Page 76 of Just One Look
“What’s ‘normal’?” Nyree asked. “Tell me. I’ve never known anyone who did a job like that. My friend Victoria is a prosecutor, like I said. I never understood being able to do that, either. Must tear you up inside when things go pear-shaped.”
Elizabeth hesitated, then said, “I usually don’t talk much about what I do.”
Marko said, “No worries.”
Nyree, of course, said, “Why not? Is it too sad?”
Elizabeth looked down at her mug of tea, then up again, and Luka thought,You toldmeabout the surgeries, though. What does that mean? And you don’t have to explain this. Not if you don’t want to.
She said, “No. It’s not too sad. It’s the opposite. Which is why most people, if I explain what my day’s actually like, think I’m odd. Odder. I mostly get the hard stuff, you see. Ilikethe hard stuff. But how can anybody actually enjoythe pressure of operating on somebody’s brain or removing a tumor at the base of their spinal cord, amidst all of those fine neural structures that she could damage beyond any possibility of repair with one tiny slip? And worst of all, how can she shrug it off and move on when the patient dies, or when it does go … go pear-shaped? It’s like being a forensic pathologist, doing autopsies all day, or maybe a garbageman. You know it’s necessary, but what kind of strange person does it and likes it? Normal people don’t want to think about the kinds of things that fascinate me. Also, I find it spoils their appetite.”
Nyree said, “You don’t shrug it off, though. I don’t believe it.”
Elizabeth hesitated again, and Luka could tell she was deciding whether to go on. Finally, she said, “Yes. I do. I have to. Oh, you show compassion, of course. Or, if you have to distance yourself, you fake it. What if it’s a baby, though, it’s your first surgery in a busy day, and you’re out there telling the parents that you couldn’t get all the tumor on their ten-month-old without killing him, and, yes, it’s malignant? That their baby is going to suffer, and then he’s going to die? See, you shuddered. I do tell them that, though, because it’s my job, I did my best, and my best is excellent. And then I go back to work, knowing that I might lose the next patient on the table. She’s somebody’s mother and somebody’s grandmother, and they love her, and I can’t save her, because her bleed’s too extensive. Her son’s waiting to see her, and after I pronounce death and put down my instruments and take off my mask, because she’s past needing a sterile field and is just meat now, I have to go out there again and tell her son that he won’t be taking her home. And then I go in and do a spinal fusion on a teenage girl with scoliosis so bad, everything about her is twisted, because I know I can get her standing upright for the first time and living without pain. Going to a dance, having a boyfriend, not getting stared at, and she wants to do all of that so badly. I focus on her, because she’s the one who matters now. The baby’s gone from my mind already, and so is the grandmother. They have to be, because I’m on to the next patient, and I owe that patient my focus. I do that over and over and over again, every day, and what’s even stranger, I do it because I love it. It’s the opposite of depressing to me, hours and all. Bad outcomes and all. Disappearing boyfriends and all. I do it, and I love it.”
Nyree and Marko looked a bit stunned. Luka may have been stunned, too, or he may have just been laid out in a tackle you could hear all the way up in the stands. The hair was standing up on his arms, and Elizabeth’s blue eyes were blazing like sapphires, her complicated face alight with intelligence.
“Maybe,” he said, “you do it because it’s a challenge, and you know it’s always going to be a challenge. Maybe you need a challenge.”
“Trust me,” she said, “that’s not necessarily the way people see it. Other people’s lives change all around me,becauseof me, and I’m still the same. Somebody’s world just collapsed, or it turned the right way up again after so much pain, and I’m getting coffee and a sandwich in the cafeteria and listening to the latest hospital gossip. The more difficult a surgery is, the harder that tumor is to resect and the lighter my touch has to be, the calmer and more detached I get. I’m in the zone. I’m at the … the apex of myself. It’s about helping people, sure, the joy of saving a life or making it better, but it’s also about me. My knowledge. My skill. My care. It’s arrogant, and it’s probably obsessive, too. That’s what I hear, and that’s why I don’t like to talk about it. I can’t hide how I feel if I talk about it, and people who aren’t surgeons don’t get it. They judge me for being late and odd and distracted and no good at the rest of life, and I’m tired of being judged.”
