Going Under

by Sonia Henry

  ‘And?’ Winnie looks hopeful.

  ‘And I’ve nicknamed him the Joker because he’s so horrible.’

  Max looks pained. ‘One of those then.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Winnie leans over with the wine. ‘Shit, mate, that sucks.’ She tops up my glass, then launches into a hilarious account of her date.

  I lean back into the old couch, and feel myself relax into laughter. By the time I go to bed an hour later, I’ve almost forgotten I have work in the morning. I am reminded by the view of the hospital through my bedroom window. I sigh and close the shutters.

  I set the alarm then get into bed and try to will myself into sleep. It’s only day two of doctoring tomorrow, I remind myself. It’s a marathon, not a sprint. Just take it one day at a time.

  I hug my pillow for comfort and, just for a minute, forget myself and wish that Fabien was lying next to me. He always knew how to lift my spirits. But you don’t think about Fabien anymore, I remind myself. I banish the thought, immediately.

  My phone pings on my bedside table. I pick it up and see a message from Max.

  BREAKING NEWS, it reads. Surgical intern contaminates sterile field with tears!

  I LOL for real.

  three

  ‘Every step of the way in this profession, someone will try to derail your career. No one tells you that, of course, but it’s true. Every. Step. Of. The. Way.’ So says Dr Bird, the head of the neurosurgical department.

  I am underwhelmed with inspiration.

  ‘Don’t be fooled!’ he booms, making everyone in the room jump slightly. ‘They don’t teach you this in medical school but, rest assured, your main problems aren’t going to be the operations or the patients or the fear or the loneliness.’

  ‘Gosh, he’s really selling it,’ Lawrence mutters next to me.

  ‘It’s the fact that at some point in your future, some other doctor—or an administrator, or a nurse, or some other colleague, maybe several of them—will actively try to destroy your career.’

  Dr Bird looks around the room, his beady little eyes lighting on each of us in turn, letting the words sink in. He might have a birth certificate that says Bird, but he reminds me of a shark eyeing his prey. Last words, little fish, before I devour you whole. Chomp, chomp, chomp. I immediately christen him the Shark in my mind and forget his real name for the rest of my life.

  ‘Anyway, that’s just some food for thought,’ he concludes, as the rest of the department starts to file into the room, obviously wanting to scare the pants off the new junior doctors before the meeting even formally begins, and succeeding. ‘You can’t say you weren’t warned.’

  Someone turns on the overhead projector and the image of a mashed-up brain beams onto the screen in front of us. A man stands up, and I cringe as I recognise him. The Joker returns. After our less than positive meeting last night, I’d been hoping he might fall sick or something and stay home, but no such luck. Not that that would ever happen; doctors aren’t allowed to get sick. So here he is, once again pointing at a brain scan.

  ‘Twenty-six-year-old female, assaulted with a king hit to the face two nights ago, brought in unconscious by ambulance through emergency.’

  As his voice drones on I replay the Shark’s words.

  Every step of the way in this profession, someone will try to derail your career.

  It’s hard to remember at this moment why I’d ever wanted to become a doctor. I’d been so sure when I embarked on my medical degree: so committed, so driven, so convinced I would be able to make a difference.

  ‘For the prestige and the scripts,’ Estelle always says when people ask her the question. ‘Why else would you do it?’

  ‘Katarina!’

  I snap to attention to see the Joker glaring at me. The mild ache that’s been sitting behind my eyes immediately declares itself as a full-blown throb.

  ‘Ah … yes?’

  ‘Describe the scan,’ he snaps.

  NOT THIS AGAIN!

  I stare at the image, and try to think clearly. Blood is white, and ischaemia is darker. There’s some white, and some inflammation. The midline looks off; maybe there’s a shift. Bleed likely from the middle cerebral artery with midline shift and oedema, I think to myself.

  As I open my mouth to speak I see the Joker smirk. I freeze.

  ‘Well, Katarina?’

  ‘Ah, maybe a bleed, from, ah, the …’ I feel sweat beading on my brow. The room is totally silent. All eyes are on me. ‘Ah, the middle … cerebral …’ I squeak out.

  He looks disgusted. ‘And?’

