Page 54 of The One Day You Were My Husband
“That’s ambitious.”
“They said it would be doable. Anyway, Yanika—I know you had four weeks in mind, but two is the best I can do. Does that work for you?”
She sighs. “Suit yourself,” she says. “But please be clear: this world is still closed to women who want to put their kids before their jobs. Of course that’s not the official line anymore but it’s the reality. You need to be ready for that.”
“I know. And I am ready.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
She leans in. “OK. You’re in theater. Or clinic, even. You get a call saying one of your kids is sick and needs picking up from school. Your husband is away. What are you going to do?”
I look at my plate, thinking fast.I don’t know what I’d dois the honest answer, but it’s not the one she’s looking for.
“I’d find someone to pick them up,” I say, after a beat.
“Who?”
“A friend. Neighbor. I’d have a list of people who could help if my husband was away. Of course I would.”
Yanika sits back, folding her arms. “Are you sure? You’ve a list of people on standby who can collect and look after your kids at a moment’s notice? People you’d trust to look after them if they were really sick and begging you not to leave them?” She frowns. “This isn’t general practice, Carrie. This issurgery.”
This is why I’m here. Yanika didn’t need to interview me for a shadowing placement—why would she? I’ll be little more than an observer. No, the reason she wanted to see me was this. To be able to look me in the eye and not only ask this question but force me to answer. Becausewhen push came to shove, I chose my children over my job, and that decision will have troubled her for years.
Yanika is, in many ways, very like my mother. No matter how inelegantly she handles it, this interrogation is happening because she cares. She wants to be satisfied that a good proportion of the Carrie she once knew is still alive in my body, that I won’t get crushed again.
“I think most GPs would find that pretty offensive,” is the best I’ve got.
She ignores me. “Not one person in the NHS could tell you this, Carrie, for fear of being sued. But let me make it very clear: you don’t get to prioritize your kids in this job. You can work part time, you can find a surgical specialty that doesn’t involve on-call. But if you leg it home the moment one of your kids falls ill, they’ll find a way of getting rid of you. So, if you’re not one hundred percent sure, don’t bother.”
“OK,” I say after a long silence. “I’ll think about it again. But I’ll do that in my time, Yanika. Not now, here at the table.”
She stares at me fiercely for a moment, but I sense the energy of a smile somewhere. She’s pleased I can still stand up for myself.
“Very good. Well—assuming you decide to go ahead, I can have you start March sixth,” she continues, as if nothing just happened. “You’ll need to arrange your accommodation but I can give you some suggestions. There are serviced flats nearby that many surgeons use when they come over to train. And I’ll have my secretary send all the paperwork…”
As she talks, the couple next to us squash into the same chair, taking an awkward selfie. It’s 12:40 p.m. on a Tuesday afternoon in January and I am in a Lebanese restaurant in Stockholm, the sun a bright ball of burning milk behind thick sheets of fog, snow neatly swept on the pavement outside. Yanika Hatziz is offering to help me resurrect my career, although she’s doing so with a loaded gun. Why did I expect anything less?
She marches off to the toilet. I message Maya for an update aboutDad. I check my emails. I’m not ready to think about what she’s just put on my plate—not yet. It’s taken me a long time and a great deal of work to get this far.
I find myself thinking about the young Carrie, the woman Yanika mentored all those years ago. Her inexhaustible energy, her determination and grit. I think about her fiercely protected heart, the heart she was brave enough to hand to a Swedish man with beautiful eyes, and suddenly I’m angry.
Somewhere, within a few miles of this restaurant, he is alive. Out for lunch, perhaps, or working at his desk—one of the desks pictured on his firm’s website, with a white orb lamp and hipster colleagues as far as the eye can see. Somewhere, his human body is breathing and moving, and his mind—the mind that holds the answers to so many questions I thought I’d take to my grave—is busy and active.
I try to breathe slowly but the rage is building. I still want answers, no matter how many years have passed. And the one person who has them is only a few miles away. I don’t think I can stand it.
Yanika returns from the toilet just as her phone starts ringing. She answers quickly and then she’s off, throwing her coat on. She doesn’t even have time to explain to me, but she doesn’t need to—I know; I remember. She just runs, talking quickly in Swedish, because of course she has become fluent in Swedish, to whoever it is on the phone, losing their nerve, losing their patient.
I pay the bill, because she certainly isn’t going to, and then I get into a taxi and give the driver the address of Johan’s architectural practice. I don’t know what I’m doing, only that Yanika has unhinged me in some way, and I don’t need to worry about reality at this moment. I’m just a woman held in the arms of a dream.
Twenty.
Johan’s firm’s office is in a sixties building not far off Götgatan, a busy shopping street in the Sodermalm district. On this unreal afternoon, I like the office straight away, with its book-lined window shelves and sea of indoor plants. I stand across the road by a peach-colored apartment block, where a man is delivering something in tall trolleys from a van. I pretend to focus on my phone.
Everything feels calm and streamlined. Even the rattle of the metal trolleys is softened by the hallucinatory quality of this episode. The sunlight is low and garish, falling in sharp slices through the window of Johan’s office. The snow in the tiny municipal garden opposite has the dream-bright quality of an illustration in a child’s storybook.
The office is nearly empty at the front, but there’s a large table at the back, full of people. Could Johan be one of them?
