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<\/p>\n\u201cIt was such an illuminating thing to go to this unbelievably foreign place. It\u2019s 95 per cent Islamic and just everything was foreign about this place to me. And still, the connections, the similarities, the commonalities were so much greater than the differences. It was kind of this epiphany, or at least this sunburst of wonder that week, to be reminded that we have to get outside and talk to people and give people the benefit of the doubt sometimes. That sounds very trite…\u201d she says, trailing off.<\/p>\n
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The Revisionists, the book Michelle Johnston wrote following her research trip.Credit: <\/p>\n
Despite its history of devastating invasions and the push and pull of different regimes, armies, and nations, Johnston says they\u2019re such an independent people. \u201cIt\u2019s this cultural crucible, an absolute polyglot; each village along is as different as a different planet.\u201d<\/p>\n
Johnston works part-time as an emergency physician at an inner-city hospital, and her husband is a head and neck surgeon. \u201cThe rest of the time I write. It\u2019s a compulsion,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019ve always thought I had the soul of a writer and the heart of a poet, but I didn\u2019t write for such a long time.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt just got to a point in my life where I have the brain space to be able to do it \u2013 all of this stuff that\u2019s been welling up there for decades is now just pouring out onto the page. I actually feel uncomfortable if I\u2019m not writing.<\/p>\n
\u201cI seem to have something that I needed to explore, I needed to understand. Writing them into fiction is the best doorway into understanding the human condition and those things,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd I\u2019ve obviously been shaped by 35 years as a doctor, primarily in emergency, and seeing this huge spectrum of humanity, patients at their most vulnerable, these complexities. Just trying to understand humans and how they behave and why they make the decisions that they do, has been this compulsion: to try and start to scrape off the layers, it makes life more livable for me if I have a greater understanding of why things aren\u2019t perfect, and why people do the things that they do, and particularly the things they do to each other and to themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n
The process helps her make sense of life. \u201cIt\u2019s just my way of trying to navigate the world and make peace with this very complex, very messy, often very unkind and very traumatising world that we\u2019ve made as humans.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u201cWhen you\u2019re forced to articulate [these thoughts] into sentences and paragraphs, something happens. Something happens in that alchemical transformation \u2026 this swirling anxiety about the world, I didn\u2019t realise that\u2019s why I was feeling this free floating rage or anxiety. I didn\u2019t realise that\u2019s what it was until I started to form it into … language on paper. I was just in my brain doing what we all do, which is staying awake at night and not thinking productively, just ruminating rather than organising it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Working in an emergency department, Johnston has seen a broad cross-section of society; the concept of the lottery of life is writ large, every day. \u201cIt\u2019s so fundamental to what we\u2019re seeing at the moment, that idea,\u201d she says. \u201cNobody chooses to get born where they are, with however much money and however much family and privilege. To ignore that as so fundamental to how our lives turn out, including the generations before us\u2026 it\u2019s wildly stupid.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know if there is any better illustration than the US right now of exactly that \u2013 the individualism that \u2018I merit everything because I\u2019m a white man born in a certain time and anybody else does not deserve basic human rights\u2019. It\u2019s staggering. It\u2019s so plain and obvious to most thinking human beings.\u201d<\/p>\n
Johnston\u2019s second book, Tiny uncertain miracles, published in 2022, was set in the basement of the Royal Perth hospital, \u201cthis labyrinthine, ridiculous structure where there are doors that go nowhere \u2026 it\u2019s just so fabulous, it\u2019s actually almost magical\u201d.<\/p>\n
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Johnston and husband Richard in Dagestan. Johnston says their week there was \u201ca sunburst of wonder\u201d.Credit: Courtesy Michelle Johnston<\/p>\n
The story revolves around a scientist who works in the basement making proteins from bacteria, who comes in to discover that the bacteria have started making gold.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s the story of the main character, the hospital chaplain, a man of God who believes in science \u2013 one of the lines is he would have been a great chaplain had it not been for God \u2013 and the scientist who reads his horoscopes and thinks he\u2019s the chosen one. It could be alchemy or miracles, or whatever, that\u2019s the vehicle for telling the story. It\u2019s a little bit about fate and faith, free will, and the relationship between these two men.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a very different book to her latest. \u201cI\u2019ve learned a huge amount as a writer since then,\u201d Johnston says. Her first book, Dustfall, published in 2018, explores running away, medical error, asbestos mining and corporate conscience \u2013 or lack thereof. Her next offering is different again, a non-fiction book about \u201cthe crazy, absurd wonders of the human body\u201d. Written from an emergency medicine perspective, it\u2019s \u201cmemoir adjacent\u201d, she says. \u201cIt\u2019s not memoir, but there\u2019s lots of my experience in there \u2013 35 years of emergency medicine and the wonders of the human body and the human when they\u2019re under stress and trauma.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018It\u2019s actually the small things every day that I know are more important: the kindness…\u2019<\/p>\n
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Despite emergency medicine being an impressive vocation, Johnston is humble about it, saying she \u201cjust fell into it\u201d. Working at the hospital brings her great joy. \u201cI look back and couldn\u2019t have asked for a more rewarding way to spend a few decades of my life. I get to actually make a difference; once in a while I get to do something fantastic. It\u2019s actually the small things every day that I know are more important: the kindness, the taking time with the patient, the sitting on the end of the patient\u2019s bed, the listening to them. You cannot overestimate the incredible power that those tiny moments have, far beyond saving lives,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
\u201cEveryone wants to talk about saving lives, which we do fairly rarely \u2013 we don\u2019t kill people but when I\u2019m intervening in a very melodramatic way, that\u2019s low yield. It\u2019s tiny moments every day,\u201d she says. \u201cThat\u2019s the thing that I\u2019m going to take away when I eventually hang up my shackles. I will be prouder for that.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Revisionists (Harper Collins) is out now.<\/p>\n