Page 17 of Anxious Hearts

Three days.

That was it.

They gave the trainees three days off to study for an exam that was so wide in its breadth that nobody could ever know it all.

There would always be something you missed, something you didn’t see, somewhere you couldn’t go.

But Kelly was going to make damn sure she covered as much as any person who had ever gone before her.

Three days. Plus two more on the weekend. Five days until she ran headlong into her destiny.

Numbers. That’s what it came down to now.

Twenty-four hours in a day. Fourteen for study.

Four wasted on food, personal needs and short breaks.

Six given over to sleep. Then, come Monday, two parts to the exam, one hundred and seventy questions in total.

Five hours and twenty minutes across the day.

Seventy minutes for lunch between the two papers.

One day that will change it all.

She woke early. Ate little. Only turned her phone on twice a day and ignored any message that wasn’t essential, which basically meant she only responded to Finn.

He was trying to be encouraging and, although he knew her better than anyone in the world, he would never know what this pressure was like. Only the other trainees could know.

But even they were cast aside now.

Kelly was the only person left who mattered.

One chance.

One hundred per cent.

Zero margin for error.

***

Eighteen out of twenty. It was a good score, her teacher said. Only two words wrong. And she was at the top of the Grade Two spelling level, after all. If she did the same tests as the other kids, she’d get everything right, all the time.

But it wasn’t good enough. Kelly knew that. She knew she needed to do better.

Kelly took the test out of her school bag and placed it on the dining room table. Her older brother, Fergus, was kicking a football in the backyard with a school friend. Their nanny, Rita, was fixing some afternoon tea.

Rita brought a plate over to where Kelly sat. ‘There you are, sweetheart. Peanut butter sandwiches and choc-chip cookies. Do you want some juice as well?’

‘No, thank you, Rita,’ Kelly said. ‘The cookies already have enough sugar in them.’

Rita frowned and shook her head. She grumbled something Kelly couldn’t hear as she walked back to the kitchen.

Kelly fetched a stack of blank paper from the printer and split it into two piles, which she laid alongside her test. She took a bite of the peanut butter sandwich and wrote the words she had misspelled on the top sheets of each pile: liable and charisma .

She started with liable , copying the word out in neat rows.

Over and over and over she wrote until her wrist ached.

Kelly filled the page, occasionally brushing away cookie crumbs, then shook out her hand and started on the next sheet.

She remembered what her dad had told her: ‘There’s perfection at one end of the scale, Kelly, and failure at the other. Nothing in between. There’s no such thing as good enough for people like us.’

Eighteen out of twenty wasn’t good enough. She would never again spell liable or charisma wrong.

Kelly heard her brother come in, his friend leave, Rita begin to prepare dinner. She snapped out her wrist periodically, stretching and twisting it, delighting in the crack and pop that alleviated the pain.

Only when it was too dark in the room to see the pages did she rise from the table to switch the light on. At the same time, the front door opened and she heard her dad’s voice.

‘Hello, family,’ he called jovially. ‘Anybody home?’

She heard Fergus rush to the door and excitedly recite every moment of his boring day to their father. She could imagine their dad ruffling his hair like Fergus was a stupid dog begging for its owner’s affection.

She listened to the footsteps approach. Sat back down and waited in front of the pages and pages and pages she had filled out. Her dad entered the room from behind her.

‘What have we got here?’ he said.

Kelly held her breath. She felt his presence beside her but didn’t look around.

Her dad’s shadow lay across the table. He reached out and turned the top papers over so that Kelly could no longer see the words. ‘Charisma,’ he said.

Kelly breathed out slowly and closed her eyes. She saw the word a thousand times over, just as she had written it. ‘C-H-A-R-I-S-M-A.’

‘Liable,’ her dad said.

‘L-I-A-B-L-E.’

She felt her dad’s hand on her shoulder, strong and warm. Sensed him kneeling beside her. She turned her head slowly and was rewarded with his proud smile under his neat, dark moustache.

‘Excellent job, Kelly,’ he whispered, as though it were a secret. ‘This is what will make you great one day. Whatever it is you choose to do, this commitment to excellence will put you ahead of everybody else in your field.’

Kelly didn’t always understand what he was saying but it didn’t matter because, when he looked at her like that, it felt like her whole body was warm and light and free, all at once.

‘Your brother doesn’t get it,’ her dad said. ‘And neither does your mum. But you’re one of the special ones.’ He pinched her cheek gently and kissed her forehead. Then he left the room.

He had called her special. More special than her brother. More special than her mum, even. It was the best feeling in the world.

Kelly took out another piece of paper and began writing the words again.

***

Kelly had hoped that, when the exam day arrived, she would feel differently. That some level of the constant pressure that bore down on her with the relentlessness of gravity would lift. No more preparation could be done. No more anticipation. No more uncertainty. Just the test to sit.

But it wasn’t the case. She woke with the same gnawing in her gut. The same dull ache behind her eyes that had become such a constant companion she had forgotten what it felt like when it wasn’t there. The same pain in her jaw from the clenching and grinding overnight.

She ate a small breakfast, packed her bag and left the apartment early.

She arrived at the exam venue – a large convention space transformed for the day – and quietly and efficiently registered her details with the conveners.

Fellow trainees were milling around the waiting area, but she kept her distance, her gaze on the ground.

She didn’t want to catch their eyes and smile nervously in sympathy as many were doing.

Or feed on their desperation and anxiety. She just wanted to get this done.

When it came time to take her assigned desk, the fog cleared at last. Like an athlete who had prepared for years to compete in an Olympic final, Kelly felt ready. Her time was now. Five hours and twenty minutes.

‘You may begin,’ the chief convener said.

And Kelly went to work.

***

That night, when it was all over, Kelly was shattered.

She ignored the messages from her study group; she would see them on Saturday when they went out for a celebratory dinner – premature, in her opinion.

But she did respond to Eli, just to tell him she was okay but tired and would catch up with him later in the week. And Finn, as well, of course.

And then she did what came naturally. What had to be done next.

She began to prepare for the clinical exam, which was now only three and a half months away.