Staking Claims

Chris

I jolt myself awake just in time not to miss my stop on Monday morning. I buy myself a cup of coffee and walk to the hospital knowing I need every ounce of caffeine I can get.

Muna’s sniffles manifested into a full-on cold this past weekend, so neither of us got much rest. But after dropping all my weekend shifts, dropping another one today isn’t even an option. Surely a beautiful way to start the week.

“You look totally wasted!” my friend, Josie exclaims when I walk out of the elevator on to the outpatient floor where I have consultations that morning. “Let me guess; another tough weekend?”

“You called it,” I answer with a shrug.

“Why don't you just get a live-in Au Pair?

After Brexit, the European ones are even cheaper than they were before. Kavya keeps threatening to get one and send her mother back to India.”

“Weren’t Kavya’s parents born here in England?”

He chuckles. “Yeah, but it still feels good seeing the look on my mother-in-law’s face when she hears it.”

I shake my head and smile as I walk down the hall. “You should count yourself lucky her mother is around to help you guys out. Mine lives over an hour away and would rather slit her throat than move to London. Left to her, Muna would live with her.”

“And would that be such a bad idea?” Josie asks, walking fast to keep in step with me. “You’d get your life back and be able to do the things you haven’t been able to.”

We both know he’s talking about the specialization program I have suspended. Even though we wrote our MRCP exams at the same time, he has since been able to qualify as a Specialist Oncologist, a feat I’m at least two years away from.

“Moving Muna to my mom’s isn’t an option, Josie. And I’m not interested in getting an Au Pair, either,” I say, walking into the consulting room. “Have you forgotten what happened with the last one?”

Just before Christmas, I hired Astrid, a Swedish Au-Pair. Pleasant and well spoken, I was relieved to have finally found decent childcare. That was until schedules at the hospital were rearranged and I left for home several hours earlier than I normally did… and found that she had been harbouring her boyfriend in her bedroom for Lord knows how long. Walking into my house and seeing the half-naked man with the body of a man crazy big remains one of the most surreal events of my life. I can only imagine how men who catch their wives cheating feel.

Even though Astrid pleaded, saying she’d only taken him in because he had nowhere else to go, the fact that she’d put my daughter’s life at risk with a strange man in the house was enough reason for me to let her go. And I have been too scared to go down that route again.

“Besides, they’re too expensive,” I say, setting down my cup of coffee. “And with my reduced hours, I might not be able to afford one.”

He doesn't laugh at my joke and instead scoffs. “Carry on the way you are, and soon you really won’t. Get your shit together and get childcare, Chris.”

The smile fades from my face and I nod in agreement. He’s right. I do need to get my shit together.

“Anyway, Kavya said to invite you and Muna for dinner anytime you’re free this week,” he wiggles his bushy brows and winks, my cue that I won't like the next thing he says. And I’m right. “There’s someone she wants you to meet.”

I glare at him and sit, not even bothering to respond to what has to be the most annoying collection of words ever; ‘someone I/we/she/he want(s) you to meet’.

“Seriously, I’ve met her,” Josie says, sitting on the patients’ chair opposite me. “Her name is Jessica, and she’s really fit… ”

“Again, you forget what happened the last time someone tried to play matchmaker with me,” I find the need to remind him.

“Come on, man. That was so long ago!” After a long pause, he adds, “ You know she would want you to move on.”

Hearing about my late wife is enough to make me still. I glance up at him from the computer, and even he knows he’s overstepped.

“Just think about it,” he says, rising to his feet. “She’s a real stunner. Tall and with everything you like. Just how you like them.”

“Bye, Josie”

Alone in the room, my mind wanders to the woman who still holds my heart, years after her passing. I smile at the mental image that forms in my mind, one of her the way she was before the aggressive cancer ravaged her body. Tall, willowy and brown coloured skin, we’d met as medical students at the University. Away from her family in America for the first time, I’d been more than glad to ease her homesickness and help her settle in. We were inseparable all through medical school and as we wrote our qualifying exams, finally marrying the year we both passed the final MRCP exam.We had a beautiful, blissful marriage… until breast cancer cut our love story short.

Flipping open my wallet, I smile at her glowering passport picture tucked there, right beside one of a grinning Muna. It is one of the very few pictures where her brilliant white teeth are not on full display in what was her signature grin. But frowning or not, she is still staking claim, not only in my wallet but from almost every room in my house where her pictures hang beautiful and graceful, just like her.

“What should I do, love?” I ask her. “Should I bite the bullet and get another Au-Pair?”

I look at the picture as if expecting a response. Several minutes pass and it is the ringing of the telephone on my desk that brings me back to reality. I sigh as I realise the decision is mine to make, not someone long gone.

Later that morning, in between consultations, I pick up my phone, dial the agency’s number, and ask them to send an Au Pair for me to interview. Surely, I can’t have a stroke of bad luck two times in a row, can I?