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Back Going Under Save as PDF
Chapters (70)
  1. COVER PAGE
  2. ABOUT THE AUTHOR
  3. DEDICATION
  4. PROLOGUE
  5. PART I BIRTH
  6. ONE
  7. TWO
  8. THREE
  9. FOUR
  10. FIVE
  11. SIX
  12. SEVEN
  13. EIGHT
  14. NINE
  15. TEN
  16. ELEVEN
  17. TWELVE
  18. THIRTEEN
  19. FOURTEEN
  20. FIFTEEN
  21. PART II LIFE
  22. SIXTEEN
  23. SEVENTEEN
  24. EIGHTEEN
  25. NINETEEN
  26. TWENTY
  27. TWENTY-ONE
  28. TWENTY-TWO
  29. TWENTY-THREE
  30. TWENTY-FOUR
  31. TWENTY-FIVE
  32. TWENTY-SIX
  33. TWENTY-SEVEN
  34. TWENTY-EIGHT
  35. TWENTY-NINE
  36. THIRTY
  37. THIRTY-ONE
  38. THIRTY-TWO
  39. THIRTY-THREE
  40. THIRTY-FOUR
  41. PART III DEATH
  42. THIRTY-FIVE
  43. THIRTY-SIX
  44. THIRTY-SEVEN
  45. THIRTY-EIGHT
  46. THIRTY-NINE
  47. FORTY
  48. FORTY-ONE
  49. FORTY-TWO
  50. FORTY-THREE
  51. FORTY-FOUR
  52. FORTY-FIVE
  53. FORTY-SIX
  54. FORTY-SEVEN
  55. FORTY-EIGHT
  56. FORTY-NINE
  57. FIFTY
  58. FIFTY-ONE
  59. FIFTY-TWO
  60. FIFTY-THREE
  61. FIFTY-FOUR
  62. FIFTY-FIVE
  63. FIFTY-SIX
  64. FIFTY-SEVEN
  65. FIFTY-EIGHT
  66. FIFTY-NINE
  67. SIXTY
  68. EPILOGUE
  69. AUTHOR’S NOTE
  70. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The hospital sends us a three-sentence email with a link to a counselling service and we keep going to work as if nothing has happened. They hold a small memorial service in the chapel which is interrupted by the constant beeping of pagers and awkward speeches by doctors who knew her and who have the same look in their eyes I’d seen in Dr Prince’s the night I sat in his hospital room.

At home that night, I look at the memorial booklet with a picture of her on the front. The photo was taken in France, the caption says, in a town called Èze. I can see the Mediterranean in the background. As well as her many other skills, Dr Rachel Copeland spoke fluent French, having lived there for a year after she finished high school. I remember the morning on the surgical ward, and the funny expression on her face when she’d talked about the south of France. I wish to God that I had asked her about it then. I wish I’d known she could speak fluent French because of a conversation we’d had at work as colleagues, not because of a photograph on the cover of her funeral booklet.

I stare at the frozen image, at her smile and her hair. In the photo it’s windblown and bleached white by the sun, not the neatly coiffed style I’d envied with perfect honey highlights. I stare at her smattering of freckles, dotted carelessly along her cheeks. An artist accidentally flicked his brush and sunlight scattered across the canvas of holiday skin, like gold poured into the crack of a finely wrought ceramic, the impossible contradiction of perfect imperfection.

I google Èze and discover it is a fortified medieval town that has been home to some of the world’s most famous artists, writers and actors over the centuries. I try to imagine Rachel there, sitting in the sun, drinking wine and being happy. The images are distorted, mixed in with the look on her face when she saw me outside the change rooms, or on the ward rounds, when she told me that everything I did was always wrong. I wish I’d met her in Èze, and that I had known her as she was then.

The symbol of Èze is a phoenix perched on a bone, I learn, and the town’s motto is Isis Moriendo Renascor—In death I am reborn.

All I can hope is that it’s true. But who knows? Maybe at the end there is just the impact of a bus going sixty kilometres an hour, metal on flesh, and then nothing.

FIFTY-FIVE

fifty-five