Page 9 of The Night Shift
(At least, she thought it said gorgeous. Dev had used his characteristic loopy scrawl and some of his words were barely legible. He could just as easily have been addressing his festive salutations to a Gorgonzola.)
I left your present upstairs on the landing (out of sight of burglars– safety first– you know me!) along with a couple of parcels addressed to you that look exciting. I have given them a good squeeze but no clues. I’ve also left you a little surprise in the fridge (don’t worry– it’s not the kind of surprise that Swedish guy left me in the fridge a few years back– I didn’t think you needed that on Christmas Day).
Think of me spending time with those family members who believe that being gay is a crime against Bhagavan and know that I’d much rather be sinking festive tequila with you and Marvin. I’ll be back sometime tomorrow evening– sooner if Aunty Bheena starts trying to marry me off to some nice Hindu girl.
Dev xxx
On the middle shelf of the fridge were a series of labelled bamboo containers and a plate covered in a brightly patterned Christmas fabric featuring robins wearing bobble hats. Stuck on top of this was another note.
Reheat me in the microwave (metal box in the corner) but remember to take off my beeswax wrapper beforehand or I will taste like candles and you’ll destroy yet another one of Dev’s eco-friendly kitchen products.
Violet recalled the multiple times she had accidentally melted Dev’s eco-wrappers and idly wondered how many bees were required to produce sufficient wax to cover, say, an average dinner plate. She’d be interested to know.She looked at her watch as her stomach growled ominously. The last thing she’d eaten was a stale Rich Tea biscuit just before she cycled home, which had likely given her blood sugar a very temporary boost but hardly constituted a nutritious breakfast. Was it acceptable to eat a full Christmas dinner at ten o’clock in the morning? And if not, was there anybody here to judge her? No. She removed the wax and put the plate in the microwave as instructed, turned on the immersion heater and collected her presents from upstairs, assembling them in front of her on the table as she turned the radio up to full volume for Slade.
Noddy Holder bellowed out ‘It’s Chri-i-i-i-stma-a-a-a-s!’ as she tucked into her meal for one. Once she had finished eating she video-called her parents, unwrapping her presents in front of them as they unwrapped those she’d sent earlier that week. There was a pang of homesick nostalgia, especially when Gloria the cat leapt onto her dad’s lap and meowed loudly into the screen, but then her mum mentioned an old lady who she’d visited during a session at the Taunton out-of-hours GP service on Christmas Eve, and her dad showed her the array of cards and gifts he’d received from his patients, and suddenly she was quite glad of her original decision. She loved her parents unreservedly, but their worthiness always made her feel inadequate.
‘You look tired,’ her mother said eventually, eyeing her closely through the screen. ‘We should let you get some sleep.’
‘I know it’s hard but we’re terribly proud of you,’ her father chipped in. ‘And although we miss you, we know how important your work is. We’ve all been there, haven’t we?’ He looked fondly at Violet’s mum who nodded.
‘Oh, yes! I remember those Christmas hospital shifts like they were yesterday. One was when I was pregnant with you!’ She beamed and pointed into the camera.
‘I did make sure you took a turkey sandwich to work with you that day though,’ said Violet’s dad, looking affronted.
‘He did.’ Her mum was still talking to the screen. ‘And when he came to collect me one of the girls from A&E recognised him and called him in to assist with a chest drain! I was left sitting there at the end of my shift, ankles the size of balloons while he sorted out some chap’s pleural effusion.’
‘Well. It was Christmas. I could hardly say no.’ Her dad held his hands out in the universal ‘what can you do?’ gesture.
‘And then…’ Violet’s mum hadn’t finished. ‘Then, the man who he’d put the chest drain in mentions having been in the war, and how he’d not been so breathless since he took a bullet to the ribs back on Omaha beach, and your dad ended up chatting to him for the next hour while they found him a bed!’
