It had gone 11 pm. I sat bleary-eyed in bed, wrapped in a blanket, while Arielle flipped open to a random page in the heavy oncology textbook.
‘All right, try again. HPV-related head and neck carcinoma is more likely to arise from which area?’
‘The brain?’ I crossed my fingers.
‘No. Oral cavity.’
‘Shit. Ask me something else.’
She flipped more pages. ‘Okay, here’s one. When Sorafenib is used for the treatment of patients with advanced hepatocellular carcinoma, the improvement in overall survival is approximately how long?’
I had zero clue. None. ‘I don’t know, six months?’
She sighed and shook her head. ‘It’s been shown to be ineffective, it doesn’t increase survival at all.’
I groaned. ‘One more, ask me one more.’
Arielle sighed and flipped to the back of the book. ‘Okay. Concentrate on this one, all right? Which type of cancer is most likely to produce ectopic hormones?’
‘Oh, oh, I know this one! Pancreatic cancer!’
Maybe I’d be okay in the exam after all. Thank God.
‘Nope. Renal cancer.’
Or maybe I wouldn’t be.
‘What? Show me.’ I snatched the textbook from her, checked the answer myself and buried my head in my hands. ‘What am I going to do?’
She shrugged. ‘Have you not studied at all? Like literally not at all?’
‘Of course I’ve studied! There’s just too much to know. It’s impossible.’
She shot me a look. ‘You’re Lily-genius-girl-Harding. I’ve been testing you on stuff for the last ten years, there’s never been anything that’s too much for you. You obviously didn’t study. Too busy shagging that Paul Walker doppelganger you’re obsessed with.’
The hot volcanic ash rose in the pit of my stomach. ‘I’m not obsessed. I did study. I studied every single weekend when he was at the football, and every Wednesday night when he went to Jenny’s parents’ house for dinner, and every Friday night when he went to his mum’s for dinner. So don’t tell me I haven’t studied, okay?’
Arielle laughed. She actually laughed! I wanted to kick her.
‘Can you even hear yourself? You study when Toby’s doing this or when Toby’s doing that. Why can’t you study unless Toby’s occupied? Doesn’t he let you study? Do you have to spend every waking second together screwing?’
‘Of course not!’ I raised my voice. She was really pissing me off now. ‘As if he wouldn’t let me study. It’s just that he hasn’t done a degree in medicine, he has no idea how hard I need to work. He didn’t even know I had an exam until I mentioned that you were coming over to test me.’
‘Oh, please!’ She snorted. ‘Every idiot knows how hard you have to work to become a doctor. Plus he’s got a degree himself. I think we can give Toby some credit that he isn’t a moron and that he realises study is a part of going to university.’
‘Well, what’s he supposed to do while I study?’ I argued. ‘It was easier with Ben – he was studying too. Toby’s already graduated so it’s heaps harder.’
She let out a long sigh. ‘I don’t know. Maybe he could watch TV? Read? To be honest, I don’t care what Toby does to entertain himself while you study. But,’ she yawned ‘it’s getting really late and I’m stuffed so I need to go home and sleep. I had an allnighter with Stu last night. Mmm, he was so yummy.’ She smiled dreamily.
‘Who the hell’s Stu?’
‘He delivered my pizza last night.’
‘That has got to be the worst cliché ever. You shagged the pizza delivery boy? Are you serious?’
She didn’t look the least bit embarrassed. ‘Dead serious. And because of all the shagging, my darling, I now desperately need to sleep. Goodbye and good luck.’
‘I’m totally failing this exam.’ I picked up a pillow and buried my face in it.
‘Just try and study as much as you can now, okay?’ She reached for her denim jacket. ‘You’re super smart. You could learn a fair chunk of this shit just by skim reading, if you put your mind to it. Will I still see you tomorrow after the exam?’
‘Yeah I’ll see you then. Hey, thanks for helping me.’
She bent down to kiss the top of my head. ‘Night.’
‘Why do you have it in for Toby?’ I asked when she was in the doorway.
She took a moment before she turned to face me. ‘I don’t. Just study, okay?’
‘Why am I even doing this to myself?’ I moaned. ‘I don’t even want to be a doctor.’
She sighed. ‘You keep saying that and not doing anything about it. The night before your exam isn’t the time to think about it, though. Just study, all right? You’re a night owl. You’ve got a good three hours left in you at the very least and I bet that’s enough for you to scrape through. Work hard, babe. Make me proud.’
She left and I started reading about blastoma.
Six minutes later I texted Toby:
I want you Toby.
How much?
More than anything.
Give me fifteen minutes.
Helium Man caught me on my way out of the exam. ‘Miss Harding, you’ve left three parts of your exam paper empty. What in the world happened?’
