Dr Graham's Marriage
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Meredith Webber
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CHAPTER ONE
FRIDAY night in A and E was drawing to a close. Not a bad shift for her last night on duty—until next month. Through the glass doors and beyond the ambulance reception area, Gabi could see the streetlights growing dim as the sun began to take over, returning colour to a world bled to blacks and greys by darkness.
Inside the building, the team on the swing shift was working on a patient, but beyond that cubicle all was in readiness for a new influx of patients—the less acutely ill who waited until morning before presenting with their pains and upset stomachs. Full drip bags hung on stands, fresh linen was spread on examination couches and, clustered around the desk, a group of nurses discussed their weekend plans, teasing the intern to bring some friends to a party one of them was holding.
‘You’re invited too, Gabi,’ one of the older nurses said, but Gabi shook her head.
‘This weekend I plan to lie in bed, rising occasionally for food or liquid refreshment, flipping channels on cable and generally zoning out. I’m older than you lot and it takes longer for my metabolism to make the change from night to day shifts.’
‘Oh, poor old Granny Gabi,’ one of the nurses teased, while others, including the intern who’d been pursuing her for weeks, assured her, in the kindest of tones, that thirty was no longer considered old.
‘I don’t think it ever was.’ Gabi wasn’t going to let him get away with that one. ‘Except to five-year-olds just starting school, when a twenty-four-year old teacher seems ancient.’
‘Hey, I’m twenty-four,’ the intern protested, and Gabi smiled.
‘In fact, thirty-plus is supposed to be the ideal age—you’re the in generation these days,’ Roz Cooper, the senior nurse and triage expert, reminded her.
‘Thanks,’ Gabi said. ‘I must remember that one day when I’m functioning properly. But this weekend it’s “in bed”—that’s where this member of the in generation intends to be.’
‘Ooh!’
‘Who with, Gabi?’
‘Anyone we know?’
The wail of an approaching ambulance siren put a stop to the teasing.
‘Damn!’ Roz said. ‘Just when I wanted to get away on time.’
‘Did the ambulance call this in?’ someone else asked.
But Gabi was already out the door, with two nurses and an orderly wheeling the emergency cart in case the new arrival needed immediate resuscitation.
‘No panic!’ the ambulance attendant said, slipping out of the driver’s seat and passing a sheaf of papers to Gabi. ‘He’s unconscious but breathing, no blood. The driver of one of those big street-sweeper machines saw him lying in the gutter. Thought it was a bundle of rags at first. We were just returning from that transfer to the chest hospital and pulled up behind the council machine.’
Gabi looked at the pale but beautiful face of the young man on the gurney the second attendant had rolled out of the back of the ambulance.
‘Drugs?’ she asked, while her heart ached to think of the loss of innocence or security that must have led this man to this particular moment in time.
‘Most likely,’ the attendant agreed, but he was edgy, awaiting a signature on the paperwork so he, too, could finish his shift.
‘Let’s get him inside,’ Gabi said, nodding to the other staff, then accompanying the driver into A and E. She led him over to the desk, where she checked the paperwork he’d handed her.
‘No ID?’
‘None.’
‘Well, let’s hope he remembers who he is when he wakes up. If not, we’ll have to wait for someone to identify him.’
Gabi signed for the unknown patient and, while the clerk took over the paperwork, setting up the admittance procedures and arranging wrist- and leg-bands for him, identifying him by numbers that would follow his progress through the hospital, took a look at him, checking, as always, the ABC of emergency care.
Airway—it was clear but, to be sure, the ambulance attendant had inserted a tube. Breathing—the young man was breathing without assistance, though again, to be sure, he was masked and an extra concentration of oxygen was flowing into his lungs. C stood for circulation which, according to his pulse and blood pressure, was just fine.
So she had to find a reason for him to have passed out.