  I clear my throat and try to continue, but my voice fails me.

  ‘Bleed from the middle cerebral artery with midline shift!’ my boss roars. ‘That is a simple scan!’

  ‘I … I thought that was …’ I stop. Just speak next time, I admonish myself. Trust your instincts.

  My instincts are urging me to flee—all the way to the south of France. One way.

  Stop being so ridiculous, I tell my instincts. Surgeons don’t run away. They stay inside the operating theatre and just cop it sweet. Toughen up, princess!

  ‘You need to spend some time looking at more scans, Katarina,’ the Joker says. ‘I’m going to quiz you this afternoon, so you’ll need to actually be prepared rather than relying on me to tell you the answers.’

  I sink back into my chair, relief washing over me as he starts to interrogate a registrar on the other side of the room.

  No surgical terms are easy, but brain surgery is as bad as it sounds. As we go through more scans, it’s clear that most of the patients on the ward are at risk of crashing. And by crashing I don’t mean a bit of a temperature spike; I mean like a train crashing. As in death. And no doubt, I think to myself sadly, it will happen when the rest of the team is in the operating theatre and I’m alone on the ward.

  I can’t handle this, I think, suddenly. I actually cannot handle this.

  I mentally kick myself, hard, and force myself to concentrate. ‘You must have seen some decent trauma in the States,’ the Shark is saying to the Joker as the last scan mercifully vanishes from the screen. ‘Good experience.’

  The Joker, I soon discover, spent a year in a big-deal hospital in America after completing his PhD at Harvard; that explains the accent—he must be trying to remind us that he’s no longer Australian but an honorary member of the Boston elite. Impressive as this is, it’s clear that he feels he’s taken a step backwards in returning to Australia, and he’s trying to boost himself up by lording it over the more junior members of the team. I’m easily the softest target both because I’m at the bottom rung of the team ladder and because I’m female.

  How can I make him like me? Not even like me, but just be marginally less horrible? I wonder as I hear my pager start to beep.

  Dr Holliday draws a blank. Ask Kitty Holliday the writer, I imagine Estelle suggesting.

  She’d probably flirt her way out of it with clever words. Weapons of verbal mass seduction, rather than scalpels of destruction, or something along those lines. Hmm, perhaps not. If I tried to flirt with him I might accidentally vomit, which would only make matters worse.

  As we file out of the room, the Shark, to his credit, pulls me aside.

  ‘I know you don’t have a registrar for a few more days, so just call on me or Dr Prince if you need to,’ he says, quite kindly. ‘Things can get a bit messy up there on the ward.’

  I must have looked a little confused at the mention of Dr Prince. As far as I knew, he wasn’t at the meeting.

  ‘Dr Prince doesn’t attend many meetings,’ the Shark says, sounding peeved. ‘I’ve told him he has to, but he doesn’t often listen to me.’

  I nod.

  ‘Anyway, Karen,’ the Shark says heartily, looking over my shoulder as if the conversation has already gone on too long, ‘I’ll see you for a round later.’

  ‘It’s, ah, Katarina,’ I correct him.

  He nods vaguely and hurries away.

  No problems, I
tell his retreating back. Call me whatever you want, just don’t be too mean.

  Thank goodness the registrar will be here in a few days, I think as my pager starts up again, signalling that it’s time for the nurses to start harassing me. I am relieved to learn that the registrar is a woman. I can’t wait to have an ally, a fellow female warrior to stand between me and the Joker.

  I only need to get through another few days, I remind myself as I walk into the ward, then the new registrar will start and I’ll be out of the line of fire.

  Just a few more days.

  four

  I trudge into the doctors’ room, fighting an over whelming urge to throw my beeping pager out the window. How can something so small have so much power? Outside, the sun is shining, and as I look out the window I wonder if I should have made different choices. It’s only day two and I’m already starting to question if I’m really cut out for the world of medicine. If it was a TV show it’s feeling, awkwardly, less Grey’s Anatomy and more Prison Break. That is to say, rather than steamy encounters with my incredibly attractive colleagues, I can see myself spending more time plotting methods of escape. I suddenly wish I didn’t want to be a surgeon and that I was sunbaking on a Spanish beach drinking sangria instead of sitting here, about to do battle with the ward printer, which doesn’t work.

