Chapter 4: Ted Feels Diminished

Far North Queensland.

Later that week, Judith asked Ted to come to her office. She ushered him into the room that used to be his.

When the hospital was last refurbished, he’d secured a spot from where he could stand and look across the narrow esplanade to a flat, grassed area on the shores of Trinity Inlet. In the foreground was a helipad to bring in emergencies from the reefs, islands, rainforests and tablelands, for those communities within the range of the chopper. To the north, thick mangrove trees hid Saltwater Creek. Only recently, a large crocodile had lumbered from it onto the airport road and held up traffic. He could not see this busy scene at the desk under the window or in his comfortable chair by a small table: only the ever-active sky of Far North Queensland. It was here he’d worked and written.

Ted recognised the Piano Trio Judith was playing. ‘Mendelssohn. I love the youthful, energetic first movement. Did you know he’d written a second one?’

‘No.’

‘Not often played. A peaceful second movement, as good as this one. He did peace very well.’

Ted didn’t know Judith was about to disturb his own peace.

‘Sit down, Ted,’ she said, and without waiting for him to do so, ‘I’ve decided to rearrange our operating schedules.’

He remained standing. ‘Why so?’

‘I want you to give up an operating session and do a fracture clinic instead. I need to find an extra spot for Kane.’

Ted’s chin jutted forward. Muscles tensed before he had time to think. He hated this all-too-common reaction. He liked to be calm. ‘You can’t do that. What do you think it will do to me?’

They stood closely, facing each other; Judith was firm. ‘I want to keep Kane involved in the base hospital, so he’s not seduced by private practice. He needs to do more sessions here. I want to both encourage and support our younger people. Kim has a full-time appointment. That suits her. You’ve a half-time university appointment. Why not do more teaching? You’re good at it.’

Ted started to flick his fingers repetitively under his nose, as he usually did when nervous or upset. ‘What about my operating? I’m not in my dotage yet.’ He sat down, as though to show he was.

‘It was your choice to go half-time, Tedo. I value your important role in keeping an eye on Kane until he’s more mature.’

Ted winced at her propensity to add ‘o’ to the names of anything she was fond of. It was no comfort to him. ‘Don’t Tedo me. I need operating time to keep up my skills. I’m losing them. I’m still a surgeon.’

It was Judith’s turn to push back. ‘You’ll have to decide what you want to be. You may not be able to manage being both a full-on surgeon and an ethics professor. I’ve made up my mind. Accept it. You can get more theatre time by helping the registrars.’

Ted’s face reddened. He wasn’t going to win. He’d fought to get her as director and, so far, admired the way she was doing the job. Not this time. In the background, he heard the trio’s slow movement continuing; he knew it was calming, but he didn’t wait to hear any more. Turning, he left her office.

Ted walked across the Esplanade towards the sea. The warm sun and breeze helped him think. He’d known Judith’s late father, Lex. They had attended orthopedic conferences together and had similar disparaging views of the ambitious younger generations. Ted remembered Lex complaining that his daughter never made time to speak to him alone; he missed the moments they’d had together when she was younger.

‘We’ll both regret it later,’ Lex had said.

Ted knew Judith regretted it already. Lex and three friends had taken off from Merimbula in a light plane to fly over the Snowy Mountains. They’d been warned that conditions were dangerous: dense fog and freezing weather, not so unusual, even in summer. They took a risk. Lex had to operate the next morning, and he would have argued forcefully for them to fly back. Ted and Judith sat together at the funeral, wondering what the four had talked about when the controls iced up and they knew they were going to die.

Ted liked working with women, particularly assertive ones. Judith’s compelling green eyes also influenced him. Attractive for her fifty-four years, ten years younger than him, Ted liked her dignified, clever face and the soft way she laughed. Her straight hair, dropping below her shoulders, looked blondish to Ted, although he wasn’t sure how much was natural. Her nose was long, her lips full.

‘Why do you want to come here?’ he had asked at her first job interview. Later, he learnt she had suppressed the truth that it was as far north of Brisbane as she could go to get away from her mother. Also suppressed were her three-weekly sessions at Brisbane General Hospital, which gave her contact with her colleagues and the essential peer review and where, in earlier times, she’d found the testosterone-fuelled energy of the men exciting. It was usually the closest she got to the regular advantages of the hormone, and even that had worn off. The only time she was flat out was with private consulting and operating. No energy. No opportunity. She told Ted that much later.

In the interview, she said, ‘Firstly, I want to get out of Brisbane. No more grand rounds in which six bored surgeons and a motley myriad of followers trail in a ragged bunch after the self-imagined Napoleonic unit head, leaving the junior staff to sort out the muddle of confused and anxious patients once the caravan moves on.’

Judith took a breather. ‘That’s the longest sentence I’ve ever uttered.’ There was a pause. ‘Have I come over too strong?’

‘Probably.’ Ted showed no emotion, secretly agreeing with her assessment. ‘What’s the second reason?’

‘I think you’ve created a great unit. I want to join it.’

After the interview, Ted welcomed her to Cairns. ‘Tell me what you really thought of the guys in Brisbane?’

‘They were a good bunch, but you know there was one thing that struck me,’ she said. ‘The Tuesday afternoon meetings were scheduled to begin after the outpatient clinic. They never started on time. The other surgeons hung around, drank tea, made phone calls and did anything but go home. I imagined the wives and children at home, all waiting for the father who was too busy to come. I don’t think it will be like that here.’