With help from the orderly, she and the nurse stripped the comatose man, but a superficial examination revealed no obvious injuries, no rigid scars from old needle sites, no recent needle marks. Some bruising on his legs and arms, but more conducive to a fall rather than a beating. She sniffed his breath but found no indication of the fruity breath indicative of ketoacidosis, which would be likely if the coma had been induced by diabetes. She felt his skull—there was no obvious injury to his head to explain his loss of consciousness.
The nurse eased the unresponsive body into a hospital issue gown.
‘I’ll take blood for testing, then send him to X-Ray. Could you alert them? We’ll let the radiologist on duty decide if he wants scans as well.’
As the nurse bustled off, everyone moving quickly as the end of the shift came closer, Gabi raised a vein in the patient’s arm and inserted a needle, intending to take several vials of blood. Test results would come back more quickly if more people were working on the specimens. The process involved leaving the needle in place and attaching new syringes to it, then withdrawing the needle when the final specimen had been taken. Mentally she reviewed the tests she’d request. Drugs, of course, but there were other possibilities. Encephalitis as a result of some infection—and glandular fever came to mind.
She was holding the needle to steady it while she removed the first filled syringe when all hell broke loose. The change from comatose to violent was so sudden, and so totally unexpected, that the nurse who’d just entered the cubicle with the computer-generated labels bearing the patient’s numbers was knocked over by his flailing feet, while the man’s arm, sweeping upward in an arc to catch Gabi unawares, spun the needle, with the precision of an arrow shot from a sling, straight into the bicep muscle in her upper right arm.
‘Don’t touch me, don’t touch me!’ the man was yelling, and his noise, together with the nurse’s scream of alarm, brought another nurse, an orderly and two security men all running.
With a calmness she was far from feeling, Gabi removed the needle from her arm, set it on the instrument trolley, squeezed the tiny spot to make it bleed, then dabbed alcohol on the small wound.
Two security men were holding the patient—not roughly, but certainly making sure he could do no further harm.
Ignoring him for the moment, Gabi turned and helped the nurse to her feet, checked she was OK, then suggested she leave.
‘Get a drink and something to eat—sit for a while, then go home. It’s time you were off duty anyway.’
She bent to collect the papers off the floor, passing them to the newly arrived nurse, telling her to set them aside for the moment. Then, once satisfied order had been more or less restored, she gave her attention to the patient.
‘Are you OK?’ she asked him. ‘You were brought in unconscious so I guess waking up in a strange place freaked you out.’
The young man was sitting on the edge of the gurney, still flanked and held by the security men though he showed no sign of giving more trouble.
‘I was unconscious?’ he said. ‘Damn! I thought I’d thrown that stuff off for ever.’
He went on to explain he was epileptic, though for years medication had controlled his seizures.
Gabi listened, and motioned to the security men to release him, but she was glad the two men remained. Most epilepsy victims she’d treated awoke drowsy and disoriented after a seizure resulting in loss of consciousness. They were confused, certainly, but rarely violent.
‘Do you know your name? Address? Do you have someone we can contact? At present you’re just a number, so if you could give us some details…’
The young man shrugged.
‘Is there any need? I mean, I’m OK now, and I can phone a friend to come and get me. If I’m not being admitted, do you need to know this stuff?’
‘Yes, we do,’ Gabi told him. ‘It keeps the files tidy and the powers that be happy. An ambulance dropped you off here, we signed for you, and now we can’t just let you disappear into the ether. Who knows when someone might turn up and accuse us of losing you?’
She spoke lightly, hoping to dispel the tension she could feel radiating from the as yet unidentified patient. The security men must also be feeling it, for she’d noticed them both tensing—with almost imperceptible movements she hoped only she had seen.
She picked up the file and tried to look as nonthreatening as possible—not hard for someone five-six in the medium heels she wore to work.
‘Now, if we could start with your name?’
Robin Blair offered this so hesitantly Gabi guessed it was false, while she was almost sure the address he gave, 14 Smith Street, Kirrawee, had been made up on the spot. But he claimed he was just visiting Queensland on business, up from Sydney, and she didn’t know the southern city well enough to know if such a suburb existed.
