Read Online A Love Like Blood by Marcus Sedgwick - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Marcus Sedgwick
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everyday world, such an extraordinary, magical, mysterious thing. And as someone bled to death and their life bled away with that blood, it must have been obvious that blood is the source of life, that without it we are nothing; its colour must have seemed chosen by the gods, as if to say, ‘Look! This! This is important, for this is what you are!’
I learned at medical school how the colour of blood changes with its state of oxygenation, from dark, almost purplish, through to the brightest lurid red, but whatever its precise colour, our earlier selves must have formed a deep relationship with it. Relationship, that’s the only word I can use, and still, after all my time thinking about it, I cannot find an answer to the question of blood.
Chapter 14
At some point after my return from Paris and before Marian’s arrival, I was called in to see the Head of Department, Dr Downey. My boss.
Although he didn’t refer to it once, it was obvious that I had not impressed in Paris. Somehow word had reached him of my performance at the rostrum, and I wondered if he also knew I’d skipped a couple of sessions. All this sat unspoken on his desk between us, and I was unable to defend myself, for the accusations were not said aloud, and they were all the more damaging because of that.
Downey was a forbidding figure, old school, of uncertain age, probably in his late sixties, though I speculated idly about whether he’d been a classmate of Darwin, he was so antediluvian. He spoke to me in the kind of way that made you think he added Listen here, young man to everything he said to you, though it was done just with his eyebrows and his forefinger.
He sat before me in the gloom of his office and after some ambling around, saying nothing really, he got to the point.
‘You’re going to have to make up your mind what you want in life,’ he said. I sat up a bit straighter. This sounded like plain speaking – something I had rarely heard from Downey. ‘Do you want to be a consultant for the rest of your life, or do you want to try something different? God knows you’ve got there at a frighteningly young age; that’s going to mean a long career in the hospital, practising your art. The board has approved the plans to move to a new site. In about ten years from now there’ll be a grand new hospital to work in on the edge of town. We intend it to be the finest in the country. So you can work there, putting into practice everything you’ve learned, or you could do something else: you could be the one to move on our sum of learning, the one who discovers the laws that others will learn.’
He was, of course, selling me only one choice, and I knew what he expected.
‘Is there an area that interests you? Something you’d like to look into? Think about it. I’ll give you a small team of researchers. Just bring me something we can be proud of.’
I stumbled out of Downey’s office feeling as though I’d been told to invent gravity, but by that evening, over drinks with Donald, I realised it wasn’t so bad. Off the top of my head there were at least four interesting areas in haematology at the time, and I just needed to pick one that would interest me, and that I had a chance of cracking.
I think it was that evening Donald told me he was moving to London, to set up in private practice. He had got married earlier that year, and although I liked his wife, she certainly had expensive tastes.
‘She wants children,’ he said, matter-of-factly, ‘and I need more money.’
I was sad that Donald was leaving, but just then it didn’t bother me too much, because I had something I was anticipating, greatly.
Marian.
When she arrived I went to meet her at the station. She’d wired her arrival time, and the train was punctual.
When I saw her step down from the carriage, it felt like a small physical blow, as if something had knocked into me from behind. I think I actually caught a breath, then told myself to act as coolly
I learned at medical school how the colour of blood changes with its state of oxygenation, from dark, almost purplish, through to the brightest lurid red, but whatever its precise colour, our earlier selves must have formed a deep relationship with it. Relationship, that’s the only word I can use, and still, after all my time thinking about it, I cannot find an answer to the question of blood.
Chapter 14
At some point after my return from Paris and before Marian’s arrival, I was called in to see the Head of Department, Dr Downey. My boss.
Although he didn’t refer to it once, it was obvious that I had not impressed in Paris. Somehow word had reached him of my performance at the rostrum, and I wondered if he also knew I’d skipped a couple of sessions. All this sat unspoken on his desk between us, and I was unable to defend myself, for the accusations were not said aloud, and they were all the more damaging because of that.
Downey was a forbidding figure, old school, of uncertain age, probably in his late sixties, though I speculated idly about whether he’d been a classmate of Darwin, he was so antediluvian. He spoke to me in the kind of way that made you think he added Listen here, young man to everything he said to you, though it was done just with his eyebrows and his forefinger.
He sat before me in the gloom of his office and after some ambling around, saying nothing really, he got to the point.
‘You’re going to have to make up your mind what you want in life,’ he said. I sat up a bit straighter. This sounded like plain speaking – something I had rarely heard from Downey. ‘Do you want to be a consultant for the rest of your life, or do you want to try something different? God knows you’ve got there at a frighteningly young age; that’s going to mean a long career in the hospital, practising your art. The board has approved the plans to move to a new site. In about ten years from now there’ll be a grand new hospital to work in on the edge of town. We intend it to be the finest in the country. So you can work there, putting into practice everything you’ve learned, or you could do something else: you could be the one to move on our sum of learning, the one who discovers the laws that others will learn.’
He was, of course, selling me only one choice, and I knew what he expected.
‘Is there an area that interests you? Something you’d like to look into? Think about it. I’ll give you a small team of researchers. Just bring me something we can be proud of.’
I stumbled out of Downey’s office feeling as though I’d been told to invent gravity, but by that evening, over drinks with Donald, I realised it wasn’t so bad. Off the top of my head there were at least four interesting areas in haematology at the time, and I just needed to pick one that would interest me, and that I had a chance of cracking.
I think it was that evening Donald told me he was moving to London, to set up in private practice. He had got married earlier that year, and although I liked his wife, she certainly had expensive tastes.
‘She wants children,’ he said, matter-of-factly, ‘and I need more money.’
I was sad that Donald was leaving, but just then it didn’t bother me too much, because I had something I was anticipating, greatly.
Marian.
When she arrived I went to meet her at the station. She’d wired her arrival time, and the train was punctual.
When I saw her step down from the carriage, it felt like a small physical blow, as if something had knocked into me from behind. I think I actually caught a breath, then told myself to act as coolly
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