Undoctored, page 20
I gave a fake name, which I imagine is fairly standard, but spiced things up a little by using an unconvincing French accent. I’d practised this quite a few times in the hotel, like I imagine all the best spies do. There was always a risk that the guy on the front desk would hear my flawless cadences and reply in my newly adopted native language. Luckily he didn’t, so I wasn’t forced to wheel out the only French I remember: asking for a return ticket to Dieppe and telling him the library is closed. He handed me a locker key on a wristband and a white towel that had definitely spent some time getting to know a grey sock or two in the washing machine, then nodded towards the changing room door.
The locker room was mercifully empty. I stepped gingerly out of my clothes and squeezed the towel around me, its width slightly narrower than my circumference. Off with my watch, on with my wristband, then through to the fuckatorium. I felt sick – not so much butterflies in my stomach as a churning mound of bats.
There was something very odd about walking into a sauna that had extremely loud music playing – a place of relaxation reimagined to be utterly unrelaxing. Like getting an aromatherapy massage from a masseur who can’t stop screaming. Half a dozen men were sat around wearing the same uniform: white towel and wristband – in here, we’re all anonymous and equal. I had expected there to be more customers and, while I was glad not many people would see my face, it was also slightly alarming to discover there were only six other people in this city as perverted as me. They looked up and I smiled nonchalantly. Well, I was going for nonchalantly – it could have quite easily been anything from a scowl to a serial-killer grin.
I realised that my research left me in the dark from this point – I was new to the world of saunas, let alone international ones. How does it work? Do we flirt? Am I meant to talk? Where do we go? Surely we don’t kiss? What actually happened hadn’t occurred to me as a possibility: a man in his forties stood up, took my arm and wordlessly led me to a dimly lit cubicle, where he raped me.
I was brought up well – I like to give people the benefit of the doubt. I’ve tried to put myself in my rapist’s situation again and again, to work out if there could have been some kind of misunderstanding – something I did wrong. I would have preferred that version of events – I could chalk it up to experience and pledge to communicate better next time. But I can’t – the truth of it is inescapable. I said no when it became obvious he wanted this interaction to go a lot further than I did. I said no, again, when he started. I said no when he overpowered me and pushed my head into a wipe-clean cushion that stank of antiseptic. The smell took me out of the moment and briefly back to hospital – being transported away was no bad thing.
I tried to scream, knowing even in that moment that I wouldn’t be heard – not by this man who didn’t want to hear and not by anyone else, thanks to the rhythmic pounding of the music. I soon stopped bothering, concentrating instead on the pulse I could feel in my ears – a reassuring reminder that I was still alive, and something that I could count until it ended. 1 … 2 … 3 … 4 … 5 … It has always helped me to count – the number of lengths left until I’ve finished my swim, the number of patients left to see in clinic. 36 … 37 … 38 … 39 … And I knew this would end – whether it lasted four seconds or two hours, it had to end eventually.
The inconvenient clarity of hindsight makes me wonder if the fact I stopped saying no and screaming acted as implicit consent. Signalling that he was right to carry on, that I’d just been playing hard to get, that I loved it really, that I was just like all the rest. And there had to be others, didn’t there? He was too blasé, too confident to be new to this.
363 … 364 … 365. Six minutes if my pulse was going at sixty beats per minute. Three, if my pulse was 120, which was probably more likely. He peeled himself away from my body, and muttered ‘Thanks’, before leaving. Thanks. You don’t say thanks to someone you’ve just raped, do you? Was coming here in the first place my consent? Not pulling my hand away when he took my arm – was that a way of saying yes, in a language I’d never been taught, negating everything I would say afterwards?
There was another man in the locker room when I got back into my clothes. He said hi and I reciprocated. ‘Oh, are you from the UK?’ Fuck. I’d forgotten my ’Allo ’Allo impression. I said I was from Hartlepool, even though I didn’t and still don’t know where that is.
