Hearts And Bones

Author’s Notes:

* This story will pick up immediately where ‘Always And Everyone’ left off. As you have maybe guessed, this is quite a high emotion story, with a lot of sadness. I know I promised to those of you who wrote to me that I’d try to put a happier sheen on my writing, but trust me when I say that there will be a happy ending eventually. If not just yet…

* These aren’t my characters. They belong to Constant-C, Warner Brothers etc… I do this for fun and gain no money from it.

* The song featured is ‘Evaporated’ by Ben Folds Five. It is taken from their Whatever And Ever Amen album.

* Thanks as always to my trusted editors, Leslie, Cari and Emily. Your help is invaluable, ladies.

* Love it, or hate it, I’d really like to hear from you… Feedback is always sought and very much appreciated!

* For Cate and Sash. Ladies, here’s to Guinness, Led Zeppelin and the pursuit of a penis.

Hearts and Bones
By Jo 
dynamojo26@hotmail.com 

****

Carol appeared in the doorway, looking pale and ghostly, her eyes watery. "Doug…" she said quietly. He sobered quickly and put down his drink, coming up in front of her.

"What’s wrong?" he asked, putting his hands on her shoulders. Carol took a deep, jagged breath.

"That was Javier," she paused, looking distractedly around at the people dancing. "I have to go back, Doug… It’s my Mom…"

****

My mother had two faces

And a broken pot

Where she hid out a perfect daughter

Who was not me

I am the sun and moon and forever hungry

For her eyes.

- Audre Lorde -

****

"Carol? Your Mom?" Doug took her hand and led her out into the quieter hallway, where the music was but a hum and a thump of bass and the voices were dulled. He pulled the door shut discreetly and turned to her. She looked down at her feet, and two tears slipped onto the leather of her shoes. "Hey… hey… what’s happened?" He pulled her gently to him and she hugged him fiercely, the tears spilling over, sobs choking from her throat. For a little while, she was quiet, almost eerily so compared with the noise that came from behind the wall, and he cradled her, wondering what on earth had stunned her so. "Carol… what’s happened?" he repeated in a hushed voice. Slowly, she pulled away from him and wiped her wet face, her eyes burning khaki with emotion.

"There’s been an accident…" she whispered, almost inaudibly. Doug’s eyes instantly widened.

"An accident?" Carol nodded.

"This morning… they were in the car, going shopping…" her voice broke, she blinked, and more tears flooded down her cheeks. "And some… somebody pulled out in front of them. Javier tried to stop… but he couldn’t in time…" She paused, blew a long, stuttering breath out, then murmured, "Mom was hurt. She’s in the hospital, but… but she’s in surgery… She’s…"

"Oh, Carol…" She collapsed into his open arms again. "You have to go back, sweetheart… I can’t come with you right now, but you have to go now… Come on…" He gently eased her towards the door. "Let’s go get your things…"

"No, no, Doug… You can’t stay… I need you…"

Doug thought his heart was going to split in two, such was the dreadful familiarity of her words. "I can’t, Carol…" he explained weakly. "We’re not even half way finished… there’s so much left to do." She looked up at him, pleading him with her eyes. He looked away. "C’mon… let’s get your things…"

Doug dispersed the party relatively quickly, ushering Carol into the bedroom and out of the commotion. That is, all but Will Kelly, who lagged behind, offering to call Heathrow and get Carol onto a flight. "Thanks, Will, but I need to speak to her first… find out if she’s taking the girls, or if she wants to do this alone…" He nodded, glancing around to the bedroom where Carol was hidden from sight.

"Well, you know I’m only downstairs…"

"Yeah, thanks. I’ll come and get you if I need anything…" Will nodded and stepped out of the apartment, giving Doug a sympathetic smile as he did so. The door clicked shut and Doug went back into the bedroom. Carol was lying prostrate on the bed, her arms wrapped around herself, staring at the ceiling. "Hey, come on, let’s get you packed up…" he said with what he hoped was a comforting smile.

She looked across to him and shook her head. "I can’t do this, Doug," He swallowed. "I can’t do it on my own. I need you." A small sound escaped his mouth, trying desperately as he was to maintain some sort of emotional control in the midst of the turmoil. He went to her, pulled her to seated and wrapped his arms around her.

"Carol, stop this…" His embrace tightened. "This isn’t gonna work, okay? I can’t come with you. God, I want to, and you know if I could, I would, but I can’t, I just can’t…" He tried not to let his voice sound frail, but knew he was failing.

"Doug… I don’t want to…" she murmured, and he could feel her tears soaking through the material of his shirt. "Don’t make me…"

Beyond the half closed door, Doug heard the latch click open again and then a familiar voice echoed into the empty room, "Carol… Doug… where are you? Will just told me…"

"We’re in here,"

Cindy pushed the door open and saw them still clasping each other. "Carol, I’m so sorry…" From the sanctuary of Doug’s embrace, she uttered a wordless reply, then suddenly, Doug realised what he had to do. He glanced up, gently levering Carol’s helpless body away from him.

"Cin, can I have a word?" She looked at him strangely.

"Sure…" He threw his head towards the door and they stepped outside, pulling the bedroom door closed behind them. "What’s the matter?"

"Will you go back with her?" he asked immediately, looking to her with hope in his eyes. "She wants me to go, but I can’t… I can’t just leave them in the lurch… There’s too much riding on me." Cindy stared at him as if he’d merely asked her to pass him a glass of water.

"Sure I will, Doug… definitely…" She smiled encouragingly. "Has she packed yet?"

"No,"

"And the girls? She’s bringing them back too, yeah?"

"I would guess so,"

Cindy nodded. "Okay, that’s fine. Just so I know…" She looked at him and reached for him. Doug fell gratefully into her embrace and let out a deep sigh.

"This is… it’s… unbelievable… We… she was having so much fun here…" Cindy rubbed his back gently.

"Doug, it’ll be okay…" He sighed, not seeing how it could. He was deserting her again, or at least, that was how it would appear to her. Cindy tugged him away from her and gave his upper arms a squeeze. "Can I use your phone? I have to call Jude and Harry…"

****

Even though it was late at night, Heathrow was still crowded with people as Cindy and Doug guided an almost catatonic Carol through the crowds, enlisting the help of a staff member to push their luggage trolley. Doug had the slumbering twins cuddled in his arms, their changing bag and Carol’s backpack slung over his shoulder, while Hannah and Robbie tripped sleepily beside him. They made their way along the concourse as quickly as possible, but when they reached the terminal, the flight had already been called. A line of people were waiting at the exit, filing through the steel swing gates steadily. "The plane’s ready, kiddo…" Doug said, trying to keep the sadness out of his voice. Carol looked up at him distantly. "Be careful…"

Suddenly, as if stirred from oblivion, her eyes filled with water and she stuttered his name, holding him tightly. "I love you,"

"Always…" He rocked her gently, while Cindy took a few paces back to a more discreet distance. "I’ll call you as soon as I can…" She nodded against him. "It’ll be okay, I’m gonna speak to Dan tomorrow and see if I can’t finish at the end of the week instead. I’ll do my hardest to finish this week. I promise."

She pulled his face up and kissed him passionately, abandoning any sort of restraint, and he kissed her back, rubbing the back of her head with the pads of his fingers. But as an echoing voice came over the Tanoy, urging all passengers for the British Airways flight to New York JFK to board, he reluctantly broke her off, planting quick presses of his lips on her nose and forehead. "Take good care of my girls," he added, peeling them off him and passing Tess to her, Cindy reaching in like a shadow and taking Kate. He kissed each one of them in turn again, then gave her a gentle push towards the gates, where the line had vanished. She turned and started numbly to walk towards them, and as he watched, as she waved and stared, she was swallowed up.

He went to the big plate-glass windows and looked out, watching their tiny forms on the wide expanse of tarmac as they were led out to the waiting plane. As he watched, Cindy turned around and threw a wave behind her, unable to see him, though he could see them and Doug smiled, momentary thankfulness washing over him. Somehow, he knew he’d put his family in good hands…

****

When the plane touched down in New York, they caught a connecting flight through to Chicago, thankfully having to wait only an hour. Carol had spoken few words during the flight, alternating between a dreamless sleep and quiet reflection. In Cindy’s arms, Tess and Kate slept peacefully, unaware of all the chaos around them, and on either side of her, Hannah and Robbie idly watched the beginning of the in-flight film, only to fall asleep half way through. Deciding against conversation with Carol, thinking that she would speak if she wanted to, Cindy remained quiet and absorbed herself in her thoughts.

****

Across the Atlantic Ocean, Doug sat on the edge of the bed in the apartment, having slept not a wink since he’d returned from the airport. Through the window, the sun was rising with a yawn over the city of London, and the trees were beginning to stir with the first breaths of early morning breeze. He looked out, listening to the bird chorus and in the distance, the hum of traffic beginning on the roads beyond the park.

He sat quite still, knowing he would be tired for the day ahead, knowing there was work to do at the hospital, but unable to clear his mind. He thought of Carol, still thousands of miles up in the air, flying not towards home, but towards a now forgotten city and a numbing reality. He thought of Cindy, facing the responsibility of four young children resting heavy on her shoulders. And he thought of himself, separated once again from everything he loved, thrown back into the loop like trash.

****

Javier was waiting at the hospital when she arrived, and Carol saw him as soon as she came through the swing doors and into the waiting area outside the ICU, sitting with his head in his hands. At the end of the corridor there was a corner sectioned off, spotted with dark green padded seats and a low table, topped with a vase of blue irises. He looked up when he heard her tennis shoes squeak on the floor and stood up from his seat by the window and smiled as best he could. Carol walked towards him and though he had never done so before, he gently took her in his arms and hugged her. "I’m so sorry, Carol…" he murmured in a husky voice, starved of sleep and strained with worry.

"Is she okay?"

"I don’t know… they haven’t told me anything new since, since she came out of surgery…"

Carol looked around her, searching for a doctor whose face was familiar, someone she could beg some kind of prognosis off of. "Have you seen her?"

"No, n, not yet," he stumbled over his words, looking down grimly. "They said they had to watch her afterwards… make sure everything was okay… They told me to wait out here…"

"How long have you been here?"

He glanced at his wrist watch. "Nine hours…"

"And when did they bring her back from the OR?" Carol was surprised at how calm her own voice sounded. When Cindy had dropped her off in the rental car at the entrance, she had felt a slow terror descending on her, wondering how she was going to cope with the inevitable questions. Her actual response was nothing she had expected.

"About two hours ago… She was still asleep, I think, but there were…" He took a deep breath. "There were lots of doctors in there, talking… They wouldn’t tell me anything…"

From behind her, Carol heard an instantly memorable voice, precise but sympathetic English vowels making her turn immediately in relief. "Carol… Carol, I’m so sorry…"

"Elizabeth… what’s going on? Did you treat her?"

"Yes, I did…"

"And what’s the matter? What was she having surgery for?" Carol suddenly found her voice rising again with alarm, her eyes becoming flighty and the calmness of before melting away. Elizabeth cleared her throat and took her by the forearms, pushing her gently out of the middle of the corridor and further into the more private waiting area.

"Carol… your mother was the passenger in a car that was in a low-speed collision…" Elizabeth caught Carol’s eyes and tilted her head slightly, as if adjudging whether or not the information had sunk in correctly. Carol nodded,

"And what happened?"

"She was badly injured…"

"Elizabeth!" Carol cut her off, shaking her head emphatically and gesturing wildly. "Tell me what’s really happening!" Taken aback, but immediately understanding, Elizabeth stopped and corrected herself,

"I’m sorry… Let me start again… She was brought into the ER with a few minor fractures, cuts and bruising… She was conscious, and her responses were good, so we bandaged her up, and simply kept an eye on her, believing her injuries to be minimal. But shortly after lunchtime, she complained of a sharp, one-sided headache, so Mark ordered a scan. On the way to CT, she lost consciousness and the scan revealed a clot on the brain. She was taken immediately to the OR and they drained the blood clot and clipped the ruptured vessel." Elizabeth paused slightly, noting how Carol’s face had become pale. She swallowed then continued, "We’ve induced a coma so that the brain can begin to heal under the least possible stress levels, and although she’s still in a critical condition, she’s stable…"

Carol was stunned, and when she spoke, her voice was small, "Will she be alright?"

"She’s strong and healthy, so there is every chance that she’ll make a complete recovery… She was on the table within the Golden Hour, so her chances are very good. However, at the moment, it’s too soon to tell… and really, I don’t want to be giving you any false hopes…"

"It’s just hope, Elizabeth, not false hope…" Carol said, sharper than she would have liked. Elizabeth blinked her eyes, but took the high emotion in her stride.

"Would you like to see her?"

Carol nodded.

