Friends Like Us

by Siân O'Gorman

  She checked the dates; the weekend he went to London to meet clients. But if that was a business trip, she was Rumpole of the Bailey. She then had a thought and went on Facebook and searched for Angeline Barrow. Birthdate? Last month. So it was a birthday weekend away. It had to be. Angeline was 29 years old. Steph shook her head. What was he thinking? Steph felt disempowered, dehumanised, worthless. Someone else was worth his time, his energy and she was nothing. She should have been used to it, but each time she was faced with his utter disregard for her and their family life, it was a new shock, a fresh wound.

  Somehow she managed to get her coat, bag and keys and drive to the Dundrum shopping centre, and she did what she always did when subtle domestic terrorism did not quell her feelings of utter powerlessness. She went shoplifting. It was far more soothing than eating cakes, she thought, or drinking alcohol. The high was so much higher.

  3

  Eilis

  Aching feet, damp patches under her arms and, sticky-up hair. For an A&E consultant, this was what was called getting off lightly, the mere physical manifestations of a night shift and it didn’t do you much good to dwell too long on the emotional toll. Eilis McCarthy knew dwelling on anything didn’t get you anywhere. She was half-way through a night shift and it was 4am but in the parallel universe of hospital life, the time didn’t matter, you didn’t care. It was a case of getting to the end, whenever and wherever that was.

  But in all these years, the nightmarish whirl of a shift on the A&E ward never ceased in its power to shock. And then, suddenly, like some terrifying fairground ride, it was over and you would be deposited on terra normal, legs shaking and eyes blinking in the sunlight, the throb of it all jingling and jangling in your brain.

  And all those patients, the old, the dying, the strokes, the beaten-up women, the bizarre domestic accidents – all those stories – they didn’t just float off and disappear. You couldn’t just forget about them and carry on with your day. Well, Eilis couldn’t, anyway.

  She would go home and try to do some gardening or gaze in the fridge for something to eat or be brushing her teeth and then she would realize she had totally stopped, frozen at the memory of the person who, just hours earlier, was fighting for life. They were men and women at their lowest, at their most vulnerable. Helpless, inadequately clothed, often alone, and Eilis would have stitched them up, made assessments, talked to them, soothed them, dispensed drugs, and then she was expected to just walk away. And then there were those who didn’t make it, the ones who couldn’t be soothed and medicalized back to full health, the ones who they couldn’t help, couldn’t save. It was them, the ones who had lost the fight, that were the worst, those were the faces that most haunted her waking moment.

  Maybe she should have gone in for paediatrics. But that was heart-breaking, too, wasn’t it? Worse, maybe. Or… maybe she should never have done medicine. But it was all her mother wanted for her.

  The kettle in the little kitchen of the staff room in A&E was a slow-boiler and even if you tried not to watch it impatiently, it still took ages. But she persisted as she was suddenly desperate for the comfort of a hot mug of tea and a proper read of the note she had skimmed. And maybe a biscuit. Eilis rooted around in the tin hoping for one that wasn’t soft or half-chewed.

  She was thin and pale, the result of a diet of biscuits and not enough sleep. She was petite and pretty, her hair was cut pixie-style, but she spent most of her life avoiding mirrors so as not to be reminded of the dark circles under her eyes, and anyway, what could she do about it? Unlike practically every other workplace in the world, a hospital was one place where your physical appearance was of absolutely no consequence, thankfully.

  The note had been written by Steph and Melissa. She had scanned it quickly, when Theresa had given it to her, but she wanted a chance to read it properly, to take it all in. The thought of Melissa and Steph – her friends! – made her feel that fresh air was being breathed into her life, something wonderful was there for her, if she wanted it.

  And she did. She hadn’t realised just how much until she saw Steph’s handwriting. ‘It’s us,’ the note had said. ‘Here to see you. We miss you and want you to join us next week for drinks. Steph and Melissa.’

  But what would they think of her? Would they see through her, realize how insular, how introverted she had become? And what would she say about Rob?

