Hana Du Rose

by K T Bowes

  Hana wrenched it free of Logan’s rucksack and helped him to a sitting position. Logan used his right hand to grapple around inside. “Let me do it,” she said. “What are you looking for?”

  Logan waved her away. “I’m good.”

  “I’ll finish getting our stuff together.” Hana ran around the room, checking for stray belongings. She found the green clip from her wedding day and pushed it into a pocket in the larger bag. Retrieving Logan’s socks from under the bed, she put them with her own dirty washing. She looked around in time to see him shove something up his nose and faltered. “What’s that?” she demanded, her fingers fluttering over the bag strap. “It’s not drugs, is it?”

  “It’s a prescription,” Logan said, shaking the bottle and repeating the exercise. His eyes watered and he dropped the bottle back into the bag. “It stops bruising.”

  “Like arnica?” Hana asked, dragging the bag towards the door. “Like that?”

  Logan shook his head and ran a hand over his eyes. “No. That brings out bruising. I don’t want that.”

  Hana plucked the bottle from the wash bag and Logan watched her sideways as she read the label. She didn’t understand the chemical composition but recognised the pharmacy as local. Logan’s name ran along the bottom of the label in capital letters and the date showed as recent. Her new husband watched her reaction. “It’s nothing dodgy,” he promised. “Can you drive?” He cracked open another bottle with his teeth and shook out the contents onto the bed.

  Hana nodded and propped the bedroom door open with the bag. “For sure,” she said and held out her hand.

  “Thank you.” Logan hauled himself from the mattress, popping four white painkillers into his mouth and swallowing without water.

  “For what?” Hana’s eyes searched his face, fear making her blind. She dived back and cleared up the tablets, shoving the remainder into the bottle and pushing it in her pocket. “For what?” she repeated, urgency in her voice.

  Logan shook his head and winced at the action. “You tried to protect me with your hands,” he said, his voice husky. He reached out and took her slender fingers in his. “He could’ve killed you.”

  Hana swallowed and tossed her head. “Can we go now?” she demanded.

  Logan nodded and his expression softened. “I won’t forget this, Hana,” he said, his tone sincere.

  “Nor will I!” she replied, her tone sarcastic.

  Shock replaced Logan’s smile as he grabbed his stomach and lurched towards the bathroom. He hurled himself to his knees and vomited into the toilet. Hana felt powerless, hovering in the doorway as he retched. She offered him a glass of water once he finished. “Drink this,” she said, treating him as her child. “Sip it.”

  Logan exhaled, taking the glass and slurping the water. It ran down his chin and onto the floor, speckled with blood. He didn’t speak, rising enough to perch his butt on the side of the wide bath. He cradled his arm and looked sick. Hana cleaned the toilet through a misplaced sense of guilt and then threw their remaining possessions into Logan’s rucksack. “Up,” she said to him as his colour returned. “We’re leaving. Right now!”

  Logan showed surprising reluctance and with his stomach empty of the sumptuous breakfast, looked less grey. “It’s fine,” he said, his words slurring. “We can’t just run away.”

  “Are you freaking kidding me?” Hana shouted. “Don’t change your mind. You asked me to drive and I need to get out of here.”

  Logan watched her dragging the bag. “Our stuff is mixed up,” he said, brows knitting in discomfort. “I wanted it neat.”

  Hana snorted and added the rucksack to her load. “Our lives are mixed up!” she snapped. “I wanted that neat, so neither of us got what we desired.”

  “Mum’s doing a roast lunch,” Logan protested and Hana stared at him, her eyes wide with incredulity.

  “I’m not staying now, so don’t ask me to. I’ll be in the car. Five minutes, Logan. That’s how long I’ll wait for you. Then I’m driving home and you’d better believe me. When I get there, I’m calling the cops.”

  Hana slung the rucksack over her shoulder and struggled with the heavier bag. It banged against her calves as she hauled it into the wide hallway. Her auburn hair escaped from her ponytail, swathing her shoulders in an amber carpet. Glancing backwards, she saw Logan standing where she left him. “I mean it Logan,” she stated, her voice full of threat. “I’m leaving, with or without you.”

