Page 47 of The Elements
When I was twelve years old, I was buried alive within the grounds of a construction site.
Ever since, I’ve been terrified of enclosed spaces and one of the consequences of this is that I always try to avoid elevators.
This morning, however, workmen are repairing the staircase between the ground and first floors of the hospital, leaving me with no choice but to make my way up to the burns unit in the lift.
And, to make matters worse, I’m not alone.
The boy standing in the corner can’t be more than fourteen, and he appears anxious, tapping his right foot on the floor in an insistent rhythm.
I try to intuit from his demeanor whether he’s visiting a loved one or is here for a consultation himself and decide on the former.
Next to him stands an overweight man with a heavily stubbled double chin who I assume is his father.
When he catches my eye, he holds it for a moment before allowing his gaze to fall to my breasts.
As we ascend through the spinal column of the building, he continues to stare, before looking up and studying my face, as if he’s deciding whether or not, given the opportunity, he would have sex with me.
When he looks away and yawns, I can only assume that I haven’t met his exacting standards.
They exit on the fourth floor—Renal—while I continue up to the sixth, exhaling in relief when the doors finally open, a slight prickle of perspiration tickling my back.
Ahead of me stands Louise Shaw, the most senior nurse practitioner and the closest thing I have to a friend here, along with Aaron Umber, a medical student who’s taken the unusual step of opting for a three-month elective on my team.
He’s my responsibility, but for some reason his presence has irritated me since his arrival.
He’s never anything but polite and is both diligent in his work and focused on our patients, so I have no reason to feel such antipathy toward him, but nevertheless, I find myself snapping whenever the poor lad opens his mouth.
“Good morning,” says Louise, somehow managing to control the dozen or so files that she’s carrying, along with the Styrofoam cup of coffee and KitKat with which she greets me every morning.
She’s due to retire soon and I’m worried that whoever replaces her will not be as attentive to my needs. “Late night?”
“No,” I say. “Why do you ask?”
“You look tired.”
“Thank you. It’s always nice to start the day being told that I look wretched.”
“I didn’t say that you looked wretched,” she tells me, her Irish accent seeping through. “I said you looked tired. There’s a difference.”
“Well, as it happens, I was in bed by ten,” I tell her, which is the truth, although I wasn’t alone, so perhaps that accounts for any weariness I’m exhibiting.
I turn to Aaron, who’s watching me in that unsettling way of his, as if he suspects I’m not human at all but a visitor from another planet, and not a particularly friendly one at that.
It’s crossed my mind that he might have a crush on me.
I’m only thirty-six, after all, and from what the media are always telling me, young men his age are consumed these days with lust for older women.
Leaving aside the fact that I’m his superior, however, he hasn’t a chance as he’s not even remotely my type.
It’s not that he’s unattractive—in fact, he’s quite good-looking, if you like that sort of thing, with dark blond hair cut high on his head and short at the sides and sharp, gray eyes—but he’s thirteen years my junior and I haven’t slept with a twenty-three-year-old since I was twenty-three and have no intention of ever doing so again.
“What do you think, Aaron?” I ask him. “Am I some washed-out old hag?”
“You look fine, Dr. Petrus,” he tells me, his cheeks coloring a little at the directness of my question.
“Just fine?”
“No, you look great. I mean…” He trails off, clearly uncomfortable with this line of questioning.
One good thing about the contemporary world, where everyone lives in perpetual hope that they’ll be on the receiving end of a remark deemed sufficiently offensive that it can be reported to HR, is that conversations between colleagues, particularly between those of opposite sexes, tend to remain professional. Which suits me fine.
“You ignore her,” Louise instructs Aaron with a maternal smile before turning back to me. “You’ll want these,” she adds, extending the pile of folders in her arms. “Just the usual. Test results, evaluations, overnights, and so on.”
“Put them on my desk, will you, Aaron?” I ask, retrieving the coffee and KitKat and watching as he scurries along the corridor. His trainers have seen better days and, as he’s quite tall, his ill-fitting scrubs expose his ankles. Maybe it’s the fashion these days.
“How much longer do I have to deal with him?” I ask when he’s out of earshot.
