Page 45 of Maybe (Mis-shapes #1)

ISAAC

Ezra and Jonty moved out. Suddenly, the worst part of my day wasn’t heading onto the wards knowing I had a gruelling ten hours ahead of me but coming home to an empty flat.

No cooking smells, no Sackboy saving the Kingdom of Crablantis, no updates on Mrs Unwin’s latest subversive opinions.

And no welcome kiss accompanied by a quick fondle of my arse in the kitchen until I was frustratingly hard, with the whole night ahead of us.

No cold feet tucked behind the bend of my knees, no bony elbow accidentally poking me in the kidneys at four a.m.

Nagging at Ezra wouldn’t work. He wouldn’t ever live here with me, in leafy Chiswick. And especially not in this flat with all our family’s history attached to it. Trying to persuade him otherwise with wheedling conversations was a waste of time. Like a proud oak, he’d only dig his roots in deeper.

My mum probably used to stay here with my dad, whilst he was still married to Ezra’s mum.

No wonder Ezra had refused to linger longer than he needed.

As I sat on the sofa, surrounded by the depressingly similar CVs of the Fitz-Henry Medal applicants, I absorbed my clean and tidy living room.

I hadn’t even bought any of the furniture—it was all here when my dad handed over the keys.

Nothing in here said Isaac Fitz-Henry, and as sure as hell nothing said Ezra and Jonty.

“The strip lights in this place are literally a physical assault.”

Alaric rested his head on dogeared ancient copies of Reader’s Digest and Woman’s Own smothering the break room coffee table. “They’re literally trying to melt my face off.”

Ten minutes from now, the night staff would hand over, and we’d launch into Groundhog Day.

Today’s ED forecast was stressy with a chance of a major banana skin fuck up.

So no different from every other in this overstretched, underfunded healthcare system.

Alaric, in his inimitable fashion, had chosen to prepare for it by getting absolutely wankered the night before.

“Big night?” I asked.

“Yeah.” He groaned. “Went to a gig down in Kentish. Way too much fun at the cocktail bar next door, and then I got my brains fucked out by the lead singer. He was scrawny as anything, but I swear his dick was bigger than my arm. It had better not be too busy in here today—I can scarcely walk. And I might puke.”

More unfiltered than I truly needed before breakfast, but that was Alaric for you.

“Water?” I supplied.

“Fuck yes.”

“That bad, eh?” No one drank the tepid fluid out of hospital taps unless convinced they were dying.

After gulping it down, he gingerly ran his tongue over his teeth and groaned again.

“My mouth feels like it’s been fertilised with camel shit, except the only thing growing in there is regret.

Don’t let me ever go out on a school night again. ”

Old me had lived through him vicariously.

Like a spectator on the shore, I’d watched him surf through life.

And hated him a tiny bit, even though Alaric was one of the few people I called friend.

New me, who had recently received a text comprising four lines of hearts interspersed with aubergine emojis from his brother-boyfriend, merely tutted.

“Fat lot of good you are. I was going to ask you to go through some revision cards with me at lunchtime.”

“Ask Luke,” he mumbled, eyes closed. “It’s your last day, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Luke confirmed from his usual corner. He almost smiled; I could nearly smell the waves of relief. “I’ll do it with you, mate, if we get a moment.”

“Cheers. Big celebration planned?”

That got a laugh from him. “The usual, you know. Survival.”

“Well, stay in touch. If you’re still in London for a while and fancy going out for a drink, give me a call, yeah?”

“Ugh.” Alaric moaned. “Me too. But not tonight.”

“Thanks.” Another look crossed Luke’s face, more solemn. “Can’t remember the last time I went to the pub with friends. People stop asking after a while, don’t they?”

“Yeah.” I wondered about passing Luke’s contact details on to Gerald. I didn’t know Luke’s sexuality—I don’t think he did either, which wasn’t helping his issues. Perhaps Gerald’s unique brand of flirtation would help him get to the bottom of it. At any rate, they could talk therapists.

Heading into the exam on Friday morning, I was 60% Sabiston’s Textbook of Surgery , 30% diet Coke, and around 8% no fucks to give. Analysis of the other 2% of my DNA would show it belonged to my brother-boyfriend, from earlier in the kitchen as we killed time waiting for the toast to pop up.

