by Sonia Henry
I shake my head. ‘I need to email the German guy and keep going with this research,’ I tell him. ‘Prince sent me this hectic email before I left and it’s not like I have a raging social life here in Wingabby.’
‘Fair enough,’ Max says. ‘The Godfather’s at the pub already with one of the nurses so I’ll catch up with him later. See you.’
‘Bye,’ I say as he heads out the door.
I open my laptop and immediately feel exhausted. Novel immunotherapy for tackling recurrent glioblastoma multiforme, while undeniably worthwhile, sounds about as exciting as watching paint dry.
These are the sacrifices junior doctors have to make, I remind myself. To have a competitive CV, I need to actually have something written on it. I also realise I don’t have Dr Dietrich’s email address.
I wonder for a crazy moment if I should text Nicole, but banish that thought before it can implant, and realise the only person I can really ask is Dr Prince.
I pick up my phone, and stare at it. Hmm.
I haven’t seen Dr Prince since the awkward M&M meeting. I think about him quite a bit, but in fairness there isn’t much else to think about on thirty-eight-degree nights surrounded by brown walls.
I reassure myself that Dr Prince has no idea of his starring role in my after-dark fantasies and that there is nothing wrong with texting him to ask for Dr Dietrich’s email address.
I write a draft text which I then waste close to an hour editing. My head starts to hurt. If I can’t even write a text, I have no idea how I’ll manage to write an entire research paper.
Miraculously, Estelle emerges from her bedroom, looking sleepy but pleased. ‘I just had the sleep of death!’ she announces. ‘I’ve finally found exactly the right temazepam-to-wine ratio!’ She looks over to where I’m hunched, staring at my phone on the couch. ‘What’s wrong with you? Have you been called in to the hospital?’
‘I have to text Dr Prince for his friend’s email address,’ I explain. ‘You know, the German guy he’s asked me to do research for.’
Estelle, aware of my feelings for Dr Prince, looks at me sympathetically. ‘Have you been working on a draft?’
I nod, ashamed.
She grabs my phone and, before I can protest, types quickly. She throws it back to me.
Hi, would you mind sending me Dr Dietrich’s email address so I can let him know where I’m at with the research? Having a really fun time out here in Wingabby! Thanks. Katarina.
‘I don’t know about the “having fun in Wingabby” bit,’ I say nervously.
‘Too late.’ Estelle is merciless. ‘I already sent it.’
I whimper. ‘What if he doesn’t reply?’ I feel the churning fear of anyone who’s ever sent a text message to someone they have a massive crush on. Even if the text is only work-related.
‘Of course he’ll reply,’ Estelle says dismissively. ‘It’s about boring research that he asked you to do. Don’t be ridiculous.’
My phone beeps, causing my heart to skip a beat.
‘It’s probably Max,’ I say, trying not to get my hopes up.
‘Nope, it says Dr Prince.’ Estelle looks excited. ‘I’m opening it.’
I don’t know what she was expecting, but she looks disappointed.
[email protected]
‘He didn’t even acknowledge the fun line about being in the country.’ She rolls her eyes. ‘Do you reckon he ever goes to strip joints?’
‘Doubt it,’ I reply.
She sighs and sits next to me on the couch. ‘Old surgeons just aren’t what they used to be. Everyone is fucking PC now. It’s so boring.’
As Estelle raves about the good old strip-joint days, when surgeons were into champagne and cocaine rather than surgery, I open a new email and copy in the address Dr Prince has sent me.
Hi Dr Dietrich,
I’m Dr Prince’s surgical intern and he has sent me details of the paper I’m going to be writing. I’ll send you updates as I go for advice and feedback. Dr Prince mentioned that the paper will be presented in Sweden. I’d be happy to help present if you think it’s appropriate. Please let me know the deadlines etc. I’ll be on secondment at a rural hospital for the next 9 weeks, so I’ll have some time on my hands.
Best,
Katarina
Estelle suggests a wine, which I feel I deserve after going to all the effort of writing an email, and we leave Poo Palace for the bright lights of the backyard.