Elizabeth led her into the ICU and Carol looked swiftly around, her eyes searching for just one face. When she saw it, swathed in dressings and occluded by plastic tubes and tape, she strode quickly forwards, stopping abruptly at the edge of the bed. Up close, Helen Hathaway looked like someone else, a complete stranger. Her skin was pallid and Carol could make out the purple and blue of a spreading bruise across her cheekbone. The eyes were shut and gave the impression of calm serenity, as if nothing at all were wrong. Carol picked up the hand pierced with IV’s and held it in her own. It felt cold and dry next to the anxious clamminess of her own. Limp and lifeless.

Gliding out of nowhere, Javier appeared beside her and spoke, his voice low and respectful, "I called your sisters…" Carol glanced up at him and saw the tension running through his eyes. "Gina is stuck at JFK trying to get a flight out, and Anya has been here already. She went home to get some rest…"

"Annie’s already been?"

"She came straight away… she stayed most of the afternoon, but Helen wasn’t out of surgery when she left. I was going to give her a call when I knew more…" She nodded. "I called you as soon as I found your number…"

Carol looked up, feeling instantly guilty for her absence and fastened her eyes on Javier. Without a sound, Elizabeth backed out of the doors to allow them some privacy. "How are you?" she asked in a quiet voice. He smiled wryly.

"I’m alright… a little shaken… but I wasn’t hurt." His head dropped defeatedly. "It just came out of nowhere." Carol turned to him. "I, I didn’t even see it… it was just there and then it was too late and I couldn’t stop. I shouted to her, but she just turned her head and… Oh, God…"

He had started to cry.

In the artificial silence of the ICU, his choking sounded louder than it really was, even though he was stifling it with his hand. Carol stared, not really knowing what to say or do. Across the room, a nurse watched them out of the corner of her eye as she went about her duties, her rubber-soled shoes making no sound on the floor. She reached out, touched his arm and rubbed it gently. Javier looked at her through sad, reddened eyes and, Carol, feeling redundant, did the only thing that occurred to her and wrapped her arms around him again.

They stayed that way for a few minutes, while Javier composed himself. "Do you want me to call your sister again?" he asked as he pulled away, blinking rapidly. Carol nodded. They stared at the body on the bed for a moment, then he moved away and suddenly, she was alone. The nurse came across the room and glanced at the heart monitor and respirator.

"It’s okay… she’s stable…"

Carol, taken by a spontaneous anger at the nurse’s assumption of ignorance, responded sharply, "It’s fine… I know what to look for." Her tone made the young nurse blink with surprise, and escape back into the shadows. Silently dragging one of the padded chairs from the wall, she placed it a foot or so from the head of the bed, then sat down.

Having no personal experience of such a situation and not really knowing what to do next, she simply stared at her mother. Part of her told her that she should say something, but the room was so quiet it felt like a sacrilege to do so. Instead, she put her hand on the neatly white sheets tucked into the bed and smoothed them, feeling their coldness through her fingertips. She looked at her watch. It was nearly three in the morning, and she couldn’t say where the time had gone to. The lights were turned down to minimum, except for the odd bathing of yellow light coming from the jointed lamp above her mother’s head. Carol stared, thinking the light was much too dramatic, imagining, in turn, a cold white spotlight at a theatre, then more disturbingly, the gold and silver haloed statues of Jesus and Mary from church.

She reached up and angled the light away, pointing the halo in another direction.

The door opened on the other side of the room and she turned around, grateful for something else to look at. It was Javier. He nodded in acknowledgement and then came to stand beside her. "Anya’s on her way…" he said in a low voice. "She couldn’t sleep anyway…"

Carol nodded, thinking how strange it sounded to hear her sister’s full name. "It’s okay… you can call her Annie…"

"Annie?"

"My sister. Anya." She looked up at him. "You can call her Annie… that’s what everyone else calls her…" Javier blinked with momentary confusion at her comment and then nodded his head.

"Oh, yes, sorry… Annie…"

They stared again. It was like the silence of a first date, Carol thought to herself bizarrely. When you just stared at something ordinary because of a lack of anything relevant to say. Behind her, Javier cleared his throat gingerly. "Have you eaten?" she asked, not looking back at him.

"No, no, not yet…" She smiled briefly at his awkwardness, then twisted in her seat and looked back at him. "Should I go down to the cafeteria?"

"Yeah, go on," He nodded and walked away again, the swing doors swooshing shut after him. The room fell quiet again, but for the humming of the gathered machines around the bed. Each sound was slightly different, Carol noticed as never before, a whoosh from the respirator, an electronic hiccup from the heart monitor, a computerised sigh from the pulse-ox machine. She followed the wires from their various sources and traced them up and along the bed, to where they buried themselves beneath the sheets.

It was peculiar seeing her mother like this. Helen Hathaway had always been so particular about her image and to see her now with shaven head and bandaged arm seemed almost fictional, as if it wasn’t really her, but some kind of grotesque parody put in her place. Carol remembered the mornings most. Because the school bus didn’t pick up at the end of their street, Helen would drive Carol and her sisters the half a mile or so to the bus-stop every morning, wait for the bus to arrive and then drive back home. But, before she left the house, even though she never once got out of the car and spent only two minutes at stationary while they piled out of the car, she would ensure she was immaculately dressed and made-up. Carol thought of what she would think now if she could see herself, with those ugly flesh-coloured electrodes pressed onto her temples and her chest, and the cumbersome plastic ET tube burrowing into her throat.

At this brief entertainment of thought, she found herself smiling, though it was entirely inappropriate for the situation. She reached out and absently picked at the not-quite-transparent tape that held the IV’s in place, wondering why it was taking Annie so long to get here. The traffic could not be so bad at three in the morning. She leaned back in the seat and crossed her legs. A few moments passed while she closed her eyes and took a couple of long, deep breaths, discerning how she was out of time with the gush of the respirator. The girls.

Quickly, she stood and searched around for the nurse that had been here earlier. She located her sitting at a desk in the shadows and made immediately for her. "Is there a phone I can use, please?" she asked. The nurse looked up with a different face than before and Carol frowned, not having noticed any change of shift.

"There’s one in the hall… beside the fire extinguisher, near the restrooms."

"Thank you,"

She turned and left the ICU, out into the blaring light of the corridor. She blinked a few times, squinting against the pain of the sudden brightness. The corridor was empty, and but for the chattering of the television above the reception desk, it could have been almost eerie. Carol walked the twenty yards down to where the corridor forked towards the restrooms, and dug out some change from her pocket. She picked up the receiver and dialled Cindy’s cell phone number.

Five or six rings later, her slightly groggy voice answered. "Hello?"

"Hey, it’s me…"

"Oh, hey…" She cleared her throat. "Hey, how’s it going?"

"It’s okay… I’m okay…" She sighed. "How are the girls?"

"Asleep in the bed… They dropped off straight away, no trouble."

"Where are you?"

"We checked into a Holiday Inn. They got us a family room, so Hannah’s in the single bed, Robbie’s in the cot and the girls and I are in the double…" Carol heard her open what sounded like the bathroom door, and then there was a clink of glass and the sound of water flowing. "Have you seen your Mom?"

"Yeah, yeah… she’s out of surgery…" Carol leaned against the wall, taking her weight off her feet. "They’ve done all they can. It’s just a question of time now…"

There was a little, measured silence, then she added, "Will you come up tomorrow?"

"To the hospital?" Cindy asked. "Yeah, course I will… What time?" Carol chuckled dryly.

"As soon as you can?"

"Yeah, sure. I’ll be there by eleven… okay?"

"Okay,"

"Alright then…" She paused. "Take care,"

"I will…"

Carol replaced the receiver and sighed. It was going to be a long night.

****

What I’ve kept with me

And what I’ve thrown away

And where the Hell I’ve ended up

On this glary, random day

Were the things I really cared about

Just left along the way

For being too pent up and proud?

****

Doug yawned with his mouth closed. The meeting seemed to have been going on for forever. Dan Birsey’s office was pocked with people, of which he was only one, locked in fierce debate about whether to work twelve hour or eight hour shifts. Two giant whiteboards stood to the side of Dan’s desk, criss-crossed with two separate shift patterns and the relative pros and cons of each. Doug thought they both looked fine. "I don’t want to work Friday night till ten," someone with a Scottish accent said. Across the room, a female voice, possibly Lucy Calloway, Doug wasn’t sure, piped up,

"That’s tough shit, Rob… I would rather start early and get it over with…"

"What’s wrong with you all," Will Kelly announced in a voice as bored as Doug felt. "It matters exactly bugger all when you start and finish, you’ve still gotta come to work."

"So what do you suggest, hmm?" Dan enquired.

"Twelve hours seems the easiest option. Then you don’t have to find too many staff. And you get a decent day off…"

"Doug?"

Doug looked up and spread his hands non-committally. "I really don’t think it matters either way." Normally, he would have cared. He had always tried to implement a twelve hour shift pattern in every other ER he had set up, believing it to be ultimately easier to manage. These sorts of arguments frequently arose where hospitals were employing new staff, everyone having different ideas depending on which system they were accustomed to, and usually, he stopped them before they got to this stage. In the end, his word was final and he would generally settle the discussion with a short sentence. But today, he was finding it very hard to concentrate on keeping his eyes open, let alone dictate the direction of a debate.

It had been the same all morning. They had gathered at nine to begin ironing out the finalities with the staff, and it was already noon. First off, it had been the allocation of holiday time. Naturally, no-one could agree. Then it had been the Consultant General Surgeon spreading gloom about the demerits of having an on-call surgeon, rather than enforcing one emergency shift a week from the surgeons upstairs.

Thankfully for Doug, Dan had noticed something was afoot in the first fifteen minutes of the morning and from that point onwards had been effectively chairing the meeting for him. At this point, his feet were on his desk and he was leaning back in his chair, his hands behind his head. Doug could tell he was enjoying himself thoroughly. "Right, it’s settled then," he said. "Twelve hours it is. If there are any complaints, don’t come to me with them. I’m not interested." A chorus of groans circled the room. "Now… let’s look at the uniform. Do you want to wear scrubs or white coats?"

A crescendo of voices began around the room and Dan glanced over to Doug and flashed him an amused smile. He smiled back, but was soon drifting off again. From where he was sitting, he could see out of the window and across to another portion of the hospital. In the window opposite a woman was holding up a small child, pointing down onto the street. Doug couldn’t see what she was pointing at, but the child was laughing, so he figured it must be something more interesting that what was going on in this room.

"What do you think, Doug?" said Will Kelly.

He blinked back to the present and turned his head towards the direction of Will’s voice. "I think you should wear scrubs…"

The room fell uncomfortably silent and Doug stared around at the faces. "What?"

"We’re on student doctors now…" Will explained, a faint smile on his lips.

"Oh, sorry…" He shook his head. "I was miles away…"

Dan sat forward and put his hands down on the cleared surface of his desk with an air of finality. "Listen, I think it’s about time we wound this up. I don’t think we should have student doctors doing major procedures on kids. They can watch the experienced staff, but I think it’s best they’re kept out of all the trouble we can keep them out of."

The room nodded in agreement. "Okay, we’ll break for lunch now. You’ve got two hours…" He stood up and as everyone slowly filed out of the door, turned to Doug. "You’ve not with us today, are you Doug? What’s wrong?"

****

Dan took him to a secluded bar a few streets away from the hospital, bought him a beer and a sandwich and sat him down to explain. He listened astutely and sympathetically, giving Doug time wherever he needed it, helping him finish sentences that alluded him. "Have you phoned her?" he asked when Doug had exorcised all he knew.

"I didn’t want to call too soon… Give her some time…" Dan nodded.

"That’s probably a good idea."

They were silent for a moment, then Doug felt it was time to ask. He needed to know. "Dan… I need to know when we’re going to finish here…? I don’t want to leave her to do this on her own. It’s not right."

Dan’s expression was unreadable. "What do you want?"

"Some time, maybe? A sabbatical… till things are looking up…" Doug suggested hopefully.

"And how long’s that going to be?" He spun his empty pint glass on the shiny surface of the table they were seated at. "A month? Three? Six?" Doug shrugged. The average time allotted for a complete recovery from a blood clot was four to six months and he knew Dan knew that. It was a long time. Dan sighed, "The thing is, Doug, this isn’t as easy as just being sympathetic and letting you get up and leave… We’ve got to get this system up and running before the end of the tax year, otherwise we don’t get it assessed for running costs from the NHS. Then the hospital ends up having to pay its own way for a whole year, and that’s going to involve a shocking amount of money. Money we just don’t have." Doug was silent, knowing his answer even before it had come from his mouth. "If I let you take six months off, that puts us well into next year and puts our chances of having things up and running for assessment before the 1^st of April into the near impossible."

"I know…" He nodded. "It’s a lot to ask, but…"

"I understand where you’re coming from. I don’t pretend to say I know how you’re feeling… I’ve never gone through it, but I just can’t let you go like that, Doug. We need you to get this finished."

"What about a couple of weeks? Or at least until the worst is over?" Doug suggested.

