Читать книгу The Family Way - Tony Parsons - Страница 10

The job was too much for her.

Megan could handle the workload, but not at the pace required. Her patients still filled the waiting room long after the other doctors had gone to lunch, and more were there when she came rushing back late from her house visits. So it was no surprise when Lawford came into her office and told her, ‘There’s been a complaint about you.’

All those years at med school. All those blood-splattered hysterical nights in A & E at the Homerton. All the tired flesh she had pressed, all the dicky hearts she had fretted over, and all the rubber gloves she had donned to probe some ancient and decaying rectum.

And now the ancient rectums she worked with were kicking her out.

She wondered which of the surgery doctors had lodged the complaint. They had some nerve. Bastards, she thought. Rotten bastards the lot of you.

No wonder female patients flocked to her, away from these old men with hair in their ears and stains on their trousers and contempt for their patients and their talk of ‘plumbing problems’, as if the aftermath of an ectopic pregnancy was no different from having a leaking pipe, as if crippling period pains were somewhat similar, when you thought about it, to having a broken boiler.

Megan could deal with any of it, all these things that she had never experienced herself, only studied in a classroom at medical school. But she just couldn’t do it in the few fleeting minutes allowed. She needed time.

She was just about to tell him to take his job and stick it up the terminal part of his large intestine when he spoke.

‘I think you’re doing a terrific job,’ Lawford said.

‘What?’

‘So do the other doctors.’

‘But the complaint…’

‘It’s from a patient.’

‘A patient? But my patients love me!’

‘Mrs Marley. Remember her? The large woman from the Sunny View Estate? One of your house visits.’

‘I remember Mrs Marley. And Daisy.’

‘Daisy’s the problem. You diagnosed a fever, correct?’

‘Her temperature was a bit high. She was listless. I thought –’

‘She was rushed to hospital the next day. It turned out to be a thyroid condition. Daisy’s hypothyroid. Hence the lethargy.’

Megan could feel her heart pounding. That poor child. She had failed her.

‘A thyroid condition?’

‘We all get it wrong sometimes. We’re doctors, not God.’

‘How’s Daisy? What will they do?’

‘Give her some Thyroxine pills and she should be back to normal.’

‘But she will have to take them for life.’

‘In all probability.’

‘Are there any side effects?’

‘Side effects?’ Lawford was suddenly impatient. ‘Yes – they make her well.’

It was the response of a vastly experienced doctor. Are there side effects to these pills, doctor? Yes, they make you well. Megan filed it away for future reference. She knew she would use the line many times in the coming years. If she ever became a fully registered GP.

‘Don’t worry about Daisy. She’ll be fine. Mrs Marley’s the problem. You don’t want a complaint of negligence on your record. Doesn’t look good at all.’

‘What do I do?’

‘You apologise to Mrs Marley. Grovel a bit. As much as necessary, in fact. Admit you’re only human. As you know, this year is a continuous exam for you. I’ll be writing a summative assessment. I don’t want a misdiagnosis on your record, Megan.’

It was the first time that Lawford had ever called her by her first name. She could see that he was trying to get her out of this thing with her career intact, and she felt a flood of gratitude.

‘You’re not just apologising because it will get Mrs Marley off your back,’ he said sternly. ‘You’re apologising because it’s the right thing to do.’

‘Of course.’

Lawford nodded and headed for the door.

‘Thank you, Dr Lawford.’

He turned and faced her.

‘How far along are you?’

She placed a protective hand on her stomach. ‘Is it so obvious?’

‘The constant vomiting was a clue.’

‘Eight weeks,’ she said, finding it difficult to breathe.

‘Are you planning to have the baby?’

‘I don’t see how that’s possible. I can barely look after myself.’

I’m not going to cry, Megan thought. I am not going to cry in front of him.

‘I do want children,’ she said. ‘Very much. But not now.’

Lawford nodded again. ‘Well,’ he said, suddenly shy. ‘That’s it then.’ He smiled with a softness that Megan had never seen before. ‘I’ll let you crack on.’

I do want children, Megan thought when he had gone. And one day I will have children, and I will love them far more than our mother ever loved my sisters and me.

But not now, not when I have just started work, and not with some man I fucked at a party.

Yes, she would apologise to Mrs Marley.

But Megan felt like she should really be apologising to Daisy.

And to this little life that would never be born.

