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stayed behind to have a word with Mr Zable about getting hold of some past exams for practice. The shuffle of feet exiting the room, the scrape of chairs and the babble of conversation unsettled me again. I watched Finn out of the corner of one eye, then he hesitated near me and touched my back to get my attention.
    ‘See you, Sarah,’ he said and my heart started up its thumping and bumping until it felt like I was having a heart attack.

    YEAR 12 JOURNAL, DAY 4
    1.15 p.m.
    I know the symptoms of heart failure.
    It’s not like I haven’t said this before.
    I, Sarah Lum, am going to be a doctor.
    My grandmother had a heart attack one day while I was playing in the kitchen at home. She was making my favourite meal — dumplings — when she clutched at her arm and cried out in pain. I thought she’d cut herself and I screamed for my mother who came running. Mother said Grandmother was having a heart attack. I thought she was wrong. I was six, but even I knew that your heart lived somewhere inside your chest, not your arm.
    ‘We need a doctor,’ sobbed my mother, wringing her hands. ‘A doctor.’
    She grabbed the phone. I thought she was going to ring the police or an ambulance or even the fire brigade, but it was her sister, Elya, that she called. It was Elya who called the ambulance. My aunts lived close by and Mum never did anything of major consequence without first consulting with them.
    The ambulance came and it was Elya who sent me outside to play while the adults milled around and spoke in hushed voices. There was nothing much to do outside. My young brother was only a baby. My cousins had stayed at home. I followed the trails of the sugar ants as they marched to their nest outside the kitchen window. I moved clumps of dirt and twigs and leaves out of their path to make their journey easier.
    Then I saw the next-door-neighbour, Mr Wilson, making his way to his car.
    ‘Grandmother has had a heart attack,’ I explained.
    ‘I am sorry to hear that,’ he said.
    I didn’t know what else to say. I watched a white moth settle on my mother’s favourite rose bush. As always, I tried to fill up the silence. ‘When I grow up I’m going to be a doctor.’
    ‘Good for you,’ he said. I could see that he wanted to say something else. Instead, he finally just got into his car and drove away.
    I told the cat at the bottom of the garden.
    ‘I am going to be a doctor.’
    I told the sky, just in case Grandfather was up there watching me. I’d never met my grandfather, but I had it on good authority that he lived in heaven with his brother and my three pet fish that had died for no apparent reason.
    Maybe if I’d been a doctor they never would have died?
    After things settled down that day, I visited Grandmother happily sitting up in a hospital bed surrounded by her family, and I told my parents that I would be a doctor when I grew up. They were pleased.
    ‘Yes, yes,’ they said. ‘You will make a fine doctor, Sarah.’
    And so it was written on destiny’s ledger that I was to be a doctor. It had been a spur of the moment idea. A flitting white moth that had strayed into my mind and turned into a beautiful shining butterfly. Every time I told someone of my decision, the butterfly’s colours grew stronger and more defined.
    ‘A doctor?’ they would say. ‘Clever girl.’

    YEAR 12 JOURNAL, DAY 4
    7.20 p.m.
    My cousins are all high achievers. My mother recites their successes whenever she returns from her sisters’ homes.
    ‘Barbara has just had her third child,’ she might say.
    Or, ‘Andrew has bought a plasma TV. It is bigger than Aunt Aisah’s.’
    Or, ‘Melissa came top of her class again in Physics.’
    Just last week she said, ‘Michael is now a junior partner at his law firm,’ her head nodding as if she had played some part in his success.
    I doubt she even knew what being a junior partner meant.
    ‘He has new business cards.’ She fingered the card like it was a precious jewel. The gold