  She and Rob had been together since they were first years… so twenty years ago now. But she wasn’t sure if what she had with Rob was normal? They hadn’t had sex since… since probably around the last time she had seen Steph and Melissa. No, that was taking it a bit far. But probably six months or so. Long enough anyway. Too long. When were you officially flatmates? What was the cut-off point? Six months? A year?

  She and Rob were both doctors, so it was inevitable and entirely un-ironic that their relationship should be clinical. He was a consultant but had had the sense not to specialize in A&E, the front line. He was besuited and officed and led a far more civilised professional life than Eilis. He liked everything just so: his life, his home and his partner. He didn’t go in for emotion or mess. Their small cottage was like something you might see in an interiors magazine, where if you left a mug on the table, it all felt wrong and weird. Their kitchen cupboards didn’t even have handles, so you had to jab and stab at them, just to try and get them to open. Sometimes Eilis wondered just what was so wrong with handles. But these kind of things mattered to Rob… and it didn’t really to her, so she went along with it.

  Rob spent his evenings perched on their stylish but incongruously uncomfortable sofa. Supposedly a place to relax, it made you feel like you were waiting for your annual smear test. It wasn’t what you wanted in a sofa; that much was sure. But Rob loved it and was happy to balance on its edge.

  Their whole house was a bit like that, Eilis thought. Rob didn’t even like cushions or rugs. The headboard on their bed had a piece of wood jutting out that caught Eilis on the back of the head. Every time. And even the tea towels were too nice to use. Eilis had her own secret supply of mugs that Rob said he could not, would not drink out of. If it didn’t emanate from Scandinavia, then it wasn’t worth having. He had also sharpened up his appearance lately but isn’t that what happens when the forties loom, you either up your game or let things slide. He was more muscular these days and his hair was trendier. It was quite a shock when he came home with it, such a departure from the normal hair he had before… But he looked good. And very different from the Rob she had met all those years ago, when they were first years doing medicine in Trinity College.

  He had dressed beyond his years in those days, blazer and smart trousers, hair cut in a style only a Granny would love. But now… he exuded that look of the lean, sporty type. Not the kind of man Eilis ever thought she would end up with and not the kind who she would have thought would have gone for her. But he had and there they were. A couple, uncoupled.

  It didn’t help that she felt surrounded by death. There was the hospital, of course, part of the job. Sometimes she felt like the last person left in the castle which was being besieged by faceless people with swords. She kept having to swing around and fight off the next one. But it was also her mother, who had died in her last year at school. She felt almost embarrassed that she was still, she felt, in grieving, even twenty years on. She still felt like that eighteen year old who lost her mother, she still carried the pain around carefully so as not to dislodge it. She couldn’t, hadn’t, told anyone about it as no one would understand her inability to move on.

  But at least now she had Steph and Eilis… at least she had her friends back, after all that time. They hadn’t given up on her.

  She was desperate to phone Steph straight away, and say wild horses wouldn’t keep her from meeting next week. She had missed the two of them as well and that making new friends like them had turned out to be impossible. She almost skipped out of the tea room, ready to get on with the shift and get home.

  ‘Right, I need
to talk to you.’ A man in his early forties, wearing a checked shirt and sleeves rolled up, was marching straight up to her. Handsome, she couldn’t help noticing. ‘Yes,’ she said, smiling warily.

  ‘Are you a doctor?’ He spoke angrily.

  ‘Yes… but…’

  ‘My mother has been waiting for more than eight hours. I just can’t believe that this situation exists in this country. My mother… my mother is out there. Stroke… we think. Who knows? Not anyone in this bloody hospital! She’s eighty-five, but no one has bothered to ask her that. No one has asked any questions yet because not a single doctor has examined her…’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, thinking how worried he looked, wrung out. ‘We are…’

  ‘Listen,’ he interrupted. ‘I know you’re up to your eyes, but when are you going to see her?’

