As Tom came into work every day, that feeling of satisfaction with himself had bade him never to bemoan the day in, day out routine of one operation after another. He was thankful for the sense of dignity of his work, and his own repaired sense of identity. It enabled him to rise above Connie's outrageous desire to dominate all those around her ,and Will's perpetual bitching. While Ric was in the unenviable position of being middleman, Tom was able to carry on calmly doing what he was best at. He knew above all, that he had not always possessed that sense of stability and he never forgot that feeling of life being helplessly out of control.
It was three years that he had last tasted a drop of alcohol and he had never felt sharper and more alert in his life. He was able to plough through a series of examinations with fairly nonchalant ease, but without that desire to appear to shine which was the consequences of his upbringing. Right at the end of the day, he stepped out into the fresh air and the rosy red sunshine, which still lit up the skyline. It was a simple performance of nature, which once he would have ignored, in his characteristically tunnel-visioned fashion.
While he meditated, his mind drifted back over time with perfect ease and he could see a clearly as if he was watching a movie from the third row of the story of his own life. Right from the word go was that nagging sense that he was the son of a famous heart surgeon. It had given him an enormous feeling of pride in his father when he was little but, as he grew up, there was that sense that so much was expected of him to succeed as well. If he got nine out of ten for a school essay, his father's eyes would narrow in disappointment that he hadn't got ten out of ten. It instilled in him that inner tension that just would not let him be, and engendered that double edged personality trait. On the one hand, that drive for success had led him to where he is now but the downside was an intensely self critical attitude that would turn on him if he ever appeared to fall short of his standard. After a while, it didn't take more than a characteristic facial expression and turn of phrase to twist in the knife. At the same time, he could never free himself of that early hero worship of his father so he was even denied the ability to feel anger towards him.
When he looked back at his life, he had to admit that his father provided stability of a sort. At least he knew where he stood with his father. He might have had a better chance if he had had the soothing, constant mothering that he craved. That was denied to him by his mother's drinking. There were times when she gave him that motherly affection and other times when she didn't want him near her. He grew up permanently bewildered by her reaction as his mother's behaviour was never explained to him and therefore he could never explain it to himself until later on in life. The only sense he could make of it was that she seemed to be only half a grown-up, only half a mother. His father worked all the hours that God sent to further his career and was remote from him, except from those times when he was around and his powerful personality made its mark on him. Dysfunctional as his upbringing was, he knew nothing else in his upbringing and had nothing with which to compare it as he was an only child and he had few school friends who were close to him. To stop himself feeling the pain, started to grow that mask over his real feelings, enslaved as he was by the idea that 'big boys don't cry.' It was only many years later when he went through therapy that he realized how tenacious that convention, how it towered over him and his contemporaries.
Going to medical school enabled him to make that leap of confidence out of his former existence into a convivial, tight-knit institution. Superficially, it was the making of him and ministered to that need for self-approval. As he grew up and became successful, his mask fitted on his face, that slightly combative, self-assurance, and belief in his own abilities, which concealed his own insecurities and self-doubt. For how could he believe in himself when he could never be as brilliant as he remembered his father being and how could he seek comfort when comfort had been always denied him?
He could never remember how his self-destructive affair with alcohol ever started in the first place. As a hard-working surgeon, he could justify himself by saying how understandable it was to need to wind down after a hard day at work. This was a quite different matter from his mother's surreptitious drinking. That was a family conspiracy, that everyone knew but nobody alluded to. It was just that, as his career continued, this prop became very attractive to him, the golden chance to switch his mind off from all the inner tensions, all his self-doubts that continued to plague him. However successful he became, he could never escape himself. He found that the golden elixir provided the blissful answer. As time went on, he found it only too easy to blur and obscure the amount of alcohol that he was consuming as his addiction took charge and its hold of him gradually started its pervasive takeover of his waking hours. His agile mind enabled him to conceal from his consciousness just how much he was drinking. So long as he was able to keep up appearances, he could continue in his own crazy fashion. He was even able to ignore the periodic stomach cramps he suffered from as just a burden he was destined to carry.
It was only when the normally 'fit as a fiddle' Tom Campbell-Gore was rushed into hospital with a bleeding stomach ulcer. He never knew how he ever got there in the first place, just the memory of lying flat on his back, dressed in a patient gown and looking upwards at all the nurses hovering around him. It gave him a mild sense of being somehow in the wrong movie. He wasn't where he should be. He should be up there, standing upright and bestowing the benefits of his knowledge on behalf of the patient.