"What? And stop the whole thing in its stride? Think of the repercussions, Doug… We’re a huge, huge hospital. We don’t just pull kids in from London, but from all over the world. What’s a half-finished department, standing idle, going to do for PR? Not to mention the interim wages of all those staff we’ve already pulled from their jobs to work for us…"

Doug looked down at his cleared plate. If he had been in a right frame of mind, all these reasons would have seemed perfectly understandable, but as things were, all he could see were walls going up all around him. All these reasons seemed insignificant compared to his need to get out. He felt himself starting to panic. "But what sort of job am I going to do like this?" he rallied, almost out of hope. "You saw me this morning. I could barely even concentrate."

Dan closed his eyes and gestured emphatically. "I’m sorry, Doug, I really am, but I can’t let you go. It’s just impossible." Doug heard the finality in his words and reluctantly resigned himself to his fate. "You’ll just have to buckle down." Dan looked at him solidly. "As Nelson said at the Battle of Trafalgar, ‘England expects that every man will do his duty…’."

Doug stared miserably, and in his chest, felt a familiar ache return.

****

"Curly… you’re here…" Carol looked up. There was only one person in the world who still called her that.

Anya – Annie – Hathaway was coming through the swing doors of the ICU, dressed hurriedly in paint-stained jeans and a crumpled jade print shirt, her dark straight hair bundled into a messy French pleat and clasped with a crocodile jaw clip. She wore no make-up, but still sparkled behind her holiday tan and crystal clear blue eyes.

Carol stood up and they embraced. "How’re you holding up?" Annie asked, rubbing her sister’s back.

"Okay… what about you?"

"Oh, it’s old news for me," she smiled dryly. "Actually, I’m still a bit numb… I don’t really know what I’m thinking…" She gave a sigh and pulled away. "You look rough," she added, holding Carol by her forearms and studying the dark, puffed circles beneath her eyes with worried attention.

"Oh, thanks, Annie… Nice of you to notice…" Carol brushed the comment off and Annie chuckled, an explosive blast of mirth condensed into a few quick quavers. She glanced down at Annie’s jeans and shirt. "You don’t look so great yourself…"

"Well, I wouldn’t want to meet mother in anything less than my Sunday best," she replied mock-seriously and Carol smiled. Annie’s sense of humour was so sharp it could cut to the bone. "I sent Javier for more coffee… He’s a good old slave, isn’t he? You should try his muffins. They’re divine." She plopped her curvy figure down into the seat Carol had been occupying and tilted her head on one side. "How is she?"

"They’ve induced a coma,"

"A coma?!" Annie twisted instantaneously in her seat, immediately alarmed by the word. "Why, why? Why would they do such a thing?"

"So the brain can heal better," Carol explained, smiling at her sister’s instinctive reaction. "They’ll have been a lot of swelling from the bleed, so to keep that under control, it’s best to keep the activity in the brain to a low. So they’ve given her some drugs…"

"So that’s good then?" Carol nodded in reply. Annie was quiet for a moment. "Gina called me. She’s still at the airport. They can’t get her on a flight…"

"I know,"

"You do?" Annie looked surprised.

"Javier told me,"

"Oh,"

They were silent again. Annie had been Carol’s only relief as a child. The other less-than-perfect Hathaway girl in the household besides Carol, and her presence steered away some of the flak from Carol’s direction. In Helen’s eyes, Carol was the underachiever, the one who was less than the sum of the parts, the one who was most like her husband. Annie was simply the incomprehensible one. She was too energetic, too arty and too emotional for Helen to understand. "I’m sorry you had to come back from London…" she murmured, scooting up on the seat so Carol could squeeze in beside her. She flung her arm around her and gave her a hug.

"So am I," Carol gave a sigh. "I had to leave Doug…"

"Ohhh, noooo!" Annie gave a melodramatic cry and adopted a face of pained anguish. "The lovebirds had to be split up! Tragedy… is in the air!" Carol hit her sister in the leg and chuckled. It was just like Annie to make light of every situation. They laughed at each other for a minute, then Annie asked, "Have you called him? To let him know you’re here?"

"No… I figured he’d probably be in bed…"

"Yeah," Annie agreed. "Probably best wait till tomorrow." She looked over at their mother, motionless on the bed. "Besides, I don’t think anything’s gonna change much between now and then." She yawned.

"Are you tired?"

"Yeah…"

"Then why don’t you go take a nap in one of the guest rooms? I noticed they were empty when I used the phone…"

Annie raised her eyebrows. "You think that’d be okay?"

"Yeah, sure… Go find someone… they’ll give you a key…" Annie nodded and patted her thighs, standing up with a groan. She gave one last smile at her sister, before heading out of the doors.

Carol watched her leave, then settled down into the padded seat, putting her feet up on the crossbar beneath the bed. She rested her head and before long, found herself fighting sleep, then, as she tried to keep her eyes open, wondered why she was even trying, and let herself slip away.

****

You find yourself not feeling anything. It’s kind of a limbo, kind of like purgatory would be if you were to imagine it without Dante’s preconceptions. If an atheist were to put a feeling to being dead, this would be it. When the clamour of the initial grief is gone, you go numb. Every move you make, every thought you think, becomes automated, geared towards no particular destination. You sort of trundle along in second, with no desire to change up. The world passes by in its usual fleeting manner, but you notice none of it, and feel no desire to keep up with it. The slower pace is pleasant, but it’s dangerous too. For after a little while, you begin to wonder if this is how it will always be. How it will always feel. If the worst happens, what will you feel, after feeling so little for so long?

What happens when everything actually stops?

****

Carol woke with a start, and for a moment, thought that she was still dreaming. Around her, a concert of noises greeted her ears, like a thousand alien little insects, chirruping and humming to some strange score. Her eyes found a screen and saw on it moving green lines, peaks and troughs like some kind of tidal animation. She blinked a few times, and then saw the bed and its white-sheeted form and remembered where she was.

She slowly sat up straight, her neck stiff from the peculiar sleeping position, and loosened the fabric of her t-shirt, pulling the material away from her sweating back. A doctor she didn’t recognise was moving slowly between the other beds in the room, checking each of the charts astutely then scribbling some comments on the last sheet. She leaned forward and performed her own rapid inspection of the relevant machines, then glanced at her mother’s face. It was as still as yesterday and just as calm.

She sat quietly for a moment, gathering her strength, then rose and headed over to the doors, smiling an acknowledgement at the doctor as he turned and glanced at her. She pushed the door open and walked down the now busier, day-lit corridor and into the first guest room.

On the bed, with the sheets pulled haphazardly over her legs and torso lay Annie, on her side, her arms wrapped around herself. Carol paused for a moment, thinking how very childlike she looked. She took a step towards the bed and bent slightly to gently shake her sister awake. Annie rolled and moaned as she wrought her tired eyes open and stared blearily up at her. "What time is it?"

"Eight ten,"

"Oh, God… that’s far too early…" She sighed and rubbed her eyes with her fists. "What were you thinking, Curly, waking me up now?"

Carol smiled at her. "I thought we should go get some of Mom’s stuff from the house…" Annie groaned again and eased herself to seated. "And I think Javier went home anyway…"

"Yeah, he did. He found me with some coffee and we talked for a while, but then he left to get some sleep." Annie was still dressed under the sheets, and she stood up straight away, looking only a little more rumpled than before. "Come on then… I could really use some food, too…"

Carol drove them back to the house in Annie’s car, stopping to pick up some fresh bread and milk from the store. The traffic was bad, being as it was, a working day and every commuter in the state was trying to get into Chicago. While they were waiting at the lights, Annie spoke up, "Do you think Gina’ll get here today?" Carol gave a shrug.

"I don’t know… probably… you know what she’s like." Annie giggled.

"Yeah, I s’pose so… Miss Prim and Proper won’t be happy that things haven’t gone all her way."

And so they laughed all the way back, talking about their mother and sister, remembering the filthy arguments and the screaming rows and sulks, finding amusement where before there had been anger and frustration.

"You know, she has gotten a lot better…" Carol said quietly as she pulled the car up outside the house. "When the girls were born, things changed with her… I don’t know what they were, but she was easier… There wasn’t much arguing…" Annie nodded, looking out of the side window.

"Yeah, I know…" she paused. "I think it’s him, you know…" She glanced across the Carol, then up at the house where Javier was probably still sleeping. "He’s changed her."

"You really think it’s him?"

"Well, it’s definitely not you or me, that’s for sure…" Annie chuckled.

Carol was silent, contemplating her remark. "Should we go in?"

"Yeah, let’s wake the man up."

****

Doug finally left the hospital at seven P.M. He called and picked up Chinese take-out on his way home and walked into the stuffy apartment around an hour later. The air was thick and muggy, the humidity at a peak after two weeks of glorious sunshine and steaming heat. He opened the window in the apartment and stood in front of it for a moment, breathing in the still, cool air of the evening. Across the street, a young couple were arguing, pushing and cursing at one another. The woman yelled ‘Fuck you, Craig…’ and then flung open the door of a purple Volkswagen Beetle parked in the road and climbed in. She started the engine, and despite the desperate gesticulating by her partner, swerved the car out into the road and accelerated off into the distance.

He turned back from the window and went to the kitchen. Selecting a plate and some cutlery, he tipped out his chicken chow mein and started eating while still standing. He glanced at his watch. It was ten past eight; in America, it was ten past three. He thought about Carol. She’d not called at all, not even to let him know she’d touched down safe and sound. He stared at the telephone for a minute, wondering whether to bite the bullet and call her himself, but immediately banished the thought, she’d call when she had time…

He ate a little more of his meal, picking out the chicken, but it wasn’t satisfying him, so he scraped the remainder into the trash. He set the plate down on the counter and noticed Carol had forgotten the nipples to the girls’ bottles. Picking them up, he turned them over in his palm a few times. This felt different to the months they’d spent apart before, and he wasn’t sure which he hated most. Then, it had all been part of a dream. Now, he’d tasted the happiness, and with that realisation, he knew that this was harder.

He turned the television on. The news was being read by a pretty brunette with an English accent and he listened absently for a few minutes. There were reports on British politics, a fatal pile-up on the M25, a four lane highway he assumed was a fairly important route by the alarming manner in which the on-scene reporter was describing the situation, the discovery of some Roman coins in the middle of London’s Canary Wharf financial district, a transfer of some European soccer star for £38 million and further trouble in Israel. He sighed and turned down the volume.

In the corner of the room, the telephone rang. Immediately he ran to it and answered it, hoping it was Carol. It was a wrong number. He hung the phone up dejectedly and turned back to the screen. The flickering newscast had moved on to trailers for some couples drama series. He stared at the happy faces on the screen, half listening to the laughing and comedy lines. Why hadn’t she called?

He glanced at his watch again. It was too early for bed, but he knew nothing else he could do, so headed for the bedroom, stripped off his clothes and slipped naked between the sheets. They were cold and he wrapped his arms around himself, trying to convince himself that the time he had left to work was not as long as it seemed, even though it seemed like a lifetime. He’d never missed her like this before.

****

He dreamed of her. Dreamed she was making love to him. They were by a pool. It was hot and sunny and the sky and water were glistening. She’d just come out of the water and she was standing in front of him, wearing a high-cut black bikini, water glinting on her skin. She was smiling at him, walking towards him, arms by her side, hips swaying, a saucy sparkle in her eye. He held out his arms to her and she straddled him, lightly sitting on his thighs, but supporting most of her weight with her legs so her muscles were flexed tantalisingly.

He reached out a hand to touch her, but she slowly shook her head and he withdrew. She kept her eyes on him, then leaned forward and kissed him. Her lips were hot and he drank from her, until she pulled away and then she was taking off her bikini top, reaching behind her so her breasts jutted out. She rolled her neck. Her hands teased with the clasp. She was naked in front of him. Oh God, she was beautiful. Now she was easing his shorts, pulling them away down his legs, a faint smile crossing her face when she saw his erection.

She was touching him. He closed his eyes. Then she stood and stripped completely. She straddled him once again. He felt her hands on his chest, tracing down, and down. She had him in her hands. Oh, oh. Now she was moving, and then she was sliding herself onto him. He couldn’t help a sound of ecstasy escaping from his mouth. His mind went black. Swirling shadows all around him.

It was fading and he struggled to hold on to it. Desperately, he writhed against it, but despite his efforts, he found himself wide awake. He rolled quickly onto his back and stared up at the ceiling, breathing hard, his heart pounding in his chest. He sighed in frustration. Somehow, she always managed to slip out of his reach.

****

Javier answered the door when they rang the bell, looking as if he’d not slept a wink. His hair was wet, and he had changed his dirty clothes, but the dark shadows under his eyes were still present. "Good morning, girls," he greeted, trying his hardest to be jovial. Carol cast him a glance as he let them in through the door. He was smiling, but the smile was forced, as if it were the last thing he wanted to do.

"Morning, Javier," Annie said. "We bought some bread and milk for you. We didn’t know if you’d have any?"

