The weekend was marred only by a call from her GP on Saturday morning, asking if she could ‘pop back in’ for a repeat blood test due to some unspecified anomalies in the one from Friday morning. There was a pre-work slot available first thing in the week, and so Anika spent last night carefully mitigating for any further surprises in her diary.
These doctors and their triple checks, eh? Obviously, everything with the blood test this time wasabsolutely and completely fine. There wereno questions or queries. They had never seen a better, less anomalous blood sample …
She was complacent for Friday’s entry. That must have been what it was.
‘Make a fist?’ the nurse asks her now.
Anika complies, the gesture coming all too easily.
Squeezing her hand tightly, she watches as vivid dark red liquid creeps down the thin tube and into the glass phial at the end of it. She’s safe in the knowledge that she’s handled things this time. It was a blip last week, that’s all.
The jaunty nurse releases the green rubber band that has been constricting Anika’s upper arm like she was a medically sanctioned junkie. ‘OK, perfect, Anika – there you go.’ Her Portuguese accent reminds Anika of a holiday with the girls just after uni, and of Wendy’s rhapsodising about a trip there recently, though her family stayed somewhere infinitely more bougie than Anika’s accommodations. She resolves to give her friend a call, then dreams of a holiday again soon, too. God knows she deserves a break after everything that’s happened. Maybe she can squeeze in something last minute before her new job with all the days off she has coming up? Maybe with Cam? She pictures them hand in hand on a beach, carefree and sexy and …
‘Hah! I don’t see many smiles when I take the blood,’ the nurse says, jolting Anika out of her head.
‘Oh. I was thinking about … my boyfriend,’ Anika replies, testing out the term. It feels thrilling.
‘Ah.’ The nurse pats her arm knowingly. ‘Now remind me, please – your date of birth, sweetheart?’
‘July the fourth, 1992.’
At the mention of the date, Anika’s mind darts to the various milestones punctuated by her birthday. Meeting Cam properlyon her seventeenth was a great one – but then there was what happened with Zaya that night, and the spiral it set off. And just this year there was the life-saving surgery – again, somehow both a bad thing but also one of the best things that had happened to her. Her birthday might be a signifier of … turmoil?
No.Change.
Anika clears her throat. ‘So, we’re all done?’
The nurse nods, pressing one of those pale circular plasters into the crook of Anika’s elbow. The sight of it reminds her of leaving the health clinic a couple of months ago, the day that Len dumped her. It feels like a lifetime ago.That Anika doesn’t exist any more.
‘Thanks.’
Bypassing the lifts down from the GPs’ offices, Anika heads out into the stairwell, peeling the plaster off and flicking it into the unseen darkness beyond the banisters. She watches a tiny bead of blood still eager to push to the surface of her skin, and presses her lips into the crook of her arm to suck it away. The tang of iron feels like a reminder that she’s still here.
Pushing open the door out of the stairwell on the ground floor, Anika’s footsteps echo through the foyer that doubles as the entrance to a community gym. A boy, probably all of sixteen, watches her cross the space towards the exit with a slack-jawed gaze, his greasy hair pulled into a ponytail, a badge pinned to his yellow polo shirt indicating that he’s a member of staff. She’s faintly flattered at his rubbernecking her new look. Anika also made sure to write in the diary that debuting the hairstyle would be met with minimal curiosity in the office – not that it much matters with today being her last day.
After a few cooler days, the warmth that hits Anika as she steps outside is proof that these last days of August have rekindled the summer heat. She smiles into the sunshine, but the needle prick still aches in her arm, an awkward reminder of what she’sfighting to control.Forget that, she thinks. Now is a time to celebrate. To acknowledge this turning point.
In fact, as she gets to the top of the stairs that head down to the train platform, Anika reaches over and plucks a small apple off the tree that hangs there, like she saw that woman do on the fateful day when everything changed. Inspecting it for insects, she polishes the apple against her top. Then she takes a bite – and grimaces.
‘Ugh. Nope.’
She drops the apple just as the train pulls in. Perhaps some things just aren’t meant to be.
Later that afternoon, a fluorescent strip light above the long meeting table causes a pinpoint of shine on the wide forehead of Anika’s soon-to-be-former boss as she clears her throat.
‘Well – ah, yes, everyone help yourself to a glass.’ Kate nods at the late arrivals. Colleagues from the open-plan office floor have gathered around, but Anika has a feeling it’s mainly due to the prospect of wrapping up early – and, of course, the free booze. Kate picks up her own plastic flute, twirling it by its stem. ‘Um, I’d just like to raise a toast to Anika.’ She lifts the glass a bit. ‘Thank you for all your hard work in the department over the years. You’ve really been invaluable. I don’t know what we’re going to do without you!’
‘Ah, well, I’m leaving you in John’s capable hands.’ Anika’s smile is fuelled by the irony of her own statement. Her temp-replacement is hovering at the back of the group, his face blank and his glass already drained.
Kate laughs lightly. ‘Well, since we weren’t able to take you to lunch—’Thank you, diary, thank you, company-wide ‘town hall’ meeting‘—we’ve just got you a little something to say thanks again and wish you the very best of luck up at SpinRadio!’
Anika is surprisingly touched by the clearly expensive bunchof flowers that Elaine from PR now pulls from behind a nearby desk to hand over to Kate, who then passes them to Anika. Her colleagues all turn to her expectantly.
‘Wow. Well, thanks, everyone.’ Anika thinks for a moment and sucks in a long breath. Honesty bubbles up in her throat and a small inner version of herself shrugs. In part of the diary entry for today, she wrote:
Finally finishing up with the bloody ad-sales shit for the last time (amen!). I’m moving forward in my life and things are really aligning for me. I don’t know what it is, but my capacity for bullshitting has completely gone out the window. Maybe I even kind of liked chucking it out. It’s a shame more people don’t, tbh.
Anika remembers the words her pen etched as she begins to speak. ‘You know, I think I did a decent job here,’ she says. ‘But it was never really something I was passionate about. I mean it’s ad sales, so how much passion could I really have, right? Like, imagine being surrounded by the potential to putmusicout in the world, and this is what you end up doing?’ She snickers a little, but nobody really joins in. Unfazed, Anika continues. ‘And to be honest, I never felt all that welcome here, day-to-day. But a lot of that is probably on me. I think you know when you’re a good fit with people and when you’re not, right?’ She looks at the awkward, pale faces standing around the table, and smiles. The release of saying all this sends a joyfully fuck-it feeling through her bones. ‘A lot of times I felt like a weird kind of exhibition piece here, even after all these years.’ Anika shakes her head, chuckling. ‘Not that that’s specifically on any of you.’ Kate Friern clears her throat repeatedly, shuffling with palpable discomfort, but Anika presses on. ‘I don’t know, maybe HR doing all that unconscious-bias training and whatnot will have an impact in, like, five years or something …’ She shrugs. ‘I’m still going to beknocking around as a cog in this machine, so who am I to judge, eh?’ The gathered group titters nervously and Anika raises the flowers aloft a bit. ‘Anyway, thanks so much for these, guys. See you about!’
