Page 28 of Maybe
“Mostly physiology and anatomy.” He pulled a face. “The first part of the exam’s next week.”
“HFF-H would be very proud of you,” I said, because I couldn’t help myself.
He laughed. “I don’t need to ask what the secondfstands for, do I?”
“Nah, but if he was here, he’d assume it meant fabulous.”
“I’m going to be anything but, next week. The pass rate is only something like twenty-five per cent of candidates.”
I flicked ash into the ashtray. Jonty was still hacking his guts up this morning, when I dropped him off at school. Perhaps I’d call into the pharmacy on the way home and grab some patches today. Every little helped. “And you don’t think you’ll be in that 25 percent?”
“Who knows?” Isaac shrugged. “Depends what questions come up. But I doubt it. I’ve… had a lot on.”
Deb brought our drinks over, and we chatted about Jonty some more and what the twins were up to in the US. He showed me a few photos of them on his phone, which was my cue to bore him silly with rolls and rolls of pictures of Jonty.
“Our parents have missed out,” he said, when I finally put them away. “I’ve missed out.”
“Yep. Carly’s folks dote on him, though. Feed him rubbish, too, but I can’t complain, really.”
Isaac smiled. Even his teeth were ordinary; the front two were a little crooked, overlapping slightly. His smile still slayed me, though. Every time. Looking back, it always had, even when we were kids. I’d have done anything for him when he smiled like that. “If anyone begged for a third choccie biscuit in our house, Dad would have sat them down and produced some gory pictures of coronary artery plaques. And then launched into an explanation of the histopathology of them.”
“Too right.” I took a deep intake of breath. “His death must have hit you hard.”
“It did,” Isaac admitted, and I liked him for saying so. Lying to me would have been much easier. “More than I thought it would. It’s… muddled. In amongst the self-promotion and egocentricity was this clever, gifted doctor who worked damned hard and achieved some pretty amazing, admirable objectives. But in his quest for all that, he didn’t ever pause to look left or right or backwards to pick up the casualties left in his wake. You of course, your mum, me… and my mum, to an extent. He ploughed forward, regardless.” Isaac gulped a swallow, his eyes dropping to the table. “And I hated him for that.”
He ground to a halt, thrown back into memories. I waited, wanting him to continue. Finally, we were talking about it. Conversing without fences, like we did as kids. With wordsflowing naturally and honestly. But with our eyes, too, the way we held each other’s open gaze. The way we listened. The things we didn’t say, how I was cautiously coming back to him. How I wanted a role in his life and him in mine.
“But you still want to emulate him?” I asked.
“No.” Isaac hesitated a fraction. “I mean, yes. No. Maybe. I don’t know.”
I laughed. “Great, glad we’ve got that sorted then.”
“I mean–“ Isaac closed his eyes for a few seconds, trying to explain. “Of course I don’t want to be completely like him. But the career, yeah, I want to emulate that. Who wouldn’t?”
Me for one.And Isaac wasn’t totally convincing either.
“You sure about that?” I pushed. “Because don’t pursue it simply because everyone else thinks you should.”
“I’m not!” He sighed. “It’s hard, Ez. He… he had a lot of energy, didn’t he? I admired that. Like he was invincible. I think he thought he was too. His death came as a big shock to everyone.”
“Did it?”
I’d read the obituary online scrolling through my phone while waiting for Jonty to come out of school. Which was an awful, second-hand way to find out about a parent’s death, even an estranged one. I must have gone white as a sheet, as Faizan’s mum took Jonty back to their flat for an hour until I felt human again. “The obituary didn’t go into detail about that part. Ran out of space.”
“Very unexpected,” Isaac confirmed. “I’d met him for lunch the week before—we did that from time to time. I think he arranged it to check my career was still on track.” He huffed a mirthless laugh. “He’d returned from some high-level trip to the US, presenting at a conference with the World Health Organisation. He was full of it. Full of himself.Revising hard, Isaac? Good. Michelle Obama thinks that…”
It was a decent impression, though I used to do a better one, ruder too. I’d have demonstrated if Isaac hadn’t abruptly stopped speaking and swallowed hard.
“I haven’t talked to anyone about his death, not properly,” he admitted. “But I haven’t been able to escape it. Even now, I come to work and get floods of condolences. From colleagues, patients, from people I don’t even fucking know. I can’t escape it. His surname’s written on my I.D. badge, and it’s in shining lights above the bloody cardiac unit.”
No wonder the boy was so ground down. All that weight of expectation heavy on his shoulders. He needed to free up some room so Isaac could breathe.
“Dad retired to bed early the night before, complaining to my mother about indigestion and blaming the stodgy dinner at the Royal College, where he’d been doling out a bunch of awards. She found him dead in the bathroom next morning. He’d been lying there a couple of hours, probably. She phoned me straight away.”
“I’m sorry you had to go through that.” Unexpectedly, my throat dried, and I busied myself with my drink. He looked so beaten I kind of wanted to give him a hug.
“It was worse for my mother, obviously.”