Bloody doctors, Paulo thought. They never tell you what you are letting yourself in for. If they did, they would all go out of business.

Paulo carefully steered his Ferrari through the streets of north London as if he had a cargo of painted eggshells on board. Jessica was sleeping in the passenger seat, white-faced and exhausted by the events of the morning.

They had made the laparoscopy sound as routine as having a tooth filled. But Jessica was dead to the world – pumped full of drugs so they could drill a hole in her belly and send in their camera to find out what was wrong.

He slowly drove home with one eye on the road and one eye on his wife, and he knew with a pure and total certainty that he loved this woman, and that he would not stop loving her if they couldn’t have children. He would love her even if she found it impossible to love herself. He would love her enough for both of them.

When they got home Paulo undressed Jessica and put her to bed, her sleeping face as white as the pillows.

Then he went into his study and took down all of his pictures of Chloe.

When Megan left the surgery, a young man stepped into her path.

He was big and good-looking, in a bashed-in, careless kind of way, and at first she thought he was one of those charity muggers – chuggers, they called them – who increasingly ambushed you with their clipboards, stepping over the homeless to assault you with their good causes and direct debit forms. She tried to swerve past him, but he moved quickly to intercept her. She shot him her look of cold magisterial fury, usually reserved for patients refusing to take their prescribed medication.

‘Megan?’

And then all at once she realised that it was him. The man from the party. The father of her child.

‘Oh – hello, Kurt.’

‘It’s Kirk.’

‘Of course.’

‘It’s great to see you, Megan.’ A lovely accent. Full of wide-open spaces and healthy living and Christmas on the beach. ‘You look fantastic.’

‘Thank you.’ She gave him a quick smile. He was a nice guy, and she had liked him a lot, and she had no regrets – apart from the fact that a doctor who spent her days lecturing teenage mums about contraception should probably never leave her own family planning to the fates. But there was no time left for anything more.

‘Nice bumping into you, Kirk. But I really must be –’

‘I had to see you,’ he said, and at last she understood that this man had actually been waiting for her.

Megan’s head reeled with the insanity of the situation. Here she was carrying his baby inside her and here he was angling for a second date.

She didn’t know him. And he didn’t know her. Yet even in the cold light of Hackney, without one too many Asahi Super Drys inside her, Megan could recall very clearly how they had ended up in bed, on a pile of coats dumped by the guests. He was tall, athletic but with a kind of genial innocence about him. His children will be beautiful, Megan reflected, and the unbidden thought made her feel like weeping.

‘I thought you were going back to Sydney.’

‘I am. I will be. But I wanted to see you before I go.’

She had to be strong. He might be making beautiful babies one day, but they would not be with her.

‘Why’s that then?’

‘Because, well – I like you. It was terrific, wasn’t it? It was great, wasn’t it?’

‘It was okay.’

‘It was unbelievable!’ He grinned, shook his head. ‘I don’t usually do that kind of thing.’

‘I am sure your girlfriend is delighted about that.’

He had let slip the girlfriend early on in their conversation, but she had been quietly forgotten when he started reading Megan’s signals, cottoning on that – maybe – she was interested. Now he had the decency to blush. He did that quite a bit for such a good-looking man.

‘I just wanted to say goodbye. That’s all. And say that I hope we see each other again.’

‘How old are you, Kirk?’

‘Twenty-five.’

‘I’m twenty-eight. I’m a doctor. Remind me what you do again?’

‘I teach.’

‘What subject?’

‘Scuba diving.’

‘Right – so you’re a young scuba diving instructor living in Sydney, and I’m an elderly GP practising in London.’

‘You’re not so old.’

‘I just – I really don’t see how anything can come of it, do you?’

He hung his head, and Megan had to fight back the urge to take him in her arms, taste some more of those good kisses, and tell him the truth.

‘Just wanted to see you. That’s all. I don’t usually do things like that. Get pissed and fall into bed with a complete stranger.’

‘Could you speak up a bit? I think one of the old ladies at the bus stop across the road didn’t hear you.’

Kirk hung his cropped blond head, knowing at last that coming here had been a bad idea.

‘Take this,’ he said, handing her a scrap of paper with a scrawled telephone number. It looked like long distance. Very long distance.

‘If you ever need me. Or, you know, come to Australia.’

‘Thanks.’

‘As I said – I just like you.’

‘Yeah, well. I like you too.’