"I don't understand it," Ric had said to Ed. "There's a high level of fatty deposits on Tom's liver. That goes totally against the Tom Campbell-Gore who we thought that we knew."
Ed shrugged his shoulders uncomprehendingly. This was the fiery, opinionated top class surgeon they were talking about. He had long admired his daring in sailing closer to the wind than Ric ever dared and thereby performing miracles of surgery. This was a man whom he longed to emulate if he had the chance. He couldn't get his head around Tom Campbell-Gore being a patient, just lying there on the operating table.
"This can only be caused by one of four things, three of which can be ruled out in Tom's case, leaving that of excessive consumption of alcohol over a long period of time"
"There must be another reason, Ric. I've never known Tom to be falling down drunk so that can't be right," answered a bewildered Ed, shaking his head in negation of the very idea.
"Can't it?" Ric replied tersely, raising his eyebrows. "Experience will tell you that life isn't necessarily what it appears to be. I don't just mean in the operating theatre."
It was when Tom emerged from the operation that the real wake up call rang loud and clear, something that he couldn't switch off on his mobile. First of all, Ric confronted him about it after the operation, and told him that he wouldn't report Tom to the General Medical Council if Tom got some treatment. For the first time in his life, Tom looked into Ric's eyes and, behind the blazing anger, saw that pleading look in his eye as a close, if somewhat combative colleague, who really did want the best for him. His last chance was before his eyes to stop him going over the edge in total ruination. Suddenly, he slipped off the mask of the dominant charge surgeon and for the first time in his life, handed over the burden of being himself to someone or something else. Perhaps they might make a better go of it than he could. He felt bleak, empty and sick of himself. There was no where else to go and, in that resigned, accepting state of mind, allowed himself to be put through a drying out process at a discreet clinic. It weaned him off alcohol and, for the first time in his life, discovered that his waking hours carries so much space.
He felt newborn but vulnerable at the same time. All the feelings started to leak through his self imposed walls threatening to drown him. He felt needy, wanting to clutch onto anything in his life that would stabilize him. As he looked back on that seesaw period of recovery, he could see how inevitable that he should fall in love with that infinitely sweet angel of mercy, his psychiatrist, Anita Forbes. She was everything that was lacking in his life. In his stripped down painfully introvert emotional condition, she was the missing piece in his life. With her at his side, there was so much he felt that he could give of himself so that he wasn't just selfishly grasping for a lifeline as a drowning man. It hurt him through and through , when she softly declined his ardent declarations.
"I must put a stop to these therapy sessions, Tom. I feel that you have gained the strength to continue on your own"
That was a total bolt out of the blue to Tom. Life was on the upturn now. He had rediscovered a sense of joie de vivre in his soul. This bombshell would knock a vital prop from underneath him.
"How will I finally be at peace with myself?" he had asked Anita and himself despairingly." You have been my anchor in life, someone to whom I can express my inner feelings. After all, isn't this what it is all about? I can't be the man I used to be and
it is so hard to start all over at my time of life"
"You have now gained the strength to find that peace, Tom All I have ever done is to gently place important truths in your hands. They truly exist outside of my existence. Besides," she laughed in a self-deprecating fashion," if I see you much more, I might end up getting too attached to you more than is good for either of us."
It took a year of getting over the hurt and coming down off that terrifyingly intense emotional roller coaster. He realised later on that those obscure words were her way of saying that some of his feelings were in danger of being returned. He gained some slight comfort from that revelation.
Never mind, he shrugged to himself as the sun slanted down on him outside St Mary's hospital. All that happened three years agoand, as the old saying went, time is a quick healer. He had managed to work out his new identity, more understanding and sympathetic and less needing success at all costs. He saw the up and coming new registrars and could smile understandingly at them. If they were running a race, he didn't have to be part of it. There was less in him to cover up and conceal and by sheer accident, relative peace of mind sneaked up on him without him having to look for it. He could forget about all those rationalizations for sneaking another drink, without becoming smug enough to consider that that inner demon had been totally banished from within. What it did teach him was that he could spot another alcoholic, or incipient alcoholic a mile away and to pick up on those extremely convincing rationalizations. They were there for those with eyes to see.