However, it was what she was given, so she filled in the spaces on the file.
‘Did you have a wallet with you? Or any valuables on you? Is it likely someone took advantage of your illness to rob you?’
Robin Blair offered her the kind of smile she’d swear had got him out of trouble in the past.
‘Nothing on me. All I had were some notes and change. I was out cruising with friends so I left most of my things in the hotel safe. When they went on to a disco I decided to go home. The flashing lights can bring on attacks, so I tend to avoid places like that. If you wouldn’t mind passing me my jeans, I’ll check if the money’s still there.’
‘It is—or at least there’s a twenty and a fifty and some change in your fob pocket. The ambulancemen found it when searching for some ID and noted it on your file.’
But she wasn’t quite ready to pass him his clothes.
‘I’d like to do a skull X-ray in case you hit your head when you fell, and possibly a brain scan just to check out what’s happening there.’ She spoke casually, hoping he’d just agree, knowing they were tests she couldn’t, now he was conscious, do without his consent.
He shook his head.
‘No way. I’m out of here! Thanks for all you did, but I’m a working man. I’ve just time to get a cab back to the hotel, shower, change and head for day two of the conference I’m attending.’ He smiled almost slyly at Gabi. ‘Can’t keep a patient against his will, can you?’
‘I just need a few more details. Who’s your local GP? You should see him—perhaps your medication needs changing.’
‘I’ll handle that,’ Robin assured her, and Gabi went from suspecting lies to outright disbelief. But she couldn’t nail his feet to the floor until he told her what she wanted to know, neither could she, as he had so rightly pointed out, keep him against his will.
She handed him his clothes, nodded to the security men to remain in the cubicle and walked out, unconsciously rubbing her arm where the needle had pricked her.
Damn! Her failure to find out more about the mystery patient had left her feeling far wearier than usual after a night on duty. On top of that, there were so many rules and regulations about needle-stick injuries it could be another two hours before she was out of here.
At least she had some of his blood. Or did she? She looked around, searching for the syringe. She’d dropped the needle into a bowl but the syringe was gone.
Damn again! Donor blood was always the first thing the Workplace Health and Safety officer requested. Though Robin didn’t know she had his blood. Was the hospital legally within its rights keeping it? Or testing it without his consent?
No way!
Because he’d been unconscious, and not able to give consent when admitted, she had been legally within her rights to take it in the first place—to type-match it should he be bleeding internally and need a transfusion, and to test for any kind of infection that might have caused him to lose consciousness.
But now that he was conscious she needed his permission to test it for hepatitis B and also HIV, however unlikely it was that he was suffering from either disease. But protocols were protocols, and the sooner she reported the accidental needle-stick, the sooner she’d be out of the place.
Which meant seeing the patient again.
He was dressed and obviously about to leave when she went back into the cubicle.
‘I’ll only keep you another minute,’ she told him. ‘When you were brought in unconscious I took some blood to test for something that might have caused your loss of consciousness. I don’t know if you remember but, coming out of it, you banged my arm and I jabbed myself with the needle. You’re not in any way responsible, but hospital regulations say I have to report I was stuck, and the Workplace Health and Safety officer will also want both my blood and your blood tested for anything contagious. Is that OK with you?’
She tried to sound as casual as possible, but knew, from the moment she mentioned the injury, Robin Blair had tensed up again.
‘I don’t think so.’
Suspicious as she’d been, she was still staggered by his refusal.
‘Do you have a notifiable disease? Is that why you don’t want the test done?’
‘Of course I haven’t!’ The look of disgust was well done, but Gabi had already put him down as a good actor. ‘I just don’t like people taking my blood. Had too much of it as a kid, with the epilepsy. It’s my right to refuse, you know!’
He smiled his charming smile again and walked out, pausing briefly to sign ‘Robin Blair’ on the discharge form a nurse produced.
