Page 23 of Where Do We Go From Here?
SIX
HARRY (PART 3)
I moved home on 20 January. I used Jill’s need to accept bookings as my excuse, even though (information I chose not to share) she’d offered to delist the place so that I could stay on.
A part of that decision was my sense of injustice at having been asked to leave, and part of it was a desire to put things right. But on top of this, Bern had told me a cautionary tale about a friend of his who’d moved out of the family home and lost everything in the divorce that followed. Possession, Bern said, was nine-tenths of the law. Though I didn’t know if this was true, it worried me enough to make me act.
Back home the atmosphere was ghastly. Fiona had reverted to full-on adolescent sulking, and Harry seemed to have decided that the best way to deal with me was to avoid me. He’d come home late from work, by which time I was dozing, and leave extra early in the morning before I was in any state to talk. On weekends, if I had a day off, he’d vanish without explanation.
Harry started sleeping in Todd’s room, too – now free because Todd was at university. He made this change the first time I complained about his snoring, and we never discussed it again.
My job remained hellish and my shifts changed so often that – if I’m being honest – it wasn’t that difficult to avoid thinking about it all.
But occasionally there were moments when I found myself with enough mental space to reflect on our marital car crash and it was hard not to conclude we needed to talk.
On three separate occasions – because Fiona was sleeping elsewhere and I was off – I decided that I would sit Harry down and force a conversation but he came home way past midnight every time. It was as if being in the house with me alone terrified him.
In early February, my best nurse-mate Cathy announced she was resigning and going to work in a shop. I was flabbergasted. We’d worked together for over nine years.
‘It’s the job,’ she told me, over lunch. ‘It’s wrecking my mental health. I’ve been feeling on the edge of actual madness ever since Covid started. And it’s either the job or my family. It’s simply not possible to do both.’
‘God!’ I told her. ‘I’m stunned. I don’t even know what to say.’
‘Why the surprise?’ she asked. ‘You know what it’s like as well as I do. It’s like being in an abusive relationship every single day. Itisbeing in an abusive relationship, with the doctors and the managers and the idiots running the country. By the time I get home, I’m a bloody nightmare for Joe to deal with. Christ knows how you manage to stay so calm. I hope Harry realises what a gem he’s got.’
I thought about her claim that working for the NHS was like being in an abusive relationship all the time after that. And the more I thought about it the truer it felt.
We hadn’t received a proper pay rise in decades and due to lack of staff our shift patterns chopped and changed constantly. Half the time I’d wake up and not even know where I was, let alone if I was supposed to be at work.
So yes, I began to notice that everything Cathy had said was true for me, too. You could have a family or work as a nurse, but you almost certainly couldn’t do both.
‘Harry,’ I said one morning. ‘We need to talk.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘I’m in a rush. Can it wait?’
‘Not really,’ I replied. ‘I’ve been trying to talk to you for weeks.’
‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Um, OK. Hang on.’ He continued to riffle through a pile of paperwork searching for whatever it was he was looking for.
‘Haz!’ I said sharply. ‘I’ve resigned!’
‘Oh yeah?’ he murmured, continuing his search for a split second until my declaration reached his brain. Only once the words registered did he pause and straighten, his expression slipping to a frown. ‘What?’
‘I quit my job,’ I said. ‘I couldn’t take the pressure anymore.’
I’d pictured this moment a few times and tried to guess his reaction. My best bet was that he’d be glad. After all he’d complained repeatedly that I was bringing too much stress home from work. Perhaps leaving the job would fix us, I thought. Perhaps that was all we needed.
Harry glanced at his phone and then, visibly deciding that it wasn’t so important after all, slipped it back into his jacket pocket. ‘Christ,’ he said, after a moment. ‘Everyone’s resigning right now. It’s almost a national trend.’
‘What do you mean, everyone’s resigning?’ I asked, feeling peeved that he’d turned my groundbreaking announcement into a mere symptom of a national trend.
‘Oh, sorry. Um, yeah, two work colleagues, last week. And the secretary the week before.’ Then, ‘What are you going to do?’
‘For money, you mean? Or with my time?’
‘Either,’ Harry said. ‘Both.’
‘Um, take a break, mainly,’ I told him.
