Fast

The first thing she noticed was that the registrar had stopped talking.

He was standing by the anaesthetic machine, looking at the monitor. Twenty-eight years old, perhaps thirty. Good hands. She’d watched him put in a central line the previous week and thought he might turn out well.

“Pressure’s dropping,” he said.

“I can see that.”

“Sixty over thirty.”

“Thank you, Daniel.”

She stepped around him and looked at the patient. Fifty-six-year-old man, elective bowel resection, unremarkable medical history apart from hypertension and the sort of obesity that made everything a little more difficult. Two hours into surgery. Until thirty seconds ago, entirely routine.

The arterial trace was collapsing.

“Stop operating, please.”

The surgeon looked up from the abdomen.

“What?”

“Stop. Hands out.”

There was something in her voice that made people obey. She had never cultivated it. She didn’t raise her voice, and she wasn’t particularly tall.

“Daniel, adrenaline. Fifty micrograms. Now.”

She checked the airway pressures, the capnography, the oxygen saturation. The numbers were telling her a story. She didn’t yet know which one.

“Could be anaphylaxis,” Daniel said.

“Could be. Give it.”

The surgeon had stepped away from the table. The scrub nurse was watching her.

“What’s happening?”

“I’m finding out.”

She put a hand on the patient’s chest. Nothing useful to be learned there, but it gave her a moment to think.

“Another fifty. And get me a blood gas.”

The pressure recovered. Seventy. Eighty. Ninety.

“That’s better,” Daniel said.

“Don’t celebrate yet.”

She looked at the drugs that had been administered. Antibiotic forty minutes ago. Muscle relaxant at induction. Nothing new. The surgeon had been irrigating the abdominal cavity.

“Have you used anything different?”

“No.”

“Anything at all?”

The surgeon hesitated.

“We put some haemostatic agent on the liver. The retractor caught the capsule.”

“When?”

“Just now.”

She looked at him.

“Thank you. That’s useful.”

By the time the consultant surgeon arrived from the next theatre, the patient was stable. She explained what had happened, what she’d given, what she suspected and what she wanted investigated. The surgeon nodded, grateful and faintly embarrassed.

Daniel was still flushed.

“Well done,” she told him.

“I didn’t do much.”

“You gave the right drug when I asked you to. That’s what I needed.”

She took off her gloves.

“And next time, don’t tell me the pressure’s dropping when I’m looking at the same monitor.”

He laughed, relieved.

She went to the staff room, made herself a coffee, and ate half a digestive biscuit someone had left beside the kettle.

It was eleven seventeen.

She had been awake since five.

⁂

By seven she was home.

She showered, washed her hair, and stood naked in front of the bathroom mirror, examining the pale yellow remains of a bruise on her upper thigh.

Nearly gone.

She pressed it experimentally with her thumb. Nothing.

Pity.

Her phone vibrated on the basin.

Are you coming?

It was Sophie.

Ten minutes.

You said that twenty minutes ago.

I’m a doctor. We’re allowed to be late.

You’re an anaesthetist. You spend your life watching clocks.

She smiled.

Eight minutes.

She put on jeans, a black silk shirt and boots. No make-up beyond mascara. She had good skin and couldn’t be bothered with the rest of it.

The restaurant was a small Italian place where the four of them had been meeting for years. Sophie was already halfway through a glass of wine. Claire was reading the menu. Isabelle was talking about her husband.

“He’s decided we need a new kitchen.”

“Do you?” Claire asked.

“Absolutely not. But he’s watched something on YouTube about induction hobs and now apparently our lives are incomplete.”

“He can pay for it,” Sophie said.

“He can certainly try.”

She sat down and kissed them all.

“You look tired,” Claire said.

“Nearly killed someone this morning.”

“Did you?”

“No.”

“Good. Wine?”

“Please.”

They ordered. Sophie told a story about a parent at her daughter’s school who had sent a six-page email complaining about the organisation of the Christmas concert. Isabelle described a disastrous weekend in Normandy with her in-laws.

