by Sonia Henry
‘It’s switch,’ I announce joyfully, waving my phone around as if I’ve just got engaged. ‘I’ll duck out and answer it.’
The Joker and the Smiling Assassin are trapped elbow deep in brain tissue, which means I’m able to exit without delay. Once outside I consider not answering, but then remember the Shark wants to do a round so, with a sigh, I put the phone to my ear. ‘Hello?’
All I can hear is static, and a weird loud whooshing sound. I walk quickly out of theatres to the meeting room. I don’t want the Shark to think I’m ignoring him.
But even away from the lead-lined rooms I still can’t hear anything.
‘HELLO!’ I shout into the phone. ‘DO YOU WANT TO DO A ROUND?’
I hear some clunking, as if the phone is going down a ladder.
‘Sorry about the wind,’ a voice says, now fairly clearly, into my ear. ‘I’m out on the harbour.’
‘Oh …’ I stutter, realising I’m not talking to the Shark.
‘It’s Jack. Jack Prince.’
Even though I’m standing alone in the dictation room next to the operating theatre and he’s many nautical miles away, I feel my cheeks start to burn. I nearly laugh. Of course he’s out on the harbour, while I’m at work, struggling through a day that feels like it will never end.
‘Hi, Dr Prince!’ I manage. ‘Sorry, I thought it was one of the other consultants wanting to do a round.’
‘Don’t worry,’ he says, sounding relaxed. ‘I never round on Wednesday afternoons. It’s my sailing time.’
I nod, then realise he can’t see me. What can I even say to that?
‘Lucky you,’ comes out accidentally. ‘I’ve just been in theatre with your esteemed colleague.’
I must sound more sarcastic than I intended because he laughs. ‘That bad?’
‘Yeah,’ I say, forgetting myself, ‘he’s a total jerk.’
The wind whistles in my ear. I wonder, for a second, what the yacht looks like. I forget that I’m leaning against the wall outside the operating theatre in my oversized scrubs and imagine what it would be like out on the harbour. Wind. Water. All that wonderful freedom. Sailing must open the soul in a way not even the sharpest scalpel can.
I forget that Dr Prince is my boss and start to tell him about my day. ‘You know, he’s just so mean all the time,’ I explain. ‘Like, I’ve been away for ten weeks and he can’t even ask how my trip was. It’s always just how I’m never good enough.’
‘I can’t stand the guy,’ Dr Prince says, then there’s a silence as if he realises he’s gone too far.
‘Me neither,’ I agree with feeling, and even though all I can hear is the wind it whistles with agreement.
‘I actually didn’t ring to talk about him.’ He sounds brisk all of a sudden, once again my senior consultant. ‘I know you’re off tomorrow, so I wanted to say good luck with the paper and ask you to tell Wolfgang I said, Tjena.’
‘Tjena?’
‘It’s colloquial Swedish for hello,’ he explains. ‘Now he’s been on sabbatical there for nearly a year from Germany he needs to practise his Swedish.’
I can’t believe that in less than twenty-four hours I’ll be on a plane to the south of Sweden where I’ll say tjena to Dr Wolfgang Dietrich.
‘Well, thanks,’ I say. ‘Thanks for offering me the research, too.’
‘That’s my pleasure.’ There’s a moment where neither of us say anything, and more wind whooshes through my ear. We both start to talk at the same time. He stops.
‘Okay, I guess I’ll let you get back to it.’ I feel embarrassed and I don’t know why.
‘Have a safe flight.’
He ends the call.
I let my body flop against the wall and release a breath I didn’t know I was holding. What is going on here, exactly? Do consultants normally call their interns from their yachts on the harbour?
Maybe they do. Maybe he’s just being supportive. He’s a busy, important man. The only time he probably gets to make calls is when he’s out sailing.
My thoughts are interrupted by my phone ringing again. This time it is the Shark. I bury my questions with no answers, remind myself they’re questions I shouldn’t even be asking and, pulling off my scrub cap, walk up to the ward.
None of this will matter tomorrow. This time tomorrow I’ll be on a plane to the other side of the planet, and the Joker and Jack Prince and his yacht on Sydney Harbour will be far, far away.
twenty-six
It’s early afternoon when the plane lands in Copenhagen. Despite taking a concoction of sedatives kindly prescribed by Max, I’m wide awake and desperate to escape my economy window-seat prison.
