“Well, if George hadn’t brought you a change of clothes, you’d still be in your pink PJs wouldn’t you? I’m just…fragrant!”
Admittedly, the fragrance is not one that would attract many celebrity endorsements – it is Eau de Hospital: the smell of a woman who hasn’t changed her knickers in a few days combined with sleeping in a chair. My hair feels greasy to the touch, and I’ve been using sugar-free gum as dental hygiene. I am, to be frank, minging.
But bad as I look on the outside, I think internally, I look even worse. I have made myself stay, I have faked it until I made it. I have been here for them, to the best of my admittedly pretty crappy abilities – but now that it seems as though we might have turned a corner, I am already desperate to escape.
“Will he be all right?” she asks seriously, as she gives up dabbing.
“I can’t say for sure, Connie, but I hope so. I think so. The staff here know what they’re doing, and it seems like we caught it in time…”
We both pause after I say this, and then both try to speak at the same time. I gesture for her to go first, and she says: “Thank you, Ella. For everything. If you hadn’t turned up when you did, I don’t know what would have happened.”
I stare at her in astonishment, because I was going to say exactly the opposite.
“No, Connie,” I reply, “please don’t thank me. I should have been there earlier. I should have come round to check on him, even if you thought he was okay. I should have answered your calls, and answered the walkie, and been there for you… I wasn’t, and we’re lucky that we’re sitting here talking like this, because it could so easily have ended very badly. I messed up, and I’m sorry.”
I have rarely seen Connie lost for words, but this is one of those occasions. She frowns at me, and screws up her eyes, and in the end answers: “Ella, you only have one thing to apologise for.”
She pauses for dramatic effect, and forces me to respond: “Okay. What?”
“The fact that you didn’t tell me about Jake. That’s where you were, isn’t it? With him? What’s going on?”
Everything, I think, and maybe nothing. Now I have been away from him, spent so much time here surrounded by my own demons, I am struggling to make sense of it all. I yearn for him, but I also dread seeing him – feel swamped by the complexity of a new life that just a few days ago felt so simple. I should have known better – there is always a booby trap, a buried landmine to step on, a tree root to stumble over. Something always goes wrong.
I paste a smile on my face, and say: “That’s a story for another time.”
ChapterThirty-Two
I stay with Connie and Dan for two more days, fortified by George dropping off some clean clothes, and on one visit, Larry, who greets me in the car park with such ferocious enthusiasm that it makes me cry. He has been fine, George tells me, living thevida locawith Lottie – but he has missed me, that much is obvious. He stares at me from the rear window as George drives him away, and I feel my heart crack. I wave, as though he can understand such a concept.
On the second day, we have a meeting with the same doctor who admitted us, who tells us that Dan is making a great recovery, and should be able to go home soon. I know they’ll keep an eye on him, but ask anyway, receiving all the right answers about follow-up care and check-ups. I am beginning to suspect that Dr Malik is a little bit afraid of me, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
Dan himself is feeling much better, well enough to roll his eyes at his mum, call me a control freak when I check his notes, and start to complain about the fact that he gets lime jelly for pudding with each meal. Every single complaint he makes, every petulant accusation that leaves his lips, feels like a victory – a step in the right direction. Proof that he will be okay.
That afternoon, I tell Connie that I’m leaving, that everything is going well enough for me not to be needed here any more. She hugs me, and thanks me, and warns me she will be expecting to hear all about my romance with Pub Daddy as soon as Dan is discharged. I make the right noises, let her think that will happen, and get a taxi back to Starshine Cove. I cannot engage with the driver’s cheerful chatter; I can barely engage with myself. I need to be alone, but I know I have hurdles to leap before that happens.
I keep up my ‘everything’s fine’ persona while I collect a very happy Larry from George’s cottage, while I chat to Archie as he weeds the flower bed around the green, while I update the Betties. They are all interested, and thankful, and full of plans to celebrate when Dan gets home. I think I fake it well enough, but I can’t fool myself – a distance has opened up between me and these people, this place. A distance that I welcome, a distance that I can hide behind.
Maybe it’s what happened with Dan. Maybe it’s spending too long in a hospital, which was like living in a horror film flashback sequence for me. Maybe I’m just finally waking up from the dream that has been my time in Starshine, and realising that I can’t maintain it. That this isn’t me, much as I’d like it to be. I am a fraud, even if it’s only me who recognises that.
I let myself into the attic, and am relieved to finally stop pretending. Relieved that I don’t have to smile, or make small talk, or be touched by anyone else. Relieved to be alone again.
Larry rushes ahead of me, sniffing around and pawing at corners just to make sure nobody has invaded his territory while he’s been gone. There is still a used coffee mug in the sink, crumbs around the toaster from breakfast the last time I was here. My pyjamas are folded on the corner of the sofa bed, and another couple of Thomas Hardy paperbacks are piled on the table. In the bathroom, my make-up is scattered on the shelf below the mirror, left over from a lifetime ago when I was getting ready to meet Jake.
It looks exactly as it did when I left it, but it feels completely different. I can see the physical signs of the life I was leading, but it doesn’t feel like it belongs to me now. I am numb, removed, taking it all in through alien eyes – watching myself here, but not feeling anything at all.
I take a shower, dry my hair, dress in fresh clothes that still smell of fabric conditioner, and make myself a coffee – black, because the milk has gone sour. On auto-pilot, I clear up, empty the dishwasher, pack my belongings. As I’ve discovered in recent months, it is surprisingly easy to load your whole life into a suitcase once you make that decision. I am becoming the mistress of the moonlight flit – except that it’s the middle of the day.
I feel brittle and frail, as though I have aged a hundred years over the last few days. Every movement I have made since I climbed out of the taxi has been measured and controlled; every item I have packed, every dish I washed, every surface I wiped, felt like an insurmountable challenge.
I look around at my little attic room, at the place that once felt like a haven, and say: “Goodbye, hobbit hole.”
I load my bags into the back of the car as quickly as I can, because I don’t want to have to lie to anyone, or even worse, tell them the truth. The truth is that I am broken, I am damaged, and I am of no use to this village, or these people, or even myself. I can’t live like this, slipping in and out of normality, getting closer and closer to a community that I might one day let down. This time, it was Dan – and this time, it didn’t end in disaster.
It was close enough, though, to shake the real me free – the me that isn’t ready for this. The me that is worried that next time, it won’t end so well. What if Miranda has complications with her pregnancy, or her labour? What if George’s skin cancer is serious? What if one of the women I talk into attending the mobile breast screening unit gets bad news?
Even thinking about it takes me to the edge of panic – rapid heartbeat, shallow breathing, a churning stomach. I know the signs well enough; I’ve lived with them as well as treated them. I am a wreck in human form, and I can no longer ignore that. The last few days have opened my eyes, shown me who I really am – not just who I want to be. I’ve been living in a fairy tale, one that ends with happy never after.
What am I, after all? I’m a doctor who can’t cope with stress, who can’t cope with caring, who can’t cope with life-threatening situations. A doctor who can’t even control her own mental health, never mind her patients’. I’m a doctor who is scared of hospitals. That makes me no doctor at all, and the people who live here deserve more than that. More than I can give. They’ll be better off without me.