‘I didn’t know how to answer those questions. I’m sorry, Dr Leslie.’ I couldn’t meet his eye.
‘Even with the good marks that I’ve given you on ward rounds, it’s an automatic fail if you fail the end-of-topic exam. Which you have just done. You’ve failed. Over fifty per cent of the exam is unanswered.’ He looked like his dog had just died. ‘I’m having trouble understanding why you didn’t even attempt these questions.’
I gulped.
He cleared his throat but it did nothing for his squeak. ‘You could have at least had a go. I’m not sure why you sabotaged yourself this way, Miss Harding, but I’m terribly disappointed. Terribly disappointed.’
He scooped up the rest of the papers in his arms and stormed out.
I left the hospital shaking like a leaf in a storm. Wasn’t this what I wanted? I wanted out and now I had an out. So why did I feel like vomiting?
The gravity of what I’d done hit me as I stood at Arielle’s kitchen bench while she plugged in the coffee machine. I couldn’t go through to my sixth year of medicine until I passed every unit in fifth year. So because of my performance today I’d have to re-sit this whole unit next year and graduate a year later. Just like that, I’d lost an entire year of my life. Plus, I’d just gifted myself an extra year’s debt, on top of the fifty thousand I’d already accumulated. I’d be at least twenty-five years old by the time I could call myself a doctor. To become an anaesthetist was another five years on top of that. Eight more years of study.
For the second time in five minutes I needed to pee. As I flushed the loo, I looked at the water swirl in the bowl and said goodbye to my twenties as they went down the drain too.
Arielle rested her hand on my back when I joined her in the kitchen again.
‘What are you thinking about?’ she asked after a while. ‘I’ve never known you to be this quiet.’
I leaned on the counter and sighed. ‘I was just thinking about how nice it is to be here, at your place. It feels like I haven’t been here for ages.’
‘You haven’t been here since you met Toby.’
‘No way! I met Toby three months ago. It hasn’t been that long.’ That couldn’t be right. Could it?
‘It has.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘It’s okay. I’m just grateful that Toby has a full-time job and can’t meet you during the day or I’d never see you.’
‘I’ve been the shittiest friend. I really am sorry.’
‘And it really is okay.’ She handed me my coffee. ‘I forgive you. But, Lilz, it’s not okay to throw away a year of your degree on him.’
‘It’s not because of Toby.’ I sighed. ’I think deep down I had already made the subconscious decision to fail. As a way out.’
‘Why now, though? You were so close to the finish line. One more year and you would’ve had a degree behind you.’
‘For a job I’m not interested in.’
‘Who says you have to be a doctor, though? There’s loads of careers you could choose with your degree. And anyway, what is it that you want to do with your life so badly instead?’
‘I honestly don’t know . . . There’s nothing that inspires me, nothing I’m passionate about, nothing I want to do. Literally, nothing.’ The tears began to build. ‘Except for Toby. I know I want Toby but apart from him there’s nothing else I want.’
As I said it, I heard it. I had nothing going for me except for my boyfriend. I sounded pathetic. I was pathetic.
She didn’t say anything.
I sank down onto a bar stool and hid my face in my hands. I cried hot tears of self-loathing. ‘When did I become such a loser? I’ve got no career goals, no ambitions, no hobbies, I don’t go anywhere, I don’t do anything. Why does Toby even love me? What have I got to offer?’
‘Hey, come on. Don’t say that.’ She put her arm around my shoulder. ‘You have so much to offer it’s insane. But hearing you say that all you need is Toby is kind of freaking me out.’
I sniffed. ‘Toby’s the same though. He hates his job. I think we’re just as obsessed with each other.’
‘No, you’re obsessed with him, for sure. But that man’s obsessed with his dead wife.’
It felt like she’d just punched me – hard. ‘Excuse me?’ I choked. ‘What the hell do you mean by that?’
She took a deep breath and looked me in the eyes. ‘I’ve been wanting to say something for a while. I chickened out before because I didn’t want to hurt your feelings. And last night didn’t seem like the right time to say anything because I just wanted you to focus on studying. But hearing you speak like this, saying he’s all you’ve got . . . I can’t keep quiet about it anymore. He doesn’t deserve this kind of blind devotion from you.’
‘What?’
‘For three months he’s been coming to your house every night and you’ve never gone to his unless his brother’s out because he won’t let his brother see you.’
‘But I already told you about that. He’s protecting me from John because he knows how humiliated I was after he saw me naked,’ I argued.
‘Bullshit.’ Her tone was low. ‘He wants you hidden. Have you met his mum, his dad, any of his friends? Have they all seen you naked too?’
I was silent.