‘If that’s his name I’m a Martian,’ one of the security men said to her, and Gabi laughed.
‘I’m glad I’m not the only one who didn’t believe a word he said. And the way he spoke about rights, I wonder if there’s a conference for baby lawyers on in town.’
But it left her with a problem, and for a moment she considered not reporting the injury, because without donor blood she’d have to be tested regularly until there was no chance of HIV antibodies showing up in her blood.
Muttering grimly to herself, she found the required reporting forms—one an incident report, the other for her injury—and sat down to complete them. The new shift had arrived, but needle-stick injuries were so common no one was commenting on it.
Except for Jenny Thomas, the resident coming on duty.
‘Oh, poor you!’ she said, after peering over Gabi’s shoulder to see the paperwork. ‘This’ll keep you from your bed for a couple of hours.’
‘Don’t I know it!’ Gabi groaned. ‘Though if he happens to have been hep. B positive, I guess the precautions are worth it.’
‘Did he look like a user, or someone who might be positive?’
‘No, and no, though I’m sure he lied through his teeth when he gave his name and address. He positively oozed shiftiness, so he had to be up to something, and didn’t want to be caught out.’
She finished the paperwork, left the incident report for the clerk to file and took the other paper with her to the staff safety officer.
‘I can’t believe you didn’t get donor blood,’ the safety officer, a woman Gabi had never met before, grumbled, and Gabi, who’d had about as much as she could take, snapped.
‘Well, I guess I could have got Security to hold him down while I got some, or I could have scrabbled around on the floor and found the bit I did get and ignored the fact it was probably contaminated. Then we could have tested it without his permission and set the hospital up for legal action against it!’
‘Now you’re being silly!’ the woman said, bringing Gabi’s personnel file up on her computer. ‘Your hep. B vaccinations are up to date, but as you don’t have donor blood—’ Gabi considered murder ‘—we have to give you a booster. You know the figures?’
‘Chances of catching hep. B from a carrier through needle-stick injury are something like thirty per cent,’ Gabi recited. ‘Hence the precautions. But he looked a really healthy young man. I can’t imagine there being any risks.’
The woman—Gabi couldn’t read her name tag as it was slung low around her neck with the name hidden by the desk—nodded.
‘And less than point five per cent with HIV,’ she said, tapping information from Gabi’s report into the computer. ‘The jury’s still out on whether to treat staff stuck with blood from a positive patient with AZT or not, but staff with needle-stick injury from a known positive patient can opt to have the injection if they wish. However—’
‘I haven’t any donor blood,’ Gabi finished for her. ‘I think you’ve got the message about that across!’
The woman looked up from the screen, the martyred look on her face telling Gabi she was determined to ignore her rudeness.
‘You’re probably hungry. I have to organise the hep. B shot. Why don’t you go down to the canteen and have a coffee and something to eat, then come back up when you’re…’ she’d probably guessed Gabi might do her physical harm if she’d uttered the words ‘feeling better’ ‘…ready.’
Having something to eat was probably a better option than stabbing the safety officer with one of her own pens. It would also pass the time and keep her awake—though she couldn’t see why rustling up hepatitis B vaccine should take long.
‘I suppose I could,’ she said, beyond caring that she sounded bitchy and ungracious.
The woman glanced at her watch.
‘It’s change of shift, as you know. Could you call back in an hour?’
Gabi held back the sigh which threatened to escape and left the office, heading down to the ground-floor canteen.
She worked along the servery, choosing bacon, scrambled eggs and grilled tomato. The tongs hesitated over the sausages, but she decided enough was enough and settled for a piece of toast instead. Then coffee, because she knew tea wouldn’t be strong enough to calm her overstretched nerves right now. She carried the lot to a table in the far corner of the canteen, then realised food was the last thing she wanted.
It was tiredness making her edgy and irritable. Tiredness making the possible consequences of a needle-stick injury bang away in her head.
