It’s been more than thirteen years since I last worked under Yanika Hatziz, but she remains the best mentor I’ve ever had. Neither of us were traditional surgeon material back then—Yanika with her heavy Greek accent, me a quarter Malaysian and too short to operate without a steel box to stand on. But: “You must never allow these things to hold you back,” she said in our first supervision meeting at the Royal London. “You are to be outstanding and fearless in all you undertake as a surgeon, Carrie. You’ll have the power to save people’s lives in a few short hours! Do not allow anyone, anyman, to prevent you from carrying out that duty.”
Sadly for me, Yanika was poached just before the end of my core training—bribed over to Sweden by a prestigious university hospital. She’s the director of cancer and emergency surgery there now; surgeons fly in from all over the world to learn advanced robotics with her. Those that can’t are glued to her YouTube channel, where she uploads videos of surgical techniques she’s quite literally invented herself. I’ve watched them all, agog. She is a powerhouse.
“Isn’t she magnificent?” I say. Robin’s still reading her biography.
I glance at him, just in time to catch something different—something odd—in his eyes. “Oh. What?”
He hadn’t realized he was being watched. He waves me off. “Sorry.I’m just—” He sighs. “It’s just a lot to take in at the moment, Carrie. Six months ago you said you were really happy being a mum, looking after the house and the holiday let. But when I was made redundant you decided almost overnight to go back to surgery, and now you’re making plans to travel abroad.” He waves his phone, Yanika’s picture still on the screen. “I know it’s all happening at seventy miles per hour in your head, but I’m a little way behind you. Forty miles per hour, I think. Accelerating to fifty. But I may still need to take a minute to change gear, every now and then.”
“Right,” I put my fork down. “Of course. Sorry. I get it.”
I lean over and plant a kiss on the side of his face.
“It’s fine. Great, even.” He tucks my hand into his. “But I do want to say something: If it ever feels like too much, can you promise me that you’ll step back and wait a few more years? I’m working again. We’d be OK. I just don’t want you to force yourself to see this through if you realize you’ve made a mistake.”
“Thank you.” I smile. “You’re right; forcing myself on is exactly what I’d do. But—honestly—I want this.”
Robin takes this in for a moment.
“I want to go back, Robin. I’m ready. Truly ready.”
He takes a breath. “That’s good to hear, darling. The fact remains, though, you told meneverto let you go back to surgery, if you ever changed your mind in the future. And yet here we are, in the future, and you’ve changed your mind. I’m not going to try to stop you, but it would be remiss of me not to point out that your well-being has to come first. We love you too much to watch you fall apart again.”
I pick up Friday Bunny. Raffy wouldn’t go anywhere without this little creature for years; nowadays he’ll often forget even to take him to bed. My babies are growing up fast; with the passing of each day they become a clearer expression of the souls they were always meant to be.
But I am a soul, too, and I haven’t been faithful to the blueprint of my DNA. I am a woman who has been called to work at the confluence of life and death, and that’s the place to which I must return. It no longer concerns our bank balance or Robin’s long-term career security. It’s a basic need.
“I get it,” I say, trying—as I have done for years—to straighten Friday Bunny’s crooked ear. It flops back down and I give up, taking Robin’s hand again. “It must have been exhausting to watch the human roller coaster that is your wife over the past few years. I can see that, Robin, and I’m sorry. But this is what I need to do. None of it is a mistake.”
My husband smiles and kisses me. He says he’s going to find some fizz so we can celebrate my great news, and he’s whistling as he goes out to the shed where we keep our stash—but I sense I’ve failed to allay his fears.
Three.
London, 2014
“You look stuck,” was the first thing Robin ever said to me. “Can I help?”
He had no idea, poor man, what a precedent this would set.
Four years earlier, my marriage to Johan had simultaneously begun and ended on a small island in the Gulf of Thailand. I’d lived simply since then, willingly owned by my work. I’d taken jobs in London, Manchester, and Newcastle, then an out-of-program year in Johannesburg, and had just begun my ST4 at the Royal Marsden back in London, working in oesophageal cancer. I was now thirty-one and a junior surgical registrar; I had responsibilities not just for patients but for the training of others.
One of the first things I’d done on starting this job was join the hospital’s fundraising committee, which was organizing a gala in the grand ballroom of a Park Lane hotel. The sole aim of this event was to raise the final £250,000 needed to buy a surgical robot called the Da Vinci XI.
I first noticed Robin at the gala when the man he was sitting nextto bid £125,000 for a painting of a woman with five breasts. The painting had been donated by an artist whose cancer our colorectal team had successfully treated the previous year. It was now closing out the auction £100,000 over target: we had our robot.
I took a good look at the winning bidder while the ballroom around him erupted like a football stadium. He was the host of the table, a wealthy and influential man invited to fill the seats around him with wealthy and influential friends. His name was Andrew Heynes, and I knew nothing of him other than that he was a prolific giver to medical causes. As the celebratory music pounded I watched him get up to personally top up his guests’ champagne glasses, even though we had waiters paid just to do that.
Heynes’s shirt was hanging loose and undetected over the back of his belt. To my amusement, I watched another man at his table get up and simply tuck it back into Heynes’s trousers without comment before sitting back down. On the stage the auctioneer was shouting, “Three hundred and fifty thousand, ladies and gentlemen! Three hundred and fifty thousand raised tonight for the Royal Marsden Hospital!”
The waiting staff started clearing away dessert plates, which was my cue to open up the donations table. I knocked back the rest of my champagne before making my way cautiously across the ballroom on my new heels. I hadn’t got out much over the past four years and was quite unsteady. Surgical clogs would have been preferable.
“Oi!” Dell called as I approached her table. “Carrie Cole!”
She was too loud now the music had been turned down; several faces from Andrew Heynes’s table looked up.
We’d left only two tables for the general public to buy seats at and Dell, my steadfast Dell, had organized a group of our old friends from the Royal London to fill one. They’d each parted with £500 for the chance to be here tonight.
“You look ravishing!” she shouted delightedly.