  ‘One of the nurses will have…’

  ‘Do you think that is enough?’ he said, speaking more quietly. ‘Do you think that it is okay for an eighty-five-year-old woman to be left sitting on a plastic chair for eight hours? She’s been given the once-over and that’s all. Is it because she’s old? Not worth saving? Are you all happy with that?’

  ‘No… but… there’s a system here…’ She tried to speak kindly to him, to soothe, to calm.

  He rolled his eyes. ‘A system? There’s a better system in any kindergarten. Bedlam this is. Proper bedlam.’

  ‘I am sorry,’ said Eilis. ‘We are working as hard as we can.’ This is the line that they all trotted out, something they have been told to use to keep anxious or angry relatives at bay while they get on with the job of looking after patients. But she was well aware of the flimsiness of the line, the lack of satisfaction it gave the relative who was only trying to help someone they loved. She thought of her own mother and how she would feel if she had been sitting on a chair for eight hours. ‘We’ll get to her as soon as possible. I promise.’

  ‘Really?’ He raised his eyebrow. For a moment, he looked away, his mouth taut with the pressure of the situation, the fight he was having to get his mother off a chair and into a bed.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said again. ‘We will…’

  He shook his head, as if to say he couldn’t talk about it anymore and suddenly she was struck by him, this handsome man, with blue eyes, and she was struck by his humanity, his fight for his mother. She was touched and moved by him. And when he pushed his hair back, she noticed his hands; strong and tanned, even in this Irish winter. She was suddenly disarmed and didn’t know what to say.

  ‘I know it’s not your fault,’ he began and walked off back to the waiting room.

  ‘We’ll look after your mother, don’t worry,’ she managed to say.

  Leaning against a trolley (thankfully patient-less) was Becca, one of the staff nurses, laughing with Bogdan, the porter.

  ‘Everything all right, doctor?’ called Bogdan.

  ‘Jaysus, Eils,’ said Becca. ‘I thought he was going to have a coronary. In the right place, though, eh?’

  Eilis didn’t answer but instead walked to the nurses’ station and took a moment to calm herself. ‘Theresa,’ she then said, ‘there’s a woman in the waiting area, she’s eighty-five and she may have had a stroke. Could you check on why she hasn’t been seen yet. Will you find out?’

  ‘Certainly, doctor.’

  Becca came up and sat down beside Theresa, swinging a 360 in the chair.

  ‘Jaysus,’ she said. ‘I’d do him.’

  ‘Bogdan?’

  ‘No, that total ride. The one with the gorgeous ass. Mr Shouty.’

  ‘Oh him?’ Eilis dismissed it. She had a teenager with a broken leg who was just back from x-ray, a man who had been beaten up and needed stitches, and another man who had stumbled down the ladder of his loft and had fallen onto his back on his landing. She needed to assess him straight away.

  ‘I wouldn’t mind him shouting me into bed,’ said Becca.

  Bogdan overheard her. ‘You’ve got to have more self-respect, Becca,’ he said. ‘Shouting is not good from man to woman.’

  ‘It all depends,’ shrieked Becca. ‘If you get my meaning!’

  Eilis left Becca laughing away and Bogdan shaking his head, puzzled. It was going to be a long night, she felt the note in her pocket, though, and remembered she had something, she had two friends who wanted to see her. And she felt something she hadn’t felt in years: excitement.

  4

  The girls

  Eilis called Steph the next morning and arrangements were made to meet. She had looked forward to the night all week, and had even bought herself a new top.

  ‘Where’re you off to?’ he asked, not mentioning or noticing the top, the lipstick or the heeled boots. She noticed him, though. He wasn’t in his usual off-duty clothes, he had his nice jeans and shirt on. Was he going out? That was the benefit of not having children, she thought. They could both go out and not have to mention it to the other.

  ‘Meeting Steph and Melissa. Remember? I told you. We’re meeting in the Shelbourne. Steph has a proposal.’

  ‘Ah, yes, yes you did. Well, have a good time. And say hello from me.’

  ‘Will do. So, what are your plans? You look like you’re going out.’