Contracting hep. B was unlikely because, like all hospital workers, she was regularly vaccinated against it and, unlike some people, her level of immunity was good. But HIV, the insidious virus that lodged in white blood cells, eventually eating up so many of them the body lost its immunity to other diseases, was a different matter.
Gabi stirred sugar into her coffee, then bit into the toast, knowing she had to eat something. There was almost more chance of winning the lotto than contracting HIV through a needle-stick injury, so her concern levels weren’t high, but the worry with HIV was not knowing.
She prodded the toast into the scrambled eggs, picking up a little bit and nibbling it experimentally. Without donor blood—she rolled her eyes as she thought of the safety officer—to rule out HIV, she’d have to be tested now, then in three months and again in six months. Six months before she’d be cleared of a possible life sentence…
Possible death sentence…
She blinked as if a strong light had been shone on her face, while deep within her body she felt a stirring of an emotion she could only describe as revolt. Then she took another sip of coffee and smiled to herself.
‘Damn it all, Gabi Graham—if this isn’t exactly what you needed. Something to shock you back to life.’
She glanced around, hoping there was no one close enough to hear her talking to herself, but continued smiling as she fished in one jacket pocket for a pen and in the other for the tiny notebook she always carried with her.
So she had six months before she’d know—six months in which to grab hold of life and shake all the good out of it. She’d make a list of all the things she’d always wanted to do, and work her way through them.
‘Go blonde,’ she wrote, and underlined it. Would it be too late to get an appointment for today? She could always sleep in the chair.
‘No more diets.’ They didn’t work anyway. She’d accept she was a natural endomorph, with padded curves instead of jutting bones.
‘New clothes’—boy, wouldn’t Kirsten love that one? Her neighbour was forever trying to talk her into shopping sprees, but since Alex’s departure—or probably, if she was honest, earlier than that—she’d lost all interest in how she dressed. She liked to be neat and tidy, but beyond that…
‘Take up belly-dancing’—given number two on the list, she’d have the figure for it. Though maybe not belly-dancing. Maybe South American dancing—she’d read about clubs…
‘Get over the plane thing.’
If she could get over her fear of heights, and its attendant fear of flying, she could go on exotic holidays—maybe Europe, maybe visit Alex in Scotland. Maybe talk to Alex about what had gone wrong in their marriage. Maybe—
Forget Alex, she told herself sternly. You’re doing this for you.
But getting over the plane hang-up was an excellent idea. Something really positive she could do for herself—for her confidence, her self-esteem.
She chewed the end of the pen as she thought about it, not sure if it was actually possible to be free of a phobia like this one. Unless she used shock tactics. Like what, lamebrain? a head-voice jeered, then with light bulb brilliance the solution flashed upon her.
She could do the basic rescue training course and join the list of A and E doctors rostered to work on the rescue helicopter. Once she’d been over a cliff on a rope, and dropped out of a helicopter, the phobia might be dead.
Or she might be dead—killed by sheer terror and the embarrassment of everyone else on the course witnessing her cowardice.
But if she survived, she’d either be over it or she’d know for certain it was never going to go away.
Ignoring a quiver of fear already rattling her nerves and making her palms sweat, she steeled herself. She’d check the noticeboard in A and E before she left and put her name down for the next course.
Back to the list.
She thought of some incredibly boring evenings she’d endured at parties she hadn’t wanted to attend, and with great deliberation considered the next item, finally writing, ‘Never waste your free time doing things you don’t particularly want to do, or with people you don’t like.’
This was a hard one. It would mean saying no to well-meaning friends who invited her to dinner and set her up with ‘dates’, and saying no when Kirsten or Alana insisted she go clubbing with them.
Sometimes going clubbing was OK.
Sometimes she felt like it.
But other evenings she’d rather have her toenails pulled…
And, though she’d enjoyed being married—lie, she’d loved being married—and sometimes ached for what she’d lost, none of the men she’d met since Alex had left had made much of an impression on her. They certainly hadn’t come close to producing that tinglingly alive feeling which being near Alex had always generated.
