Page 92 of Anxious Hearts


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***

Toula fed Jackson again while Kelly took the call. The insatiable baby sucked noisily, occasionally pausing to stare at Kelly to warn her away from his mother’s nipple. He didn’t trust herthatmuch. Toula watched Kelly with a dreamy expression, occasionally glancing down at her son and then looking back up at her friend with whirlpools of contentment swirling in her eyes.

Kelly sat on the edge of the couch, literally, seeing her friend and her son but constructing images in her mind of the words the journalist was speaking. He’d started with ‘It’s not good news’ and the conversation had gone downhill from there. He’d picked up a scrap of information while doing a weekend shift at the paper. Something about a soap star and Dr Omelette in another public confrontation.

‘From what I heard, this arsehole was filming the whole thing.’

‘But I deleted the video, and then knocked the other woman’s phone out of her hand.’

Evan sighed. ‘How many people were in the cafe?’

Kelly cast her mind back. ‘I don’t know. Maybe twenty.’

‘And you took out two phones. That leaves eighteen blood-thirsty hyenas.’

‘Fuck,’ Kelly said.

‘Yeah, that’s about right.’

‘But what are they waiting for? It happened two days ago.’

‘Apparently the bastard is trying to drive the price up. Threatening to sell it to the highest bidder.’

‘Is there anything you can do, Evan?’

‘I can try, kid, but it’s not my desk. I was really just calling to give you a heads up.’

Kelly dropped her head. ‘Thank you,’ she said softly.

‘When’s the exam?’

‘Thursday.’

‘Good luck, Kelly. For all of it.’ Evan hung up.

Kelly stared at the ground. From the corner of her eye, she saw Toula with Jackson slung over her shoulder, gently patting his back. He burped with astonishing conviction for a seven-month-old and Toula switched him to her other breast, groaning as he began to suck, then sighing with relief.

‘Fuck my life,’ Kelly said.

***

Evan called again the next day, Monday morning. A deal had been struck.

The story was being written up and would probably go live this week.

There was nothing he could do.

Chapter Forty

Kelly sat with her back against the wall, legs outstretched in front of her. She was wearing tracksuit pants and a hoodie. With winter’s approach, the weather had turned and it was chilly in the apartment, but she hadn’t bothered to turn the heat on. Or the lights. The sun had long given up trying to break through the clouds, so she sat in the semi-dark shroud of a blackly overcast day.

Such a waste, she thought, staring at the equipment laid out on a mat at her feet. Every year, the most promising trainee was given a briefcase stocked with everything a doctor could need for the clinical exam. It was passed down from exceptional candidate to exceptional candidate; a genuine honour that Kelly had coveted and won. Now, the briefcase was open and empty, its contents laid out meticulously like instruments of torture in a twelfth-century dungeon: stethoscope; ophthalmoscope; red-topped hat pin; auroscope; pocket torch; tape measure; tendon hammer; single-use spatulas; tuning forks; cotton wool; a stack of paper and charts; and, of course, the ubiquitous antibacterial wipes – once the domain of doctors and parents of small children, now loved by the masses.

In her mind’s eye, Kelly saw a patient associated with each item. The little boys and girls, the teenagers, the newborns; all of them tested, reviewed, examined by the contents of that one incredible briefcase.

Such a waste.

Her exam would start in exactly twenty-one hours. Nine a.m. tomorrow in Newcastle, a city two hours’ flight away. The Society insisted that candidates sit the exam in hospitals outside their home states to mitigate the risk of being assigned a patient they knew, whose history was still stored in their memory and whose diagnosis did not need to be ascertained.