Page 4 of Maybe
Instead, those lips I’d dreamed of brushed against my ear, and his long fingers curled around my hip. “Enjoy, brother.” He spoke low and deep, in a tone I expected serial killers might useseconds before garrotting their next victims. “And babe? Make sure you spend some of that grubby lucre on getting laid. You look like you could do with it.”
CHAPTER 2
ISAAC
As I palpated an elderly gentleman’s tender, tense abdomen, I shouldn’t have been picturing the tiny mole under Ezra’s left eye. Nor whether I’d ever see him again. Ezra, not the old boy with the sore belly—although he was okay too, in his way. His wife had died last year, and he was explaining he’d learned to use the washing machine and cook himself a roast dinner, sixty years too late. His diverticulitis had flared up; we both agreed his ropey cooking was the likely culprit.
Nor should I have been daydreaming about the tiny scar at the left corner of my brother’s mouth while examining the same elderly fellow’s ECG. I’d miss an infarct if I didn’t concentrate properly. But how could I, when Ezra’s lips had brushed so viciously against my ear? And their owner had swept from that solicitor’s office and fallen straight off the face of the earth immediately after?Again?
That fucking nasty, vengeful will. Even David Trethowan hadn’t seen that coming; he’d never have humiliated Ezra.I’dnever have humiliated Ezra. The only saving grace was my mother and younger siblings' absence. On the other hand, asEzra pointed out before vanishing in a puff of smoke, my dad proved himself perfectly capable of having the last word on an argument, even from the grave.
I sighed, long and heavy, and the old man eyed me with sympathy. “You look like you’re drifting in a daydream, son. Or you’ve got the weight of the world on your shoulders. One or the other. Busy night?”
I glanced around the packed Emergency Department. Two months into my emergency medicine training—a brief pit stop en route to my dazzling cardiac surgery career—I hadn’t been scheduled for this shift, but we were short staffed, so I’d volunteered extra.Busydidn’t even begin to cover it; my shadow straggled five minutes behind me since the moment I’d clocked on.
“Every night,” I commented, pulling my stethoscope from around my neck. Leaning across him, I loosened the collar of his gown. “I’ll just have a quick listen. Breath through your mouth.”
The old guy’s breath was sour. Holding my own, I listened to his belly rumbles through my stethoscope. He’d made an effort to be presentable, despite feeling like shit; his thinning white hair was neatly combed, and a tiny flesh-coloured plaster covered a shaving cut on his chin.
For goodness sake, Ezra, get rid of that bum fluff,my father used to snarl at least once a week.I have dying patients more presentable than you. You look like a tramp.
A self-regarding, egotistical, narcissistic bastard, our father. Took me years to diagnose it, much longer than it took Ezra. Remembering his bad features—and there were plenty—helped soften his loss, especially at work. And yet the man was saintly, if his lengthy obituary inThe Timeswas anything to go by. A half-page, obsequious love letter to a Malawian orphan-toting, cardiac transplant-performing fucking martyr. Paragraph after paragraph of rapture, of following in his own father’s footsteps,supplanting them with some huge one’s of his own. He’d pioneered a novel coronary stent technique, spearheaded a new research department, broadened new horizons.
No mention of the tragic death of his first wife, Ezra’s mother, seconds after she discovered her beloved husband led a double life running a whole other fuckingfamilyalongside hers. No mention of Ezra, his oldest adopted child, airbrushed from history and wilfully ignored in his legacy, as if he’d only ever been a figment of my imagination.
No mention of my father’s savvy investments either, made on the say-so of his corrupt Malawian government buddies. Sir Henry comfortably afforded his double life, what with being so very, very rich. So stinking, stupidly rich. Splitting his assets into one more wedge of pie was water off everyone’s backs.
Ezra should contest the will. He’d have my support. I was all for splitting my share fifty-fifty—right then and there—if he hadn’t fucked off before my sluggish brain managed to broach that conversation. Wasn’t it enough we’d robbed him of his mother and his innocent childhood? We had to rob him of his inheritance, as well?
“My wife was a nursing sister,” the old man said, with a note of pride. “For twenty-five years, up at the old infirmary. Closed down now. She’d have had this place ship-shape in no time.”
“I bet.” I’d like to have seen her try. I forced a grin. “They don’t make them like they used to, do they?”
Even with me, the department was three staff members short tonight. One junior called in sick, and the locum failed to turn up. A student nurse pulled her back assisting a heavy patient within five minutes of arriving, and another was seconded to the surgical high care ward because they were short. One of the registrars, Luke, a guy I’d been matey with at med school (chess club—don’t judge me), was off on long-term sick leave with stress.
Stress,a conveniently light-fingered approach to the truth. Having left an apologetic note for his parents, Luke was thankfully discovered three days later contemplating the meaning of things, including the long drop, up on the top floor of a desolate carpark. The gap left by experienced Luke remained unplugged.
SNAFU in other words. The patient in the cubicle next door had been chuntering to his missus about the wait times for the last five minutes. His grumbles were becoming louder and more frequent.
“I’ll get one of the surgeons to come down and cast an eye over you, sir,” I reassured my elderly patient. “And we’ll find you a ward bed. Might be waiting another hour or so.”
More like five, and in the meantime, his fragile skin would have to battle a hard trolley covered by a sheet rivalling the texture of coarse sandpaper. Not to mention the drunken ranting of the patient next door. Too much time in this job was spent providing and apologising for second-rate care. Shitty computer systems refusing speak to each other, missing essential equipment, carpark payment machines requiring a bloody degree to navigate them. If he had to put up with this, Henry Fitz-Henry would be throwing his toys out big style.Back in my day, sister would… there’d be none of this…This old boy’s wife and my father would have got on nicely.
“I’ll see if we can rustle up an extra pillow for you.” I typed up notes on the clunky computer terminal adjacent to the trolley.
Again, our cosy chat was interrupted by the patient next door. As his liver steadily metabolised the numbing alcohol in his bloodstream, the man’s ankle reminded him it was broken. His aggression was ramping up. “Hey, faggot! How much longer have I got to wait for this bloody X-ray? I’ve been here three bloody hours already.”
How would Sir Henry Fitz-Henry have tackled some of our moremodernpatients?
Fortunately, my friend and colleague, Alaric, positively thrived on them. With a theatrical sweep of his arm, he wrenched the flimsy curtain aside. “It’s Dr Faggot to you, sir. And the radiographer should be with you any minute now.”
“The nurse said that half an hour ago,” growled the patient.
“Did he really? Wow, doesn’t time fly when we’re all having fun?”
“I’m missing the football, stuck in here. Chelsea are playing.”
“I hope they lose,” whispered my old man. We exchanged conspiratorial glances.