One day soon, I think as I nearly cop an elbow in the head from the woman sitting next to me, I’ll have to fly business class. Which means I’ll be commencing work as a female escort, considering my job as a doctor isn’t providing me with the funds to do so.
‘Welcome to Denmark,’ the flight attendant offers in perfect English as we slow to a stop on the tarmac. ‘It’s nineteen degrees with light winds.’
I rub my eyes and remind myself that this trip is my chance for a mental recharge, as well as a career development opportunity. I wonder if Dr Prince somehow knew that I needed something to help repair my badly dented surgical confidence. Change, as they say, is as good as a holiday. New places, new people, new perspectives.
I disembark, and make it through customs and to the train station underneath the airport with surprising efficiency. I start to feel as if I have stepped into the twilight zone. Everyone is very calm and polite. In my experience, airports are normally stressful and rushed. Not this one.
‘Excuse me, is this the platform for the train to Lund?’ I ask a tall blond (everyone here is tall and blond) standing in front of me. An ancient university town in the south of Sweden, Lund is only half an hour by train from Copenhagen, Wolfgang has told me.
‘It is,’ the blond man says. ‘So you are travelling in Sweden?’
‘I’m attending a conference there,’ I explain. ‘So it’s work, really.’
He smiles. ‘Still, you must see the cathedral. And the bridge. Lund is very beautiful, and so is the journey.’
He’s not wrong, I soon discover.
As the train pulls out of the station and rockets along the bridge linking Denmark and Sweden, I stare out the window. At first all I can see is water. Then, gradually, shapes start to form, emerging from the ocean like sea monsters. I squint, trying to work out what they are. I’m amazed to discover they’re windmills. It’s as if the Vikings woke up one morning and decided to hurl the windmills like javelins into the water, where they landed perfectly in a line, silhouetted against the horizon of the world.
I could have stayed on that train for hours. It’s almost a disappointment when the words, ‘Next stop: Lund’, echo through the carriage.
More mundane sights greet me as the train slows. Factories, fields, houses.
When the train shudders to a halt and the doors open, I’m greeted by torrential rain. It’s the start of June and meant to be the European summer but Sweden hasn’t got the memo and it’s freezing. The lift is broken, so I drag my suitcase up what feels like three hundred stairs. After asking a woman in the ticket office for directions to my hotel—there is no need to take a taxi, she assures me; it is only a five-minute walk away—I step out of the station into a cobblestone square lined by rows and rows of pushbikes.
Despite the seemingly straightforward directions, and even with the attempted use of Google Maps, I manage to get lost trying to find the hotel. By the time I reach the Grand Hotel I’m feeling anything but grand. My clothes and hair are so wet I feel like I’ve been on some kind of military exercise. The staff kindly ignore my bedraggled state and check me in with admirable Scandinavian efficiency. I finally make it to my room, and collapse onto the bed.
Then, reminding myself that I should text my parents to let them know I’ve arrived safely, I lift my head off the bed to rummage in my bag for
my phone. I hear the rumble of thunder, and a flash of lightning illuminates the scene outside my window. There’s a church standing in the rain, light shining from its stained-glass windows. The walls sparkle, even in the storm. I step back in time and see the stonemasons carving each brick, one by one, to build that fantastic cathedral. ‘Wow!’ I whisper involuntarily.
I had planned to review my research before the meeting I have scheduled with Wolfgang Dietrich at the hospital tomorrow morning, but it stays untouched in my suitcase. Instead, I lie on the bed and stare at the magnificent edifice in front of me. Only a divine hand could have created such exquisite beauty. There must be a God, I think drowsily, as my eyes start to close, to have inspired humans to build a place like that.
twenty-seven
I wake the following morning with no memory of having fallen asleep. When I reach for my phone I find fifteen missed calls from my parents and seven messages from Max.
How was the flight?
Are you there yet?
Are the Scandinavian men hot?
Are you alive?
Your parents called me.
Your parents are going to call the police.
ARE YOU ALIVE?
