1 – Alphabet Soup
“I’m not a fighter, but in my mind I’m fighting every day. ‘What’s new? What am I doing?’ I’m fighting myself. My soul is samurai. My roots aren’t samurai, but my soul is.”
—Masaharu Morimoto
Maire
Honestly, if no one had noticed the fecking typo, the protest still would’ve been a mess. Partly because I’d let my flatmate Siobhan talk me into it, and partly because it was fierce Baltic outside, when I could’ve been still snugged up in bed under the electric blanket, knowing I didn’t need to be up for a couple more hours.
Yet here I am. Sat on a curb outside the women’s clinic where I work, my fingers and toes entirely numb – even though I’d bundled up like an honest-to-God babushka and even put warmers in my mittens and my boots.
“Cripes, look at you,” says Shiv, trotting back over to me where she’d been talking to some of the other physician’s associates we work with. “Ireland’s not that much warmer than here, is it?”
“Actually, sometimes it is this cold,” I answer, not even bothering to pull down my scarf to talk. “But it’s also feckin’ February.”
“C’mon, you don’t need to be Miss Stick-in-the-mud all the time,” Shiv says, rolling her eyes. She’s so pretty it makes me jealous, being half-Vietnamese. Her sister Shannon works at the restaurant her parents own, and they’re both just as gorgeous as each other. Some people get all the breaks. It’s so feckin’ unfair.
“I am now ’cause you dragged me out into this weather,” I grumble. “What is it, feckin’ zero degrees out?”
“Close. It’s three.”
Three. F**k me. “Do you even feel this cold?”
“You didn’t know?” Shiv winks at me. “I’m cold-blooded.”
It’s my turn to roll my eyes at her. Her Da emigrated here to London from County Kildare during the Troubles, which is the reason she and her sister have such Irish names – except her mam, Annie, absolutely would not compromise on their middle names, which are pure Vietnamese. Entirely not the case with my parents – Da was the one who’d christened me Maire Grace Isibéal after his mam, and that was it. No argument.
“Now come on.” She taps the toe of my boot with hers. “We’re gonna start marching soon.”
I grumble and shove myself up, grabbing my sign on the way. We’d made them last night while we’d watched reruns of Midsomer Murders, recommended by Shan. I didn’t fancy myself much of a fan, though.
I don’t fancy myself much of a protestor either. Obviously I want to do my bit and that, but if it involves freezing bollocks off at seven a.m., I’d leave it to the hardcore activists.
“Healthcore? What’s that?”
“Sorry? What?” I glance over at the fella next to me. I don’t recognise him, but I think he’s a tech or something at the clinic.
“Your sign.” He points at it. “Says ‘Healthcore affects your wallet too.’”
“What? That’s…” I look down at it, and sure enough, he’s fecking right. “Oh, feckin’…”
“What?” Shiv, in front of me, glances over her shoulder. “What’s wrong?”
“Look.” I hold up my sign. “It’s got a bleedin’ typo on it.”
She turns and walks backwards as she squints at it. “'Healthcore.’ I didn’t even notice that.”
“And we’ve got the vultures after us,” I say, pointing over my shoulder at the group of journalists across the street, trying to be surreptitious but not doing a very good job of it.
“Maybe…just don’t let ’em get a picture of you?” The fella shrugs in a sheepish way.
“Pretty sure one just snapped me when I was sitting on the kerb there,” I say.
“Maybe he’s not from any important outlet,” said Shiv. “Maybe it’s, like…Private Eye or something.”
“Hey, my dad reads Private Eye,” Typo Fella says.
“So does mine,” Shiv says. “But he also reads The Phoenix. Because he doesn’t take anything seriously.”
“Whichever feckin’ outlet it is,” I say, cutting back in, “my picture’ll be up on some news site somewhere within hours. Maybe minutes.”
“Maire, you’re overreacting,” Shiv says, in her maybe-you-belong-in-a-padded-cell-and-straitjacket voice. “Besides, we’re not gonna be getting any awards for how artistic these signs are. It’s for a worthy cause.”
