by Jenni Ogden
I forced my eyes open and saw Lara’s wide-eyed gaze. Adam’s hand was rubbing my back and I fought away the rising panic, staring at the carpet, willing myself to breathe, willing myself not to throw up. I clenched my hands tightly over my mouth, my whole head jittering, my body a swamp of pulsing fear held in by desperation.
“Deep breaths, come on Georgia, slowly now: in, out, in, out.”
I clung to Adam’s voice, forcing myself to do as he said.
“Don’t cry Mum. Please don’t cry.” Lara’s small voice called me back and I closed my eyelids over my tears and thought about relaxing my arms, my fists, my legs, my body. I was floating, absorbing the aroma of Adam’s slightly sweaty scent, my face buried in the safety of his chest. I felt a smooth warm hand on my arm and opened my eyes on Lara’s red hair. She was kneeling at my feet, stroking my arm, her voice crooning, sobbing. “I’m sorry Mums, I didn’t mean to upset you. I’m sorry. Please don’t cry. It’s all right. I don’t need any of that stuff for my stupid assignment. Please don’t cry.”
Chapter 2
Monday morning came as it always did after the weekend and I had to become the calm, together woman all my colleagues thought I was. And I bloody was, most of the time. Only Adam knew my other self. Occasional other self. Before we got up—me still dozy from the sleeping pill I’d taken in the wee small hours in a last ditch attempt to get some sleep—Adam did his best to jolly me along, send me, superwoman, back to my other world where I strode with confidence through the antiseptic, male-dominated corridors of medical power.
Apparently last night after I’d had been ‘packed off to bed’ as Adam put it, he and Lara had talked for a long time.
“What did you tell her?” I asked, the nausea back home in my throat.
“I was worried that I was talking out of turn, but Lara was beside herself. She’s not used to seeing you crying and so terribly upset. You’re an expert at hiding those feelings from the kids. So I didn’t think I had any other option but to tell her what I knew about Danny.”
“I have told her quite a lot about him. She knows that an old school friend of mine suggested I look him up when I was on holiday in New Orleans. I’ve told her he was a jazz singer in a nightclub. Actually, I think that’s what intrigues her most. She’s romanticized it.”
Adam turned me over to face him. “Yes, sweet, I know she knows all those things. You’ve no need to be defensive. I’m talking about the things she doesn’t know.”
“I know Lara’s never seen a photo but I’ve tried to give her some idea of him. I’ve told her that he was charming, funny, and charismatic, and that he had a mop of curly red hair exactly like hers. I even told her he had a crooked grin. She knows that the only family of his I ever met was his grandmother in New Orleans, that his parents lived in New Zealand, and that after Danny died they refused to ever meet me or let me contact them.”
“Calm down. I’m on your side here. Perhaps we’ll be able to locate Danny’s family somehow; it’s a different world now. They’re probably on bloody Facebook.”
”I have no idea where they live. Mum and Dad thought they’d gone back to New Orleans because that’s where Danny’s father came from. I don’t know. For all I know they might be back in New Zealand. I don’t know and I don’t want to know. They didn’t want anything to do with me. They probably blamed me for his death. They didn’t care about me or what his death did to me. They didn’t care about their own grandchild.” I scrabbled under my pillow for a tissue and blew my nose.
“You told me they didn’t even know you were pregnant.“
“They didn’t, but they didn’t want to know, did they? They didn’t deserve to know.”
“Come on Georgia, that’s a bit harsh. They were hurting as much as you. More probably. They’d just lost their son.”
“And I’d lost the man I loved and the father of my baby.”
“OK. Enough of this. It’s pointless. It was sixteen years ago. The important person now is Lara, and how we’re going to help her come to terms with all this. She seems to be in the early throws of what my clinical colleagues call an identity crisis.” Adam placed a finger in each corner of my mouth and pulled it up into a smile. “You must have known this would come to a head some day.”