  Logan’s eyelashes fluttered and he nodded. He pressed his right hand over his stomach to test his nausea and followed Hana out of the room. “I won’t be long,” he promised. “Wait for me.” He turned right instead of left and walked the opposite way.

  Hana wrestled the bag into the Honda and sat in the driver’s seat, shaking from head to toe. Alarm bells sounded in her brain. “Oh God, I’m so sorry,” she prayed to herself. “I’ve made a monumental mistake and now I can’t ask you to help me.” She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel and felt her insides churn. Logan never lied to her about his strange and volatile family, but he failed to impart the true picture of their odd and violent behaviour. Their lack of emotion terrified her.

  Hana counted to one hundred and eighty as slowly as she could manage, reducing her racing heart rate as much as reaching the promised deadline. “Come on Logan!” She slapped the steering wheel and her wrist protested.

  Passing the four-minute mark, she feared Logan wouldn’t come. Not daring to think about the implications for her forty-eight hour marriage, Hana finished counting the final sixty seconds and started the engine. Her fingers shook against the key. Waiting a second longer with panic building, she saw him hobble towards the car and exhaled with relief. He worked hard to pretend he didn’t nurse a serious injury, but Hana watched how he carried his left arm with care and maintained a rigid mask over his pain. He clambered into the Honda without using his left arm, reaching his right hand across his body to slam the door.

  Nobody came from the house to wave them off. Biting at Logan in her anxiety, Hana snapped, “That was six minutes, not five! Don’t you know the difference? You’re the mathematician!” She shoved the gear lever into drive and shot away from the hotel, spraying gravel as she pulled out. Logan used his right arm to fasten his seatbelt, grunting as he pulled it around him. He indicated turns and direction changes with single word answers but rebuffed Hana’s attempts to talk to him. She fought the urge to rant, shout and scream in the pattern of her previous marriage. Hindsight taught her to hold her tongue. It cost her.

  They reached the outskirts of Huntly before Logan reached out and laid his right hand on Hana’s thigh. His black lashes fluttered and high spots of colour showed on his cheeks. The sudden contact caused something tense inside her soul to snap like an elastic band and she turned her face away while hot tears slid down her cheeks. “Pull over,” Logan commanded, indicating a wide lay-by ahead. Hana turned into it, the wheels skidding against loose grit. She sat with her hands gripping the steering wheel, fear and anger feeding her fragile nerves. Logan put his hand over hers, prying her fingers off the wheel. He fumbled undoing her seatbelt and pulled her towards him. “Sorry,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

  Hana dried her tears on her sleeve and restarted the engine, ignoring Logan’s attempts to kiss her. “I’ll drive,” he offered, but Hana pushed his hand away.

  Her glance in his direction held sarcasm. “I don’t think so.” She ignored the turn onto the Tainui Bridge, staying on the main highway and heading south. In Ngaruawahia, she pulled up in front of a neat wooden building. ‘24 Hour Accident and Emergency’ flashed neon writing against the grey sky.

  “Aw, come on, Hana! I just need a lie down. It’s not bad; I’ll be fine by tomorrow.”

  “Get out!” Hana held his door open.

  “No!” Logan objected. He turned his body away from her and refused to engage, brows knitted and grey eyes flashing.

  “Fine.” Hana placed her
hands on her hips. “Get out of your own accord or I’ll fetch a wheelchair. You choose!”

  Tired and in pain, Logan obeyed, closing the door with his backside and following Hana into the waiting room. “This is bloody ridiculous!” he grumbled. Sitting on a plastic chair, he put his head down and closed his eyes while Hana paid the fee. She appeared next to him with a green form and a pen. At the section asking for details of the accident, Hana paused and looked at Logan.

  “What do I say?” she demanded. “I’m not lying.”

  He sighed. “Give it here.” Balancing it on his knee, he wrote in a childish right-handed font. Hana watched him give details of a fall downstairs and shook her head in disgust.

  “You promised you weren’t a liar!” she hissed and Logan leaned close so he could whisper in her ear.

  “Only with you,” he whispered, his breath ruffling Hana’s fringe. “I will never lie to you.”

  Logan went into the doctor on his own. He hovered in the doorway but she ignored him, not wanting further association with the day’s events. Scrupulously honest, she felt tainted by a sentence of less than ten words which were all untrue.