She enjoyed her friends’ company, so an occasional night with them was OK, but no giving in when she didn’t feel like it—not any more!
With her out-of-work life covered, she considered her career—where she was now and where, before so many other things had happened to deflect her off track, she had once wanted to be by the time she turned thirty.
She’d wanted to be running the A and E department at a children’s hospital. That was where she’d wanted to be.
She might have missed the thirty mark but it wasn’t too late for change.
With a determination she hadn’t felt for years, and a sudden uplifting of excitement in her heart, she wrote, ‘Get some more general paediatrics experience.’ In fact, when she went back up to the safety officer, she’d see someone in the human resources department and see if there was any possibility of a shift to the kids’ ward on a short rotation, sooner rather than later. The extra experience with kids should help when a job came up at the new children’s hospital.
Though, if she was focussing more on kids, was it worth doing the rescue training?
Wimp!
She underlined the training programme, then reread the list and grinned to herself. It mightn’t look life-altering, but it represented such huge changes she felt as much apprehension as excitement.
And she’d certainly stopped worrying over HIV infection!
She doodled a border around the list, then, because it was a dream she’d held for a long, long time, she added one more item and doodled another border around it.
‘Dance all night in a red dress, then drive to the beach to sit on the sand and watch the sun come up over the ocean.’
It seemed so feeble after the enormous hurdle of getting over her fear of heights and her new commitment to her career, she almost crossed it off, then, mentally chiding herself for backing out before she’d even begun these life changes, she added another border of squiggles to emphasise it.
The massive hep. B booster dampened her enthusiasm slightly, then realising it was Saturday and no one was working in Human Resources put a further hold on her plans—though she did pick up a slim paper that detailed current and upcoming hospital vacancies and appointments. Back down in A and E, she wrote her name on the list of staff willing to do the basic training course to qualify them for working on the rescue helicopter. Then saw the date. It was next weekend, and once again her palms sweated and her stomach twisted anxiously.
It’s a whole week away, she told her body as she marched out of the hospital. And with so much to fit into the week she’d have no time to think about flinging herself off the top of a cliff with her life depending on a bit of rope and her own ability to not panic.
Aaargh!
Think hair instead. She’d sleep, then phone some hair-dressing establishments. If she couldn’t get in today, there was always tomorrow.
Fearful her determination to change was already weakening, she hesitated outside the hospital entrance. The walk from here to her flat in the Near West apartment building took ten minutes. To get there she turned right, crossed the main road at the corner, then left into Market Street and home.
Not good enough! she told herself, and deliberately turned left, then left again, circumnavigating the hospital to come at Market Street from a different angle, walking along streets she’d never walked before, looking at houses and apartment blocks she’d possibly seen but never really noticed. The jacarandas were blooming, their purple blossoms spreading an exotic scented carpet beneath her feet. The sun warmed her back and the warmth fed into her blood, renewing her enthusiasm for change so vibrantly she tackled the stairs rather than take the lift to her fourth-floor flat.
‘Not such a good idea,’ she puffed as she leaned against the fire-escape door on her floor, hoping body weight alone would force it open. It did, but not by much, so she slid through the opening and promptly tripped over something left lying in the passage.
Or someone!
The obstacle moved, sorting itself into a person—male, five-eleven, with red-brown hair and dark brown eyes, and lips that could draw a smile from a statue.
Not that she noticed these features immediately. She just knew them—knew who it was…
‘Alex?’
Whether it was climbing the stairs or seeing her ex-husband so unexpectedly she wasn’t sure, but the word came out as a quavery and very doubtful squeak, while her legs felt as if they’d lost their stuffing.
She remembered the new Gabi—never spend time with people you don’t want to see—and pulled herself together.
‘What on earth are you doing here?’
He was running his fingers through his hair, scratching at his scalp, trying to wake up—always a difficult task for Alex.
