he sounded resigned and put upon, she saw his affection for the young man shining clearly on his face. ‘What’s the real story?’
The doctor moved to front and centre. ‘I clipped an aneurysm in his brain two months before I left for Perth. He came through Outpatients as a public patient and he was a bright kid, but, like a lot of kids from the western suburbs, life wasn’t easy and he had a massive chip on his shoulder. I don’t think I got more than grunts out of him before the operation.’
She smiled. ‘And let me guess, you chatted to him just like you talked to Gretel.’
Two deep lines carved into a V at the bridge of his nose. ‘I talked to him like I talk to all my patients.’
She shrugged. ‘Maybe you think you did, but I find some patients are easier to deal with than others. You might not realise it but you have a knack with young people.’
‘No, I don’t.’
‘Yeah, you do. Look at the medical students. It’s standing room only at your guest lecture spots.’
‘Only because they’ll be failed if they don’t turn up.’
She dug him in the ribs with her elbow—half joking and half serious. ‘That’s not the only reason and you know it. You’re a good lecturer because you speak to them, not at them.’
A muscle twitched in his jaw. ‘I’d rather be operating.’
She flinched, absorbing the hit of his pain, but then she took the reality road—a path she’d always taken with him because she knew the ‘if only’ road was a dead end filled with unrelenting despair. ‘I know you’d rather be operating, but you can’t so why not embrace this avenue of medicine? You enjoy young people’s company, you must or you wouldn’t have Jared over at your place so often.’
His shoulders rose and fell. ‘I think I must have seen something in Jared that reminded me of myself at a similar age. That and the fact he lives five streets away from where I grew up.’
She recalled the comment he’d made about her Northern Beaches upbringing. ‘And that wasn’t the Northern Beaches?’
His laugh was harsh and abrupt. ‘As far from there as you can possibly get.’
She wanted to know. ‘Where?’
‘Derrybrook Estate.’
She’d heard of it, but had never been there. ‘What’s it like?’
‘It’s got the highest unemployment rate in the city, is a hub for crime and drugs, and most kids drop out of school by sixteen.’
She thought about his polished veneer and how whenever he was angry or stressed it cracked, exposing the rough edges he’d obviously worked hard at smoothing over. Now it all made sense. She found herself imagining a struggling family with a bright son. ‘Studies have shown that no matter the economic circumstances, if a family values education that’s the one thing that makes the difference.’
He flinched and his high cheekbones sharpened. ‘I wouldn’t know about that. The fact I stayed at school had absolutely nothing to do with my family.’
His words stung like a slap. ‘Oh. I just assumed that—’
‘Yeah, well, don’t.’ He flattened his spine against the tree as if he wanted to move away from her.
‘I’m sorry. Obviously, though, you not only finished school, you went on to have a brilliant career.’
‘Had.’
‘Do.’ She didn’t realise she could sound so much like a school teacher. ‘The fact it’s different doesn’t make it any less.’
‘If you say so.’
She knew he didn’t believe her and she ached for him because for some reason he didn’t seem to recognise that he was a great teacher. ‘Can you just answer my original question, please?’
The stubble on his now drawn-in cheeks made him look thunderous and she wondered if he was going to say anything more. She’d just about given up when he spoke.
‘You’re not going to stop asking, are you?’
‘No.’
He sighed. ‘At fourteen, I hated school. I was bored by every thing and I was heading straight toward the juvenile justice system. Ironically, the fact I was acting out saved me.’
She wanted to know everything but all parts of her screamed at her to go slowly. If she rushed him for information, he’d clam up. As hard as it was to stay silent, she managed it, but only just.
His haggard expression softened. ‘One night the football coach caught me on the roof of the school with cans of spray paint in my hand. I was seconds away from graffitiing the windows. It wasn’t the first time I’d been in trouble, but instead of calling the police, he held it over me and made me go to training. I hated him for it, but at the same time part of me wanted to go. I hated being there but I missed it when I wasn’t, and it confused the hell out of me. The fact Mick put up with my smart mouth and gave me more than one chance was a miracle and once I started to achieve in footy, I started to settle at school and attended regularly.’
‘But I don’t understand. With your brain, why were you bored by school?’ The question slipped out before she could stop it.
He snorted. ‘You went to an all-girls private school, didn’t you?’
His accusatory tone bit into her. ‘I did but—’
He held up his hand. ‘Don’t give me “buts”. You had teachers who cared, parents who valued education and facilities that weren’t broken or falling down around your ears.’
She sat up straight, propelled by a mixture of guilt and anger. He made her childhood sound idyllic and what it had been was so far from that it didn’t bear thinking about. ‘By the sounds of things, you had a teacher who cared.’
‘Yeah. I had a couple.’ He sighed. ‘Mick’s wife, Carol, was a maths and science teacher. Looking back, I now see what they really did for me. What I thought was a casual invitation of “come home for dinner” after footy training was really “we’ll give you a healthy meal, a quiet place to study and any help you need”. They’re the reason I passed year twelve and got into medicine. That, and a burning desire to prove the bastards wrong.’
His pain swamped her and she instinctively pressed her hand to his heart. He’d not once mentioned his parents. ‘Which bastards?’
The set of his shoulders and the grimness around his mouth reminded her of the first time she’d met him when he’d been practising navigating around the hospital. ‘Everyone who ever told me I wouldn’t amount to anything because my mother was drunk more than she was sober. Her drinking started when my father took off, leaving her a single mother at seventeen and gradually got worse after every other man she’d tried to love did the same thing. Everyone who’s still telling kids from the estate the same thing.’
‘I bet Mick and Carol were really proud of you.’
He