  Logan reappeared after three-quarters of an hour, wearing his arm in a sling. Hana read a banal celebrity magazine and remembered none of it. The screech of a toddler disturbed the waiting room, his head stuck in a terracotta flowerpot. Hana winced as his wails echoed in the pottery and exited the little drain hole at the top. She stared at the cover of the magazine and avoided thoughts of breaking him out with her stiletto heel. Logan looked at her sideways from under his long eyelashes. His nervous grey eyes showed he knew the argument hid just beneath the fragile surface of her hatred of public spectacles. Hana ground her teeth and maintained her silent vigil while the child wailed into his flowerpot.

  “Logan Du Rose?” A pretty blonde nurse called him after ten minutes and he followed her out of sight, his long legs moving with grace across the waiting room. Again, he hovered at the doorway and Hana refused eye contact. She tapped an impatient fingernail on her knee and wished she could take herself back in time to the start of the year. She’d ignore the damned rat under her desk and save herself a heap of trouble. Her audible groan attracted the attention of other patients as she realised she’d have missed out on the best sex of her entire life.

  Logan reappeared ages later, his arm in a sling and a black plaster cast stretching from his hand to above his elbow. Hana narrowed her eyes in victory, remembering the awful sound of bone cracking and feeling vindicated.

  “There’s an extra charge,” the receptionist called as Hana followed Logan to the door. He pushed his right hand into his jeans and she waved him away. She handed over her visa card as the woman read out the list of Logan’s medical procedures including x-rays and things she struggled to pronounce.

  “A drip?” Hana demanded, recognising one of the words. “What kind of drip?”

  The receptionist glanced at Logan and pursed her lips. “I can’t discuss patient details with anyone else,” she commented.

  Logan waited for Hana and struggled to open the front door. She felt a numbness descend over her brain and couldn’t bring herself to help him.

  The scent of fresh flowers filled the house and Hana discovered a bouquet from Bodie in a vase on the kitchen table. He’d left them in the paper and the stems reached for the water in desperation. Hana fingered the delicate petals of a lily between her fingers while she read the note tucked into the wrapper.

  ‘Sorry Mum! I didn’t mean for you to meet Amy and Jas that way. I’ll visit soon and we can talk about it. There’s something else I need to tell you, anyway. It’s important but face to face would be better. Happy Birthday for Tuesday, love Bo. Xxx’

  Hana let out a deep breath, trying not to cry as she reached in her bag for her phone to send him a text. Not finding it, she checked her pockets as panic set in. It wasn’t there. She thought back to the last time she used it as Tiger crept into the room and wound himself around her legs, mewing. “Your bowl’s full, silly boy,” Hana cooed as she smoothed his soft fur. “Have you really missed me? Where’s my phone, boy?” A memory of Liza confiscating it snapped into her brain and Hana let out a groan of annoyance. “Noooo!”

  Logan walked into the room and filled the kettle one-handed. “What’s wrong?”

  “My phone!” replied Hana, the whine evident in her voice. “Your sister confiscated it when I tried to call the police.”

  Logan grimaced. “Sorry.” He reached into his jeans pocket and fished it out. “She gave it to me as I left.”

  Hana snatched it from his fingers, ignoring the stab of pain that crossed his face as she jarred his body. She walked into the hallway to text Bodie, wandering around the house seeking privacy. ‘Thanks for the flowers, I love them. Text me when you get this. Love you Bo, Mum. Xxx’

  Hana pressed the button to send her message and sat down on her old double bed, looking around her spare room. She thought back to her excited exit from Culver’s Cottage just a few days ago, embarking on her new marriage with hope. “What have I done?” she sighed, running a hand over her face. Her mascara smudged and she examined the black line across her fingers. Anka’s image floated across her mind’s-eye, her slender hand waving from across the street from the registry office. The small wave and the tears made sense if she’d left Tama. Hana thought back to their rental house the night she borrowed her wedding outfit. Anka’s odd behaviour added to the picture of a woman abandoning a hopeless situation. “Oh, Anka,” she sighed. “What a bloody mess. And now you’ve dragged me into it.”