"Oh, we have, but thank you anyway…"

Carol paused at his use of ‘we’, thinking of the long years when her mother wouldn’t have dreamt of letting another man into her house. He had moved in with Helen Hathaway six months ago, shortly after the girls were born, and in that time, she had not seen her mother so happy since, well, since ever.

He took the loaf and carton of milk from Annie and led them down the hall to the kitchen. "It’s a bit messy, I’m sorry…" he apologised. "I haven’t had time to tidy it…" Annie gave a shrug that told him she hardly cared and he smiled again. "Have you just come from the hospital?"

"Yeah," said Carol as she began filling the kettle.

"No change, then?"

She glanced up at him. "No," He nodded, as if it was what he’d expected, but not hoped, to hear. Carol put the kettle on the stove and turned the gas burner on. "The doctor was looking at her when I left…" she explained. They stood for a moment in uneasy silence, then he offered to make them some eggs and bacon. Annie immediately agreed.

"I’m starving, and that sounds sooo good…" she said. Javier smiled and took out a frying pan to cook the bacon in. Annie searched the refrigerator for eggs while he added a spot of olive oil and stood by while the pan heated.

"So… Carol… how is Seattle?"

"It’s nice…"

"The weather is better, I suppose?"

"It’s not as hot or cold as here, no… We have more rain…"

The small talk continued as they ate the bacon, poached eggs and toast Javier provided in excess. Carol had always envied Annie for her ability to talk to absolutely anybody, of any colour, age or culture. She had a manner that somehow made everyone she was with comfortable, and Carol was glad of her company this morning. She’d never had much to say to Javier, mostly because she knew so little about him, and this morning there was nothing she felt like less than creating idle chit-chat.

When they finally escaped upstairs, Annie commented, "You were quiet, Curly…" Carol shook her head.

"Just thinking, that’s all…"

"Oh, no…" she chuckled. Carol ignored her and continued,

"What do you think of him? Do think he’s right for her?" Annie gave her sister a puzzled look as they reached the top of the stairs and turned for the master bedroom.

"Since when does that matter to you?"

"I don’t know…" Carol allowed. "Just… I don’t know… it seems so odd that after… everything… she’d…"

"Fall in love again?" suggested Annie with a backwards glance. Carol stopped in the doorway and stared at her sister. The words she’d just spoken had never really entered her mind, or at least, not consciously. She blinked a couple of times, absorbing them. Somehow, they didn’t sound as bizarre as she’d imagined.

"Yeah, I guess that’s it…"

Annie smiled. "Oh, I know it is…" She went to the bed and sat down on the edge, crumpling the immaculate blue bedspread. "She’s happier now than she’s been since before Dad died…" Carol gave no reply, so Annie said it for her, "You know, it has been twenty-six years. That’s a long time to be on your own."

Silence flew through the room, sound-loaded with history. "Twenty-six years…" Carol said incredibly. Annie nodded thoughtfully.

"Do you ever think about it?"

"What?" Carol frowned, trying to stop the tumbleweed of memories from rolling all over again. She lowered herself onto the floor and leaned up against the wall. Annie continued,

"Dad…"

"Sure I do…" Annie flopped back on the bed, flinging her arms out above her head.

"Did you believe her?"

Carol immediately looked up, surprised that her sister had voiced any sort of doubt. Annie had never really questioned anything, even after the divorce. For her, it had just been fate, a matter she could do nothing about, and she had never seen any need to dwell on it. Carol, on the other hand, had been always questioning, always excavating her memories for morsels of information she could assemble to a jigsaw of truth and half-truth. She could remember the exact events of the morning they heard. It had been the first day of school after the Christmas holidays, and the Hathaway house had been thrown into turmoil over the loss of Gina’s left shoe. Annie, brushing her teeth in the bathroom, had cunningly suggested the trash can, so Helen had spent ten minutes rummaging through the trash. Then, they’d tipped out the contents of the cloakroom and found plenty of odd shoes, but not the appropriate one. Meanwhile, Gina had accused Carol of giving it to next-door’s dog to play with, then of stealing it…

"Carol… if you’ve got my shoe, you do not even wanna know what I’m gonna do to you…" Gina’s false threat flew right over Carol’s head and she smiled smugly, silently enjoying her sister’s plight. She flung herself down the stairs, her long black hair snapping around her head in it’s two waist-length plaits and at the bottom, loudly accused Carol of stealing it to their mother. Helen Hathaway looked up the stairs to where Carol was standing in the doorway of the bedroom she shared with Annie and glared.

"Carol…"

"I haven’t got it, Ma… I don’t want her stupid shoe…"

Helen gave her youngest a long, contemplative stare. "Are you lying to me, Carol?"

"No, Ma…" Carol yelled down the stairs, hurtful tears budding at her eyes. "I haven’t got her smelly shoe." Helen turned and said to Gina,

"Go and look in her room,"

"Noo!" Carol objected at the top of her voice. "I’m not allowed in her room!"

"Carol, be quiet now. Gina, go and look and be fast about it."

Gina ran up the stairs, but Carol stood in the doorway to her room with her arms stretched across the frame. "You’re not coming in here!"

"Am too! Get out of my way! Ma!" Gina yelled, her face turning an amusing shade of red. She tried to fight her way through and as she was a good foot taller than her sister and much heavier, she quickly pushed through, sending Carol to floor. Her head went ‘thunk’ against the moulding.

"Oww!" Carol called out and started crying.

"Oh, shut up, you’re not hurt…" Gina told her. Carol put her hand to her temple and brought it away with a dot of blood on it.

"You’ve made me bleed!"

"Gina? Carol?" Helen was climbing the stairs. "What are you doing?"

"Nothing, Ma!" Gina called. Helen walked into the room and picked Carol up off the floor smartly.

"What are you doing?" she asked, directing the question at Carol. Carol curled her lip and tried not to cry in front of her mother.

"She made me hit my head…"

"Gina?"

"I did not… She’s just making it up. She wouldn’t let me through."

"Carol… your sister is looking for her shoe, and we are going to be late if you don’t stop this."

"I don’t care where her stupid shoe is! I bet she’s hidden it herself!" Gina glared. Helen clipped her youngest around the ear.

"Don’t talk like that to me," Carol winced. "Where have you put the shoe?"

They were stood there, facing each off, when the silence was suddenly punctuated by the doorbell ringing. Helen rolled her eyes and headed downstairs to answer it. Gina pouted. "You’re in trouble now…" she bragged. Carol, her cheeks wet and overcome by rage, ploughed into her sister.

"I hate you! You’re a pig!"

Gina, taken aback by the sudden reaction, stumbled as Carol barrelled into her. "I hate you! I hate you! I hate you!" Carol was screaming, pummelling her sister with her fists. Gina struggled for a moment, then grabbed Carol’s hair and pulled. Carol squealed.

"Stop it! I hate YOU! You’re Daddy’s little brat!"

Carol was instantly enraged at her words and fought furiously, despite the pain, to hit her sister back. Gina held her at distance, fending her off with tugs of her curls. As they writhed and fought, Annie appeared in the doorway and sharply yelled, "Shut up both of you! Something’s happened to Dad…"

"I don’t know if I do now…" Carol swallowed and looked at her sister gravely. "But I did then and that’s when it counted."

"What do you think…?"

"I don’t know… I wonder, you know…" She paused a moment and rubbed her eyes. "We had this patient in a couple of years ago, he’d been in a chemical accident and he was dying, and he wanted to see his daughter. But his ex-wife wouldn’t let him." Carol’s head dropped. "He was dying and she wouldn’t let his daughter say goodbye."

Annie was staring at her now. "Do you think Dad wanted to see us?" Carol shrugged painfully.

"I don’t know… Maybe… I mean, remember how she wouldn’t let us come to the hospital? She got Mrs. Hewson to watch us while she went alone…" Annie’s eyes turned a shade of grey. "And then when he died… all we heard of him was how terrible he was… How he’d deserted us…" Carol swallowed, shaking her head, surer now of her thoughts than she had ever been. "Dad wouldn’t have done that."

"Did you buy the black ice story?" Her voice was confidential, as if she expected their mother to be standing behind the door, listening to them talking. Carol shook her head. "Neither do I…"

****

The first time Carol had thought about killing herself, she’d thought of her father. She was sitting in a lukewarm bathtub in a cold, empty and lonely apartment. Tag was working the nightshift and Doug had spent most of the day advertising the fact that he was going on a date with a former Bunny tonight. Annie was out of town on a course and her mother was irritating her far too much for her to consider calling her for some company. She thought this was how Tom Hathaway must have felt in his tiny West-side apartment the night before he drove his car into a downtown bridge, alone and without anybody he loved.

Always, her father had been determinedly cheerful about his situation. Whenever Helen dropped Carol and her sisters off in the street below the apartment block, he would be standing waiting at the window, smiling down at them as they rushed through the entrance. Helen never went inside. She called the place filthy. When visiting hours were up, she would simply sound the car horn from the street and Gina and Annie would troop immediately down the four flights of stairs to meet her. Carol would always lag behind, preferring her father’s company to the rest of her family. After a mere minute longer, the horn would sound again, this time more insistent, and Tom Hathaway would look at his daughter with a look that Carol could never forget. They would embrace and he would spin her around, lifting her up off the floor as he always did, then he would take her down the stairs, holding her hand while she told him that it wouldn’t be long till she saw him again. Only a week. It wasn’t long. That was what she’d always told him.

And he’d always nodded and smiled at her. It wasn’t that long… he’d always agreed. ‘Think like you’re a Redwood tree and it’ll seem no time at all’. Those were the words he’d always say to her as he held open the entrance door for her and kissed her goodbye. They got so good at it that towards the end, he didn’t even have to say the whole sentence, just ‘Redwood’, and Carol would grin and give him his goodbye kiss. ‘Bye, Daddy… Redwood for you too…’

She’d run off to the car and squeeze in beside Gina and Annie and wave at him through the rolled down window, whatever the weather. He’d always call out then… ‘Bye Gina… Annie… Carol… See you next week, Helen…"

And not once did Helen Hathaway even look back at him.

Sitting in that cold bathroom, she’d remembered the policeman at the door and his words… ‘Ma’am… I’m sorry to tell you… There’s been an accident…’ She thought of the dispassionate way her mother had informed her of the details. ‘Girls, listen to me… your father’s been in a car crash. He’s skidded on some ice and crashed into a bridge…’ She thought of the way she told her he’d died. ‘Your father died last night, Carol.’

It was so cold, so… well rehearsed.

Her life was a mess. That was a simple fact, reinforced by the way those she loved the most always went away… That day in January she’d not just lost her father, but her mother too. For once Tom Hathaway was dead, Helen had no reason to maintain any sort of illusion for her children. And Carol had been young enough and impressionable enough to believe every poisoned word.

For blame only ever flowed one way in the family. Everything was always Tom Hathaway’s fault. Carol loved and resented her mother equally, and often for things that bore striking resemblance to one another. For her sense of superiority. For the way she always managed to make her feel so very small and insignificant. For her pig-headed inability to see anything from anyone else’s perspective. For the way she always doubted the goodness or importance even in those closest to her. But, most of all, for the way she seemed to be able to anticipate her daughter’s every thought. She knew exactly how she would react to things, what her loves and hates were, and what her opinion might be on any given subject.

For long years, Carol had wondered whether this was a trait that belonged only to her mother, or whether all mothers everywhere had the same characteristics and the same damned insight on their daughters. Sometimes, Carol felt it was truly beautiful to be understood so exactly. More often though, she felt it was but a monstrous invasion of her life.

In her teenage years, Carol had taken revenge for this and a thousand other less specific wrongs in any way she could. The last years of the eighties had been a time of turmoil for the Hathaway family. Gina had moved away to college, Annie was at art school and Helen and Carol now shared the house together alone. It was Hell. Carol spent most of her days locked in her room, playing her music loud, ate only when she wanted to and spoke only when spoken to. Of course, Helen had responded in kind, and when Carol finally found her own apartment, they were barely on speaking terms.

The final day had been almost unbearable for Carol. Her mother had cooked some Russian dish for lunch that she had hated since she was a child. It was bland and had too much cabbage in it. She’d picked at it, then pushed the plate away and made herself toast instead. Helen had said nothing. In the past few days, there had been a terrible silence between them, broken only by small, unavoidable enquiries. Carol dumped her meal into the trash and then washed the dirty plate up. She offered no explanation for her lack of appetite. There was no need for one. She was just about to walk out of the door when Helen spoke up from the table.

"How long is this going to go on for, Carol?"

Carol turned in surprise. Her mother was still sitting at the table with her back to her. "What?"

"You know what…"

There was long pause. Carol looked away. Even the sight of the back of Helen’s head was unnerving. Finally, Helen turned to her daughter and stared at her. Carol gave an indifferent shrug. "Is this it now?" she continued. "You’re moving out and this is how you are going to go…" Carol stared at this creature in front of her, this cold-hearted shadow of her mother. "I just thought I’d ask… then I can know…"

Carol looked down, picked at the stitching on her jeans pocket and shrugged again. "What do you want it to be?" she asked.