  The beeping of my pager is drowned out by the sound of my phone.

  It’s the Joker. ‘Prince wants to do a round,’ he snaps. ‘I’m needed in theatre. Go to the ward. Now.’

  He hangs up before I can ask if he means the north or south side of the surgical ward, which is huge. On top of that, I have no idea what Dr Prince even looks like.

  ‘No one knows that much about Prince,’ Max told me last night when we were discussing our new bosses. ‘Like, he’s a bit of a mystery. Apparently, he’s loaded. Maybe that’s why he doesn’t speak to anyone. He’s so rich he doesn’t need workmates.’

  I don’t care about Dr Prince’s financial situation one way or the other, nor about who he chooses as his friends; I just hope he isn’t a total jerk.

  I walk quickly to the north end of the ward and hail a nurse.

  ‘Have you seen Dr Prince?’ I ask.

  She shakes her head.

  I walk back to the south end and sit down at the nurses’ station. My phone beeps with a message from the Joker.

  I need a coffee. Bring it to theatres.

  I imagine buying the Joker a coffee and lacing it with arsenic.

  Lawrence walks into the nurses’ station. ‘Hey, Kitty, I’ve been look—’

  ‘God, he’s such a fuckhead,’ I say with feeling, waving my phone at him. ‘Read this! Like, what does he think I am? His fucking receptionist? You know, I’d love to turn his knife on him,’ I say, savouring the thought. ‘Next time he quizzes me about some arterial supply—bam! It’s a scalpel straight to the carotid.’

  Lawrence is looking uncomfortable, I notice.

  ‘Not enough to kill him,’ I explain hurriedly. ‘I’d just incapacitate him for a while. Like maybe … eleven weeks,’ I specify, since that’s how long I have left of my term. ‘I mean, he can go back to operating when he’s properly recovered.’

  I hear someone clearing their throat behind Lawrence.

  There’s a short silence.

  ‘Ah, I was looking for you because Dr Prince wants to do a round,’ Lawrence says awkwardly. ‘But now we’ve found you, so …’

  ‘Thanks, Lawrence,’ the man behind him says, stepping into my line of vision. ‘I’m sure Dr Holliday and I can take it from here.’

  I wait for the floor to open up and swallow me, but unfortunately nothing happens. I can feel my entire body flaming red. I wonder if Dr Prince has a fire extinguisher handy.

  We stand there, looking at each other.

  Dr Prince is taller than me, but not by much. He’s wearing navy surgical scrubs and the hair poking out from beneath the cap is dark brown. His blue eyes crinkle at the corners when he smiles at me; he’s at least forty-five, I realise. Maybe even fifty.

  ‘You must be my intern,’ he says mildly, holding out his hand. ‘I’m Jack Prince.’

  I wonder whether I should apologise for my homicidal rant against the Joker, his surgical colleague, but since he hasn’t brought it up I decide it would be wiser not to mention it.

  ‘Katarina,’ I say, shaking his hand. ‘My friends call me Kitty, though.’

  I’m not sure why I feel the need to share this. The Shark barely knows I have a name, after all.

  Dr Prince nods.

  ‘I mean, I don’t need to know your nickname,’ I say quickly. ‘Katarina is a bit of a mouthful, that’s all. Obviously, I’ll just call you Dr Prince.’

  I don’t know what’s happening. My frontal lobe has hyper-activated to a point where complete drivel is spewing out of my mouth. I can’t believe I tease Winnie about being a hypochondriac. Clearly she’s right: a brain tumour can strike at any moment. I need an MRI urgently.

  Dr Prince is looking at me with an expression that for the life of me I can’t interpret.

  ‘I don’t really have a nickname,’ he says thoughtfully. ‘People usually just call me Jack.’

  ‘Not short for Jackson, I guess,’ I say, unnecessarily.

  His eyebrows knit together. ‘No, just Jack.’

  ‘Oh,’ I say.

  ‘So, I suppose we should start the round.’ He gestures towards the patient rooms.

  I jump to attention. ‘I’ll get the charts,’ I say, quickly walking to the alcove where the patient files are kept.