  At the thought of Tama, Hana closed her eyes in misery and flopped backward on the bed. The day’s events made her body feel like a concrete block, weighed down by worry. Her wedding seemed like a farce and it mattered that nobody carried her over the threshold. Hana picked at a loose threat on the duvet cover, disappointment screwing up her face as she watched a small spider journey across the yellow stained ceiling.

  A noise in the doorway caused her to open her eyes and lift her head. Logan balanced a cup of hot liquid that dribbled down the side with the awkward tilt of his cast. He held it out to her like a small boy offering a special toy, craving her approval. His grey eyes were the colour of smoke and his fringe fell over his eyelashes, bouncing as he blinked. Hana sat up and reached for the mug, wiping the drips away with her index finger and taking a long swallow of the tea. “Nice, thanks.”

  Logan sat on the bed next to her, causing the mattress to tip Hana towards him. They sat in silence for a while, Hana drinking and Logan wondering what to say to her. “I’m sorry,” he began. “That was a stinking way for it to end, him turning up like that.”

  “Is Tama your son?” Hana voiced the concern which forced its way into her brain as the men squared up against each other. “You’re very alike.”

  Logan’s eyes narrowed. “No, Hana. No way.”

  Silence descended. It seemed Logan would only tell her his history if she asked for it. She tested the water. “Why are you so close to him? Sorry, I mean that in the past tense.” She eyed his cast assuming the relationship would be over.

  Logan watched Hana with unnerving intensity, his eyes searching her for trustworthiness. His gaze rested on the clincher, his ring on her finger. “Michael’s his father.” He sighed. “Guy’s a douche bag.”

  “Oh!” Hana bit her lip, remembering how Tama told Michael he hated him. That, at least made sense. “So where does Kane, the alcoholic dad fit in?” she asked.

  If Logan resented the questions fired at him, he didn’t show it, responding with patience. Yet she knew she walked a tightrope. One question too many and he would shut down and leave her outside the Du Rose circle to flounder alone. “Kane dated Tama’s mum. She always liked Michael, but nobody realised it progressed into anything. He was at medical school. It got messy and complicated and she stayed with Kane. Everyone found out, including Kane. He bought Tama up all wrong, on purpose. I tried to me
ntor the kid while I was here, but Kane beat the crap out of Tama five years ago and threw that little gem at him in the process. I paid for him to go to school in Hamilton then. My Uncle Reuben never let Tama’s mother back onto the property after she left. I don’t really know why. After Tama ran off with that stupid typist, I tracked him down and he told me some stuff I probably didn’t want to hear. I spoke to Michael last night and he doesn’t care. He’s an ass hole. He always knew.” Logan shook his head and finished his sentence with a worse swear word, indicating he didn’t approve of his brother’s carelessness towards his unintended offspring.

  Hana served her next question while her husband seemed willing to answer. “What’s the story with that big scar on your side? How did you get hurt? You’re so weird about it; I know it wasn’t an accident.”

  Logan ran his good hand over his face and through his hair before answering. His voice sounded calm but cold. Hana put her hand over his. “It doesn’t bother me,” she said. “I’ve kissed most of it and I know you don’t have any feeling there. It affects nothing, but I want to know how it happened.”

  He provided only sparse details, his tone and face impassive and devoid of emotion. “We played a game. It’s a stupid game and always led to something bad. Kane’s foster-sister won a dare. She told Kane to stab me. He and Barry chased me through the bush until they caught me. Barry split me open with a machete and Mike carried me home. Kane thought it funny when he shined the torch on me and saw my guts spilling out. I was eleven.”

  “Barry?” whispered Hana. “Your own brother?”

  Logan turned to sit sideways on the bed so he could face her. “Barry behaved like Kane, do you get it? He was one of them.” His voice tapered off and he chewed his lip. Hana felt a wave of guilt for pushing him.

  “It’s fine, you don’t have to tell me any more.” She reached out and put her hand over Logan’s writhing fingers. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked.”

  He lay back on the bed, shifting his body so his head reached the pillows. The sling rubbed an uncomfortable red line around his neck. His left foot touched the floor, his right leg bent and Hana watched the rigidity in his body release. She knew she’d married a complete stranger.