“But what more can I tell her? Do you want me to make something up about why he died?”
“No, of course not. Lara deserves as much of the truth as we can give her. All I did was explain why you couldn’t tell her much more because of how you were affected by his accident.”
“What did you tell her?”
“The truth. That after Danny’s terrible death you were lost for months in a fog of depression. I told her you were traumatized and that when someone is traumatized like that their memory shuts down to protect them until they are in a space where it is safe to bring those memories back.”
“Oh, no. She didn’t need to know all that. What good will it do?”
“It might help her understand. I told her that having a baby inside you was what saved you and gave you the strength to pull yourself through the nightmares and start to live again. It’s important for her to know that she, baby Lara, gave you everything to live for, and that by keeping those traumatic memories of whatever happened that night when Danny died locked safely away, you were able to go on with your life and be a good mother.
“Do you think she understood?” I whispered.
“I imagine so. She has an emotional IQ as high as the sky. It might take a while for her to digest it and the two of you might need a few heart-to-hearts.”
“Did you tell her anything else?”
“Only that having a baby to love made you so strong that you were able to go back to your studies and eighteen months later pass your Neurosurgery Fellowship exams.” Adam cupped my face in his hands and forced me to look into his eyes. “Damn it Georgia, you were one of the few women to do so, especially back then. Be proud of that.”
I gently patted beneath his eyes, pools of dark, shimmering a little. “Is that what you really think?”
He moved his hand over mine and kissed my palm, sending little shivers scuttling up my spine. “It is what I think. You’re the most courageous and wonderful person I know. And sometimes toxic memories are best kept firmly in a box.”
“Did you tell Lara I was in a psychiatric hospital for two months?”
“I did not. That’s for you to tell her if and when you’re ready. It’s enough that she knows you were in a terrible state for a long time, and that’s why you haven’t been able to tell her more about Danny’s accident. I hope she understands now that it’s not that you want to keep what you know from her, but that you don’t know it yourself.”
Shit happens. That was about the best description of a long gray Monday that I could come up. Days when I wasn’t in theater were always second best, especially now I had to stand in for Peter. Tedious meetings about budgets and how to cut staff and facilities and operate on more patients. No gap for lunch. Straight into my outpatient clinic. Patients in the door, out the door, no time for anything resembling bedside manner, or whatever the variety is when the patient is fully clothed and sitting in a chair. But at least I had a chance to finish up by five-thirty and make it home in time for dinner. That almost never happened on theater days.
Not today though. Too many patients I’d given just another five measly minutes to while they got themselves together after being told something that no one ever wanted to hear. Then the very last appointment, and a new patient walked in. Faded jeans and a brilliant emerald-green silk shirt that seemed almost the color of his eyes. And that hair—dark red, messy loose curls, his hand reaching up again and again to flick them out of his eyes. Not a care in the world. A brave front to protect him from the bad news he knew lurked in the brain scans he carried with him. New patients always took longer, but Alfie Juvnik took longer than most.
I staggered from the hospital close to seven o’clock. Great, I was on track to be late home as u
sual. Not that I’d be able to enjoy the leftover lamb and salad that was our standard gastronomic delight following a Sunday roast. The nauseating lump of worry and apprehension sitting low in my stomach would see to that—it was waiting until around two in the morning when it would rise up and choke me. Another night like last night to look forward to.
My thoughts continued to bumble around my aching head as I stepped onto the 7.10pm train to Maida Vale. Why did Alfie come to see me? Why bloody me? Today of all days when my head was already weighed down with Lara’s questions? The clinic secretary could have scheduled him for any of the other clinics on any other day but Monday; a choice of six neurosurgeons.