She continued, ‘For three months he’s been running off and leaving you alone every week to see his psychotic mother-in-law. And every week you tell me how much he hates going and how he’s never going back but, boom, as soon as the next week comes around, off he runs to her again.’
I stared at her.
‘What’s his relationship with you, apart from the woman he visits to get his nightly shag? What else do you guys actually do except shag? Think about it. You don’t go out together like other couples. Have you been to see a single movie together? Gone out for dinner? Lunch? I don’t think I’ve even heard you say you’ve gone for a walk on the beach with him, and you both live on the bloody coast. You stay home and you have sex. And you know why you haven’t met his family and why he keeps you hidden from the world? Because he’s still in love with Jenny. Now you think you’re someone with nothing to offer and that all you have is him. And that really pisses me off because it’s not true.’ She took a swig of coffee and looked to me for a response.
Her words, once spoken, couldn’t be unheard. And because I couldn’t unhear the truth, rather than choose to face it I chose to lash out. ‘I’m the one who does nothing but have sex? Me?’ I raised my voice. ‘Not you? How many guys have you screwed since I met Toby? How many, Arielle? Eight, ten, twenty?’ I wiped the froth at the corners of my lips with the back of my hand. ‘I can’t believe you’ve taken the things I’ve confided in you about Toby and thrown them all back in my face. Why don’t we talk about you?’ I said through tears. ‘You’re judging me for having sex with my boyfriend who I’m in a loving relationship with while you go around having meaningless sex with any random off the street.’
The anxiety formed a tight fist around my heart. My shallow breaths hurt.
Her face turned white. ‘I wasn’t judging you. I was only pointing out that you’re not being treated the way you deserve to be treated. But hey, thanks for judging me.’ She blinked hard. ‘Let me tell you something. I know what I want from my life. I want to be a good lawyer, first and foremost. That’s my dream, see – because I actually have one. One day, if I ever meet the right person, I want to be a good and loyal partner too. In the meantime I want to have fun, and to me that involves sex and lots of it. I don’t need a different man every week. I want to enjoy myself with different people and try new things because I like it. But I’m smart about it and I’m safe and I’m not hurting anyone. I stand on my own two feet and I feel good about myself. But it’s good to finally know what the person I considered my best friend actually thinks of me.’ She took a shaky breath. ‘Sort yourself out. Stop hiding behind Toby as a reason not to go out and live your life. Stop being his dirty little secret. Step out from that dead woman’s shadow and find out who you are and what you want. If you don’t want to be a doctor, fine. But at least be something. I’m done here.’ She walked away, and a few seconds later her bedroom door slammed shut.
The air left my body and I sagged like a deflated tire. When I managed to finally unclench that fist of anxiety after some deep-breathing exercises, I picked up my bag and left. I sent her a text when I got in my car:
I’m so sorry I said what I said. I love you and I didn’t mean it. Xx
On the drive home, I couldn’t stop thinking about Arielle’s words. I’d had this romantic notion that the love between Toby and me was so intense that all we both wanted was to be holed up together all the time, that having each other was all that mattered and nothing or nobody else did. When we lay in bed together on weekends, watching movies, eating pizza, I felt content that this was all we needed to be happy. But Toby didn’t just need me to be happy. He had a full and active life outside of our relationship.
He had photography and he had football. Every week he took time out to indulge his passions and I was never invited.
I’d barely seen Nick these last few months. But Toby had stayed connected to his family – and not just his family, but Jen’s too. And why was he still tied to Jen’s mother’s apron strings anyway – a woman he couldn’t stand? Arielle’s words crashed in on me and broke down the wall of denial I’d built around myself.
She was right, he wasn’t over Jen. He’d kept me away from his family – not to protect me because they’d see me as the other woman, but because he still saw me as the other woman. I really was his dirty little secret.
I’d put myself in a position where I had no life outside of him. And the thing was, that wasn’t Toby’s fault, it was my own doing. Here I was, twenty-two, almost twenty-three years old, with four and half years of a degree down the tube, no real friends apart from the one whose heart I broke today, no interests, and barely even speaking to my family, whose messages I didn’t get around to replying to because my mind was saturated with Toby, Toby, Toby. And during those times he was out living his life and being with others, I couldn’t go out and live mine and be with the people I loved because I needed to use the bursts of time away from him to study and make up for the rest of the time when it was just Toby, Toby, Toby.
I had to do something. It was not okay for this to be my life.
I arrived home and booked a late flight to Broome and a bus from there to Derby. Then I sent Toby a message. If I rang him I knew he’d come over. It had to be a text:
I failed the exam. I need some time out to think about things. Going to Mum’s.
Twenty seconds later he rang me. I hit decline and turned my phone off.
It was time to get my shit together and work out what I wanted from life. What that was I had no idea. But I knew one thing, I was sure as hell going to find out.