Page 46 of The Night Shift
‘I guess it made you pretty resilient though– only child, making do, lots of time on your own.’
‘And that’s why I’msucha people person,’ she said grinning. ‘Yeah– it definitely gave me an independent streak.’
‘Might have been easier with siblings, do you think?’
She considered this. ‘Yeah maybe. I was quite envious of the friends at school who had loads of brothers and sisters. I think my parents would have liked more children but they had me quite late so it wasn’t an option– and to be honest, they’d have struggled to make time for a bigger family. Their patients came first– they all had greater needs than me. It’s an odd feeling as a kid, to know that you come second fiddle to an unknown practice population of around fifteen thousand people.’
‘Poor little you,’ he said.
She laughed. ‘Poor little me, the doctors’ daughter,’ she said. ‘Sucha hard life in the liberal middle classes.’
He chuckled along with her as he cleared their plates. ‘No, but seriously. It must have had an impact on you, on how you view yourself– if your parents are busy devoting all their time and energy to the lives of their patients then as a kid it would be completely understandable to resent that. It would also maybe colour your own view of patients– as in, you might see them as a drain on emotional reserves, thieves of time.’ His expression was thoughtful. ‘May-be,’ he said slowly, ‘it would make you reluctant to engage with patients when you grew up– subconsciously you wouldn’t want to sacrifice yourself entirely on the altar of healthcare in the same way that your parents had?’
‘You could be right.’ She shrugged. ‘I’ve never thought about it that way before. I’ve never really seen my lack of engagement as anything other than my own particular problem– just a result of the fact that I sometimes find it difficult to work out what’s going on in people’s heads.’ She glanced up at him as she said this, worried it was a bit of an odd admission to make. ‘I think we often look for people to blame for our flaws and sometimes it’s just one of those things.’
He nodded, stacking the plates up on the countertop. ‘You could be right,’ he said. ‘I often end up looking for the most complicated explanation when sometimes it’s much more straightforward. But however much you try and dismiss it, it’s still a hard act to follow. If your parents are absolute paragons of virtue, it’s a lot to live up to.’ He filled up the kettle and switched it on. ‘Not an issue I had to deal with, thankfully.
‘In what way?’ she said, realising that this was one of those rare scenarios where she was genuinely interested in someone’s backstory. ‘As in, theywereparagons of virtue but you managed to not be intimidated by them like I did or…?’ She stopped suddenly, seeing a shadow cross his face. ‘I’m sorry– I didn’t mean to pry.’
‘No, it’s fine.’ The cloud disappeared from Gus’s expression almost as quickly as it had arrived. ‘My mum and dad are great but in some ways there were similarities with your situation– distractions going on in their marriage that meant parenting took a back-seat. It’s a similar story to most broken families, I expect.’
‘Oh,’ she said.
He started to load the dishwasher as she cleared the glasses from the table.
‘My dad was born and grew up in Yugoslavia,’ he said. ‘He came over to England from Bosnia in the early nineties when he’d just turned twenty. It was the start of the war. He and his brother managed to get out before the siege of Sarajevo but they still saw some pretty awful things leading up to it, and he had to leave his aunt and cousins behind. Fairly unpleasant accounts of what later happened to them. You know.’
‘God, how awful.’ She concentrated on moving the glasses to the counter slowly to avoid any chance of breaking his train of thought by dropping them on the floor.
‘But then he came to the UK and met my mum on the first day. She was helping in a refugee relocation centre. She’s always worked in the voluntary sector– not that I’m trying to compete with you for worthy parent status,’ he said quickly, smiling at Violet. ‘Anyway, it was your classic boy meets girl, two different worlds, didn’t speak the same language but fell head over heels in love. Married and pregnant within a year. It’s a very romantic story on the rare occasions that I can persuade my mum to retell it.’ He passed her another plate. ‘But in a sad twist on the usual epic romance format, they just, over time, found that their differences were too great. My dad was pretty screwed up, it’s fair to say, by the things he’d seen, by the guilt I think, of leaving– of escaping and having a lovely life offered to him while some members of his family were tortured and thrown in shallow graves.’ He coughed and squeezed his eyes shut for a second. Violet laid the glasses down quietly on the work surface and moved behind him putting her arms around his back. She didn’t say anything. Didn’t know what to say.
They stood like that for a moment, Violet feeling the heat of him through his clothes, the rise of fall of his ribs as he held in the tears, and then Gus spoke again, his voice lighter.
‘Sorry. I don’t normally get upset about it. It didn’t even happen to me. I’m totally appropriating a hideous genocide to make you feel sorry for me.’
He turned from the dishwasher, still encircled in her arms and she looked up at him. ‘You’re allowed to feel sad,’ she said quietly. ‘I mean, I’m no expert but feeling upset about things that happened to other people is the textbook definition of empathy, isn’t it– rather than appropriation? And although you weren’t there when those atrocities were committed, you presumably grew up hearing about them, sort of living in the shadow of it all? That gives you some skin in the game, as they say. You’ve got every right to feel angry or sad about what happened to your father and to his relatives, they were your family too even if you never met them.’
He nodded, pulled her into him and pressed his face into the crown of her head, his breath warm in her hair. ‘Yeah, you’re right. That’s a good way to put it,’ he said. ‘Growing up in the shadow of it– and it was a bloody long shadow. They managed to stay together until I was eight. Presumably they thought they were doing the right thing for me and my sister, maintaining this united front, but the tension at home was often unbearable.’ He lifted his head but their arms remained around each other and she stayed pressed against his chest, his voice resonant through his ribcage as he carried on talking.
‘It was a relief to be honest– when he left. And that’s an awful thing to say about your own father. But he used to have these nightmares, he’d wake up screaming, wake the whole house. We had the police around once or twice, neighbours worried what was going on. And then for days afterwards he’d be in this black mood of despair, we’d all have to tiptoe around him. Even my sister Dorota, Dot, she was only five or six but she knew not to make any noise when Tata was in one of hisdepresijas. I used to have to make up these games that we could play, things to keep her quiet. We’d sit in the garden in the rain and pretend be fairies or whatever.’ He laughed a little, remembering.
Violet could instantly imagine Gus doing this, keeping his little sister happy and entertained, navigating his father’s moods and the simmering tension between his parents. No wonder he avoided conflict– it sounded as though he’d grown up surrounded by it.
‘Do you still see him?’ she asked, looking up. ‘Your dad.’
He nodded. ‘Yeah. Now and then. He never remarried, neither did my mum. They still love each other– in a way, her loving him is the one thing that keeps him alive. There have been a few– you know– attempts to end things.’
‘Suicide,’ she said without thinking.
He smiled down at her. ‘Yes, suicide. I know you don’t do euphemisms.’
‘Sorry.’
‘No, it’s good. We should say what we mean– use the correct words. It gives them less power if we say them out loud.’
‘Well of course, that’s my primary intention,’ she said. ‘Reducing stigma. It’s nothing to do with the fact that I’m as blunt as a boot in the face.’
He laughed and pulled her closer. ‘All this talk of suicide and genocide isn’t exactly doing my cheerful party-boy image any good is it.’
