‘It’s my back, doctor,’ grunted the 68-year-old patient as he lay writhing in the high-dependency ward of Kilmarnock’s Crosshouse University Hospital. ‘It’s killing me.’
‘Okay, Mister Brodie,’ the junior doctor replied. ‘You’ve just been through major surgery to remove a tumour from your large intestine. It was an eight-hour operation, so this kind of discomfort is to be expected. However, it’s my job to control your pain and I promise I will.’
‘Thanks, lass,’ he replied, ‘But get a bloody move on, will you?’
Doctor Michelle Ramsay smiled. Her mother had died in agony from stomach cancer twelve years ago and she hated to see people suffering. Hence her decision to study medicine at Glasgow University and join her late father’s profession.
‘Can I ask you one question first, Mister Brodie?’ she said. ‘Just think of the worst pain you’ve ever experienced in your life. What was it?’
‘That’s an easy one. The day I broke my leg at football. I was playing centre-forward for Cumnock Juniors and the Auchinleck Talbot stopper went straight through me, the dirty big bastard … sorry, lass, but you did ask.’
‘No need to apologise, Mister Brodie,’ Michelle replied. ‘So, if that was the worst pain you have ever felt … and let’s give it ten-out-of-ten … what rating should we give the pain you’re feeling right now?’
‘Nine-and-a-half,’ the patient squirmed. ‘Or maybe even nine-and-three-quarters. It’s murder, hen.’
‘Well, that’s not good and I promise we’ll sort it right away,’ Michelle smiled again. ‘Your epidural is clearly not working, so I’m going to have it removed and put you on some morphine just to see you through the worst of this.’
‘Can I tell you something, dear?’ Mister Brodie enquired, forcing a wink through his grimace. ‘That smile of yours would make any man forget all about his aches and pains.’
‘And believe me,’ she laughed, ‘So will twenty milligrams of morphine.’
If Mister Brodie’s wink had been forced, then Michelle’s laugh had required every last modicum of physical and mental reserve in her body. As she walked out of the ward, her face hardened in an instant.
So, her smile would make any man forget all about his aches and pains, would it? Yes, that was what Denholm used to say too. Well, more or less, although perhaps in slightly more graphically explicit terms.
That absolute swine, Denholm. How could he have done it?
How could he have walked out on me after nearly two years? And for that bitch, Fiona? That despicable, disloyal bitch who was supposed to be my best friend? I wonder how long the two of them had been at it before they eventually owned up and walked away hand-in-hand into the sunset?
I suppose I’ll never know, will I? All I do know is that I’ve got to get over it. Somehow, I’ve got to get over it.
In normal circumstances, a patient hoping to see a Cognitive Behavioural Therapy counsellor on the NHS would have waited well over a year, but Michelle Ramsay was no ordinary patient. She was a highly respected junior doctor in a large acute hospital, and one whose reputation was rising steadily.
However, Michelle was in trouble these days and everyone knew it. In fact, she had been in trouble ever since that serial philanderer, Denholm MacSween, had chucked her in preference to his latest conquest, Fiona Telfer. Or as they were better known around the hospital’s corridors, Mister MacSween, the eminent consultant orthopedic surgeon, and staff nurse Telfer.
And with NHS waiting lists expanding by the day, the very last thing that Crosshouse University Hospital needed right now was for one of its most promising proteges to collapse in a heap under the strain of emotional distress.
So, Michelle had got a call out of the blue from none other than Doctor Hilary Malcolm, one of the most renowned CBT counsellors in the entire country, whose professional availability was like hens’ teeth.
Michelle’s first appointment with the esteemed Doctor Malcolm, who insisted on being called Hilary, took place in a consulting room on the ground floor of the vast hospital building, and was largely exploratory in nature.
However, one initial practical suggestion that the counsellor made was that Michelle should keep a diary of ‘positive affirmations’.
In essence, the plan was to list those affirmations which would be most applicable to Michelle’s vision of what kind of person she aspired to be and what kind of future she yearned, and to record her own assessment of progress on a regular basis.
It sounded like a plan. Only time would tell whether or not it would transpire to be a good plan or a complete load of bollocks, but surely it was worth a go?