‘Well – like the song says – I guess I’ll see you next lifetime.’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘See you next lifetime, Kirk.’

As soon as she had disappeared around the corner, she began ripping the telephone number into tiny pieces, her eyes blurring with tears.

Young, dumb and full of come, she thought. On his way home to his girlfriend and their beautiful babies without me ever telling him, without ever knowing, without ever being asked to carry his share of the load. And he was right – it had been fun while it lasted.

But he should consider himself lucky. She didn’t want a family with this man.

She had a family already.

In some other family, they might have drifted apart by now. In their late twenties and thirties, other sisters might have found the demands of work and home life closing in on them, clamouring for attention, taking up all their time. In some other family, men and jobs might have got in the way.

But although Jessica had her husband, her house and her dreams in one of the leafier parts of town, and while Megan and Cat had their demanding jobs at either end of the city, they clung to each other now as they had clung to each other as children, growing up in a home where the mother was absent.

They didn’t talk about it. But when Cat had first started with Rory, he had been surprised to discover that, no matter what was happening in their lives, the sisters spoke on the phone every day and tried to meet for breakfast once a week. ‘That’s unusually close, isn’t it?’ he said, with that gentle, querulous Rory-smile on his face. But of course to Cat – and to Megan, and to Jessica – it seemed perfectly normal.

This is what Cat thought about it – nobody loves their family more than someone from a broken home.

They always tried to meet in a restaurant that was equidistant from their lives.

When Megan was at the Imperial College med school, and Jessica was living in Little Venice with Paulo, they had met in Soho, in the shabby opulence of Cat’s private club, where the members were as frayed as the carpets.

Now that Megan was working in Hackney, and Jessica was up in Highgate, the axis had moved east, to a restaurant next to the meat market in Smithfield. Cat’s suggestion. It was a place where young foreign waiters dressed in black served traditional British fare such as bacon butties, porridge and fried breakfasts as if they were exotic delicacies, and every hot drink came in a mug, rather than a cup and saucer. Everything was authentically working class, apart from the sky-high prices.

Cat was the first to arrive, and through the huge windows of the restaurant she saw white-coated porters who had worked all through the night hauling massive slabs of fresh meat onto the waiting vans.

Jessica turned up next, and together they watched the porters of Smithfield at their work.

‘In ten years this will probably all be gone,’ Cat said. ‘All pushed out to the suburbs, and Smithfield turned into another Covent Garden, full of clothes shops and street performers and little cafés.’

‘Oh, that’ll be nice,’ Jessica said, picking up the menu.

Cat stared at her. ‘It will be bloody awful, Jess.’

Jessica shrugged. ‘I suppose you prefer all these men walking about carrying cows. I suppose that’s atmospheric, is it?’

Megan arrived, glancing at her watch, already dreading the dash back to the East End and morning surgery. She snatched up a menu.

‘Did you get your results?’ she asked Jessica.

Jessica nodded. The black-shirted waiter arrived, and they placed their orders, pointing at the menu as he couldn’t understand their English. When he was gone, Megan and Cat watched Jessica, and waited for her to speak.

‘It’s endometriosis,’ she said, pronouncing the word as if it had been new to her until quite recently. ‘The results of the laparoscopy say that I’ve got endometriosis.’

‘That explains the pain you get,’ Megan said, taking her sister’s hands. ‘That terrible pain every month.’

‘Endometriosis,’ Cat said. ‘That means – what? That’s to do with your period, right?’

Megan nodded. ‘It’s a menstrual condition. Fragments of membrane similar to the lining of the uterus are where they shouldn’t be – in the muscles of the uterus, the Fallopian tubes, the ovaries. Basically, all these horrible, inflamed bits that bleed when you bleed.’

‘It stops you getting pregnant,’ Jessica said. ‘And it hurts like hell.’

‘They can’t cure it?’ Cat said.

‘It disappears after the menopause,’ Megan said.

‘That’s something to look forward to then,’ Jessica said.

‘You can control it by taking the pill. You stop the periods, you stop the pain. And stop the condition from deteriorating. But the best cure for it…’

Jessica looked at her, smiling bitterly. ‘This is the funny bit, Cat. I love this bit.’

‘The best cure for endometriosis,’ Megan said quietly, ‘is getting pregnant.’

‘It stops you having a baby,’ Jessica said. ‘But it only goes away if you have a baby. Isn’t that perfect?’