"Don’t play with me, Carol…" her mother warned. Carol sighed. "Do you want us to be like this? Never talking and like strangers together?" Carol gave a little, bitter laugh. "Well, do you?"

She lifted her eyes and looked sideways out of the kitchen window, out at the first frost of the year, and tried to seem nonchalant, but she was fighting tears. There was the sound of a screech of tyres as a car sped past the house. "Because if that is what you want…?"

Suddenly, Carol turned on her mother, her face angry and resentful and distorted. Tears were running now and her failure to stop them only served to anger her further. "What the Hell do you care?!" she yelled. "You decide! You always do! You pretend that you care about me… you pretend you care about other people and what they want, but you don’t, it’s just bullshit!"

"Carol…" Helen stood up and took a step towards her daughter.

"No… don’t come near me! Just leave me alone!" Her mother didn’t stop, and Carol did the only thing she could immediately think of; she went to the front door and walked out onto the street. Her mother did not follow her, so she started walking, blindly, trying desperately to ignore that it was probably two below and she had only a jumper to keep her warm. She walked for an hour or more, until the cold forced her to return home. She would have liked to have stayed out all day and night. For returning seemed like admitting defeat, that it was somehow a signal of her own inadequacy that she was forced to return to the place that she’d left so definitely just an hour before. Carol slammed the door so her mother could hear and thumped up the stairs. In her room, she locked the door and put her music on. It infuriated her that she couldn’t even leave home as she wanted to. Even in that, her mother had control.

All her life, she’d searched for some higher ground where she could assess all the memories and questions and insecurities that haunted her mind, but as she lay in the cold water, she had a feeling she would never find it, and so instead, with the conviction of the depressed, she’d wished with all her heart that she’d died that day with her father in the Chicago snow.

****

Woke up way too late

Feeling hungover and old

And the sun was shining bright

And I walked barefoot down the road

Started thinking about my old man

It seems that all men

Wanna get into a car and go

Anywhere

****

They packed up a few of Helen’s possessions. Several pairs of cotton pyjamas for when she came round and wanted something more comfortable than a hospital gown, her towelling robe, her slippers, her hot-water bottle, a couple of big vases to put flowers in and while Carol was searching through the chest of drawers for some bed-socks, she came across something she’d never dreamed she’d find.

It was a black and white photograph of Tom Hathaway, wrapped neatly in brown paper and tied with string. An address was printed on it, but it had been crossed out so it was unreadable. Carol picked it up and untied the string, peeling back the paper to reveal the photograph and its oxidised silver frame. Carol could not remember when the photograph was taken and guessed that it was more than likely before her time. He was leaning back against a white post and rail fence, his suit jacket over his shoulder, his shirt-sleeves rolled up, a broad smile on his face.

Carol stared at the image for a long while before Annie noticed. She came to sit beside her and saw the person in the picture. "Oh, God…" she murmured, fingering the frame. "It’s him…"

****

Javier was asleep in the armchair when Carol and Annie came downstairs. Annie gently took the newspaper section he’d been reading from his hands and laid the Afghan over him. "He looks so peaceful," she commented as Carol picked up the half-empty coffee cup from his feet. She did not reply. They’d taken the photograph from its frame; Annie was going to get it copied at the photolabs. Carol placed it face up on the table as they returned to the kitchen and started to clear away the dishes Javier hadn’t found time to wash.

Deep in thought, she filled the sink with soap and water and then absently began washing the dirty plates. Annie piled up the remaining pans, knives and forks and then dried each item, laying it out on the table to air. Finally, she broke the silence,

"I’d forgotten, you know… what he looked like…"

Carol looked up immediately, shocked by her words. Annie’s photographic memory of her youth meant that she’d been largely immune from Helen Hathaway’s reworking of history. Her memories had been for a long time her personal treasures, and Carol had always been envious. When Helen had cut all the photographs of her husband to pieces in a fit of depression twenty years ago, Carol had saved nothing. Annie, on the other hand, had no need for pictures. She remembered everything. "Forgotten? How can you forget?" Annie gave a little shrug.

"I don’t know… it’s not something I’ve tried to do, believe me." She sighed, swinging the tea-towel onto her shoulder and leaning back against the counter. "But I was thinking a couple of months ago and everything was blurry. There was something there, it was just kinda faded…" She looked up, studying Carol’s expression of half amazement and half gutted disappointment.

"We have to get that picture copied," she asserted. "Because that photograph is not how I remember him… and I’m starting to wonder what else is wrong…"

"Mom," Annie said softly. Carol nodded.

"What do you think it was… when she cut all the pictures up?"

"I don’t know…" She gave a little wry smile. "I find I’m saying that a lot whenever we get to talk about her…"

There was a small silence. "We have to find out the truth, Carol," Annie said. "It’s not fair on him that everything should be so imperfect…"

****

"He used to come back from work and sit in that chair. He’d smoke his pipe and Mom would moan at him. She said it made the place smell like a tobacconists."

"And he’d kick his shoes off when he walked in the door, and she’d come straight to them and move them to under the stairs. And then the next morning, they’d have that little ritual… ‘Where’ve you put my shoes, Helen?’ ‘Where they should be, Tom.’ And then she’d kiss him goodbye and tell him to be in a good mood when he came home.

"He loved roast chicken… and pumpkin pie with whipping cream… and his eggs sunny-side up."

"He’d chew those stupid sour candies."

"And always offer them around, even though he knew nobody liked them…"

"He’d say ‘That’s golden’ when he liked something. And he used to put me on his shoulder and I could see his bald patch and he’d say that was where we’d loved him bare…"

"And remember his favourite socks, and when Mom threw them out cos they had holes in them?"

"Yeah, and he didn’t get angry or anything, he just said she’d put his best friends out with the trash."

"We used to be able to hear them laughing after we went to bed… in the living room…"

"And the way he used to walk around with shaving foam on his face in the mornings…"

"And he’d get little flecks of foam on the mirror,"

"He’d leave for work and sound the horn twice…"

In the street outside, as if on cue, a car gave a quick blast of its horn and Carol and Annie looked up to the window. They turned back to each other, smiles quickly retreating. Annie’s eyes were troubled. "God… whatever happened to him, Curly?"

****

The hospital was comfortably cool when they arrived back. On the way, they’d dropped Annie off downtown, so she could get the photograph copied and get them all some decent sandwiches. And Javier, having slept off his fatigue, was keen to get back, to see if anything had changed. Carol knew it wouldn’t have, but didn’t have the heart to break his touching hope.

He practically leaped up the stairs to the ICU ward, filled with a vitality Carol felt none of. She trudged along three or four steps behind him, feeling jet lagged and tired. She’d climbed two flights before she realised she’d not called Doug. With Javier so focused, it was relatively easy to slip away, onto another floor, where she headed immediately for a lounge, a place she knew she could find some quiet and a free telephone.

"Hey, it’s me… I’m really sorry…" she said into the receiver.

"Carol?"

His voice was sleepy, drawn from slumber. "Yeah, it’s me. Listen, I can’t be long, but I just wanted to let you know we’re okay… Everything’s okay…" He cleared his throat and she heard the bedclothes rustle. "Are you in bed?" she asked, a little unnecessarily.

"I was… There was nothing to do at the hospital, so I came back and went to bed. I haven’t slept much the past couple of nights…" he murmured. "How is she?"

"Okay… they had her on the table really quickly and drained the clot… She’s in a coma now… they induced it…" Her words were automatic and scientifically exact. Doug stayed quiet, waiting for something more. "It’s not good, but it could be a lot worse," she offered finally.

"A lot worse?" he questioned, surprised by the lack of emotion in her voice, the contradiction to how she’d been when he’d seen her off at Heathrow.

"Yeah," she brushed him off. "She’s stable…"

"How are you holding up?" he probed, a little more specific this time. Carol rolled her head, stretching out the muscles of her neck.

"I’m fine…" she said quickly. He was silent for a long moment, pointedly so.

"You’re fine?" he repeated.

"Yeah, my sister’s here… we’ve been talking, and well, I’m okay. A bit tired, but, you know…"

On the other end, his silence was noisy. Carol said nothing. She listened to the sound of him breathing. "How are you?"

"I’m missing you…" She nodded.

"We miss you too…" A short pause. She saw a Yellow Pages lying on the coffee table in front of her and flicked to the Hotels and Inns section. "Listen, Doug, I hate to do this, but can you call me back later?"

He was stunned, but recovered quickly. "Mmm-hmm. Where are you staying?"

"At the Holiday Inn…" She smartly quoted him the number of the establishment. "I’ll be there later tonight, okay? I just have some errands to run…" He made a sound in his throat. "Speak to you then… Love you… Bye…"

The sound of her hanging up the phone echoed across the Atlantic Ocean.

****

What on earth is going on in my heart

Has it turned as cold as stone?

Seems these days I don’t feel anything

Less it cuts me right down to the bone.

- David Gray, lyrics taken from ‘My Oh My’ -

****

Carol went back up to the ICU, stopping briefly at the soft drinks machine to get herself a soda. The bacon had made her thirsty and she drank it straight down standing in the corridor outside the ward.

Through the glass doors, she could see Javier sitting beside her mother, holding her hand. He was talking to her, though she couldn’t hear what he was saying. He looked sweetly attentive, as if he expected her to hear him through the fog of unconsciousness. Carol finished her can and dropped it into the bin. She pushed the door of the ward open slowly so the creak she’d recognised yesterday didn’t draw Javier from his reverie. And as she did so, stopped herself just inside the door, listening to the words that were coming from his mouth.

"Your daughters have been so helpful… Carol and Annie are here now, and Gina will be soon. I know you’d want them to be…" He paused for a moment, and brought her unmoving hand up to his face, passing it over his cheek. "The car’s written off, but I haven’t called the insurance people yet. I thought that could wait… It’s not that important… I put that washing in that you brought down yesterday… I think I got it right… But it’ll probably come out all pink, you know what I’m like…" He gave a sad smile. Carol stared for a moment, shocked at the tenderness in his voice. She’d not thought for one moment that he could possibly care for her in that way. "Annie’s gone to get us some sandwiches for lunch, and Carol was here… she was right behind me, but I don’t know where she is now… I guess she had something to do…" His head dropped and his voice cracked. "I miss you, Helen… Please don’t stay away too long…"

He leaned forward so that he was only a few inches from her face. "I love you…" he whispered. "I only wish you could say it back…"

Carol started, overcome by an explosive fury that surged its way up from a mysterious place deep inside of her. What right had he to say such things? What made him think she felt the same? She rushed forward, her voice loud and hurt, "How dare you!?" she cried. Javier snapped around at the sound of her voice and though she met a clouded, tearful face, it served only to enrage her more. "How can you say that to her? She doesn’t love you! She never loved anyone in her life, so why should she love you!"

He opened his mouth to reply, but Carol shouted him down. "She spent her whole life hating my father, how can she possibly love you!?"

Behind her, someone rushed up and started to tug her away. Heated tears were streaming down her cheeks like liquid firebrands as she was wrestled out of the door. It was only when she was out in the corridor and had struggled her way free of her captor’s grasp that Carol saw it was Cindy. "What the Hell were you thinking?" she admonished. Her face was hard and Carol clenched her fists in response, the anger still shaking her.

"He has… no… right!"

"Like Hell he does, Carol! You have no right to talk to him like that! What did you think you were doing?"

There was an appalling moment of resolution, and Carol’s face fell as if deserted by a malevolent spirit. Her lip quivered as it dawned upon her what she’d done. She stared distraughtly at Cindy for a second, then turned and ran down the corridor, all semblance of dignity vanished. Cindy made no move to follow her, but stood in the corridor and watched her flee.

****

She barged into the washrooms, flung herself into a toilet cubicle and locked the door. The instant the lock engaged, she sank to the floor, her shaking feeling as if at any moment, she would explode out of every pore. The tears rushed, unheeded, out of her eyes and poured across her skin. So overcome was she that her breathing rapidly became stilted and she was forced to steady herself. She put her hand over her mouth to dull her noise and tried to fathom what on earth had just happened. It had been like possession, if she knew what that felt like, as if something she hadn’t even known existed suddenly erupted from within and overwhelmed her so completely that she’d lost all sense of self. Rocking silently, she grabbed a wad of tissue and pressed it into her mouth and bit down on it. What was this thing that had taken over her?

****

Here I stand, sad and free

I can’t cry and I can’t see

What I’ve done

Oh God… what have I done?

****

"I’m worried, Doug…" Cindy’s voice sounded strained over the line and Doug sighed. "Something’s going on and I don’t know what it is…"

"Well, I think she’s pretty upset…" he said slowly. "She didn’t sound it on the phone… but she’s like that… she wouldn’t want me to think she was… I dunno… weak, I guess…"

"No, no," Cindy interrupted him. "This is different. She’s been talking with her sister, dredging up all sorts of things, I think…" She cleared her throat. "I don’t know what they’ve been talking about… I’ve had the kids with me all the time… Do you have any idea?"