Through reception, then out into the night. I don’t remember much about my walk to the hotel – the streets were a slow, blurry trudge. I must’ve gone the long way round, or stopped to collect whatever thoughts I could, because by the time I got back to the hotel, the reception desk was closed and I had to buzz for the night porter. He looked at me conspiratorially, as if he knew what I’d been up to, and asked me if I’d had a good evening. I found myself saying yes.
Everything I knew about rape came from watching TV dramas: you get straight into the shower and scrub and scrub and scrub yourself clean before sliding hopelessly down the tiles to the floor and sobbing into your bruised knees. But as soon as I started to get undressed, I needed my clothes back on immediately, to shut my skin away – even the air on my flesh repulsed me. I slept in my jeans, shirt and the same blood-stained underwear I’d walked home in. The fabric was my armour, keeping the shame and secrets inside, reality and judgement out.
You hear of people questioning their belief in god after life throws them some appalling roll of the dice. I suddenly questioned my atheism: what other rational explanation could there be for what happened beyond a vengeful deity, furious at my trifecta of sin: infidelity, depravity, dishonesty. Quite the charge sheet for what was barely a stopover.
Contacting the police and putting this nightmare on public record was unthinkable. Saying it out loud would make it real – I would never be able to deny it or pretend it hadn’t happened, which already felt like my only way of getting through it. Plus of course it would launch me into a spiral of bureaucracy that would see me miss my gig, delay my flight home and eventually find myself explaining everything to H. She mustn’t find out, especially now there was so much to hide. I told myself the case was flimsy anyway – the police, probably puritanical straight men with 2.4 New Zealand children, would tell me you can’t get raped if you go somewhere looking specifically for sex. What was I expecting to happen in a place like that – a round of backgammon? And as for the man who attacked me, what were the realistic chances of ever finding him? Did I even want them to find him? What if he told them I was begging for it, putting words into my mouth to fill the silence of my own making? Besides, if I could lie about my name and fake my voice, didn’t that make me the most unreliable witness?
And so I lay there staring at the ceiling of my hotel room, acting as police, judge and jury, and coming to the decision that I should somehow just try to move on. Lifting the rug and sweeping everything under it – it was in my doctorly DNA. I don’t think I slept, but it was hard to tell – replaying the same sequence in your head a hundred times is pretty similar to a nightmare.
And then I had to make people laugh for money. I’ve never thought of those two theatre masks as comedy and tragedy, more as how I present myself on stage versus how I actually feel. All I had to do that day was paint the mask on when I left the hotel room rather than when the MC read out my name. The perennial petty frustrations of the soundcheck came as a weird kind of relief. Asking if we could swap the wireless SM58 mic for a wired one meant that I couldn’t think about the way the man said ‘Thanks’. The high frequency hum from the monitor displaced the thumping sauna music from my head.
I stood in the wings waiting for my spot, as the audience were treated to incomprehensible PowerPoint presentations about interleukins and epithelial growth factors – it wasn’t doing much to warm them up for me but equally well at least I wasn’t going to be upstaged by the previous act. I concentrated on the audience rather than the learned lecturers, scanning the room to make sure that my attacker wasn’t somehow there. I didn’t even know if I’d actually recognise him – shouldn’t I be able to remember every line on his face? Was this my brain protecting me or failing me?
And then I heard my name. Time to go on. I’ve always been proud of my ability to find humour in even the darkest of situations, to plumb the depths of my despair and come up with a laugh – it’s how so many medics survive. It’s fair to say that here it was pushed to its limits. But if the jokes kept coming, if I could see those eyes smiling and hear the (albeit limited) laughter, I could get through it. For those few minutes, the safe haven of a stage beneath my feet and the lights warming me, I was invincible. The gig went remarkably well, in that I made it to the end without breaking down in tears or announcing that of the five people I’d spoken to in their country before getting on stage, 20 per cent of them had sexually assaulted me. The jokes tumbled out of me on autopilot. I left the same pauses for laughs that I always do, barely noticing or caring whether or not they came. I got my biggest reaction when I told a borderline-decent off-the-cuff joke about the long walk back from the gate being about a quarter of the total plane journey. The fact it landed better than the material I’d been honing for years was fairly grim when I thought about it. Then again, thinking of fairly grim things is a good way of not thinking about extremely grim things.