So, she decided to pay a visit to the OM Store in the nearby seaside town of Ayr, one of her favourite shops which specialized in ‘metaphysical’ supplies. That was where she and some of her kindred adventurous friends had previously procured a whole range of cool-and-quirky items like incense, tarot cards, therapy crystals, candles and ‘all things spiritual’ as the shop’s strap-line put it.
And it was there that she spied a rather unusual looking book, one with a shiny deep-purple cover and embossed with weird hieroglyphics which, as either luck or the ether would have it, was supposed to be ‘very special’.
At least according to the weird-looking middle-aged lady at the desk, the one with the long-flowing dark-blue dress, frizzy black waist-length hair, ghoulish gothic makeup and so many earrings, studs and other facial piercings that she must have clanked like a steel band every time she brushed her teeth.
However, it wasn’t the goth’s scary appearance that made the most telling impact on Michelle. It was what she had actually said about the purple book itself.
‘My dear, if you take care of this little book properly, it will become your personal spiritual diary and your most important possession. Treat it with respect and only write down things which are important to you in your spiritual life, and you will find that these things will come true. However, if you try to use the book for financial or material gain, you will lose its power forever.’
Over the next few weeks, Michelle followed Hilary’s advice religiously by listing her chosen positive affirmations. So, she wrote them down in her new diary and decided to monitor her progress daily, save for the odd omission when medical emergencies and pressure of work precluded her from spending time on the diary that was quickly turning out to be so precious to her.
She had made seven affirmations in total.
I have everything I need to succeed in my life.
I am a lucky person.
I attract warm, happy and healthy relationships.
I always see the best in people and the best possible outcomes in situations.
I attract happiness into my life.
I will handle every situation, no matter how challenging.
I believe unconditionally in the woman I am becoming.
As time went on, and with Hilary’s ongoing support, Michelle’s diary had become her bible and the affirmations her scriptures. Spending quality time reviewing her progress had by now become second nature.
Moreover, and very reassuringly, many of those same affirmations were beginning to come to fruition, as the metal-clad goth had herself predicted.
Nevertheless, a couple of hugely important questions still remained.
First, had she got over the heartbreak of losing Denholm yet? No, she had not and her heart still ached for him.
And second, had she forgiven Fiona for stealing him away? Certainly not, and she would gladly have scratched her eyes out given the chance.
However, the pain was slowly diminishing, even if the urge for divine retribution was not.
The main thing was that Michelle was feeling stronger and more confident by the day. She now realized that her affirmations had become embedded into her everyday life.
For example, she was indeed a very lucky person and already possessed everything she needed to succeed in life. She was now much more focused on identifying the best possible outcomes in difficult situations, and she knew with innate certainty that she would take such situations in her stride and handle them accordingly. Furthermore, she had pretty much convinced herself that she possessed the ability to attract happy and healthy relationships, even although she had yet to enter into another romantic liaison, but that would come. And she knew within her heart of hearts that she always managed to see the best in people.
Well, in everyone except Denholm, that cheating bastard, and Fiona, that disloyal bitch.
After a couple of months had passed, Hilary had then suggested that such had been Michelle’s progress that she no longer needed to keep the counselling appointments going, but that further sessions would always be available should it prove necessary.
Meanwhile, Michelle’s diary continued to deliver with an unstinting reliability which only just managed to keep one step ahead of her steadily-blossoming self-esteem.
One evening after a highly-challenging twelve-hour shift in the hospital’s post-operative ward, Michelle was relaxing at home with a glass of her favourite Pinot Gris when a rather bold idea hit her. It was this.
Why not try a daring little experiment with the diary and push the boat out a wee bit? After all, its success to date had been quite astonishing, so what was there to lose?
So, she opened the bottom drawer of her sideboard, fetched out the diary and a pen, refilled her glass and began writing down what was essentially a wish-list rather than additional affirmations. A very modest wish-list, though, any or all of which if they happened to materialize would transpire to be very pleasant indeed, but none of which if they should bomb out would really matter a jot in the great scheme of things.
Three such wishes appeared on Michelle’s list.