Doug exhaled quickly through his nose. "I think I could have a pretty good guess…"

"Yeah?"

"Her Mom and Dad were pretty messed up people, Cindy… not your average nuclear family…" He shook his head. He knew he shouldn’t have let her go alone. On the other end of the line, one of the girls started crying, and Cindy moved towards her, the sound growing louder, until it was howling down the phone. Doug recognised the cry as Kate’s, and his heart went out to his baby.

"What do you think I should do?"

"I dunno if there’s anything you can do… She’ll resent it if you start digging around…" Cindy was shushing Kate distractedly. "Just, just let it be. She’ll come to you if she needs you."

"But… God, I feel so… damn redundant," she sighed.

"Where is she now?"

"In the next room… sleeping, I think…"

"You brought her back from the hospital?"

"No, her sister did. Doug, I don’t know what’s going on, but when she got out of the car, her sister gave her some photographs… I don’t want to worry, but…"

Doug took a deep breath. "Listen, Cin… don’t worry… Just take care of the girls… let her do whatever she needs to do with her sister."

****

He called at eleven to ask her how she was. She was short with him and told him she was tired, irritable and didn’t want to talk. So he wished her goodnight, told her he loved her and hung up.

It was only when she had switched off the light and laid down in the cold expanse of bed that she remembered the time difference. And she cried herself to sleep, appalled by her own selfishness.

****

Two A.M. Carol glanced across at the digital display on the radio alarm clock, then at her little travel clock. The room was a pale shade of orange, the thin curtains at the window only partially blocking out the glare of a streetlight in the parking lot. She pushed the sheets down and stared up at the ceiling, the events of yesterday racing around her crowded mind. Sending a searching hand out to the bedside table, she located the switch for the lamp and pressed it, instantly flooding the room with harsh, halogen bulb light.

She closed her eyes against the brightness, and felt her way out of bed and towards the en-suite bathroom. She filled a glass with water, then took it back to bed and sat back down, easing herself up against the headboard. The sleep she had cried herself into had lasted but an hour and a half and she had now been awake since 12:30. She wasn’t really tired, and if she didn’t know she had to be up in the morning, she wouldn’t have cared that she was still awake, but she did, and so, resorting to something she hadn’t done for months, she went to her purse and took out a sleeping pill.

Her doctor had prescribed them when the girls were five months old, concerned that she was getting only three or four hours sleep in a night. Carol had nodded and agreed with his diagnosis and treatment, but in actual fact had used the pills only twice, worrying that they would cause her to sleep through the girls’ crying. Now, she stared at the little white tablet in her hand and felt no such worry. She threw it down her throat and swallowed it with some water, then sat back to await its effect.

****

When she woke she felt like she was recovering from unconsciousness, the world fading in and out of focus like she were viewing it from the bottom of a swirling muddy pond. The sleeping pill had obviously worked. She felt like someone had thrown a blanket over her head and she was powerless to shrug it off. For what seemed like a few seconds, but was probably many long minutes, Carol let her eyes shut again and dozed back to unconsciousness.

This time when she woke, she could hear the dull chatter of a television from the other room and realised that Hannah and Robbie must be watching cartoons again. She reached out her hand for her travel clock and brought it up to her face to force her focus in on it. It was just after nine. She remembered Annie saying she would call around lunchtime for her, but first she had a few errands to run. She had mentioned about cooking a roast dinner in a day or so, and she wanted to get a chicken from the supermarket before they ran out of decent-sized ones. Carol had said yes, without thinking for a moment that she would inevitably invite Javier along too.

She’d not seen him since her outburst, and Carol had the feeling he was avoiding her. But then, that was understandable, she thought. She rolled onto her side and decided to have a bath.

The water was steaming hot, and she sank down gratefully, laying her head back on the rim and trying to hang onto the last traces of the sleeping pill. But through the haziness, she could already feel the sticking points of pain pressing through. The same old jutting shapes of memory were making their familiar presence felt in her brain. She swallowed the burning desire to cry again, and tried not to think. You must deal with this, she told herself with a conviction she certainly didn’t feel. If you don’t deal with it, it’s going to multiply like it did before and then where will you be? Stuck in the middle all over again. She had to be strong.

Carol had always strived, in every part of her life, to be strong. In order to remain in control, you had to be strong. In fact, the truth was that she knew no other way to react. Having lost all connection with her emotions, she had lost it also with herself. Around Doug, she was a different person, and she felt the constant abhorrence of her own feelings beginning to dissipate, but without him, she just slipped back to the mould she’d used for her whole life. Numbness was a substitute for feelings. And now, torn between what she’d become and what she was, she swayed erratically between the two extremes, lost like a pendulum between the both.

She sobbed until her shoulders ached and her eyes grew sore. The water was getting cold. She took a deep breath and submersed herself under it and stayed there until she could stand it no longer.

****

So don’t you know I’m numb

No, I don’t feel a thing at all

Cos it’s all smiles and business these days

And I’m indifferent to the loss

I’ve a faith that there’s a soul somewhere

Who’s leading me around

I wonder if she knows

Which way is dawn?

****

In London, it rained for six days without seeming to pause to take a breath. It was as if once the Heavens opened, they’d been closed for so long that they required a tumultuous effort to expel all the water they’d accumulated. As if Mother Nature had forgotten the oil to douse the mechanism with. There was barely a moment when the sky was anything but layered grey, and almost constantly, a never-ending downpour battered the rooftops as if with a vengeance. The weathermen claimed it was an area of low pressure that had taken a liking to the British Isles and decided to hang around, but Doug didn’t care what it was, only that sometime soon, could it please let up.

All over the news were reports of rivers bursting their banks in Wales and North Yorkshire, images of houses five feet deep in water, people using canoes to get to their local pubs instead of cars and teams of soldiers bolstering flood defences with sandbags, Army Chinook helicopters circling like fat, awkward insects over their heads. In London, the Thames was straining at its floodgates, little agitated government officials standing at a safe distance and declaring the situation a disaster.

Doug saw little of it. He immersed himself in his work, focusing his mind on the things he could control so that he didn’t have to dwell on the things he couldn’t. He’d powered his way through the groundwork, setting up legal cover, insurance, membership of the half a dozen or more different departments of the NHS and then with the Medical Personnel Union. He’d waded through equipment brochures and helped order supplies, setting up accounts with all the relevant companies. And now he was bogged down in overseeing the clearing out of the outpatients department, which was to be switched to another building, and the redecorating of the place for the purposes of the A and E department. In short, it was a headache in a suitcase.

But curiously, it kept him sane, and he was grateful for the distraction. For he knew that whenever he allowed himself to stop and take stock of his situation, he started to think of Carol and the girls and how much he missed them.

Today had been no different from all the other days of late. Piles of paperwork had been dropped on his desk during his overnight absence and it had taken him till two in the afternoon to trawl through them all. He’d grabbed an insipid tuna sandwich from the cafeteria and a coffee strong enough to blow the boots off a Columbian from the machine down the hall and eaten them in isolation in his office. Then he’d trekked down to the department to find out how things were going down there, been summoned by Dan to his office to video conference with some bigwig from the General Medical Council and then returned to his office to find another mountain of paperwork deposited on his desk.

It was now 8:13, his digital desk clock told him and he knew there was no chance of him being able to get hold of Siemens at this time of night. He slowly blew frustrated air out through his teeth, leaned back in his chair and rubbed his eyes for a long time. He had his shirt-sleeves rolled up and his tie lay slung over the guest chair opposite him. His desk was a strange collage of documents, polystyrene coffee cups and fax paper. Along the corridor, he could hear the cleaners moving systematically through the other offices, talking to each other in heavily accented Black London English. Everyone else he knew had gone home, in fact, the only person he had even seen through his opened door in the last two hours had been Maria MacLeod, who had cast him a haughty glance as she had passed by just twenty minutes earlier.

Earlier, Will Kelly had made a special trip up from the chrysalis of the department to ask him if he wanted to join him and Toby Jones at the King’s Head for a couple of pints. He’d said no, but thanks for asking. He was really too tired to think about making conversation in a bar. Will had expressed a mild concern for his fatigue and suggested he went home to bed, but here he was, two hours later, still occupying the same position he had then.

And then there was Lucy Calloway, who seemed to be permanently engaged in well-intentioned efforts to cheer him up. Doug was touched, but on the whole, wished she wouldn’t bother. Being on his own for a few weeks did not justify such ardent endeavours, or in fact, any sympathy at all. He leaned forward in his chair and reached for the telephone, swearing to himself that he’d try one last time to see if she was back at her hotel room.

He had the phone tucked into his neck and was half listening to the hollow dial tone at the other end when a familiar face appeared around the doorframe. "Fancy a coffee, mate?"

Doug nearly dropped the phone in his lap, and immediately replaced it on the hook, without even thinking. Maria MacLeod was standing in the doorway, changed from her trademark scrub bottoms, tank top and white coat into a pair of loose-fitting grey trousers and a crisp white shirt. "Coffee?" he repeated, slightly bemused by this unexpected offer.

"Yeah, y’know, the hot wet stuff that comes in a mug? Most folks put milk in it and drink it…?" Doug tried to smile, but had a feeling he failed. She stared at him for a moment, then shrugged her shoulders. "Y’know, you don’t hafto, mate… It’s no sinking ship if you say no…"

Doug swallowed, then smiled gamely. "Okay…" he agreed.

She took him to a small independent café a short distance from the hospital, ordered two lattes and brought them back to the table. "So, what’s eating you, Gilbert?" she enquired, casually swinging herself into the seat opposite him. Doug tried not to be unnerved by her unusual demeanour, and replied,

"Oh, you know, work…" He gave a little sigh of weakness. "I never thought there would be this much to do… and London is great, but… I dunno… I just want home now… I’ve had enough…"

"I get that impression,"

"You do?"

"Certain," Mac waved him off gently. They were silent for a minute, and Doug took a sip of his coffee in the silence, feeling guilty.

"Is it that obvious?" he asked. She screwed her face up.

"Well, not that obvious…" A rare smile crossed her angular face. "But still pretty fucking obvious…" Doug smiled back. "Wanna talk?"

He flicked his head in surprise. "Why do you want to know?"

"Gossip…" she informed him with a rueful stare, then added, "Nah, I just thought you looked like you needed an ear… and Hell, you’ve done enough counselling with the load of us these past few weeks…"

"I didn’t think talking was your thing?"

"Ah, well, you’d be fucking gobsmacked at what you don’t know…" For the first time, Doug felt comfortable enough to chuckle at Maria MacLeod, and noticed that her eyes weren’t so cold and blue as he had thought.

"Okay…" He paused a moment, looking down at his coffee. "I’m three thousand miles from everyone I love, my fiancée’s mother is in a coma, and I’ve got to stick around here listening to other people’s problems…" Mac nodded,

"Tough, that…" Doug blinked. She noticed his expression and added, "Well, it could be worse…"

"How?" he asked incredulously.

"Well, you could be dead… or they could be dead… You gotta put fings in perspective, mate. You gotta keep yer head held high."

"My head held high?"

"Yeah…" she gave him a little encouraging smile, and leaned slightly closer to him. "It’s like that poem… by Rudyard Kipling." He gave her a confused look.

"If you can lose, and start again at your beginnings

And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold On!’."

He chuckled at her, but strangely, the words were heartening. "Great lines…" he said softly.

"I know… my Dad used to read that poem to me every night before bed. Smile in the face of adversity, ‘n’ all…" She grinned, reaching across the table to give his hand a quick squeeze. "You’ll survive, Doug. We all do…"

She called him a taxi from the corner of the street, shouting into her mobile phone with the old fiery character. It was a cool night, but across the skyline there was still the trace of what had clearly been a glorious sunset, and Mac confirmed this when she’d finished verbally disembowelling the woman at the taxi firm. "Red sky at night…" she noted monosyllabically.

"Shepherd’s delight," Doug continued with a stifled yawn. She waited with him on the walk until the taxi arrived, then waved goodbye and before Doug had had a chance to say the same in return, had disappeared around the corner and out of sight.

Once inside the cab, he gave thready instructions to the driver, who was still sporting a hairstyle Duran Duran would have been proud of and smelt of a sickly combination of stale smoke and cheap aftershave. He opened the window, kept very quiet and tried not to breathe too often. Nevertheless, the driver felt him deserving of a ramble about Tottenham Hotspur’s latest multi-million pound signing from Athletico Madrid. Doug made vaguely interested grunts where he thought he should, but mostly, simply ignored the spiel.

When dropped at the apartment building, he handed over the money and stepped gratefully out. He let himself into the building then walked into the dark hallway. The air was breathable here and he remained a few moments, basking in the relief.

Once in the apartment, he went around switching on the lights for himself and listening to the doors clunk with echoes around the empty rooms. On the kitchen counter was the half-eaten piece of toast he’d buttered but not finished at breakfast, dried and fossilised on the plate. It was like living the bachelor life all over again, he thought as he slid it into the trash and heard it plop onto the other waste. He took out one of the cans of Guinness still left from the party and poured it into one of Will’s tall pint glasses, watching with mild fascination as the black liquid settled hypnotically through its foamy, staggered clouds.