Heading out of the exam, my mother texted . Do you have time for a coffee today? I’m going away on Friday, might be nice to catch up.

A pang of guilt struck me. Weeks had passed since we’d spoken.

I had a list of ready excuses, explaining it away to myself: work, nightshifts, exams, and the small issue of being in love with my brother.

But the truth of the matter was... I was emptied out.

Not that anyone noticed, except for Ezra.

Like the obsolete, battered computers at work, I’d kept on performing out of sheer stubbornness rather than design: laughing with Alaric, fixing dislocated fingers, making small talk with Gerald. Managing a cot death. And living a lie.

Since my dad’s death, the compartment in my head reserved for being my mother’s dependable son, the golden boy who followed his parents' dreams instead of his own, had been filled with all this other shit. And I wasn’t sure I could retrace my steps back to him anymore.

Instead of telling his mother her automaton had been swapped out for the real Isaac, I’d avoided her.

Which was clearly the level of support one should always offer to a bereaved, alcoholic close relative.

If ever I found myself in a similar position, I would obviously expect nothing less of my own children.

I’d learned to fly. I’d flown away.

As my thumb hovered uncertainly over my reply, she texted again, which made my mind up in an instant. What the fuck?

Jonty left his blue sweatshirt behind at my house. If I bring it along, could you pass it on to Ezra?

We met at a small café not far from Dad’s old Harley Street clinic and, by definition, only a stones’ throw from where Ezra’s poor mother died.

I’d have probably suggested somewhere else if I wasn’t still reeling from that second text.

After three hours of multiple-choice questions, a lunchtime beer and a pub lunch would have been preferable, but even I knew you didn’t invite an alcoholic to the pub.

I settled for a cheese-filled croissant and a flat white. My mum had the same.

In a word, things were awkward between us.

After all, our last meal together had ended acrimoniously, and I’d not contacted her since.

Guilt clawed at me. Whatever my father’s flaws, she had been grieving; we both had.

I should have risen above her gripes about my career and Ezra.

Especially now I was in a much better place myself.

“How was the cruise?” I asked. There had been two since we last spoke. “And how are you?”

“Fine.”

A lie wrapped in one syllable. Did I let it slide– we could talk about the twins, the cruise, the latest big Netflix show– or did I call my mum out and endeavour to have our first frank and honest conversation in years? What would Ezra do?

Her fingers tightened around the handle of her coffee cup, knuckles whitening, and her eyes flickered away from mine just a beat too fast, searching for an escape route.

I don’t know what I’d been expecting when I’d agreed to meet, but not the defeated shell opposite. I took a deep breath, my mind made up.

“Really?” I queried as she picked at her food. “Because you can tell me if things aren’t great.”

Her teaspoon clattered on the saucer. “No, Isaac. Not really.”

There’s a quiet kind of terror listening to your mum confess she’s an alcoholic.

Especially when the cruel truth wasn’t sugar-coated with tears and excuses, and you only had one parent left.

I already knew, of course, but nevertheless, it felt like officially being handed the keys to adulthood.

As if, from now on, the responsibility to thrive was solely mine, because my mum could no longer offer any solutions to life’s thornier challenges. And Dad was dead.

As unpleasant as it was to hear, I recognised it for the progress it was.

Admitting a problem was the first step to solving it, according to everyone who knew these things.

Trouble was it also laid you open to the possibility that, if the problem had been going on for decades, it might be impossible to fix.

“I’m sorry I’ve not been around for a while,” I said, ashamed. “If you’d have said, I’d have come and helped.”

“Oh, no. You’re busy with work, I understand. And it’s… it’s not a recent thing.”

“No.” I took a bite of croissant, the pastry dry in my mouth.

“I’m going to a rehab place at the weekend,” she said in a rush.

Jonty’s little blue sweater, with guitar hero emblazoned across the front, sat between us.

Though it was nicely laundered and folded, she refolded it, smoothing down a sleeve.

“I’m not sure how long for. That’s why I’m in this part of town—I’ve been to a clinic up near your dad’s old consulting rooms. Ezra made me do it. He made me contact?—“

“Ezra?”

“Yes. He’s visited me a few times. A couple of times he brought Jonty, when his asthma was bad. I can’t say we’re getting on, but… he’s being a good dad, isn’t he?”

I had a thousand responses to that, especially on the topic of good fathers. As it was, I was too busy picking my jaw up from off the floor to say anything.