‘Mum. You know she’s sick. Didn’t sleep on the plane, so when I got here and you weren’t home I knew you must be on night duty and you’d be back soon. Had a bit of a kip while I waited.’
He glanced at his watch, then added, ‘More than a bit. You’re very late.’
Gabi ignored the unspoken criticism, too incensed by his earlier assumption.
‘You knew I must be on night duty?’ she repeated. ‘At dawn on a Saturday morning that’s the only place I could possibly be? You didn’t think for a minute I might be abseiling down a cliff, or dancing all night with a stranger in a red dress then watching the sun come up over the ocean?’
Alex looked confused, which, she realised, was hardly surprising, given how predictable his ex-wife had always been.
‘Never in a million years the abseiling—but a stranger in a red dress?’
There was so much disbelief in his voice that Gabi lost it completely.
‘Me in a red dress, you idiot. Not the stranger. And what are you doing here anyway, apart from blocking the fire exit? Because good old Gabi will put you up! I bet that’s why. Well, let me tell you, buster, good old Gabi no longer exists. I might look the same, but not for long. Good old Gabi’s gone, and not before time. Miserable creature that she was—’
‘The flat’s in my name.’
Alex was standing up now, and it was more that than the reminder which stopped Gabi’s flow of words.
Alex sitting on the floor, still half-asleep, was one thing. Alex standing, right there in front of her, unconsciously shedding pheromones the way other people shed skin cells, was a whole other animal.
‘I suppose you don’t want to stay at your mother’s place with Fred,’ she grumbled. ‘Honestly, Alex, it’s time you got over that. It would do your mother more good than all the treatment she’s on if you accepted the fact she’s remarried.’
Then she remembered what had happened when Alex and she had split up and how, because he’d been due to go overseas four weeks later, he had gone to live, temporarily, with his mother—and Fred.
And Fred’s daughter, the beautiful Diane, newly returned from a modelling assignment in Japan!
Gabi pulled the key out of her handbag and unlocked her door. Maybe she should let him stay here. And because Diane Kennedy was a subject never broached between them, and her new-found confidence was wavering slightly, she hurried into more conversation.
‘I’ve seen your mother every day—she’s very positive. And having you come home to visit—I assume that’s all it is, a visit?—well, that will cheer her up no end.’
She dumped her handbag on a lounge chair, so aware of Alex’s presence in the flat that her back prickled with pins and needles. But she had no intention of giving in to pins and needles or any other physical discomfort being near Alex might cause. The new Gabi was strong, invincible—and the ultimate in cool!
‘You’ll want to see her straight away, so why don’t you have a shower and go on over? I’m going…’
She was far too wired to sleep, so she stopped the words ‘to bed’ before they had a chance to escape, switching to ‘out’ just in time to make it sound believable.
Hopefully!
‘You’re going out when you’ve just come off duty?’
It must have sounded believable for Alex to be questioning it so disbelievingly!
Cool! she reminded herself. She turned and raised an eyebrow, an accomplishment that had taken long years of practice to perfect. Now she used it to remind him that what she did was none of his business.
‘I’ll have a shower,’ he said, proving the eyebrow had retained its potent power, while something that looked almost like uncertainty in his eyes gave Gabi a tingling spurt of pleasure.
Yes! As he turned away, lugging his loaded backpack into the spare bedroom, she pumped the air triumphantly as the affirmation sounded in her head. OK, so it was only a small triumph, but it was a start. If she could surprise Alex at such an early stage of her transformation, then maybe she could succeed.
And by concentrating on the new Gabi she could—perhaps—pretend he wasn’t here, wasn’t back in the flat they’d shared, albeit in a different bed. Though he’d be with his mother most of the time, she reminded herself when a quiver of what could only be alarm ran through her body.
And when he wasn’t visiting at the hospital he’d be catching up with friends.
He’d only use the flat to sleep and change his clothes.
But no assurances could mask the new tension inside her. It was the sound of the shower starting in the bathroom at the exact moment she mentally considered the clothes-changing thing that threw up an image of Alex naked.