Contractual obligations fulfilled, I stood outside the hotel waiting for my ride back to the airport – irritatingly, this was in direct view of the conference’s drinks reception on the lawn. There’s a definite awkwardness to the transition from professional-ish entertainer on stage to scruffy bloke holding a suitcase and looking for a silver Prius. A bunch of audience members spotted me and made their way over to say that I was great, which wasn’t technically true but was nonetheless appreciated.* No one could believe I was heading straight home and they all told me how ludicrous this whole trip was. You’ve got no idea, cobber.
I ordered an Asahi on the plane – a large one. A few minutes later, instead of the frosty bottle of lager-anaesthetic I was expecting, a significant quantity of sake arrived. Embarrassment forced me to drink it all, despite the fact it was repulsive. I should have said something but I couldn’t: I’m British, I’m a Kay, I’m a doctor.
H saw me in the kitchen and hugged me. I needed that hug, even though I didn’t deserve it. My emotions were almost impossible to process. Relieved to be home, bursting with shame. Knowing I was holding in a secret I couldn’t possibly share, terrified that it was written across my face. But more than that, a strange feeling I wasn’t quite me – I’d left something behind in New Zealand and come home in an Adam-shaped body that didn’t quite fit.
She told me that I stank. I reminded her of my twenty-four hours of air travel, glossing over the fact I hadn’t been able to see myself naked for the thirty-six hours before that. The hygiene situation felt unsustainable, so I had a bubble bath. Something that used to be a Sunday treat was now the only way I could get clean without looking at my body – protected by an opaque foam, letting the water lift off the dirt without having to touch my own skin.
No time for emotions. First on the list: getting tested and retested at a GUM clinic. I almost used my fake name and French accent again, but my alter ego hadn’t been much of a good luck charm so far and I needed as much luck as I could get. I was pretty convinced a positive test result was on its way. After all, why should this furious god be done teaching me a lesson when he still had such a good card to play? I didn’t have sex with H for weeks, until I’d had the all-clear from the clinic. It was especially painful to push away affection that I needed so acutely – I think she probably thought I was depressed.
I wasn’t depressed. I didn’t feel angry, or anxious, or worthless, or any of the other things I had always assumed someone who’d been assaulted would feel. The most overwhelming emotion was guilt, a feeling that I was the bad guy. Well, I was the bad guy. It just so happened there was an even badder guy half a world away. I don’t think I’d ever known the true meaning of loneliness until then: I was paralysed by it, locked in a soundproof cage. I couldn’t think of any other person I could confide in. Who could I trust to under-react, to hide their shock, or be sympathetic and non-judgemental? There would be so much to unpick that it would totally redefine our relationship. How pitiful to have gone this long on the planet and not have a single person I could be totally honest with.
Time is actually a pretty ropey healer. If I was that slow at trying to make people better on the wards, I’d have been struck off by the GMC in week one. But to give time a bit of credit, ten years later is better than two years later is better than six months later is better than two weeks. Thirteen years on and I no longer even think of it when I’m on stage. Mostly.
I didn’t tell another human being for over a decade. Even my diary, my confidant for years, was left out of the loop. The sole entries from that trip were my joke about the walk from the gate at the airport and the misunderstanding about Asahi. Maybe I was too ashamed. Maybe I couldn’t face the risk that someone would find my diary and read it. Or maybe I just knew from the moment it happened that I would never forget it: every minute, every second, already etched into me in indelible ink, with me forever.