“Why? Why did he go to see you?”

She fingered the sweater. “Apparently, to apologise for how he behaved at the memorial service.” She huffed a laugh “Though I don’t think his heart was in it.”

Probably not. I’d been on the receiving end of a few of Ezra’s unfuck you apologies. I tended to come off feeling like he’d rubbed salt into the wound.

“And then I thought he was after money, but he wasn’t. I think he wanted to show me how well he was doing, despite… despite everything.”

She eyed me anxiously. That everything was doing a lot of heavy lifting, but I let it go. “He looks well, doesn’t he?”

“He looks great.” Clothed, unclothed, playing his guitar, fooling around in dad mode, offering me words of wisdom, and even wearing that bloody apron.

I wondered how he’d look when I told him I’d found out about his secret little trips to Richmond.

Bashful? Knowing Ez, probably not. “So, when are you going? And where?”

As she filled me in, we sipped our coffees.

It was up to me if I told the twins, she said.

I probably would, in time, if I caught them at a suitable moment or they noticed she hadn’t been in touch.

Inevitably, conversation turned to my job and the exam.

Seeing as it was an afternoon for being truthful, I sucked in a deep breath and decided to share a few of my own.

“I’m handing in my notice at work.”

No bolt of thunder followed. In fact, saying those words aloud felt fine. So I added a few more. “I’m going to apply for a part-time post in ED. And explore a non-training route for a while. Until I know what I want to do. But… but it won’t be cardiac surgery.”

Her eyes narrowed like she was about to unleash a lecture on keeping my elbows off the table or to apply more deodorant. But it wasn’t forthcoming. Inside, she replied with, “Have you spoken to anyone about this, Isaac? Michael might?—“

“Yes.” I cut her off. “I’ve spoken to some colleagues at work.

More in touch with things than Michael and Dad.

Training has changed, mum. Hospitals and life for junior doctors isn’t like Harley Street, or even like the NHS when Dad was younger.

On some days, it feels like entering a war zone.

And… and I’m not cut out to be the man fighting in the middle of it.

Not sixty hours a week, anyhow, and to the exclusion of everything else.

” I recalled my conversation with Ezra, how I’d tried to explain, and he’d listened and understood and told me I was amazing whatever.

“I… I want to treat the patient in front of me as best I can and then go home at the end of the day with the feeling I’ve done the best I can with the shite tools I’ve been given.

No exams, no competitive interviews, no shunting from department to department every six months. I’m not the man for it.”

“Everyone feels like that after working so hard for a big exam. All you need is a holiday, and you’ll be right back in the swing of things.”

“No. I don’t. I’ve… I’ve felt this way for a long time.” Forever, actually.

“But… but what if you change your mind?”

“Then I’ll launch back into it. But I don’t think I will.

” I pictured Luke on his last day, still furiously scratching at his patchy wisps of hair.

Fragile. Too thin and dead-eyed. “I need to have a life outside of medicine. In a way that Dad didn’t.

I think… I think that’s more important to me than a glittering career. ”

“Oh.” Her gaze turned back to her coffee. “I see.”

“And you should probably know that I’m gay.” Why drop one bombshell when you could drop two?

“Yes, I know that,” she answered dismissively.

As a coming-out moment, it was… unremarkable. We sipped in silence, and I wondered why I hadn’t slipped it into conversations years ago.

“Is that what this is all about, Isaac? Because there are plenty of successful gay surgeons. They just keep it under wraps. That chap who used to come to our Christmas parties… Stephen something, one of your father’s medical school friends.

He thought he hid it, of course, but everyone knew, even if they pretended they didn’t, and it didn’t stop him becoming?—“

“Being gay has nothing to do with it.” My fingers fidgeted with the paper napkin, pulling the thin layers apart like they might reveal a fuller, more coherent response hidden inside.

Or, written in Ezra’s small, neat hand, the hackneyed three words he texted me whilst I’d sat the exam, which never felt hackneyed at all when Ezra said them.

Even less so followed by a picture of him and Jonty both sticking their tongues out over their breakfast cereal.

It was the first message I’d opened on walking out of the exam hall.

Despite randomly guessing at the answers to the last set of twenty questions, I’d found myself grinning from ear to ear.

“And… and… I’m in a relationship,” I blurted. “With Ezra. I… I thought you should know.”