In the other room, he remembered he’d opened the window for Alfred, and walked through to close it. As he switched on the light, the lizard shot under its rock cavern and span around, its two black opal eyes glinting at him from the shadows. "Do you want food?" he asked it absently. Alfred made no move, adjudging him with quiet disdain.

He went back through to the kitchen, took out some of the prepared food Will regularly deposited in the fridge and walked back through. This time, the little Tupperware tub held a truly revolting mashed brown pulp with a pungent, vaguely fruity smell. He had no idea what it was, and frankly, had no desire to find out. Usually, it was salad, lettuce and leaves, some sort of slimy seaweed, apples and hard fruits. He slid the contents of the tub in through the opening on the top of the tank. Alfred remained in his hole for a moment, tasting the air with his fleshy tongue, then aristocratically ventured forth, examined the pulp with greater interest, and began eating.

Doug sat back on the bed and watched. For such an ugly creature, with such vulgar looking skin, Alfred ate surprisingly delicately. "Look at you," he said. Alfred afforded him a brief, uninterested glance, then continued eating. "All you do is sit around in that tank, all day, every day. But you don’t care, do you? You get fed and watered and the window opened for you… You just think it’s a bed of roses…" Doug gave a little sigh. "Cos you don’t know about jungles and tall trees and lady lizards… Ignorance is bliss, hmm…?" He stared at Alfred for a long moment, Mac’s words echoing in his head: ‘Smile in the face of adversity’. "Do you fancy trading places?" he said to the lizard.

****

Annie had cooked her roast chicken and was carving it as if it deserved it. The bird wobbled on the serving plate, and finally flew out of her grasp and onto the tablecloth, as if making some last ditch attempt to save itself. Annie cursed colourfully and wrestled the bird back onto the plate. "Now look what you’ve done to the damn tablecloth," she told it reprovingly. Carol smiled, seeing in her mind’s eye the bird getting up, blowing a raspberry at her and making a cartoon getaway. "What are you smiling for?"

Carol shook her head and hid her smile behind her hands. She wanted to suggest sharpening the knife, but the impact of Annie’s glare told her not to risk her life in such a way, after all, the knife may be blunt, but it was still large enough to do some damage. Across the table, Javier’s eyes widened. "Has anyone been to the hospital today?" she asked instead, making a quick touring glance around the table. Everyone shook their heads.

"I didn’t have time this morning… I had all this to cook…"

"I was going to go after lunch," Javier explained.

"Oh, right… okay…" Carol paused a moment, not really wanting to go with him. They had patched up their difficulties over the last week, but Carol was still ashamed by what she’d done and no longer felt comfortable in his company. Now, he was looking across at her as if he expected her to say something, perhaps ask for a lift. She swallowed, and slowly said, "Would you mind if I came with you?"

"Not at all," His answer was immediate, and Carol chastised herself for being so reticent.

Annie laid out the slices of meat she’d cut onto three plates and then handed them around. "Help yourself to veg…" she added. Carol went for the cauliflower, but Annie immediately swept it away from her hands. "Oh, God… the cheese sauce…"

While she went to the stove and rescued the sauce from certain oblivion, Javier turned to Carol and asked, "When did you say Doug was coming back?"

"Friday…" She helped herself to carrots and peas. "He finishes on Thursday, but the only flight he could get out was Friday evening. I’ll pick him up from O’Hare then."

"Has he had a good trip?"

She paused a moment, trying to remember something significant he’d told her, but realised that just about the only thing he’d ever told her that had sunk in was the fact that he was lonely and missing her. She tilted her head a little. "He missed the girls," she said.

"Oh… that’s understandable…" Javier reached for the gravy. Annie returned with a jug of cheese sauce and slid it onto the table. She quickly filled her plate, moaning that Carol had stolen all the crunchiest roast potatoes, then settled down to eat.

They ate in silence for a little while, but then Javier suddenly looked up and added, "I liked the photograph you put up in your living room, Annie…" Annie looked up instantly, her mouth full of vegetables and blinked in surprise. She’d had the photo of Tom Hathaway copied a number of times and had one copy blown up to 8 by 10 size and placed in a pretty black steel frame on the bookcase.

"That’s my Dad…" she said slowly. Javier nodded, entirely unfazed, and added,

"It’s a lovely picture…" She nodded. "I’m sure you’re glad you’ve got it…"

Annie had nothing to say to that. There was nothing to say. Javier smiled at her in an understanding manner and then added slowly, "Your mother misses him too…"

This time, Annie’s mouth nearly hit the floor, not to mention Carol’s. Javier briefly looked down. "She talks about him sometimes… and says she’s sorry for what happened between you all…"

"She’s sorry?" Carol couldn’t help her incredulous comment.

"I took her to my psychiatrist. He’s an old friend… called Reg Martinez, I don’t know if you’ve heard of him…" He glanced at the surprised faces around him. "She ended up going every week. She told me he had her talk about your father, and about her family…"

Carol blinked. Her mother seeing a therapist was a possibility she had never once considered. Helen Hathaway prided herself on her ability to handle absolutely everything that was thrown at her, and even in the wake of the divorce, and her husband’s death, she had never once admitted any sort of mental pain. In fact, Carol hadn’t even seen her cry. That she might visit a psychiatrist was almost unimaginable. She looked across at Annie. "Wow…" she murmured under her breath as their eyes met across the table.

"She never told me…" Annie added.

"She didn’t want you to know," Javier explained quickly. "She said it was best that you found out for yourselves…"

"Found out for ourselves?"

"What happened with your father and her…"

****

He talked, and they listened. Gathered in the living room, with the girls playing quietly on the rug in front of them, Annie and Carol heard of the real reasons behind their mother’s change of character. It was almost implausible, Carol thought, and never once had she believed it was the aid of a psychiatrist that had been the catalyst for Helen’s calmer state of mind.

He told her of the first visit. Of the stoic manner in which she had returned, telling him nothing about what had happened, hedging about when she would make another appointment, but then, a week later, she was driving off in the car to make a second visit. At first, she was ashamed of herself, he said. She didn’t want anyone to know she was seeing a shrink. But he’d been supportive. He’d kept everything quiet, just as she wished. He’d even lied to a friend so she wouldn’t find out the real reason Helen was always out on a Friday morning.

Everything she’d ever done had never been in spite. It was all because she was scared. Because the only time she’d ever trusted anyone with her all, the only time she’d ever loved anyone in completeness, he’d let her down. Tom Hathaway had been a binge drinker, a dipsomaniac. Carol was shocked to discover this, and a host of other things she’d never known about her father. She’d always assumed her mother to be in the wrong, that her father was virtuous and pure to the core.

He’d lost two jobs in quick succession as a result of his drinking. Fired from the first for attending with a hangover, then asked to leave from the second for being drunk on duty. He’d started off as a management consultant, paid a healthy wage by a big express mailing company, then he’d been a security guard, then finally, when he’d fallen as far as he could, he’d ended up assembling outboard motors on a production line. Then his wage had barely been enough to support his family, and Helen had been forced to take a part-time job at a dressmaker’s. But, despite his flaws, she still loved him and supported him even when he blew an entire week’s wages on a botched attempt to buy her a diamond ring. His initial payment had turned out to be only one of many, and Helen had been forced to return the ring anyway. She’d suffered these little indignities until one night he’d come home blinding drunk, having forgotten his keys and was arrested for being drunk and disorderly in the street. Helen had been publicly humiliated, and bailing him out of jail with the money she’d been saving for a new car had been the final straw. They argued, and she threw him out.

Carol stared at Javier in amazement as these words fell out of his mouth. She could hardly believe it. And then came the bombshell… Annie, confused, but vaguely fitting the pieces together, piped up and asked, "When did he start drinking?"

Javier swallowed and said in a slow, taciturn voice, "When Helen fell pregnant with Carol…"

What could she think? There was only one thing to think. Her beginning had signalled the end of her father. Carol found her mind churning. Slowly, she got up and walked out of the room, down the corridor and out of the front door.

She walked for what seemed like only a short time, but was obviously much longer, for when she stopped, she found herself on the edge of the lake, staring out at the sun bouncing off the water. For years, she had just assumed it was her mother’s smouldering inadequacies that had prompted her to be as she was. Why she’d spent so much time indoctrinating Carol into the failings of men, how never to trust them, because they would always disappoint. How you must treat everyone with the same remoteness, because allowing anyone to come any closer would surely end in hurt. Carol had always dismissed her mother as being over-cautious, hard-headed and incapable of love. Never once had it crossed her mind that she might have a reason for being as she was.

Carol had loved the memory of her father so passionately because it had been the only alternative to her mother’s tyranny. Now she had no idea what to think. Everything she’d ever believed had been shattered in just a few minutes.

From the vantage of the pier, she stared out at the lake for an hour or more, watching low-lying thunderheads gathering on the horizon, reflecting on the punishments she had inflicted on her mother over the years and the truth in the memories that had prompted them. Here, in this place of tranquillity, she saw it all more clearly, how closely lives interlinked and meshed. And born of this knowledge she realised her place in the great tapestry, and how condemningly she had judged her mother.

Of course, on her walk back to the hotel, it started to rain, huge pelting droplets hard enough to make her wince. She walked resolutely, soaked to the skin, until she reached her room. Once inside, she stripped her sodden clothes off and threw them into the bath. Crawling under the sheets, she curled into a protective ball, bringing her arms around herself and hid her head under the duvet. And there she stayed until sleep carried her away and into dreamless black blankness.

****

I poured my heart out

I poured my heart out

And it evaporated… see?

****

Annie practically destroyed the door with her banging, and Carol flew out of bed, thinking the walls were falling down around her. "Hold on, hold on…" she shouted, hurriedly wrapping herself in her robe. She flung open the door and saw her sister standing in front of her, holding Tess and Kate in her arms.

"What the Hell are you playing at?!" demanded Annie.

"What?"

"What’s the matter with you, Carol?! What did you walk off for?!" Her voice was angry beyond emotion, raging like a bull. Carol stuttered back,

"I had to take some time… Annie… I had to get out…"

"Get out?! What’s that gonna solve? You didn’t tell us where you were going, you just left your daughters… We had no idea where you were! What were we supposed to think?" Carol looked down, resenting this verbal attack. "You’ve been acting mighty strange lately, Carol… what’s going on with you?" In Annie’s arms, the girls were staring to cry.

"Nothing’s going on… just… some things I needed to sort out."

"This is about Mom and Dad, isn’t it? This is you getting all damn self-important all over again, thinking that this is only affecting you. Well, I’ve got news for you, it’s affecting me too!" Carol opened her mouth to shoot back a reply, but couldn’t think of one quickly enough. Annie began again, thrusting the now wailing girls into her arms. "Now, listen to me, Carol. This is no joke… it’s no time to go moaning and moping around. Mom is lying in the hospital and she needs us to be there for her. If you can’t bring yourself to work past all of this, then I pity you… You’re not the only one in the world with problems…"

She started to walk away. "Annie… don’t walk away… let’s talk about this…"

"No, Carol… I’m not listening… you’re not ready to talk about anything. You need to figure out what you’re thinking and you need to start looking after those girls. They need you, and so does Doug… what’s in the past isn’t important anymore."

****

Blind man on a canyon’s edge

Of a panoramic scene

Or maybe I’m a kite that’s flying

High and random, dangling on a string

Or slumped over in a vacant room

Head on a stranger’s knee

I’m sure back home

They think I’ve lost my mind.

****

She didn’t speak to her sister for the remainder of the week. Instead, she busied herself looking after the girls, guiltily visiting her mother when she knew nobody else would be there, and wandering the mall. Cindy dropped around to the room a few times, tried to coerce her into talking about what had happened, had no luck, and eventually got the message that she wanted to be alone.

She found herself doing a lot of thinking. About how messed up things had been between her mother and her, about how guilty she felt that it had been Helen who’d mended the bridges before she, even when she’d done precious little wrong. It was hard to accept, naturally, for years of programming kept instructing her to hide her feelings, to hate her mother, and to love her father emphatically, but she found herself more willing to consider Helen’s position.

Perhaps it was the objectivity of being a mother herself. Late one night, she found herself staring at her little girls and realised that there was nothing in the world she wouldn’t do if one of them were in danger. She’d throw herself in front of a truck. She’d sell her soul if it meant theirs would be spared.

Slowly, it dawned on her that it had been the same position her mother had found herself in. Probably thinking the same things. Staring at her young family and hoping with all her heart to protect them from the same hurt she’d been through. If she could somehow warn them, teach them not to trust so blindly, then perhaps they wouldn’t fall into the same trap she had. Carol smiled at the thought. It was misplaced motherly love, that was all.