In her flat!
Their flat, as it had been.
She squeezed her eyes shut, hoping lack of light might blot out the picture in her mind, then, as something—possibly resolve—crumpled inside her, she straightened, shoring up her weakened defences with reminders of all the reasons she and Alex had split up.
Not least of which had been Diane Kennedy.
No, that was unfair. Diane Kennedy hadn’t come into the picture until after they’d split up. And just how far in she’d come, Gabi had never been sure. But seeing Alex out with Diane had been the final nail in the coffin of their marriage as far as Gabi had been concerned. Proof positive that things would never work between them again.
If only she could get her body to accept it, she thought when she glimpsed Alex, his lower abdomen modestly swathed in a towel, crossing the passage from the bathroom to the second bedroom.
A phone book, that was what she needed. Thick yellow pages. Not to rip apart in frustration or hurl at the head of her visitor, but for a hair appointment.
A hairdresser in the trendy El Centro shopping mall had a cancellation at midday. Gabi took it, then headed for the kitchen to find a pack of garbage bags. If she was going to do this, she had to do it properly, and keeping blah clothes that belonged to the old Gabi just wasn’t on. She’d pack them into garbage bags and drop them in a charity bin on her way to the hairdresser.
The little boutiques in El Centro would have just the style of clothes the new Gabi needed!
‘I’m off. I don’t know when I’ll be back.’ Alex’s casual announcement reminded her of her uninvited guest.
‘Wait. I’ll give you a key. I’ve no idea when I’ll be back either.’
Ha! Second look of surprise on Alex’s face. The old Gabi would have waited in for him, made sure she was here, and probably had a meal cooked as well. Talk about a doormat!
Though it hadn’t always been that way, she admitted sadly as the door closed behind the man her heart still hungered for. The doormat thing had only begun after she’d lost the baby, and the gap that had started opening up between them even before she’d become pregnant had widened so far she hadn’t been able to find a way back to where they’d once been.
And she hadn’t been sure that Alex had wanted to find one.
The domesticity route had been suggested by the counsellor she’d seen, but it had angered Alex more than it had appeased him, and in the end the tension and unresolved conflict between them had been so bad it had been a relief to see him go.
Water under the bridge! That was then and this was now!
Duh!
She banged her forehead with the palm of her hand. Surely the new Gabi should have said no to Alex’s invasion of her flat. After all, the man had friends!
Though having him here would steel her to follow this new path she’d chosen, and—she grinned to herself—seeing his reaction to it all would certainly be entertaining.
She continued to shore up her confidence as she hauled sensible clothes out of her wardrobe and rammed them into garbage bags, continued to remind herself of the new Gabi as she emptied drawers full of sensible undies into another bag for disposal.
Then she came across the dress.
The Dress!
It was red and slinky and she held it against her cheek to feel the cool silkiness. It was a dress like nothing she’d ever worn, bought when she had been less than three months pregnant but already feeling bloated, constantly sick and thoroughly uncomfortable. And although Alex had been insisting they go to Scotland, as planned, she’d still been hoping he’d change his mind.
In her wonderful dream they would stay in Queensland, and by the time the hospital ball came around, she’d figured, when the dress had tempted her from a shop window, the baby she was carrying would be three months old, and she’d leave him—or her—with Alex’s mother and they’d go to the ball, dance all night, then drive to the beach to sit on the sand and watch the sun come up over the ocean.
So she’d bought the dress. No matter that Alex hated dancing and that the dream had been as unrealistic—given the state of her marriage and the tickets to Scotland—as the rest of her dreams at that time.
Then she’d lost the baby the next day. But the silly idea must have been hiding in the murky gloom of her subconscious, emerging from the dark depths when she’d written the same thing on her list this morning. ‘As if!’ she muttered to herself, shoving the red dress into the bag with the undies. She certainly wasn’t charitable enough to give it to some other woman to wear for her dream.