She listened, laughed, and ate most of the bread.

It was only when she reached across the table for the olives that Sophie noticed.

“Oh, hello.”

“What?”

Sophie was looking at her wrist.

The cuff of her shirt had slipped back. There were two small bruises just above the bone, one darker than the other.

She pulled the sleeve down.

“Don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t do that.” Sophie was grinning. “Is that what I think it is?”

Claire leaned forward.

“Oh, finally.”

“Would you two behave?”

“Absolutely not,” Isabelle said. “We’ve been waiting months.”

“It’s been three weeks.”

“Three weeks!” Sophie put down her glass. “And you didn’t tell us?”

“I told you I was seeing someone.”

“You said you were having dinner with someone.”

“We did have dinner.”

“And?”

“And other things.”

Claire laughed.

“Oh, you lucky bitch.”

She felt herself blush, which annoyed her. She could stand in a theatre with a man’s blood pressure at thirty and feel nothing resembling embarrassment. Three women she’d known for fifteen years could reduce her to a schoolgirl.

“Is he nice?” Isabelle asked.

“Yes.”

“Properly nice?”

“Very.”

“Does he know what he’s doing?”

She looked at Isabelle.

“Yes.”

Something in the way she said it made the others fall silent.

Then Sophie raised her glass.

“Well, thank Christ for that.”

They drank.

“Show us,” Claire said.

“No.”

“Just a little.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Are there more?”

She picked up an olive.

“Possibly.”

Sophie made a delighted noise.

“Oh, I’m so pleased for you.”

And she meant it. That was the lovely thing.

There was no alarm, no awkward conversation about whether she was safe, no suggestion that a woman of her age and education ought to know better. They knew her. They knew she was careful, and they knew how long she’d been looking.

They also knew, although none of them said it, that she had spent most of her adult life being the person other people leaned on.

Her mother rang when the boiler broke. Her brother rang when he needed money. Her colleagues rang when a list was falling apart. Her ex-husband had once called her from a motorway service station because he couldn’t work out how to change a tyre.

She had changed it for him.

In the rain.

Six months before the divorce.

“So,” Sophie said. “When are we meeting him?”

“You’re not.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’ll interrogate him.”

“Of course we’ll interrogate him.”

“And because,” she said, taking a sip of wine, “he’s not particularly interested in meeting you.”

Sophie blinked.

“Well. That’s rather rude.”

“No. It isn’t.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s not that sort of relationship.”

Claire was the first to understand.

“Oh.”

“Yes.”

“Oh, darling.”

“Don’t darling me.”

Claire reached across and squeezed her hand.

“I’m happy for you.”

“I know.”

And she was happy.

That was what surprised her most.

Not the pain. She had expected the pain. She’d thought about it for years, wondered whether the reality would disappoint, whether she’d discover that the idea was more interesting than the experience.

It hadn’t disappointed.

What surprised her was the quiet afterwards.

The extraordinary absence of obligation.

He didn’t need her to organise anything. He didn’t need her to reassure him that he was doing well. He didn’t ask whether she was happy every five minutes, or what she wanted to do next, or whether she thought they should go away together for a weekend.

He paid attention. He understood what she wanted. He took responsibility for what he’d agreed to do.

And when it was over, he made her tea.

⁂

At ten forty-three, her phone lit up.

She was in a taxi, watching the city slide past the window.

Tomorrow. Nine.

She looked at the message.

There was no question mark.

She typed Yes, then deleted it.

Typed I’ll be there.

Deleted that too.

Finally she sent:

Thank you.

The reply came almost immediately.

Don’t thank me yet.

She put the phone away.

Outside, an ambulance passed in the opposite direction, blue lights flashing silently through the rain.

She watched it until it disappeared.

She wondered where it was going, whether the crew were any good, whether whoever was waiting for them would survive the night.

Then she stopped wondering.

For once, it wasn’t her responsibility.

⁂