“We aren’t,” I snap. “But my feckin’ brother, the Grammar Guard, will notice. And he’ll never let me live it down.”
“Which brother? You have six.”
I don’t have a clever retort. She’s right – whenever I say my brother she always has to ask which one. I’ve six of them, only one – Derm – who’s older. The rest – Con, Mal, Tadhg, Kee, and Corm – are all younger. Such a bleedin’ picnic growing up.
“Corm,” I say finally. “Mr Human Spell Check.”
Shiv just laughs, which gets a small smile and an eye roll from me. Maybe that is a little funny, now that I think about it.
Sure enough, when the march is over, my mobile blows up. I have to pull off a mitten with my teeth, then rummage in my coat pocket to look at it. Two messages from Corm – the first: healthCORE you did not just invent a new aesthetic did you; the second: r you tryin to turn yourself into a meme maire cause I think you might be one.
got distracted, you feckin grammar guard, I reply. was busy when I made it.
i don’t even know what healthcore is but it sounds like a sh*te aesthetic anyways, he answers.
shouldn’t you be in class not texting me you little mitcher, I shoot back. also, language.
not mitchin :(, he replies. an ur not mam, i can use language when i wanna.
You so are. Mitcher.
All I get back from him is a middle finger. Real mature.
“Look, it’s online,” says Shiv, holding her own mobile up.
“Let me see,” I say, through a mouthful of mitten as I shove mine away and make a grabbing motion at her.
“Aww, look. You look like GrumpyCat.”
“Siobhan,” I snap. “Mobile. Here. Now.”
“Ugh. Fine.” She slaps it into my palm and I glare down at the screen. Sure enough, there I am in a photo montage the news outlet’s pulled off social media, with my typoed sign.
“F**k me.” I sigh through gritted teeth.
“I’m sure it’s not that bad,” she says, taking it back before I try to chuck it in the nearest bin. “Look, this guy did it. ‘Nuses save lives with better ££.’ He’s not getting any awards for spelling.”
“Maybe his brother’s giving him a lesson too,” I grumble.
Two days later, our gaffer at the clinic, Dr Kristin Harper, calls us back to work. We’re not NHS, but we’d wanted to support each other – and it’d been her daughter Natalie’s idea anyway. And she is NHS. Emergency responder and everything.
“You walk off the job again,” she says, at the end of the morning meeting, “and there’ll be consequences to suffer. That’s all. Carry on.”
“It isn’t as if she’s paying any better,” Shiv mutters next to me as everyone disperses.
“Don’t let her hear you say that.” I nudge her. Even though she’s right. Together, we make rent on our flat – but in every other way, we live like poor people. And by that I mean packaged food, secondhand furniture, leaving broken things broken because we can’t afford to fix them. I can’t even whine to Con, the only other brother I’m closest to besides Kee, because he’s probably living meaner than me – the epitome of a starving artist, trying to make it in the acting business.
“If I didn’t need this job so much, I bloody would.”
The first patient I see that day is a woman a few years older than me, sporting bruises on both her wrists and around one of her eyes. But she doesn’t seem to sense my alarm when she greets me.
“Oh! Are you my doctor?” She sits up straighter on the examination table. “I prefer women doctors, you know…at the hospital, I always get men…”
“PA, actually,” I say. Because when you can’t afford med school, this is how you compromise. “But I can take an initial look at you. Alexandra, right?”
She nods. She’s pretty in a dainty way, and her shoulder-length, light brown hair is tousled so purposefully it says I woke up like this. “I prefer Alex, though.”
“Right. Alex.” I glance down at her information on the tablet I use for work. “It says you were last here for…counselling?”
“Yeah.” She shrugs, and her jumper, which is too big for her, slips sideways and reveals another bruise on her collarbone. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Someone manhandled her. “Just stuff for, like, rehab. But I’m working on it. My brother says I need help.”