  I return with charts in hand, relieved that I’ve managed to do something successfully, and hand them to him.

  ‘So how are you finding neurosurgery?’ he asks.

  ‘It’s all right,’ I say half-heartedly. ‘I mean, good. No, it’s good.’

  He raises his eyebrows.

  ‘I like it,’ I add unconvincingly as we walk towards the first patient.

  ‘Have you been into theatre yet?’

  I shake my head. ‘Not yet … I went all the time as a medical student, though,’ I say, ‘and I found it so fascinating.’

  He looks at me, interested. ‘What did you find fascinating about it?’

  I consider this. I’m about to make a joke, to keep things light, but for some reason he makes me want to be honest. ‘It’s hard to articulate,’ I say slowly. ‘The whole idea of taking away someone’s consciousness, of cutting through their skin, to have that kind of power and control, is just, well …’ I stop, feeling a bit foolish. ‘Blood and knives and power and pain and mercy and magic,’ I say, repeating the words I’d used to Estelle yesterday in the cafeteria. ‘It’s all there, under those bright lights.’

  His eyes crinkle. ‘You’re a poet,’ he says. ‘My intern is a poet.’

  I laugh. ‘I wanted to be a writer,’ I admit, forgetting myself.

  ‘Why do you say it in the past tense? Once a writer, always a writer.’

  I want to hug him, then feel depressed. I’m not really a writer, I remind myself. I’m just a wannabe writer who’ll probably never make it.

  ‘Well, you know,’ I say defensively, ‘I want to be a surgeon, and it’s a bit hard to focus on both.’

  ‘The two can coexist,’ he says very simply, encapsulating all my desires and exposing my insecurities in one sentence. ‘Why can’t they?’

  Suddenly I feel a bit light-headed. Here I am, revealing my secret dreams to my consultant neurosurgeon, and rather than laughing at or scorning me, he is responding with kindness.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I say as we walk from the nurses’ station to outside the patient curtain. ‘I have the impression that surgery and creativity don’t go that well together. I’ve had kind of a rough start. Although, it’s only day two, I guess.’

  He looks at me directly. His eyes aren’t really blue at all, I realise. Not quite blue, not quite green and not quite grey. I don’t know how to describe them.

  They say the eyes are a win
dow to a person’s soul but I know from doing neurosurgery that this isn’t true. Eyes are just an extension of the brain. Eyes aren’t kind or cruel or anything else. They’re just eyes.

  ‘You should come and assist me in theatre sometime,’ Dr Prince says, and then he opens the curtain, thus closing the conversation, and asks Mrs Boyd how her head’s feeling after her operation.

  I open the chart, and her CT scan falls out. The sight of another CT scan I’ll probably be quizzed on makes me die a bit on the inside, but Dr Prince just picks it off the floor and holds it up to the light, considering.

  ‘What do you see, Kitty?’ he asks.

  It is obvious to me, so I tell him. ‘She’s had a meningioma excised,’ I explain. ‘They do the post-op scan to check there’s no bleeding or complications, and this looks pretty good. I saw her original scan yesterday.’

  ‘We’ll make a neurosurgeon of you yet,’ he says, and he smiles.

  Suddenly, I love being an intern. I love being a doctor. I love everything, and I feel as if I have just won the lottery.

  ‘It really makes a difference when people are a bit pleasant,’ I blurt out.

  ‘Sounds like some people aren’t being so pleasant,’ he observes mildly.

  I clear my throat and focus on putting the scan back into the chart. ‘It’s fine,’ I say quickly.

  We’re interrupted by Mrs Boyd.

  ‘You doctors are so young these days,’ she croaks. ‘And ladies! A lady doctor!’

  Dr Prince and I both smile.

  After we’ve seen all the patients we stand at the end of the ward. The round is over, but I find myself reluctant to leave.

  ‘Well, thanks for the round,’ says Dr Prince. ‘You’re doing very well.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I reply, feeling ridiculously pleased.

  He looks like he’s about to say something else, but instead he raises his hand, and half nods at me. ‘Okay … Bye then,’ he says.

  ‘Bye,’ I say, finding I’m doing my own weird half nod.

  As he walks away I stand there, wondering why I feel so odd.