Estelle takes off her top and throws herself onto the grass, face first. Her breasts squash out to the sides and I bite back a laugh. She looks like a human pancake.
‘I should have put a towel down,’ she mumbles into the grass. ‘It’s really itchy.’
I take off my top as well and lie on my back, enjoying the liberation of being semi-nude outside in a place where no one can see us.
‘When we first met five years ago, did you ever imagine we’d find ourselves here together?’ Estelle asks. ‘Like, lying on this itchy grass, in forty-degree heat, in the middle of fucking nowhere while working at the worst hospital in the world as junior doctors?’
‘Nothing surprises me anymore,’ I say, looking up at the bright blue sky, tracing the marshmallow clouds with my finger.
‘Well, mate, there’s no one else I’d rather be having this glorious experience with than you,’ Estelle says formally, ‘my colleague and friend, the esteemed Dr Kitty Holliday.’
I feel myself grinning at the ridiculous use of the word ‘esteemed’, when we’re definitely the least-esteemed doctors I know—not to mention the fact that the esteemed are exposing themselves indecently and spending the afternoon getting drunk.
Two hours and two and a half bottles later, the esteemed stumble into the house of brown, and resettle on the couch. I look down at my phone, which I have happily neglected, and see that I have a reply from Dr Wolfgang Dietrich. In my happy wine haze I start to open it when I see I also have eleven missed calls from Max.
Estelle, meanwhile, finds her own phone and discovers a similar number of missed calls from the Godfather.
‘I bet they’ve found a party,’ she says, looking excited. ‘I’m calling him back.’
The Godfather answers immediately. I hear him yelling into the phone but can’t make anything out.
‘Slow down!’ Estelle interrupts him. ‘What? You’re where?’
More incoherent yelling.
‘Okay, okay. Shit.’
‘What’s going on?’ I ask.
She waves me silent. ‘Okay, Kitty and I’ll walk there as fast as we can. How far is the police station from our place?’
The police station?!
She hangs up and looks at me.
‘Get your clothes on,’ she says. ‘We’re going to the police station. Max has been arrested!’
nineteen
Estelle fills me in as we begin the walk to the police station. We have a car, supplied by the hospital, but we’re both too drunk to drive—which, I discover, is the crux of our immediate problem.
‘Max was driving the nurse’s car,’ Estelle begins. ‘You know—the guy he went to the races with? Anyway, he was on his way home, but then he crashed into an ambulance.’
I stop walking.
‘I know.’ Estelle’s shaking her head. ‘Of all the luck, right?’
The Godfather assured Estelle it was only a minor scrape, but the paramedic, being a responsible member of the local community, insisted on calling the police. They attended the scene, mobile breath-testing kit in hand.
‘The nurse Max was with said he couldn’t drive because he was too drunk, but Max thought he was fine.’ Estelle grimaces. ‘It’s this hot weather—it really fucks with you.’
We’re nearly at the police station when the Godfather calls Estelle again. ‘Wait there, I’m coming outside,’ he says.
We stop on the lawn. I admire the architecture. PROTECTING THE COMMUNITY SINCE 1911 a sign proclaims.
I see the Godfather exit the station and hurry
towards us. I can’t help but notice he looks a little … on edge.
‘Are you high?’ Estelle asks him incredulously. ‘Your pupils look like dinner plates!’
‘I didn’t realise I’d have to pick Max up from the fucking police station!’ he whispers fiercely, trying to wipe sweat off his brow. ‘I’d just had some MDMA when he called me!’
‘How did you get here?’ I ask, fearing the answer.
‘How do you think? The races are in the middle of nowhere—I had to drive!’ he shout-whispers, looking over his shoulder.
‘Oh, great,’ I say. ‘So, Max gets arrested for drink driving, then you arrive at the police station high as a kite after drug driving.’
Both Estelle and the Godfather turn on me. ‘Shhhh!’
‘Sorry, sorry,’ I say. Moralising isn’t exactly helpful in the present circumstances, I concede. ‘Well, you’ll have to leave your car here. We can’t drive either—we’ve been drinking wine for hours.’