I half expect her to say I can stop any time I want, because that’s addict-speak for My self-control is all bockety and I don’t care. I would know – I have two brothers just like this.
“I liked it so much here last time, I wanted to do my annual checkup,” Alex is saying. “I mean…sort of annual. I wasn’t going at all before J took me in.”
I don’t ask any of the things I’m itching to, namely What are those bruises from. Instead, I say, “Well, while we’re waiting for Dr Harper, do you mind if I do the initial stuff?”
“Oh, sure. Have at it.”
I’ve never met anyone who’s as enthusiastic about a visit to the doctor’s office as she is, and even Dr Harper seems to have noticed.
“Well, she was chipper, wasn’t she?” she says when the appointment finishes and we’re walking up to the front desk for her paperwork.
“I’ll say,” I agree. “Personally I hate going to the doctor.”
“Classic case of White Coat Syndrome, Maire,” she says. “It’s probably chronic.”
“Yeah. Mine’s incurable.” I can hear Con, nudging me and saying Gallows humour again? And I tell the Con in my head to kindly shut his hole.
That’s when I run smack into a solid wall of human being, standing right in our path. My face mashes into a chest, and I nearly drop the tablet I’m carrying.
“Bleedin’ hell, sorry,” I say, momentarily forgetting I’m in public.
“Watch where you’re walking,” rumbles a voice from above, like the voice of doom.
I look up, and all I see is a thicket of beard and pale blue eyes scowling at me under bushy brows. Fella’s got a lot of nerve, talking to me like this.
“I said I’m sorry,” I hiss at him. “And if you hadn’t been so rude, I might’ve meant it.”
His beard twitches, and I wonder if I’ve crossed a line. I probably have. Mam always said I was too hot-tempered for my own good.
“Looking for my sister,” he says instead. His accent’s Manc – the hot potato in the mouth, Mam always called it. “She here?”
I cock my head. Kill ’em with kindness. “Which one is she?”
“Alexandra. Alex.”
“Wait.” I remember what she said earlier. “You’re J?”
His eyes narrow. “Don’t think you’re s’posed to say that to me.”
I back up a step, so I don’t have to crane my neck so much. This fella is fecking huge. “Do you want to find Alex or not?”
“Mr Brummell?” Dr Harper says, before he can answer. He turns partway around to look at her. “Are you looking for Alexandra?”
“Yeah,” Brummell, or J, or whatever the feck he wants to be called, answers. “She around somewhere?”
“Here, J!”
Alex comes skipping from the direction of the bathroom, then practically leaps into her brother’s arms. I see the family resemblance right away: the same curly hair in an identical shade of light brown, the same pale skin tone and light blue eyes, even their accents are exactly like each other’s. It’s impossible to mistake them for anything but siblings.
“Lex,” he says, as he lets her down. “Not now.”
“What, so I can’t be happy to see my brother?” Alex’s eyes narrow, and I see something shift in her manner. “You’re gonna be like that? Seriously?”
“Lex. Not now.”
She suddenly shoves him, and he’s so surprised he takes a step back. “F**k you, J.”
Then she’s shoving past him and leaving the clinic.
“Bloody…” He rakes his hand through his hair, then glances between me and Dr Harper, still standing by the front desk. “Just a mo’. I’ll go get ’er back.”
Then he’s rushing out too, and Dr Harper and I exchange a glance.
“What was that all about?” I ask, while we wait. “She seemed so happy just a second ago.”
Dr Harper lets out a heavy exhale. “If it’s what I suspect, Alexandra came to her appointment high. That’s why she’s acting the way she is.”
“High? You’re kidding.”
“I wish I were. Her pupils were dilated. That’s how I knew.”
“Jaysus,” I say. I don’t mean to –but there’s a first time for everything, even this.
“All I’m going to say is that we caught her at a good time. Now we can refer her to a specialist.” Dr Harper’s tone is clinical.
“Yeah. Good idea.”
I don’t mention anything about how much this reminds me of Mal. I doubt it’d be helpful.
