Page 61 of The Elements

It’s late afternoon and I’m preparing for a surgery taking place in two days’ time.

A man named Richard Conway, separated from his wife of four years, waited outside their former marital home until she returned from work, then approached her as she put her key in the door.

When she turned, he sprayed her with lighter fluid before tossing a lit match in her direction, resulting in third-degree burns to her right arm, neck, breasts, and the lower half of her face.

I plan on doing a skin graft that should hopefully repair some of the damage he caused, although she will never, of course, look as she once did.

I’ve dealt with crimes like this more often than I can count.

I’ve seen women whose faces have been destroyed by the men who stood next to them at an altar promising to spend their lives together.

Women who know they’ll never willingly look in a mirror again.

Women who’ve gone through dozens of operations just to stop people staring at them on the street, on a bus, or in a supermarket.

Wasn’t it Margaret Atwood who said that men are afraid that women will laugh at them, but women are afraid that men will kill them?

In Conway’s case, he didn’twant his wife dead; he just wanted to make sure that no other man would ever want her again.

I’ve invited Aaron to assist at the operation. And when I say assist, I mean observe. He’s still too green to hold a scalpel, but it will be good for him to witness what takes place in theater. Louise appears pleased, if a little surprised, when I mention this to her.

“You’re warming to him, then?” she asks.

“Well, I wouldn’t go that far,” I say. “But I’m making an effort, like you suggested. Actually, I invited him for a drink.”

“You didn’t!”

“I did. I thought it might help if I got to know him a little better.”

“And?”

“Well, it wasn’t the best evening of my life, but it wasn’t the worst either. He’s polite, interested, curious. His girlfriend’s training to be a pilot, did you know that?”

“How would I?”

“I thought the pair of you talked.”

“We do,” she says. “But he plays his cards close to his chest, that one. Still, I’m not surprised he’s got a girlfriend. He’s a bit of a looker, don’t you think?”

“Not my type.”

“Too young?”

I glance at my watch and think about the final episode of a drama series that I’ve been saving to watch tonight. I think about my Ocado order. I think about an award-winning novel I’ve been reading but that I can’t get to grips with. I think about anything but her question.

“With retirement looming,” she continues when I fail to answer, “I wonder should I start looking for a younger man.”

“You don’t think Liam would mind?” I ask, referring to her husband, with whom she has a very loving relationship.

“Sure he would, but he doesn’t have to know, does he? From what I read, all the twenty-something boys are mooning over older women these days. It’s that pop star, what’s-his-name. The lad from the boy band. Always going after them.”

There’s an awkward moment as she realizes that I’m not engaging with her banter in the way that I usually would.

“So, was there a spark?” she asks eventually.

“I’m sorry?”

“A spark,” she repeats. “Between you and Aaron. On your date.”

“It wasn’t a date,” I say, rolling my eyes.

“You asked him out.”

“No, he asked me.”

“Did you not just say, ‘Actually, I invited him for a drink’?”

I’m thrown for a moment. She’s right. I did say that.

“I meant that I agreed to go for one, that’s all. He wanted to discuss his career in a less, you know, formal environment than the hospital.”

“And when did all this take place?”

“A couple of weekends ago.”

I’m fond of Louise, but the expression on her face, that self-satisfied smile, is annoying, and I regret bringing the subject up at all.

“Trust me,” I tell her, “I have absolutely no ambitions in that direction.”

“If you say so.”

“He’s practically a child,” I insist. “What do you take me for?”

Perhaps my tone is more aggressive than I intended because she looks a little put out.

“All right,” she says. “I was only teasing.”

“Well, don’t,” I say.

Perhaps it will be better, after all, when she’s no longer here. There should be clear lines drawn between doctors and nurses, and we’ve grown too familiar with each other.

Aaron is with me now, studying my surgical plan, when my pager goes off and I’m summoned downstairs to A&E.

I move quickly and he follows like an obedient puppy, although he waits for the elevator while I take the stairs, which means he has to run to catch up with me when Holly, one of the more experienced nurses down here, sees me approaching and offers a quick nod of acknowledgment before handing me a clipboard.