I swear all three of us roll our eyes at exactly the same time.
‘You’d better come and say hi to Max.’ The Godfather’s face creases with pity. ‘He’s in the cell.’
‘Maybe you should wait here,’ I suggest, ‘and just, you know, chill out.’
He looks relieved. We leave the Godfather hiding behind a large shrub and head into Wingabby local command.
I walk up to the reception counter.
‘Hello, Officer …’ I pause. ‘We’re here to see our friend, who’s currently incarcerated.’
The policeman smiles cheerfully. ‘Oh, the doc? Yeah, poor bastard. He was barely over the limit. It was just that ambulance driver. He really wanted to make a stink about it.’
He leads us down the hall and gets out his keys. When he opens the door to the cell, Max looks up fearfully, then promptly starts to cry.
‘It’s all right, mate,’ the policeman says kindly. ‘Your friends are here now.’
‘It was the ambulance driver!’ he tells us, wiping his nose on the sleeve of the blue Ralph Lauren shirt I’d admired only this morning. ‘I swear, the ambulance wasn’t even scratched!’
‘Oh, we’ve heard,’ Estelle assures him. ‘The cop said you only blew just over. Why didn’t you get a blood test? By the time they would have taken your blood you’d have probably been under.’
Max nods, more tears leaking from his eyes. ‘I thought of that, but guess where the blood would have been taken?’
I groan. ‘The hospital.’
‘Oh, right.’ Estelle nods her understanding. ‘Well, that’s not an option.’
I agree. I can’t imagine anything worse than being dragged into the emergency department in front of my colleagues and then having to face their disapproval. It’s a dilemma unique to doctors. I make a mental note to carry a card in my wallet that gives specific instructions in the event of an emergency that I only be taken to certain hospitals, where it’s least likely that I’ll know anyone working there.
‘Do you reckon I should tell my mum?’ Max looks up at me, his eyes wide with trepidation.
‘I don’t know, mate,’ I say honestly.
Estelle gives him a hug. I pat his shoulder.
‘I’d stopped drinking hours before,’ he sniffles, his beautiful face stained with tears. ‘I swear I thought I was right to drive. Then they made me go in the paddy wagon to the cells.’
This is too much. We all start to laugh so hard that soon I can’t breathe. I try to picture Max, in his designer shirt with his perfect smile and big blue eyes and razor-sharp intellect, sitting in the back of a police truck in the middle of the Australian bush.
‘What did you say to the police?’ I ask him.
‘I started crying straight away,’ Max says, looking a bit embarrassed. ‘But, like, you know … Then they told me I was under arrest and when I got here I tried to call you guys but no one answered.’
‘We were drunk in the backyard,’ Estelle explains sheepishly.
‘So, I called the Godfather. I was so desperate I could barely talk, and he said he’d come straight away and get me but when he got here …’
‘Yes, we know,’ I say quickly.
‘Lucky they didn’t drug test him,’ Max whispers, looking around anxiously. ‘I mean, wouldn’t look too good, would it?’
It’s funny how quickly abnormal things become normal. My compass is constantly in full spin. North is south and east is north. I feel myself acclimatising too quickly to situations the younger me would have been horrified by.
‘You doctors are crazy!’ our friend the local policeman says happily a few minutes later as he liberates Max from his cell. ‘Have you heard the news?’
‘I’m on the news?!’ Max turns pale. ‘I think I’m going to vomit.’
‘Not you, mate,’ the officer says. ‘I mean your friends in the big smoke.’
He informs us that back in the city two surgeons have been found operating after doing cocaine all weekend, and the media’s jumped on it. The health minister has been on a rant about how disgusting we all are: we’re meant to be doctors, he scolded, not drug lords. (No doubt doctors in hospitals all over Australia agree loudly and then go home and text their dealers to start using a less-obvious car.)
The police officer signs Max out of custody and gives him his list of criminal charges as a parting gift. ‘We’ll be in touch with the court date,’ he says cheerily. ‘Great to meet you guys!’