1. When my salary hits my bank account tomorrow morning, the overtime I’ve been due now for several months will have been paid in at last.
2. Tomorrow afternoon at my monthly review meeting with Doctor Kazim, he will be very complimentary about my performance.
3. Before long, that gorgeous young anesthetist who has been eyeing me up will have asked me out on a date.
Michelle finished what was left of her wine, closed her diary and kissed it goodnight, then headed to bed for a very well-earned rest. However, before she curled up in the duvet, she set the alarm on her mobile phone for 2.35am, her reasoning being that NHS payroll always credited its employees’ bank accounts at precisely 2.30am on the fifteenth day of every calendar month.
By the time her phone began playing the irritating harp-music alarm jingle that awoke her each morning for her shift, Michelle had hardly slept a wink, so intrigued had she been to discover if her diary-cum-bible would deliver once again.
She switched on the lamp and rubbed her eyes. As the mobile flashed on the bedside table, the harp music continued to grate in her ears, so she killed the offending alarm stone dead. She then clicked on the Barclays Bank icon, punched in her login details and waited with bated breath until her account details appeared.
Michelle couldn’t believe her eyes. The overtime money had been paid in full, all £3,868.41 of it.
‘Holy shit!’ she squealed, before remembering that it was still only half-two in the morning and that old Mrs Grumpy-Drawers next door would moan at her the next time they met.
Michelle shot out of bed and made her way through to the kitchen, where she retrieved her diary from the drawer and took it back to bed with her, the way she used to do with her precious doll, Tina, until the day of her tenth birthday when somehow it quite inexplicably contrived to get ‘lost’.
Cradling the diary to her bosom, she then fell comatose and slept like a baby until the same infuriating harp-music woke her up again abruptly at 6.45am to inform her that it was now time to get her backside out of bed and head for work.
The ward shift transpired to be remarkably calm that morning, save for one unexpected cardiac arrest which Michelle and her team managed to resolve with the aid of the latest defibrillation device.
Once her ward rounds were complete, it was time for her lunch-break, immediately after which lurked her review meeting with Mister Kazim … or ‘God’ as her colleagues were prone to call him.
Normally, such things would never really have fazed Michelle, but today she felt particularly on edge as evidenced by her Marks & Spencer tuna salad having been shoved around its plastic bowl rather than gorged with the traditional famished enthusiasm for which she was famed.
Michelle knocked on Mister Kazim’s door at 2.00pm precisely, neither wishing to turn up early and appear anxious, nor late and look disorganized. There was no response, so she waited for a few moments and knocked again. Still nothing.
She thought about heading for his secretary’s office, but then heard footsteps approaching, at which point the eminent consultant’s imposing figure appeared, clad in an expensive-looking dark suit and open-necked light-blue shirt, the faintest of smiles radiating from an impossibly handsome olive-brown face.
‘Go on in, Doctor Ramsay,’ he beckoned with a wave of his hand. ‘And make yourself comfortable.’
Mister Kazim took off his jacket and walked around to the other side of his desk where he draped it over the back of his chair and sat down.
‘I wouldn’t recognise you without that stethoscope wrapped around your neck,’ he nodded, his smile widening. ‘Do you sleep with it on?’
‘No, Mister Kazim,’ she laughed, just managing to betray her nervousness. ‘I normally manage to tear it off at bedtime … although I must admit that I once took a shower wearing it.’
‘Why does that not surprise me?’ he quipped. ‘You are a very dedicated and hardworking young doctor, but I do think you need to learn to unwind a bit at times. Taking a few seconds more to think things through before diving straight into action can sometimes be a good thing.’
Michelle visibly winced. Oh my God, she wondered, was that a compliment or a criticism? She wouldn’t have to wait much longer to find out.
There then followed a wide-ranging discussion on Michelle’s professional performance in which many issues were explored and analysed.
On the whole, her performance over the last month had been excellent.
Her diagnostic and clinical skills had continued to improve with experience, and her ability to weigh up the pros and cons of her patients’ future medical requirements before coming to a decision was particularly notable, although she still had a tendency to ‘err on the cautious side’.