“House fire,” she says. “Thirty-two-year-old female, nine-year-old male, seven-year-old female, two-year-old infant.”

I scan the notes prepared by the ambulance crews, flicking through pages, knowing exactly what I’m looking for, and taking in every relevant piece of information.

When I push open the door to the area where they’re being treated, a team of nurses and junior doctors is already attending to them and I’m hit with the familiar smell of charred flesh along with the equally recognizable sound of suffering, a low keening emerging from beneath gauze-covered bodies as cannulas are inserted into veins and morphine is injected to deliver some relief from the pain.

I quickly establish that the mother is unlikely to survive, while the two-year-old has already been covered with a sheet and I instruct a porter to remove him to the morgue.

The older children are still alive but only the girl looks perceptibly human.

From behind me, a sound of deep distress arises from Aaron.

“If you’re going to throw up, take it outside,” I say, and he turns and runs.

Over the next hour, I prescribe medication, order tests, and do all that I can to alleviate the pain of the three remaining victims. The nine-year-old boy’s organs are beginning to shut down, and all I can do is make his transition from this world to the next as painless as possible.

Most of my attention needs to be turned toward his younger sister, who’s suffered the least amount of trauma but whose future is irrevocably changed.

Earlier today, she would have been a perfectly normal-looking child with her entire life before her.

She would have gone on to meet a boy or girl someday and fallen in love.

She would have broken hearts and had her heart broken.

She might have taken trips to the Grand Canyon, the Great Barrier Reef, Victoria Falls.

She might have become an award-winning actress, the managing director of a tech firm, or an employee in an organic-food shop.

But none of those things are likely to happen now.

She’s too young for her skin to heal. Her life will be defined by pain and, most likely, an endless series of operations.

When Aaron returns, he’s steeled himself for the wretchedness contained within this room and walks toward the boy, taking his hand in his and holding it gently.

I can’t hear what he’s saying, but he’s speaking to the child in a low, calming voice and the boy is moving his charred fingers a little, as if he’s trying to squeeze my intern’s hand.

Seven minutes later, he dies.

Thirteen minutes after that, his mother passes away too.

The girl is made as comfortable as possible before being moved upstairs to the specialist burns unit, where she will become my priority over the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours.

When there’s a moment to breathe, I make my way outside the hospital and close my eyes, throwing my head back in a desperate need to inhale some fresh air, even though I contradict this by lighting a cigarette.

Three hours have passed since we were summoned downstairs, but it feels like only a fraction of that time.

Aaron joins me but remains silent as he leans up against the wall.

“Are you all right?” I ask, offering him a smoke too, but he declines.

“Yes,” he says. “Sorry about earlier.”

“Don’t be,” I tell him. “Situations like that take some getting used to.”

I hesitate, then pay him a rare compliment.

“When you came back in, Aaron, you did a good job. I saw you comforting the boy. We might not have been able to save him, but you showed great empathy.”

He offers a half smile. “I thought you said that we should keep emotion out of the job?”

“I did,” I admit. “But sometimes that’s impossible. We’re only human, after all.”

“Are we?” he asks.

“Well, aren’t we?”

He shrugs. “I don’t know, sometimes. Someone did that to them.”

“Of course someone did.”

“A man.”

“Probably.”

“Men like that—”

“Are less rare than you might think.”

“You say that like we’re the only monsters.”

“You know a lot of female serial killers, do you? Female rapists? Women murdering their husbands?”

“Not many, no. But I don’t think one sex is more inherently evil than the other.”

I shake my head. It feels pointless arguing with him. His generation always believe they’re right about everything. Their sense of moral superiority is what makes them so unbearable.

“I mean it, Freya,” he says, surprising me in his use of my first name. “Think of that little boy we treated a couple of months back. Vidar. It was his mother who was abusing him and her husband.”

“True,” I admit.

“And I’ve seen some other things while I’ve been here.”

“I’m not saying women are perfect,” I say. “Or that we’re always the victims. I’m simply saying that, more often than not, men are the perpetrators of violence against us, not the other way round.”