Violet nodded along, all the while wondering at her parents’ behaviour evidenced in this story, which she had heard many times before. It rang absolutely true, of course, her dad would do exactly this. His naturally compassionate nature was as predictable as her mother’s. Where Violet struggled was placing herself within a similar scenario. She thought the chances of her volunteering to go back into the hospital on Christmas Day to assist in an invasive procedure were pretty slim anyway, but the idea of then talking to a patient for hours about something non-medical seemed completely incomprehensible.
Not for the first time Violet wondered whether she was in fact adopted. Perhaps if she’d had some siblings, she could have compared their traits to her own, understood the normal inherited variance of personality and character. However, she was an only child, and as such, the sole beneficiary of this wealth of combined parental goodness, the singular manifestation of a double helping of compassion and moral fibre. Yet where kindness and warmth leaked out her parents with every gesture, phrase and action, Violet herself parcelled these feelings up tight and handed them out in meagre rations to only those that she felt were deserving, who were few and far between. She cared, of course she did. She cared deeply about those she loved, and those who understood her– she just wasn’t very good at expressing it. There were times when she wondered why the bottomless well of demonstrative empathy that lay deep within both her parents had simply not materialised in her, their daughter. Perhaps the hereditary genes simply couldn’t cope with such a quantity of tangible human kindness in duplicate and had cancelled each other out, like when two really good-looking people give birth to an ugly child.
Whatever the reason, she felt her own inadequacies keenly, a situation only worsened by knowing that her parents would be devastated by their daughter’s low opinion of herself. Had she been trying to live up to some unrealistic academic ideal, as she had seen friends do, she could at least have felt justifiably resentful towards her parents. But it was hard to feel aggrieved with those who only wanted her to be happy, hard to feel anything other than love towards people who were just too nice for their own good.
‘Anyway darling,’ her mother’s attention was back on her, ‘you have a lovely Christmas and we’ll pop down to see you as soon as soon as we can. I know Gran would love a visit too as soon as you’re able…?’
‘Oh, yes, I’m going to see her next week,’ said Violet, glad that they were off the subject of vocational medicine. ‘I checked with the care home. They said it’s okay if I want to take her out for the day as long as she wraps up warm. I thought I might take her to see one of Marvin’s shows.’
‘Dev’s boyfriend Marvin? You’re taking Gran to a drag club?’ Her father’s question was without judgement. He was simply curious.
‘Well, it’s not the full show, obviously,’ said Violet. ‘I wouldn’t be able to get her into the club for one of the night-time performances and it might be a bit much for her.’
‘I don’t know,’ her mother said. ‘If there’s any seventy-five-year-old woman with dementia that I can see knocking back woo woos in Rainbow Punters at two in the morning it’s your grandmother.’
‘True.’ Violet smiled. ‘But the care home wants her back by seven at the latest. Otherwise, she’ll miss supper and you know what’ll happen then.’
Her mother laughed and nodded knowingly. ‘Oh, yes.’
‘No, what I was thinking was Marvin’s been working on this new matinee routine, it’s gone down really well– it’s like a drag bedtime story with Madame Marvelarse. He’s done it on the festival circuit. Dev says it’s brilliant– kids love it, parents love it– really interactive and he says it’s just the kind of place that Gran could shout out all her inappropriate questions and nobody would bat an eyelid.’
‘Hmm. Sounds ideal. Maybe I’ll get your father to come along, see if anyone minds his inappropriate questions!’
‘Hey! My questions are perfectly appropriate, thank you!’ Her father pretended to look affronted for the second time that morning.
Again Violet felt the truth of his comments– his questions were always appropriate, her parents always knew what to say and when to say it. She and her gran were the only ones who made social gaffes as easily as breathing, and her grandmother had dementia which was a pretty watertight excuse whereas Violet just had the uncomfortable knowledge of her own social awkwardness to account for her failings.
‘Well, wherever you take her I know she’ll be well looked after,’ said her mother. ‘She’s lucky to have such a caring granddaughter.’