And so, she found herself reassessing her father, and the memories she had of him in light of this new information. She had been five years old when Tom Hathaway died, and two and a half when the divorce had been finalised. When she was honest with herself, she had no real recollection of the years before the divorce, for she had been sweetly blinkered by youth, and the few memories she had after that time had been only during the Saturday afternoon visits. Four hours a week on a Saturday afternoon was not enough to judge anyone’s character by and assume righteousness, she realised. Oh, how hard it was to believe, but her father had had flaws, fatal flaws. And like some kind of tragic hero of romance, she found herself beginning to loathe him for these flaws as much as love him.

****

‘Above the titles of wife and mother, which, although dear, are transitory and accidental, there is the title ‘human being’, which precedes and out-ranks every other.’

- Mary Livermore -

****

Friday evening arrived faster than she had ever contemplated, and, begging babysitting time from Cindy, she grabbed a taxi to the airport to await his arrival. She found a spare seat in the waiting area, near the chute, and sat quietly, watching the people rushing past her. His plane was due in at six, and as she had some time to kill, she bought herself a magazine and settled down to wait.

When she happened to look up, he was standing in the mouth of the chute, his suitcase sitting behind him, scanning the rows of people with an impatient eye. Slowly, she lowered the magazine, sat up, and smiled. It took him a mere second to locate her, and he hurried toward her, dropping all his bags on the floor and sweeping her into a relieved embrace, lifting her up and hugging her close. "Mmmm…" he murmured into her neck, kissing her repeatedly. He clung so tightly to her that she had to fight him gently back so he wouldn’t crush her. He looked somehow different from before, and she couldn’t place the change. Perhaps it was the stubble covering his jaw, the tired look in his eye… she wasn’t sure. Shaking this off, she hugged him back. "Oh, I’ve missed you…" he sighed, tugging her chin up so he could look her in the eyes. "Tell me you’ve missed me too…"

"We’ve all missed you…" she said quietly, rubbing his back, feeling a restlessness she couldn’t fathom. She’d anticipated that seeing him would bring a kind of resolution to the thoughts that had haunted her of late. That somehow he would throw new light on everything that happened. But, with a sudden realisation, she saw that here he was, right in her arms, and she was feeling no different. He was smiling, but wouldn’t let go. "Did you have a good flight?"

"Yeah, I did… I’m beat, but I expected that…"

"Did they give you a good sending off?"

He grinned. "They sure did." He dropped his voice to a tone of confidentiality. "I’ve got the oldest bottle of Moet hidden in my suitcase I’ve ever seen. 1935…" Carol bobbed her eyebrows. "And a huge bar of Cadbury’s chocolate, and a gold-plated name bar for my desk… and tea and my very own Matchbox black cab and loads of other stupid little things." He rocked her joyfully. "I’m so glad to be back, though… this feels so good…" He kissed the bridge of her nose. "But, how are you? How are things?"

She made a little face. "Okay… things are okay…" He gave her a funny look.

"And your Mom?"

"They started reducing the sedation on Tuesday… they were talking about Sunday for a complete withdrawal from it. She’s been trying to talk all week."

"That’s good news, Carol…" he told her, rather unnecessarily, and she nodded.

"I know…"

"My girls?" he prompted, smiling once again.

"They’re fine too…" He nodded. She was a little unforthcoming, he noticed, but decided not to press the matter. There probably was more going on that she was letting on, but he figured she’d tell him when the moment was right. He slowly let go of her, and she stepped back.

"D’ya fancy icecream then, darlin’?" he flashed at her with an impressive Cockney British accent, gathering up his bags and starting towards the exit. She screwed her face up. She didn’t think she could make intelligent conversation with him right now.

"Er, you know what, Doug… I just wanna get back… get some take-out or something. I’ve been on my feet all day…"

"Okay," he agreed readily. "Sure… we can get pizza or something. I’m pretty tired myself." She smiled at him, and they headed off out of the airport, and into one of the waiting cabs.

Back at the hotel, he called for pizza and fussed over a sleepy Tess and Kate while she emptied his bags into the wardrobe. After rocking the girls to sleep, he took them through to Cindy’s family room, where she had pestered with the management to set up some cribs for them and put them down. He stayed in there for a long while, even after the pizza arrived, and when he returned, he rushed through the door and grabbed her from behind, chuckling. She shot ten feet in the air and spun around. "God, Doug, don’t do that…"

He was surprised by the seriousness in her voice, and immediately stopped his teasing. "You okay?" he asked.

"I’m fine…" she replied. He shrugged his shoulders, putting her bad mood down to the fact that she was maybe tired, or even on her period and went to the foot of the bed, where he dropped himself down onto the floor and switched on the TV. Carol afforded a few furtive glances at him while he quietly watched the highlights of a baseball game. She finished up her pizza, and perched on the end of the bed to his right, trying not to feel unnerved by him. It felt almost claustrophobic with him here. Like at any moment he was going to demand what was wrong, and she would have to tell him, and she was so ashamed of herself and the past that Annie had insisted she put behind her that she was dreading that moment more than anything else. And what would he think of her if she told him…?

After a short while of tense silence, she stood up and patted her thighs nervously, "I’m going to get washed up…" she told him. He abruptly flicked the television off and looked up at her.

"Oh, okay… You wanna go to bed?" A small smile crossed his lips and Carol froze momentarily.

"Yeah," she said quickly, trying to ignore the implied intent behind his words. She turned and escaped into the bathroom, locking the door behind her. For a moment, she stood behind the door, secretively listening to his movements, to the rustling of his clothes as he changed for bed too. She knew what he wanted, and what he was making preparations for beyond the door.

Distractedly, she filled the basin with water and washed her face, then drained it away and splashed cold water on her eyes, staring up at herself in the mirror. She wasn’t even sure why she was feeling this way.

She dallied as long as she could, but when she realised she could linger no longer, she wandered out of the bathroom and glanced across at him, sitting up in the bed, his arms folded across his bare chest. Swallowing, she knew instantly that her guess had been correct. Trying to seem relaxed, to be calm, she went to her side of the bed and pulled out her pyjamas from under the pillow. "Don’t put those on…"

His voice was slow, purposeful and quietly demanding. Carol hesitated. "Doug, I’m really tired…" she sighed. He paused for a moment, studying her bemusedly.

"But I’ve not seen you in three weeks…" She stared at him, finding his steady gaze almost embarrassing. She turned away and pulled her bottoms on, feeling the intensity of his eyes upon her, like her soul was already an open book to him. She pulled the curtain slightly aside and peered out.

"I hope it’ll rain tonight…" Doug made a small noise in his throat. "We’ve not had any rain since last week and the ground is so dry at the moment. It feels like the beginning of August, not nearly October."

"The weathermen are predicting a change on Sunday…"

His voice was monotone and Carol tried not to feel guilty. She knew he knew damn well what she was doing. For a moment longer, she stared out of the window in her bra and pyjama bottoms, not wanting to turn back to him. She wasn’t even sure why she was feeling this way. Sex with him had never ever been difficult. She’d never once felt anything less than turned on by him. Yet here she was, dreading it almost as much as she was dreading telling him what had been revealed during his absence.

She was embarrassed to be feeling this way, because she couldn’t stop thinking how totally unnerving it was. She could find no more room in her crowded heart for love for him. Turning away, she hurriedly reached for her pyjama top. "Carol… c’mere…"

She stared at him, trying not to let him see her unwillingness, knowing how it would affect him. He held out his arms to her and she knew… there was no getting out of this now… She put the pyjama top down and walked to the bed, feeling very, very naked. He slid across the bed as she sat down. He ran his hand down the skin of her arm and raised goosebumps. "Are you cold?" he asked softly, adjusting his position so he was kneeling behind her, his other hand lifting her hair and his mouth hovering over her skin. She felt her muscles gathering, anticipating his touch and what it would feel like.

"A little…"

He was right behind her now, and his lips were tracing along her collarbone. She shivered. "You really are cold, aren’t you?" he murmured. "Let me warm you up…" He reached for her and turned her gently onto him. She slipped reluctantly down between his legs, the sheet between them her only safety net. Through the material, she could feel his erection hard against her thigh. His hands were all over her now, caressing her flesh, moving around the muscles of her buttocks, up the small of her back and along her spine. Then he was reaching to kiss her and Carol drew back, fearing this moment like no other. "Oh, Carol…" he groaned as their lips touched. She shut her eyes and tried with every molecule to blank her mind of all emotion.

His mouth was pressuring her, pressing against her, all hard and demanding. She felt he’d been anticipating this moment for days, such was his desperation. Now he was fighting the sheet down from between them, and their skin touched in intimate proximity. Baulking suddenly, she pulled back, and this time it was pronounced enough for him to notice it and be unable to pass it off as something else.

"Carol… what’s wrong?"

He turned her face towards him and gazed into her troubled hazel eyes. "Don’t you want this?" She tried not to hear the disappointment in his voice, the terrible realisation that maybe she didn’t want him. She pulled herself away from him and moved to his side, away from his touch. Shocked, Doug watched with wide eyes as she slid away from him and covered herself with the sheet. "Have I done something wrong?" The quaver in his voice was unmistakable.

"No, no, no… it’s… it’s just me, Doug…" She smiled wanly at him, but he did not smile back. A silence passed between them.

"Then if it’s just you… what’s the matter? Why won’t you tell me what’s wrong?" He was hurt and she could feel it radiating from his eyes.

"Doug… just… don’t worry, okay? It’s nothing to worry about. It’s just me… I’m tired, and it’s been a busy day…"

God, what a shameless liar she had become. She dropped her head. "Carol?" he warned, sensing what she had just said wasn’t true.

"Don’t worry… Doug… I’m dealing with it." She tried to smile. "It’ll all be alright soon…" she added, not sure how it could be.

"Soon?"

"Yeah… soon…"

He stared at her for a long moment, sinking this strange, new information in. Slowly, he nodded. "So, this is it, then?" He blinked, as if fighting back tears. "I let you leave me, and then I come back, and this is what I come back to?" His voice was slowly rising. "You won’t tell me anything, you just tell me everything’s okay, that you’re dealing with it? What am I supposed to think, Carol? Is there something going on I need to know about?"

She shook her head, alarmed that he would think she was having an affair. "No, Doug, I’m not… that’s not what’s happening. I told you, it’s me…"

"It’s you?" She nodded and reached out to him, stroking his arm, seeking to reassure herself as much as him, feeling the hairs on it prickle her palm.

In the ugly silence of the room, with just the tick of her travel clock punctuating, Doug felt a ball of terrifying unease gather in his stomach. He frowned, "What’s happened to you, Carol?" He swallowed. "What have you done with my Carol?"

She stared at him. "I’m right here…"

"Then why this? Why won’t you let me…" his voice choked up and he stopped to compose himself, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath. "Why can’t we make love?"

The look on his face almost broke her heart in two, and compelled by her own guilt, she moved forward, sliding down the bed, and took his now soft penis in her hands. Doug stared down at her, baffled by her sudden turnaround. "What are you doing?" he said.

"This is what you want, isn’t it?"

"I want you…"

She looked up at him and saw the confusion behind his eyes, unobscured by the desire she knew he couldn’t control now that she had possession of his Achilles heel. "Let me do this first…"

And so she took him in her hands and mouth and teased him, squeezing his balls subtly between the pads of her fingers, drawing her tongue along his length. He was trying to hold back, she could tell, but soon he was hard again, and she could feel the blood pumping in him. She rolled her tongue around the tip, tasting the salty residue there, and then took him in her mouth, sucking on him a moment. Doug’s head fell back against the wall and he let out an unwilling moan, feeling himself gathering even though he was trying not to let it happen.

He looked down at her, and saw the expression on her face. It was one of duty, less of love, cherish and protect and more of honour and obey. He closed his eyes, not wanting to see the change. She was like another person… someone he did not know.

She was tickling his balls now with the tip of her tongue, and they tightened under her touch. She looked up and saw his eyes closed, his face contorting, and knew he was nearly there. So she sucked him one last time, bobbing her head gently, rubbing the flared head on the roof of her mouth, and suddenly, she saw his hands reach out and grasp the sheets and he came in her mouth. From the strength of his climax, Carol knew that he had been saving himself for this moment, and felt a wave of regretful sadness wash over her, thinking how her shortcomings had cost him something special he’d wanted to share with her. Controlling him gently, she brought him down, rubbing the tensed muscles of his thighs to still him.

And when he opened his eyes, she looked up to him and saw a pain so great it cast a shadow over his face. They stared at each other, like two strangers across a divide, unmoving. He stretched his hand out and pressed it gently onto her cheek. And when he spoke, though his voice was soft and tender, she could hear the resonance of grief echo around the room, "Where’s my girl gone?"

****

And I don’t feel nothing anymore

There’s too many cracks in my armour these days

There’s too many feelings I don’t understand

I make my face my mask to wear

But, you’re singing to me

In your sleep you’re singing to me…

We all fall down sometime.

- Ruth Bridges, lyrics taken from ‘We All Fall Down’ -

****

To be continued