I spend ten minutes being yelled at by my mother for not having called sooner, text Max to assure him that I am still in the land of the living, then hastily shower and dress and, grabbing my folder of papers, run down to the hotel lobby.
The girl behind the desk promises me that the hospital is easy to find. To my relief the rain has stopped, so I take her word for it and make my way through the streets of Lund.
The town is beautiful, like something from a fairy tale. I’m so taken with the old architecture and the narrow streets that when the hospital comes into view I’m momentarily disappointed. Hospitals, even in fairy tales, look pretty much like any other hospital. And, I discover, have a similarly confusing layout.
Standing in the foyer, I re-read Wolfgang’s email: Meet me at 8 am on level 5. It’s the surgical floor.
I look around. The hospital is huge. There are blocks of lifts to different wings and floors all over the place. Hmm.
I approach the information desk and say, ‘I have a meeting with Dr Wolfgang Dietrich on level five. Can you direct me, please?’
She turns and speaks quickly in Swedish to a man beside her.
‘Come with me,’ the man says. He leads me around the corner and up a flight of stairs to another set of lifts. He swipes his card and presses the button for the fifth floor. ‘You’ll need a code to get through the door when you get up there, but I don’t have it,’ he says apologetically. ‘Maybe if you bang on the door someone will hear you.’
‘Wait …’ I don’t think this sounds like a particularly good plan, but the lift doors are already closing.
They open again on level five, and I find myself facing two huge closed doors. There’s no one in sight.
I sigh. I try knocking, which achieves nothing. Then I see an intercom. I press the button a few times, again with no result. I’m just about to get in the lift and go back to information when the doors miraculously open and an attractive older man in white scrubs steps towards me.
‘Thank God!’ I exclaim. ‘Thank God you appeared! Can you let me in, please?’
He looks at me. ‘Ah, do you work here?’
I look down at my faded jeans and grey hoodie and realise I don’t quite fit the surgical mould. I curse Wolfgang Dietrich and his suggestion of a ‘casual meet-up’ and realise I should have dressed more formally.
‘I’m here to meet Dr Dietrich,’ I say, my confidence faltering. ‘I’m Dr Katarina Holliday—from Australia.’
Understanding dawns on his face. ‘You’re Katarina! Katarina from Sydney!’
‘Yes!’ I nearly hug him.
‘Yes, yes. You know Jack!’ The man reaches forward and shakes my hand enthusiastically. ‘I’m Tomas Johanssen. Very good to meet you.’
‘Johanssen, like the 2014 paper on glioblastoma?’
He laughs. ‘That’s nothing too important, believe me.’
I admire how humble the Swedes are.
He leads me into a room where there are more men in white scrubs having an animated discussion over cups of black coffee. Everyone stops talking to stare at me.
‘Wolfgang, I have found Katarina from Sydney!’ Tomas says. ‘Jack has sent her to us!’
A man with sandy blond hair steps forward, smiling.
‘Hi,’ I say, then remember. ‘Sorry—tjena!’
His smile turns into a laugh. My irritation melts away and I immediately warm to him. He turns to the rest of the white scrub brigade, who are also chuckling.
‘Jack has taught her well! Tjena!’
We shake hands. His eyes are bright blue, and the smile reaches them. Wolfgang Dietrich looks as if he doesn’t take life all that seriously, though I know he must, given the kind of work he does.
‘Katarina from Sydney! You made it!’
‘Well, eventually,’ I tell him as he motions for me to sit down. ‘Your directions were hopeless!’ I start to pull out my research folder, but all he wants to talk about is Jack Prince.
‘Has Jack told you we used to go to the museum all the time?’
‘Um, well …’
‘It was great.’ His expression is animated; it’s clear he has fond memories of his time in Sydney. ‘We used to go there to look at his latest acquisitions, and then out for drinks, then sometimes we operate. And his house! Have you seen his house?’
I’m not sure how to tell Dr Wolfgang and Co that in Australia interns don’t socialise with their consultants and that our main interactions take place on ward rounds or in the operating theatre. Fortunately, he doesn’t seem to need an answer, as he’s lost in his reminiscing.
‘And his yacht! Tomas!’ Wolfgang looks over at Tomas. ‘Remember his yacht?’
Tomas, it turns out, has also met Dr Prince, and is as impressed as Wolfgang.