You have to hand it to country folk; they are pleasant to a fault.
We find the Godfather lying down behind the shrubbery, staring at the darkening sky.
‘I feel amazing,’ he says dreamily. ‘Look at how big the world is.’ Estelle and I drag him to his feet, and the four of us walk home.
‘Cheer up,’ I say to Max as we stroll along the main street, the sun setting behind us and the dusk settling on the shops and old pubs that line the wide road. I throw my arm around him. ‘Just think, in a while this will be such a great story.’
After all, even the biggest catastrophe can be turned around a few months later over some wines and a good laugh.
twenty
The rest of the weekend is spent formulating Max’s legal defence. Once the Godfather sobers up, he steps into litigation mode. As well as picking Max up from the police station while high on MDMA, he is also generously taking on Max’s case pro bono.
‘I can’t believe you used to be a lawyer.’ Estelle is shaking her head. ‘What kind of psycho are you? Law then medicine?’
‘Maybe don’t answer that,’ I say quickly as the Godfather looks thoughtful and opens his mouth to launch into a lengthy description of the inner workings of his mad mind.
‘The first thing you need to do is a remedial drivers’ course,’ the Godfather announces.
Max looks startled. ‘What do you mean? Like an online quiz?’
The Godfather smiles.
Remedial Drivers, we learn, is a six-week weekend program created for traffic offenders. The Godfather reckons it’s nonnegotiable. It will send the message that Max is taking his crime seriously and genuinely wants to reform.
‘You have to watch videos on dangerous driving, and then you listen to talks by occupational therapists about patients who’ve suffered brain injuries from drink-driving accidents,’ he tells Max, who’s looking more and more horrified. ‘Then there’s a big reflection session at the end. I think you have to write an essay about your feelings and stuff. And you get a certificate,’ he adds, as a sweetener.
‘At least it’ll give you something to do on the weekend,’ Estelle tells Max encouragingly. ‘You might learn something.’
I’m amazed a town as small as Wingabby has such a service, but the Godfather explains that all country areas have them, due to the high volume of offences. Apparently, a significant proportion of the community is spending their Saturdays at the local church hall being lectured about road and traffic safety.
As the other three start arguing about what else to include in the remedial driver
s’ curriculum, I remember that I still haven’t read the email from Dr Wolfgang Dietrich.
I open my laptop and locate the email. I discover that he sent me a second one while I was at the police station. I read both.
Hello Katarina,
How lucky you are being Jack’s intern! He is a fun person.
He was very good to me when I am in Sydney. Has he taken you to his art gallery?
I grin at his slightly off English and I wish I’d been to Jack’s gallery.
He launches into a description of the research, which sounds hard and boring. The paper is on novel immunotherapy techniques for treating horrible brain tumours. He wants me to do a literature review and has a few links to add to those Dr Prince sent me.
As Jack told you, if you do well and the paper is accepted you can have most of the poster with that, then you present it at our conference.
You write me and we be in touch.
Best regards,
Wolfgang
Then another email, sent five hours later:
Sorry, I forgot. The paper is due in nine weeks. I know not much time but Jack promises me you are a clever writer so it will be all right.
Best regards,
Wolfgang
Jack promises me you are a clever writer! I’m thrilled—and concerned.
‘Do you reckon it’s possible to do a really detailed lit review in nine weeks?’ I ask the rest of the group, who are still arguing about remedial drivers.
‘Yeah, easy,’ the Godfather and Max say almost simultaneously.
Estelle looks sickened. ‘God, why would you want to do that?’
‘Is this Prince’s research?’ Max is interested. ‘I’ve written a few surgical papers. I’ll help you, Kitty.’
‘Good idea—it’ll keep you out of trouble.’ The Godfather looks at Max sternly.
It’s decided. In exchange for Max helping me do the research, I promise to pick him up every Saturday evening after remedial drivers and buy him a beer.
Later that day, Estelle and the Godfather go for a walk to the corner shop, and Max and I sit outside Poo Palace together, listening to the birds.