Freya North - Pip

‘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.

So that’s who it is. I remember. She was the clown at Billy’s party. She did that extraordinary juggling thing whilst doing the splits. She told terrible jokes which the kids loved. Didn’t I take her card?

Zac was over at the drinks machine when two clown doctors bustled into Out-patients, creating merry havoc in their wake. From his quiet vantage point outside the fray, he recognized Dr Pippity as being the clown from his nephew’s party – albeit with toned down make-up, wearing a doctor’s coat and performing at a very different venue today. He sipped his coffee by the machine, watching the clowns at work, enjoying the children’s reaction to them. Though the clowns brought colour and a certain cacophony with them, there was a moving gentleness to their gestures and jokes.

‘Hey ho and what’s your name? Is it Mildred? Or perhaps Millicent?’ Dr Pippity asked, shaking the hand of a small boy in Out-patients who she’d seen before up on the wards. Eczema. His skin looked so sore but she gauged in an instant that a level of physical contact would be right. So she shook and shook his hand, operating a hidden squeak in her pocket. ‘Dear, oh dear, would you listen to that! I’d say your elbow needs some grease!’

‘My name’s Tom ,’ the child protested, having a giggle at his squeaky elbow, ‘not Mildew or Militant.’

‘Of course it is!’ Dr Pippity exclaimed, clasping her hand to her head and setting her nose alight in the process. She almost fell over, whilst rolling her eyes. ‘And Tom is a very fine name. My brain has run out of battery. Can you help start it again?’ She handed the boy her toy hammer and pointed to two positions on her forehead, much to his delight. ‘How old are you?’ she asked. ‘One hundred and thirty-two?’

‘No, I’m almost six years old,’ he said, as if to a simpleton. ‘I live in Swiss Cottage.’

‘In a swish cottage, hey!’ Dr Pippity gasped. ‘Is there room for me?’ The boy said he didn’t think so and the clown doctor pretended to cry, blowing her nose into an enormous polka-dot handkerchief.