‘Symptoms disappear when you get pregnant,’ Megan said. ‘But it’s true – the symptoms make conception difficult. Not impossible, Jess. Please believe me.’

Megan put her arms around Jessica, and her sister pressed her head against her. Stroking Jessica’s head, Megan glanced out of the window, and saw the slabs of bloody meat being carted into the fleet of white vans. All the headless, yellow-white carcasses and the panels of bloodied flesh. The men with their bloody, Jackson Pollock-splattered white coats.

Their breakfasts arrived at that moment and Megan gasped, the vomit rising in her throat. She pushed her sister away and quickly fled from the table. When she returned from the bathroom, Cat was tucking into her sausage sandwich, but Jessica hadn’t touched her pancakes.

‘What’s wrong with you, Megan?’

‘It’s nothing.’ She looked at her porridge and felt like being sick again.

‘Megan,’ Cat said, the stern elder sister demanding the truth. ‘What’s happening?’

Megan looked at her sisters and knew that it was madness to think she could keep this thing from them. They were her best friends. They would understand.

‘I’m pregnant,’ Megan said.

Cat put down her bagel. ‘How long?’

‘Eight weeks.’

‘How does Will feel about it?’

‘It’s not Will’s.’

‘Okay,’ Cat said. ‘Okay.’

Jessica struggled to speak. ‘Well – congratulations,’ she said eventually. She stroked her sister’s shoulder, smiling through a thin film of tears. ‘I mean it, Megan. Congratulations.’

Cat shot Megan a look.

Megan shook her head. ‘No.’

‘You’ll be a terrific mother,’ Jessica said.

‘But you’re not…’ Cat’s voice trailed off.

‘No,’ Megan said. ‘I’m not keeping it.’

Jessica looked at her.

‘I’m not keeping it, Jess. How can I? I hardly know the father. And even if I did, I still wouldn’t keep it. I’m not in love with him, Jess. And this is the wrong time. It’s just completely the wrong time for me to have a baby.’

‘The wrong time?’

‘I’ve just started work. I just did six years at medical school – six years! – and another year as a house officer in hospitals. I’m not even fully registered for another year.’

‘You just started work?’ Jessica said. ‘Wait a minute – you’re going to have an abortion because you just started work?’

‘That’s right,’ Megan said, angry that she had to justify herself.

‘Do you know what it means to go through an abortion?’ Jessica said.

‘Jess,’ said Cat, trying to stop her. ‘Come on.’

‘I almost certainly understand the procedure better than you do,’ Megan said.

‘I wouldn’t be so sure,’ Jessica said. ‘Some things you can’t get from books. They hoover the baby out of you. That’s what it amounts to. They get a fucking hoover, and they hoover this baby out of you, then stick it in a bin, or they burn it, they throw it away like a piece of rubbish. That’s how they will get rid of the baby, Megan, just so you can carry on with your precious career.’

‘And do you know what it means to go through a pregnancy without a father?’ Megan said. ‘Or to go through life as a single parent? I see them every day in my surgery – women with the life sucked out of them. You sit out in Highgate waiting for Paulo to come home, and you have no idea what women are going through in the real world. I’m sorry, Jessica – that’s not going to happen to me.’

‘So selfish. So bloody selfish. You think I’m not in the real world? What makes you think that Hackney is any more real than where I am?’

‘This is not about you, Jess,’ Cat said. ‘It’s not about you and Paulo and your baby. This is Megan’s decision.’

‘It just makes me sick,’ Jessica said. ‘These women treating abortion like it’s just another form of contraception.’

‘These women?’ Megan said.

‘As though it’s no different to a condom or a pill or something. Why did you let it get this far? Why did you have to make a baby? Why did you have to do that?’

‘It’s not a baby,’ Megan said. ‘Not yet. And I can’t cope with my work as it is – it just wouldn’t be fair on the baby.’

‘You think that killing it is fair on the baby? You don’t care about the baby, Megan. You care about your career.’

Jessica stood up. Cat tried to stop her, but Jessica shook her off.

‘That poor little thing, Megan. That poor little thing.’

Jessica threw some money on the table and walked out. Megan and Cat let her go. A couple of porters whistled at her.

‘It’s natural, isn’t it?’ Megan said. ‘Not to want this baby?’

Cat stared out of the window at the meat market. All this would be gone soon. She suddenly felt exhausted.

‘It’s the most natural thing in the world,’ she said.