‘Surgeons make no money here,’ Tomas tells me as I am poured my third cup of black coffee. ‘Not like Jack.’
Another man in white scrubs joins in. ‘After I met Jack, I really wanted to move to Sydney to have a life like his, but my wife wouldn’t let me.’
‘Yes, Henrik wasn’t allowed to become an Australian,’ Wolfgang explains to me, looking amused. ‘Here in Sweden we are very controlled by our women.’ Suddenly Wolfgang changes tack. ‘So,’ he says, ‘let us talk about the conference tomorrow.’
He leads me into his office to show me the template for the poster and explain how the presentation will work.
‘It’s not so hard,’ he assures me. ‘You just stand next to it and for two minutes answer some questions. We will be there if it gets too difficult.’ He looks at his watch. ‘We have to go and operate,’ he tells me. ‘You can join us if you like.’
To be totally honest, the last thing I feel like is standing in an operating theatre for ten hours, but it would be rude to turn him down, so I half-heartedly agree and follow him out the door.
Within minutes I am standing at a sink, scrubbing in next to Wolfgang as he peppers me with questions about Dr Prince and life back in Australia. I can’t believe I’ve gone from a scrub sink in the southern hemisphere to one in the northern hemisphere and wonder for a second why we couldn’t have done something slightly more relaxing, like go for a drink, instead.
Doctors, I think with a sigh. It doesn’t matter which part of the world they’re in, they still can’t help themselves.
A nurse comes over to let us know the patient is asleep. She gives me a funny look.
‘Tjena!’ I say brightly, since it’s the only Swedish word I know.
‘Hej Hej,’ she replies coldly, before exchanging a few quick words with Wolfgang in Swedish.
Wolfgang clears his throat. ‘Kitty, this is Astrid, my girlfriend.’
Astrid gives me a frosty smile. She is extremely slim, with honey-brown hair and piercing blue eyes. Her features are so symmetrical it seems imp
ossible. She is undeniably beautiful, in a perfect Scandinavian ice queen kind of way. No wonder he wanted to sleep with Nicole, I think. She might not look like a Scandinavian supermodel, but she exudes sexuality.
Astrid says something else in Swedish, then turns and enters the operating theatre.
Wolfgang looks at me. ‘You’re coming?’
‘Ah, yes … yes!’ The jetlag is kicking in and I just hope like hell there’s a stool I can sit on.
The Europeans, I soon discover, are even more psychotic than the surgeons back in Sydney. After seven hours—including a lunchbreak during which they leave the patient asleep on the table, and then the discovery that there’s a slight complication, so the operation will now probably take another seven hours—I’ve had enough.
‘Um, guys, I’m going to head back to the hotel.’
They’re so focused they don’t even raise their heads, but Tomas acknowledges my words with a nod. Wolfgang, without taking his eyes off the brain, bids me farewell.
‘We meet outside the hospital at eight in the morning,’ he says. ‘We will all go to the conference together. You have your notes?’
‘Yes, of course.’
I flee the operating theatre and almost run back to the hotel bar.
There I pull my laptop out of my bag to review the points I’m going to make. I have rewritten the paper so many times and made so many summaries, I don’t feel overly nervous. Wolfgang doesn’t seem too worried either, which is reassuring.
The barman catches my eye. ‘Would you like another drink, perhaps some food?’
I throw caution to the wind and order another red wine, and a huge bowl of meat and dumplings.
‘This is good Swedish food,’ he tells me as I start to devour the enormous plate in front of me. ‘You’ll sleep well after this.’
I’m yawning even before I finish the meal. I think of Estelle and her experiments with wine and sedatives, and resolve to tell her the magic trifecta: temazepam, pinot and Swedish dumplings.
twenty-eight
‘You have done very well,’ Wolfgang whispers to me the next morning as I stand beside my poster, explaining the best new immunotherapy techniques for treating recurrent glioblastoma multiforme. ‘I’m impressed.’ The poster presentation is much more congenial than I’d feared. I’d had horrifying visions of me standing on a big stage as surgeons rapid-fire interrogated me. Instead, I just parked myself next to my poster between two other posters, and people have been milling around, asking questions and being surprisingly pleasant.