Her bedside manner was outstanding, but she sometimes spent a disproportionate amount of time with certain more vulnerable patients … after all, she was a doctor, not a family relative and not a social worker, and she had a whole list of other equally deserving patients to see.
Moreover, her application and commitment to her duties were flawless, although sometimes verging on the compulsive side, so she would do well to try to relax a bit more and accept that some things might have to take a bit more time to execute.
Finally, Mister Kazim invited Michelle to think about her work/life balance and whether there were certain aspects which she needed to address.
‘A happy doctor is a good doctor,’ he said. ‘Try to remember that.’
‘I will, Mister Kazim,’ replied Michelle with a slightly embarrassed smile. ‘It has been mentioned before.’
The consultant stood up and Michelle took his cue. She was busy and he was very busy.
As she made her way towards the door, he began to put his jacket back on. His final words made her catch her breath.
‘You are developing into a very fine doctor, my dear. And if you continue to apply yourself and keep learning, you will have an outstanding career, of that I am certain. I am very pleased to have you on my team. May I call you Michelle from now on? Not in front of the patients, of course.’
‘Certainly,’ she beamed, her heart bursting with pride.
‘Then since we are going to be working together for the foreseeable future, you can call me Anwar. But again, not in front of our patients.’
Doctor Michelle Ramsay walked out of her boss’s office like the cat who had just nabbed the cream. The juice of a dozen lemons couldn’t have wiped the huge grin from her face.
The rest of her shift fairly flew by, after which she put her medical clobber into her locker, draped her trusty stethoscope over the peg and locked up. Striding along the wide communal corridor of Crosshouse University Hospital, Michelle felt like she was walking on air.
She smiled and nodded to the bespectacled young lady behind the reception desk and made her way through the automatic exit door. She heard it swish closed behind her, then immediately swish open again.
A rather hesitant voice interjected.
‘Hello there,’ it said with a perceptibly nervous wobble. ‘I’m Aaron … Aaron Sutherland.’
When she turned around, a fair-haired young man in his late-twenties stood looking at her. Oh my god, she thought, it’s that anesthetist guy.
‘Oh, are you?’ she replied, feeling her cheeks flush but trying her damnedest to appear cool. ‘Well, hello there, Aaron Sutherland.’
‘And I think you might be Doctor Ramsay … Doctor Ramsay from Mister Kazim’s team,’ he blabbered.
‘You think right,’ Michelle nodded. ‘And to what do I owe this pleasure?’
‘Well,’ Aaron continued. ‘I was wondering … I was wondering if … well, you know …?’
‘No, I don’t know,’ she teased, eyeing him questioningly. ‘Perhaps you could enlighten me?’
Aaron took a big deep breath and spat it out.
‘Well, I was wondering if you would like to go out for dinner sometime? There, I’ve said it.’
Michelle’s cool immediately departed and she smiled.
‘Well, why not, Aaron Sutherland? But if you take me to Burger King, I won’t be hanging around for long.’
Aaron laughed and his body language visibly relaxed.
‘No, I promise it’ll be somewhere a wee bit more exotic than that. I’m off over the weekend. How about you?’
‘Off Saturday, back on the grindstone on Sunday night.’
‘Okay, I’ll pick you up at seven on Saturday night. Do you like Thai food?’
‘Yes, I love Thai.’
‘Great. Can I ask you your first name?’
‘It’s Michelle. But you already knew that, didn’t you?’
Aaron laughed out loud and held up both hands as if the cops had just put him under arrest.
‘Guilty as charged. Okay Michelle, see you on Saturday night?’
‘Great. Oh, and Aaron … don’t you think it would be a good idea if you asked me where I live?’
‘Oh shit, yes!’
\
‘Tell you what, I’ll give you my mobile number and you can text me. How does that sound?’
Aaron duly typed Michelle’s number into his phone and bade her cheerio. Trying to regain his composure, he made to go back through the same automatic door, only to find it refusing to budge and belatedly to clock the words ‘No Entry’ emblazoned on the outside. He prayed that she hadn’t noticed.
She had, but found his nervous clumsiness quite cute.