There was a third reason, one that Ted knew, that she did not need to mention. Simply, he said, ‘Was Ben Gibson part of it too?’

‘Yes.’

And the third reason? Ted remembered the storm Judith had created when she’d shocked everyone by stating publicly that female trainees would be better off giving their male colleagues a blow job than complaining about sexual harassment. The crude language had been deliberate and designed to provoke. And it had worked.

His mind drifted back to his own training days. That operation where his senior surgeon had snapped, ‘For this operation, I need two experienced assistants and all I have is one bloody idiot.’ Ted had shrugged it off at the time, even felt there was some truth in it. The following year, the same surgeon had sent him a handwritten thank-you note and later an excellent reference. He’d felt validated, accepted into the brotherhood. One of the team.

The memory shifted now, coloured by Judith’s revelations. He’d told that story for years as an example of a surgeon’s stress, of learning to take criticism, of earning your place. But now he saw it differently. Would that surgeon have spoken to a peer that way? The power dynamic had made it acceptable to both of them. Ted had been grateful for later kindnesses that perhaps should have been basic professional courtesy.

He remembered his own initial reaction to Judith’s allegations: denial, of course. Like most senior surgeons, he’d seen bullying, heard whispers about harassment, but had dismissed them as isolated incidents. Judith had written to the College about three female trainees being pressured for sexual favours. One trainee had been offered a place in the programme in exchange for sex. Another had received a negative assessment after refusing similar demands.

Ted winced, remembering how the College had buried Judith’s letter with bland acknowledgements and references to ‘policies’. No one had asked for details about the perpetrators. They’d treated her like a bad smell they hoped would go away.

His own complacency had been shattered at a dinner party when two women had torn apart his comfortable assumptions. Sexual predation was real and widespread in other academic areas and workplaces. He’d been forced to question everything. Had he been a perpetrator himself without realising it? Had his silence enabled others? Had his own story of ‘surviving’ bullying helped normalise abuse of power?

Judith had known exactly what she was doing with that crude statement. While some lamented her choice of words, there was no doubt she’d forced the College to act at last. They’d had to set up an independent expert group and proper complaints processes. The College report had proven her right—sexual harassment and sexism were endemic. The old boys’ network had failed women.

Ted realised his own story of resilience under bullying was part of the problem: it had helped maintain a system where abuse was seen as a rite of passage rather than what it really was: a failure of professional ethics and human decency.

Yet, Ted mused, he had valued that experience. Resilience did matter; it was all a question of context. On the other hand, he thought, if his supposed resilience was an illusion, look what happened when it came crashing down!

Judith stood at her window after Ted’s abrupt departure following their confrontation, watching him stride angrily across the road to the beach, wondering what he was thinking, disturbed by his reaction. She’d always looked up to him and tried to copy his strengths and ignore his failings; she enjoyed his optimism and good humour. She remembered how kind he was when her father died, even though he must have been suffering himself.

Now she was judging and instructing him. And she felt she had been too hasty, too abrupt and unnecessarily cruel. That was not the way she wanted to be. And yet, fundamentally, she knew it was the right decision, and one Ted should have considered himself.

Ted soon returned to her office, knocking, as though to accept her space, wanting to make friends. ‘Come in,’ she said irritably, not knowing who it was, surprised and pleased when it was Ted. She stood at the window of what used to be his office, seeing his old view, not looking him in the eyes.

‘I’m sorry I walked out. I want to say how much I admire you,’ he said quietly.

With a slight, pleased smile, she said, ‘Thank you,’ and then with a sudden grin, ‘What gave you such a profound revelation?’ The old, mischievous Judith came back suddenly. It was such a relief to see him; she was looking directly at him now.

Ted was slower to react. ‘I was thinking of the time you took on the College of Surgeons all on your own,’ he said with slightly more emphasis.

Judith laughed. ‘Professional and personal activities becoming significantly blurred, they called it. ‘Such a sterile way to describe something so toxic.’

‘When you went public with this, many criticised you. But you knew exactly how to make them act.’

‘Sometimes you have to force people to look in the mirror.’ Judith was back on her horse. ‘Even when they don’t like what they see.’

‘I still don’t know if I can truly understand what it’s like for women.’ He paused, seeking the right expression. ‘To walk in their shoes.’

‘Understanding isn’t the goal, Ted. Action is. Change is.’ She was galloping now.

Ted nodded slowly, still feeling a little under the whip. ‘The machismo stereotype of the surgeon: self-assured, brave. We’ve all tried to live up to it. Even our female surgeons have taken on that male culture.’

‘And you think that’s good?’

‘No. Not anymore. It’s just a front we try to embody. It might help with patient trust in the short term, as they believe in the image, but it’s false. Untrustworthy.’ He paused again.

‘What will we do about it?’ The whip was striking out.

‘Change our value system. Stop hiding the feminine traits that even we men feel. Stop pretending that we’re invulnerable.’ He was feeling very vulnerable now. ‘Be more like you, Judith. Brave enough to speak up, even when it costs you.’

She smiled sadly. ‘It’s not just about being brave, Ted. It’s about being honest. Looking into that mirror and seeing ourselves as others see us.’

Ted didn’t see that as possible. ‘Others can’t see us through our own mirrors.’ He laughed triumphantly. ‘Lost in your own rhetoric!’

Judith was delighted. We’re friends again, she thought.

Ted had accepted her decision, although he still planned to do some operating, even if they were minor cases.

But then, what constitutes a minor case?