“Reckon you are,” Marko said.
Elizabeth turned to him. “Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe you do know. Other people have obsessions too, right? Rugby players run into pain in a way nobody sane would, because I doubt Luka’s neck feels good right now, and I saw how he played with it last night. It doesn’t make sense to push yourself like that, to risk the damage you could be doing, but you must love it, both of you. You wouldn’t do it unless you loved it. You couldn’t, because you’re both intelligent men who know what you’re doing to your bodies and how you’re likely to pay for it. And Nyree’s a painter who wants to paint even when she’s recovering from childbirth. All of that is a little obsessive, I guess. Well, so am I. I do this. It’s not as beautiful as that painting I saw, and it’ll never be a spectator sport, but it’s what I do. It’s also all I do.” She straightened her already-straight spine and said, “They call me ‘The Robot,’ and they’re right. But that’s also what makes me so good, and I’ll take being good.”
* * *
It waslike coming out from under anesthesia. What had shesaid?
Some women knew how to flirt, how to draw a man out about himself, his passions, his dreams. They knew how to make new friends and bond over light, funny conversation and a cup of tea.Otherwomen talked about babies with brain tumors in front of new parents and dead people being meat in front of their new love interest, not to mention bragging about how arrogant they were.
Why had she said all that?Anyof that? She might not be completely neurotypical, but she wasn’tthisodd. She knew how to shut up and keep her obsessions to herself. It had all just poured out of her, though, and all she’d been able to do was sit there and watch it go. Nyree’s eyes were wide, Marko’s were thoughtful, and Luka’s were …
His were compassionate. Well, that was just great. He looked better than ever, in a T-shirt and jeans today, both of them more or less molded to his form, because that T-shirt was covering a lot of ground, and the jeans were faded with wear and sort of … cupped him. He’d shaved since last night, and it looked good, but he was getting some five o’clock shadow already. He looked big and tough and hard. Except for that compassion.
She’d met the hottest man she’d ever known, he’d acted interested in her, and what had she done? She’d gotten so nervous at sight of him that she’d lost her filter, and now he felt sorry for her.
She said, “You didn’t have sex with me last night.”
Marko’s mouth opened, and Luka said, “No. I didn’t. If you’d read my text, you’d know that.”
Nyree said, “Bloody hell. You do lead an interesting life, Elizabeth.”
Marko, his nearly black eyes quizzical, said, “You texted her that you didn’t have sex with her.”
“Because I fell asleep,” she said. Oh, my God. Now she’d broughtthisup.She’d just wanted to be semi-normal and not robotic and closed down! That didn’t mean spewing completely inappropriate confessions at people she barely knew. If she’d wanted to do that, she could’ve just gotten drunk like a regular person, and possibly had an alcoholic blackout afterwards. A blackout would be excellent. She said, “I cannot believe I said that. Any of it. It’s like I’ve suddenly developed a frontal lobe tumor. Please just … erase all that. Unsee this. Please.”
Oh. She should leave. That was the reasonable thing to do after you’d lit your hair on fire in public. She set down her empty mug, which she’d been hanging on to, apparently for support, and said, “I’ll be going now. Thank you very much for the walk and the company, Nyree. You can’t say that you’ve had nothing but babies to talk about anymore, anyway. I’m fairly sure I’ve given you food for thought. Probably food for discussion, too. Destined to become a family story, possibly.”
The rusty, mewing sound that was a newborn’s cry came from inside the house, and Nyree’s mother, as well-groomed as she’d been at the hospital, and still looking about as likely to be Nyree’s mother as the Queen of England, brought the baby out and said, “Here you are, darling. Awake from her nap and needing her feed. She had a bit of a nappy explosion, so she’s in her beautiful embroidered pink Babygro and chenille socks that Jocelyn Pae Ata gave her, and looking like such a little princess. You do have some lovely friends, don’t you? Have you had a nice chat, then?”
Marko said, amusement lightening the harsh contours of his face, “We have, thanks. In fact, it’s been fascinating.”
Elizabeth thought,I’m going to have to move someplace else now. Someplace extremely remote. Possibly the Northern Territory.