It was only when Michelle got back home and began to carry out her daily review of the diary that she began to appreciate the enormity of what had just happened.
The diary had delivered again.
Only this time, not merely in terms of realizing her very ambitious list of positive affirmations which, after all, required tremendous effort and application on her part to bring to fruition.
This time though, it had also delivered on three highly-wishful outcomes materializing, each of which had been much more likely to bomb out than not.
And all of them delivering in one single day.
This was the stuff of The X-Files.
By now, Michelle’s fertile imagination was beginning to run riot. To say that the diary had come up with the goods would have been a masterpiece of understatement.
She had developed an ambitious list of seven positive affirmations and had now pretty much embedded each and every one of them into the fabric of her everyday life, to which her CBT counsellor Hilary would happily attest.
Buoyed by its success, she had then pushed the boat out and added three more, only this time not affirmations as such, but highly-desirable outcomes of a more personal nature, and again the ‘purple bible’ had come up trumps.
Latest score? Ten-nil to the diary.
What next then, Michelle? Well, therein lay the big question. What next indeed?
She took a quick shower, slipped into a more comfortable leggings-and-sweatshirt combo and made herself a cup of milky coffee. She then wandered over to the sideboard and opened the bottom drawer.
No diary. That’s strange, she thought, I was sure I put it back in the drawer.
She sat her cup down on the glass-topped coffee table and immediately noticed that the diary was lying on the arm of the settee. Somewhat puzzled, she sat down and picked it up, then clutched it to her bosom with the same compulsion that she used to afford to the long-departed, cuddly Tina.
Michelle recalled the prophetic words of the zany lady in the OM Store about the diary’s potential power.
‘Treat it with respect and only write down things which are important to you in your spiritual life, and you will find that these things will come true. However, if you try to use the diary for financial or material gain, it will lose its power forever.’
No lottery win for me tonight then, Michelle laughed.
She began to reflect on how far she had come since the day Denholm walked out on her.
If somebody had told her in the midst of her anguish that she would have completely turned her life around within the space of only a few weeks, she would have laughed in their face. And especially, if they had added that the catalyst for such a colossal turnaround would be a blank A4 diary.
However, the truth of the matter was that Michelle really had reinvented herself through those seven simple little affirmations, not to mention the other three which had then transpired to be the icing on the cake.
And so, it was now time for a bit of soul-searching. She took another sip of coffee then asked herself the ‘big’ question.
Are you happy, Michelle?
Actually, yes, she answered wordlessly. I really am happy now.
Sure, I’m working long and hard shifts, but I love my job and it pays reasonably well, especially now that they’ve finally decided to stump up the overtime I’ve been long overdue.
Not only that, but Mister Kazim thinks I’m the bees’ knees and I’ve even to call him Anwar from now on. Good grief, how can I call God by his first name?
And on Saturday, I’m being taken out to dinner by that nervous, blubbering but drop-dead-gorgeous hunk of an anesthetist, Aaron Sutherland.
So yes, thanks for asking, I am very happy indeed.
Right then, Michelle, she continued, here’s a more difficult one. How do you feel about Denholm now? And remember, a really honest answer please, so no bullshit.
Okay, here goes, she answered far too quickly.
I hate the bastard with every sinew in my body. I can never forgive him for what he did to me. Never, ever. Walking out on me was one thing, but walking into the arms of my best friend was another entirely.
In fact, Michelle, you said you’d give a really honest answer, didn’t you? So, here it is.
I hope Denholm and Fiona never spend another day together.
Well, write it down then, her inner voice persisted. Just put it in your diary and see what happens.
Michelle gasped at the sheer monstrousness of her self-suggestion.
She had always considered herself to be a good, decent person and her popularity with others over the years had more than corroborated that view. So, where had this latest thought come from, then, this heinous wish that was so out of character?
She rose from the settee, walked briskly towards the kitchen and poured what was left of her coffee down the sink. A situation like this called for something a bit stronger, so she poured herself a generous glass of wine and sat back down again.
As she took her first sip, the voice in her head spoke again. Go on Michelle, it said, what are you waiting for? Write it down in the diary.
Go on. Just do it.
