along a corridor on the ground floor. Dr Pippity doesn’t mind. There’s a sink. A small table to prop her mirror on. A stool. She removes her nose. She takes off her slap and in doing so, emotionally wipes away the tougher parts of her day. She hums softly as she unbraids her hair from the taut pigtails. Her scalp feels both sore and relieved. She runs her fingers through her hair, amused, as always, by the kinks and curls that will take a few hours, if not a wash and blow-dry, to calm down. It proves to her that her naturally straight hair suits her best. It still amuses her to remember how she longed for a perm in her teenage years and how she cursed Django who forbade it. The hippy in him, however, was happy for her to experiment with henna (‘If it’s herbal it’s harmless! If it’s organic don’t panic!’ being one of his favourite maxims). Unfortunately, henna turned her mid-mousy brown to garish barmaid orange in the space of half an hour. It took half a year to dull down and fade. Pip has decided to be at peace with her natural colour ever since. She keeps her cut softly layered and shoulder length. It may be mousy and straight, but it’s glossy and frames her face becomingly, crowning her features well.
From her doctor’s coat pockets she lays out the tools of her trade and wipes everything with antiseptic cloths. A comedy stethoscope. Five different types of magic wand. Small red foam balls that, with a little surreptitious rubbing between the palms, or a heartfelt ‘abracadabra’ from a child, metamorphose into a selection of miniature animals. A huge pair of plastic scissors. Handfuls of stickers. The squeaking plastic hammer. She takes off her doctor’s coat. It’s a real doctor’s coat, in thick white cotton, but embellished with colourful patterns on the pockets and with her name, ‘Dr Pippity’, emblazoned on the back like some kind of patchwork tattoo. An intricate circuit and a couple of AAA batteries enable her to make the squeaks and dongs. She takes off her luridly striped pinafore, with the flowers on springs attached to the kangaroo-style pouch, the badges dotted here and there with ‘I am 8’ and ‘smile’ and various cartoon characters. She peels off her tights – she customized this pair so that one leg has multicoloured dots and the other has wriggling lines. She showed them off that afternoon, very forlornly, to a girl with no hair up on Gainsborough, the cancer ward.
‘I’ve not got no hair no more,’ the child had told her. Dr Pippity had sat beside her and stretched her legs out. ‘This leg here,’ she showed the girl, ‘has the multicoloured measles.’ The girl gingerly placed a finger over the spots to check. ‘And this leg here,’ Dr Pippity declared, ‘has worms!’ She’d been able to muster a giggle from the girl. The girl hadn’t giggled for days. It felt good. For Dr Pippity. For the nurses. For the children in the beds to either side. But especially for the little girl with cancer and no hair. And she was the point.
‘And that’s the point,’ Dr Pippity says as she takes off her tights and puts on a pair of navy socks instead. ‘That’s my job.’
The clothes and the bits and pieces that accessorize Dr Pippity are placed carefully into a really rather dull beige holdall. Pip checks her reflection and wipes away a smudge of slap that she’d missed. She pops her mirror into her bag, tucks her white shirt into her jeans and leaves the room, closing the door quietly. Not that there’s anyone to disturb. The wards are all upstairs. She walks through the main entrance, not now recognized by anyone, though many of them would know her at forty paces in her slap and motley.
Zac did a swift double take when Pip passed him, but he didn’t linger or even look back. Over the years, he has known so many people at the hospital – as faces, or as names, too, or even well enough for a quick conversation – that he doesn’t think to try and place Pip. He’s got things on his mind, anyway. So has she, she didn’t notice him at all.
‘Fen? It’s me.’
‘Hiya, Pip.’ The sisters chatted on their mobile phones as they left work; Fen walking away from Tate Britain, her older sister hovering near the ambulance bay.
‘Fancy a film?’ Pip asked, pronouncing it ‘fill-erm’ as is a McCabe tradition. But Fen explained she had ‘a bit of a date’ and would Pip mind awfully therefore if she didn’t. ‘A bit of a date?’ Pip teased. ‘Which bit – just the arms and torso of some poor sod? Oh, for God’s sake, tell me it’s a real hunk, not just a hunk of sculpture you’ve fallen for.’
‘Shut up!’ Fen protested lightly. ‘It’s only that Matt bloke, the editor of the Trust’s magazine, Art Matters,’ she justified. ‘I’m still just the new girl at work, remember. Nothing to read into – it’s just a quick drink.’ However, Pip was sure that there was a veritable novel to read into. Fen could sense her older sister’s smirk. And Pip knew her younger sister was blushing slightly.
‘Be good!’ she warned her. ‘And if you can’t be good—’
‘—be careful,’ groaned Fen, finishing off another McCabe-ism.
‘Have you spoken to Cat today?’ Pip asked. ‘Is she OK?’ Fen hadn’t. ‘I’ll give her a call,’ Pip said, ‘cook her something hearty and wholesome.’ Deep down, Pip would have preferred someone to do the looking-after her. It was a Tuesday, after all. But she’d never ask. Certainly not her younger sisters. As eldest sister, she had duties to them, responsibilities – in lieu of their mother who had left them to cavort in Colorado.
‘Are you off, Pip? Off duty? Off home? Off somewhere else?’ Pip turns. It’s Caleb Simmons, all chocolate eyes and husky voice and olive skin smoothed over exceptional cheek-bones.
‘Just wondered if you wanted to go for a quick drink? I’m through for the day,’ says the brilliant young paediatrician, ruffling his immaculately tousled hairstyle. Handsome enough for a role on ER. Compassionate to the children, patient with the parents, charming and courteous to the nurses, to the hospital staff, to the clown doctors and to the janitors alike. He’d asked her the same question a couple of weeks ago. Today, she gives him the same answer she’d given him then.
‘Sorry,’ says Pip, with an apologetic shrug, ‘I already have plans.’
No, you don’t.
I do. I just haven’t quite made them yet.
‘Another time, then,’ Caleb suggests with equanimity and a dashing smile. With hands in his pockets, his white coat flowing out behind, he turns back to the hospital, sharing banter with the porters and patients he passes.
Pip went to see her youngest sister, Cat. And had a draining evening. Cat was heartbroken, now at the stage of denial and daft hope. She begged to be allowed to phone him. Pleaded with Pip to promise that this was a bad dream and she’d awake soon. Prayed that they’d get back together. Yet if Pip could grant wishes, she wouldn’t allow a single one of Cat’s to come true.
‘He was horrid to you,’ Pip tried to reason without lecturing, ‘he was a nasty piece of work. You are going to be fine. I know it doesn’t feel that way right now, but I promise you that there will be a time when you breathe a sigh of relief that your life has no place or space for him.’
Cat looked absolutely flabbergasted. ‘I don’t believe you,’ she sobbed. She didn’t believe a word Pip tried to say, didn’t want to believe her, didn’t eat a mouthful Pip had prepared. In protest, Pip wanted to shake sense into her sister, to yell home truths at her. But she didn’t. She was trying hard to be sensitive and diplomatic, although, after the day she’d had, she really didn’t feel like counselling Cat. But she did. It was her duty.
You should have said ‘yes’ to that lovely Caleb Simmons.
Then what would Cat have done without me?
Exactly as she did with you there.
Caleb’s not the answer.
But he might be a nice little diversion. A handsome distraction.
I haven’t the time. Or the inclination, to be honest.
Honestly? Really.
SIX