“Not much longer than you have to deal with me,” she says. “But, of course, after he’s gone, another him will show up. Along with another me. We’re all replaceable.”
“Another you would be fine. Another him though…”
“Be nice,” she says, admonishing me in the way that only she would have the courage to do. “You intimidate him, that’s all. You look like a supermodel, speak like a fishwife, and, on top of that, you’re his boss. That’s a combination that frightens boys his age.”
“He’s not a boy,” I tell her. “He’s a man. There’s a difference.”
We exchange a few particulars about a skin graft I’ll be performing just after lunch on a young woman who collapsed with an arrhythmia, ending up with third-degree burns from the two-bar electric heater that warmed her flat because she couldn’t afford anything more.
Then I make my way toward my office, hoping that Aaron won’t be waiting inside for me.
My prayers are answered because he’s vanished off to wherever he takes himself when I’m not barking orders at him.
The precision with which he’s laid out the folders on my desk annoys me, and then the fact that it annoys me annoys me too.
It’s ridiculous that I should be so aggravated by his efficiency.
I follow through on some emails, sending quick, straightforward replies to anything that seems urgent.
A conference taking place in Paris in a few months’ time that has invited me to present a paper on the ethics of temporary grafts from deceased donors.
A medical journal asking whether I might proofread an article on the prevalence of edemas in over sixty-fives who’ve suffered insult to the top two layers of the dermis.
Various administrative hospital matters, including details of a meeting where I’m invited to discuss what further cuts I can make in my department to help ensure that the NHS runs on a budget of about ￡2.
99 a day. An hour passes, and as I do my rounds at eleven thirty, which is fast approaching, I reach into my bag, grab my cigarettes and lighter, and head back toward the dreaded elevator, passing Aaron on the way and telling him to be ready to join me on my return.
It’s a warm morning and I’d intended standing in my usual spot just under the shade of the awning, but, seated on a bench about twenty feet away, near the statue of the hospital’s founder—who was involved in the nineteenth-century slave trade, although no one’s cottoned on to that yet, so he remains in situ for now—I notice the boy from earlier.
He’s alone, his elbows on his knees, his head in his hands, staring at the ground.
I know that I should turn away, smoke my cigarette in peace, and focus on this afternoon’s operation, but when I see a boy his age in such obvious pain and showing clear signs of vulnerability, I simply can’t help myself.
“Do you mind?” I ask as I approach him, and he startles for a moment, before looking up and shaking his head.
His straight dark hair tumbles down to his eyebrows, a little like the Beatles in their mop-top days.
His skin is mercifully free of acne, but his nails are a horror to behold.
He must gnaw on them like a teething puppy with a chew toy.
In fact, he lifts his left hand to his mouth as I sit, attacking his index finger with gusto, and I gently slap it away.
“Don’t do that,” I tell him with a smile, so he knows I’m not just being a scold.
“You never know what kind of bacteria you’re carrying on there. ”
“That’s what my mum says,” he tells me. “She also says that smoking causes cancer.”
I turn to look at him and raise an eyebrow.
“Cute,” I say, taking my first drag, then blowing the smoke toward him, and he waves a hand in the air to drive it away. I hold the flame of the lighter steady for a few moments, enjoying its purple-blue splendor, before snapping the cap shut. Reaching for the pack, I offer it in his direction.
“I’m fourteen,” he tells me, a note of reproach in his voice. When did teenagers become so puritanical? At his age, I would have taken one and put a second behind my ear for later.
“I won’t tell if you don’t.”
“No, thanks,” he says.
We remain silent for a few moments, and when it becomes obvious that he’s too shy to talk, I take the lead. Which is fine. I’m no pediatrician, but I do know how to talk to boys his age. I’ve made quite a study of it.
“I saw you in the lift earlier, didn’t I?” I ask him. “You looked a little upset. Was that your dad with you?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sick? I’m not prying. I’m a doctor. I work here.”
“No, I’m fine,” he tells me. “It’s my friend. He’s not doing so well.”
“Who’s your friend?”
“Harry Cullimore. Do you know him?”