  ‘I was,’ he said. ‘You know, work night-out. But I don’t know… I think I’ll have a quiet night in,’ he said. ‘There’s that programme on steam trains… so…’

  Just then his phone beeped and he picked it up. Eilis took it as a cue to leave. They were like an old married couple, these days. Comfortable together. Unlike their sofa.

  Sometimes Eilis wanted to buy something hideous and see how long it would take Rob to bin it or burn it or whatever he did with the aesthetic eyesores that inhabit most people’s homes. Things would be disappeared, and nothing more would be said. Eilis toyed with buying a little jug, with a picture of the Parthenon on it, when they were in Greece last summer. Gloriously tacky, naff but nice. But she knew that its life, like that of a box of chocolates in a communal office, would be pitifully short if she brought it home, and instead brought back a bottle of Ouzo, a taste of the holiday.

  And Eilis didn’t really mind too much. He was the aesthete and she appreciated the fact that he was into things and the way they looked, far more than she did. Except, she did long for a sofa that did what it was meant to; something into which you could sink, something enveloping.

  Rob was equally dedicated to his own wardrobe. He always dressed in purely navy or grey or black that he bought in the kind of posh men’s shops which are always entirely empty of other customers and where the cost of jumpers is the price of a small family car, and the socks so luxurious you can’t actually wear them.

  But his style had rubbed off on her. A bit. Okay, a lot. She now dressed not unlike him in a muted colour palate which some might call stylish but she felt desperately boring, really, and middle-aged. But she was boring, she supposed, and middle-aged. Once upon a time she had a pair of red checked trousers and she didn’t even consider that they might be garish or unflattering. She just wore them because she loved them. Who was that person, she often thought, the one who was so unselfconscious?

  She took the winding train into town and arrived at the Horseshoe Bar in the Shelbourne, and ordered a gin and tonic and sat down to wait for Melissa and Steph, her old friends. The first large swig of her drink felt so good that she took another… and another. Her gin and tonic had slipped down like a log flume at a fun fair. She quickly ordered a second. She hadn’t realized that she had been feeling so nervous, so she vowed to slow down and drink like a grown-up, not a nervous teenager on a first date.

  *

  Steph entered the Shelbourne hotel and went straight to the Ladies. There was a small bench in the room which she sat down on and tried to get herself together. She was still breathing hard after what had happened earlier. God knows how she had managed to get herself out of the house but she hadn’t wanted to miss the evening with Eilis and Melissa, but she now realised she was in no fit
state to socialize. She had to calm herself, get herself together. She had pushed the revelation of Rick and Angeline to the back of her mind, it was where she stuffed everything she couldn’t think about. She was worried about what she would do if she decided to let any of it out.

  Maybe she shouldn’t have come, she thought, and why had she done such a thing? Imagine if it got back to Rachel? Or anyone she knew? Imagine if Fintan had told Miriam… the shame would be too much.

  Earlier, she had been in Supervalu, picking up a few bits and pieces for dinner. And she saw they had their Easter eggs in. Already! She had her basket with milk and tea bags in and some of those juices Rachel liked when her eye spotted a Lindt gold bunny. And suddenly she knew she was going to steal it, and there was nothing she could do to stop herself.

  Without looking around, with incredible sleight of hand, she slipped it into her handbag. And then she went to the till, hoping she looked normal, even though her insides were screaming with the surge of adrenaline, and calmly paid for the things in her basket.

  She was just leaving when the manager, who she had known for years from being in and out of the shop, came up to her.

  ‘Mrs Fitzpatrick,’ he said, blushing beetroot. ‘Have you forgotten anything?’

  She managed to smile. ‘No, Fintan, I don’t think so… I have everything.’ Does he know? she thought. Did he see? Why had she done it? Her heart was pounding, blood rushing to her head. Why had she done this again? What was possessing her to steal things, to slip things into her bag? She kept doing it and she couldn’t shake the habit. The thought of being caught terrified and horrified her, but she kept doing it. And a Lindt bunny! The shame.