She picked up the diary, opened it and grabbed her pen. A blank page was staring back at her. Begging her, beseeching her. She could imagine the words etched on the page, even although she had yet to write a single word.
‘This will be the very last day that Denholm MacSween and Fiona Telfer ever spend together.’
The nib of the pen almost made contact with the paper, but somehow she managed to pull it back at the very last moment.
‘What the hell are you doing, Michelle?’ she yelled so loudly that she was sure old Mrs Grumpy-Drawers must have heard her through the wall. ‘Stop acting like a spurned adolescent and grow up!’
She finished her wine and shot to her feet. She then returned the purple diary to the bottom drawer of the sideboard, slammed it shut and switched off all the lights.
Michelle’s sleep that night was so restless that she felt as though she had spent its entirety in the tumble-drier, her eight-hour ordeal subconsciously witnessing a never-ending catalogue of horrific dreams.
When she finally stumbled through to the bathroom in the morning and pulled up the blind, her eyes screamed for mercy and her hair looked like a burst haystack. A quick shower contrived to shock her back into the land of the living and set her up for another day in the post-operative ward of Crosshouse University Hospital, or ‘Stalag Seventeen’ as it was often dubbed by the medics.
She switched on the kettle, shoved a slice of seeded bread into the toaster and turned her mobile off silent mode to check the morning’s assorted news flashes and text messages, most of which would inevitably transpire to be either totally irrelevant or could wait until a rare moment of downtime presented itself later in the day.
Good God, she thought … eight WhatsApp messages? What the hell is all this about?
She clicked on the first one. It was from Helen Allardyce, one of the hospital’s most senior staff nurses and a long-time friend and confidante. The message was short and to-the-point.
‘Michelle, I’ve been trying to contact you since 6.00am. Please call back. Urgent. H.’
She began scrolling down the list of WhatsApp messages. Five were from Helen and the other three from her fellow registrar, Doctor Maria Jimenez. She clicked on Maria’s first text.
‘Michelle, need to speak urgently. Not good news. Please call me back as soon as possible. Maria.’
It was only then that Michelle noticed the five missed calls as well, two from Helen, two from Maria and the other from a mobile number that she didn’t recognise. Hands shaking by this time, she clicked the ‘recents’ icon and hit ‘Maria J’. The young Spaniard answered on the first ring.
‘Michelle!’ she gasped. ‘Oh Michelle, where have you been? I try … I try for last hour to speak to you.’
‘What … what’s wrong, Maria?’ Michelle stammered.
‘It is Denholm,’ she replied, her voice shaking. ‘Oh, Michelle … it is bad news I give you. Very bad news.’
‘Tell me, Maria.’ Michelle spluttered. ‘Tell me now … please.’
‘I am so sorry, but Denholm … Denholm is dead.’
‘What?’ Michelle shrieked over the phone. ‘Dead? How? Where? No … no, he can’t be. Please tell me that it’s not true.’
‘I am so sorry,’ Maria replied. ‘It is true, Michelle … and his girlfriend too … you know … Fiona? Fiona Telfer?’
By now, Michelle was near catatonic with shock. She only managed one single word and even that came out in a strangled croak.
‘How?’
‘They were both killed this morning, Michelle. Denholm’s car … it crashed with lorry … big lorry. Both died … both died instantly. Michelle, it is all over news, social media, everywhere. I am so sorry …’
Panic blinding her, Michelle was incapable of replying. Instead, she hit the red button and cut the call.
She half-ran and half-stumbled towards the sideboard. When she opened the bottom drawer, the purple diary was nowhere to be seen. Wiping the tears from her eyes with the sleeve of her blouse, she quickly scanned the living room, but there was still no sign of it. Her heart by now pounding as if fit to burst, she ran back into the bedroom.
And there on the pillow was the diary. It lay wide-open, Michelle’s favourite Parker pen sitting proudly on top of the blank page like an orchestra conductor’s baton waiting to perform its latest masterpiece.
Only, the page was no longer blank. One short sentence stood out like a candle in the dark, written in Michelle’s very own handwriting.
‘This will be the very last day that Denholm MacSween and Fiona Telfer ever spend together.’