* * *
* I’m not sure an audience of Brits would ever do this – I guess New Zealanders are just a lot less reserved and probably that bit nicer. (Although, admittedly, one did bring the average down.)
Chapter 25
I took a photo of the bizarre blisters that had been spreading across the palms of my hands for the last few days. I felt like I should probably do something about it when picking up a shopping basket led to bubblewrappish popping sounds and drops of thin fluid, which caused a minor environmental hazard in the entrance to Waitrose.
I spent a good day wondering who was the best person to send my snap – I didn’t know any dermatologists, so probably a GP? I was flicking through my contacts list, working out which of my GP mates was least likely to forward the picture around a WhatsApp group, when an outlandish thought occurred to me.
I could … see my own GP? They might tell me I was over-worrying, or make fun of me, or make me feel bad for not knowing what was wrong with me, or say I was wasting their time. But realistically, they’d be too nice/knackered for any of that so they’d just hand out a diagnosis and pack me on my way. That’s what normal people do when they have a medical issue, right?
‘Which doctor do you normally see?’ asked the receptionist when I called.
Now there’s a good question – what was the old boy called? Ah, that’s right. ‘Dr Strange,’ I replied.
‘Oh goodness. Well, I’m sorry to say that he passed away. A few years ago now, actually.’
When I put my jacket on and told J that I was off to see the doctor, he reacted with delighted astonishment, as if I’d found the Koh-i-Noor in the washing basket, or how my parents would if I said I’d gone back to medicine.*
‘You’re going to the doctor? Not just someone you know? Your actual GP?’ I caught him weighing up whether to ask me any more questions, like I was a deer he didn’t want to spook. He told me he was proud of me and asked if I wanted him to come along. I reminded him I was going to the doctor with hand blisters, not some terminal diagnosis.
My new GP, Dr Xavier, was extremely nice. He shrugged his shoulders slightly and said he’d refer me to a dermatologist, but meantime handed me a prescription and suggested that I slather on a steroid cream, to see if that helped.* Thirty seconds. Done.
‘Is there anything else?’ he asked.
‘Nope! All good!’ He’ll be glad to have a bit of time to grab a cup of tea or catch up on some paperwork.
I stood up and walked to the door. What an excellent patient I was.
Then I paused. It had taken me god knows how many years to walk through this door, how many more would it take for me to come back? Columbo-style, I told him there was one more thing. I didn’t turn round – it felt easier not to look him in the eye. I heard him very gently set whatever he’d been holding back down on his desk. ‘Of course.’
I put my hand on the door handle, just in case I changed my mind. Opening up was something I’d always done to someone else, with a scalpel. I needed to be more like J, always so good at telling me what he was feeling, distilling his thoughts into words.
‘I don’t have a great relationship with food. And I think I might have some kind of PTSD from my old job.’
I heard him take a breath but he didn’t say a word. He knew there was something else coming. And so did I. The words came out in tense, heaving staccato. ‘And I was sexually assaulted.’
And then I started crying, and he told me I should sit down to talk this all through.
* * *
* Or a wolf if it smelled a – no? OK.
* The dermatologist prescribed me a slightly different steroid, which cleared it up. It was a weird hand eczema called pompholyx, which curiosity is going to lead you to google images of, whether I warn you against it or not. I received a copy of his letter to my GP and scanned it for the all-important first line: the encrypted message about what they think of you. Now that I’m out of the magic circle, I’m prepared to break that code.
‘Thank you for referring this pleasant lady/gentleman’ – normal patient.
‘Thank you for referring this very pleasant lady/gentleman’ – nice patient.
‘Thank you for referring this extremely pleasant lady/gentleman’ – patient sent a thank you card or a bottle of wine.
‘Thank you for referring this lady/gentleman’ – actively unpleasant patient.
‘Thank you for referring this chatty lady/gentleman’ – this will be a double-length appointment.
