Page 4 of The One Day You Were My Husband
Without hesitation, Robin cashed in the money he’d inherited aged twenty when his parents died in a road accident. It had been untouchable until this point—his pension and security, guarded closely in an investment portfolio—but he channeled it all into our household savings account so I could be a stay-at-home mother.
I wrote to the London Deanery and Imperial College to tell them I was done with surgery. There were panicked offers of evidence-based rehabilitation this, confidential crisis counseling that, but I declined them all and deregistered from the General Medical Council.
It takes years of work and sacrifice to get into surgery, but it turns out that it takes just a few hours to leave. I became a full-time mother and refused to look back.
Until six months ago, when Robin suddenly, shockingly, lost his job. For more than a decade he had worked for Andrew Heynes, a man of colossal wealth and praiseworthy intentions—or so we believed. Then Andrew, distressingly, was investigated for fraud and most of his operations, even the charitable ones, were temporarily closed down. Robin was one of many redundancies that followed.
I think we both assumed he would find another job quickly, but it took a long time. The landscape has changed a lot in the past decade, it turns out, and people are less keen to give their money away. Robin did a lot of number crunching. We still had his inheritance, of course, but it wouldn’t last indefinitely.
Robin wasn’t sleeping and neither was I. At some point during the past few years I had, without realizing, simply rolled over like a soft animal and allowed my husband to carry me—to carry all of us. I hadno idea where Carrie Cole had gone, why I had allowed her to disintegrate without resistance. I had to start earning.
Running a household was enough for plenty of other women, brilliant women with sharp brains and important careers before they’d had children. But I’d often wondered, as I scrubbed the toilets in the Pig Shed, if I might simply have a different genetic makeup. My own mother certainly wasn’t built for parenting or housekeeping. She’d gone back out campaigning by the time I reached eleven weeks and had suffered no guilt at all. She’d done what she needed to do and was much happier as a result.
Once the idea of returning to work had taken hold in my mind, it was my sole focus. I wasn’t doing it because I had to—it was at this time that Robin finally got a job—but rather because I wanted to. The day I phoned the GMC to reregister as a physician felt like a rebirth.
Now as then, Robin is in support of my plans, but I know the speed of it all has been overwhelming. Especially with my decision to visit Sweden for three nights next month. Until recently, I wasn’t willing to leave the kids even for a night.
—
I relax, letting Robin hold me. Itisspectacular, he’s right. No matter how long it takes me to retrain not just my brain but my hands, or how many years it takes me to get back to ST6, which is where I was when I left, the NHS’s willingness to accept me back is in itself cause for great celebration. It was never a given.
“I also got a call from Yanika Hatziz this afternoon. She’s said I can go and shadow her in Sweden while I’m waiting for my reorientation to start! Although first I’ve got to meet her for some sort of interrogation when I’m in Stockholm.”
I pick up Raffy’s little stuffed rabbit—Friday Bunny, his name is,because we bought him on a Friday—and throw him up into the air, catching him and hugging him hard.
“My favorite biohazard,” I say, smiling into Friday Bunny’s sweet, germy fur.
I force myself to sit down, and Robin hands me my bowl of macaroni. He says, “I’m ashamed to admit I believed them when they told you it couldn’t be done. More fool me. If anyone can pull this off, it’s you.”
“Theyhad forgotten what a good surgeon I was.”
I’m trying to speak in this way—to think in this way—as frequently as feels bearable. There will be people wanting to crush me at every turn over the next few years, as I inch my way back into my career. My old friend Dell from medical school has warned that the softer edges of the NHS as an employer have yet to extend to surgery.
“Have you told your mum?” Robin asks.
“I called her. She didn’t pick up. I left a voicemail.”
“And?”
“Nothing.”
“That sounds about right.” He squeezes my hand.
“Oh, I think she’ll be pleased. She’s never been able to get her head around me choosing to be a stay-at-home mum.”
Robin’s seen Mum let me and my children down too many times to have a great deal of time for her, but he’s respectful enough to keep his thoughts to himself most of the time.
“Tell me more about this placement in Sweden,” he says. “Will you have to speak Swedish?”
“I think so. Yanika says they all speak English, but no clinician in their right mind would speak a foreign language in an emergency. I’m getting a language app so I can start brushing up.”
“Right,” Robin says, less enthusiastically. “Sounds sensible.”
He knows that I signed up for Swedish classes soon after getting together with Johan, that I was drunk on love from the start. And, no matter how happy Robin and I are, no matter how many years have passed since I cared in any way about Johan, I think it pains him that the language lives on inside me. That there was once a time when I would lie awake next to Johan, thinking,Jag älskar dig.I love you. I love you.
I eat another forkful of macaroni, a reminder to Robin that I’m on his team.
He gets out his phone and we google Yanika.