He didn’t look like Danny, not really. Not that I had much of a picture of the details of how Danny looked after sixteen photo-free years, but the hair and the eyes were enough. Those I’d never forget—and Alfie had them. And now I’d have to clip his aneurysms. I should have discouraged him. Bloody truth is, if we left them be and kept a close eye on them, gave Alfie an MRI every year to check that they weren’t getting too big, he’d probably die of old age at ninety-nine, his aneurysms happily intact. Why couldn’t I have made that his only option? Oh, for the olden, golden days when doctors didn’t have to tell their patients everything and then expect them to make such impossible decisions. What will it be today sir? Would you prefer a brain operation that carries its own risks, however minor, however unlikely, or would you prefer to live with the knowledge that some small flaw in your makeup might kill you one day when you’re least expecting it? Or might not.
Why was I being so flippant? Christ, if we knew all the possible ways any one of us might die, we’d all be screaming wrecks. The sooner we got the message that all these expensive screening tests were double-edged swords, the better.
I suddenly wanted to be home, right now, with my normal healthy family. At least a day at the office put our trivial problems into perspective. How to organize transport to cricket and netball practices and working out how to pacify a daughter who wants to know who she is.
Thank heaven for Adam, my voice of reason. Where would I be without him to talk to? We discussed our kids, the books we were reading, our friends’ problems, our own problems, my patients, Adam’s students, my operations, his experiments, the hospital, the university, our childhoods, our dreams for the future. I shivered, and pulled my coat closer. But my ghastly past? Not for years. Danny had been safer locked away in the compartment in my head where I kept the emotions I didn’t have the guts to deal with.
I almost ran the dark moonless streets from the Maida Vale train station to our house. Perhaps Lara would leave it alone now after Adam’s chat with her. I stopped outside our gate, trying to catch my breath. Not forever she wouldn’t. This was it. The end of fooling myself that I could keep Lara happy without her knowing the truth about why, how, her father had died. And those were questions I couldn’t answer.
“Sorry, sorry. I had a clinic that went on and on.”
Adam opened his arms and I collapsed into him, my head buried in his familiar smell, sudden tired tears threatening to overflow.
“Hey, it’s OK.” Adam pulled away a little but kept his arms around my back. “You look exhausted. What you need is some stunningly delicious and soul-warming food and a very large glass of wine.” He grinned, and my wobbly head cleared.
“It’s a special concoction of left-over lamb slow simmered with all sorts of herbs and healthy greens. And I can have it on the table in a jiffy. But why don’t you go and have a nice deep bath first, and I’ll bring you your pre-dinner drink?”
“Mmm, sounds perfect. Are the kids upstairs?”
“Angels the both of them, heads immersed in their homework. They fed their faces early, poor starving mites. It’s a wonder there’s anything left for us. Now scram, and I’ll bring in the crystal goblet of Aussie red on a silver tray. Perhaps a nice cracker and Stilton as well.”
I dumped my coat and bag in our bedroom, stuck my head around first Lara then Finbar’s bedroom doors and blew them each a kiss, and ran my bath. Bliss.
Glowing and perhaps ever so slightly tipsy—the crystal glass had been over-full—I floated to the dining table and discovered that I was ravenous.
“Has Lara been OK?” I asked, when we were on to the ice cream.
“Subdued. But she’ll be fine. She’s tired, like you, and likely feeling a bit churned up after yesterday.”
“I feel terrible. It must have been scary for her to see me break down like that. Should I talk to her about it tonight? Or leave it a few days?”
“You’re her mum. You know best what to do.”
“I’ll at least see if she wants to talk or ask me anything. I hate to think of her bottling things up. ”
“Off you go then, but don’t get into too long a thing. You both need a decent night’s sleep.” Adam began collecting our plates.
“I’ll clean up when I come back down. That was a beautiful dinner. I feel like a new woman.”
“You do look a tad better than when you staggered in the door. Now go. I’ll clean up.”
Lara had moved from her desk and was half lying, half sitting on her bed, pajamas on, her headphones clamped to her ears, nose in a book. She looked up when I knocked on her open bedroom door and managed a very small smile. Taking it as an invitation, I perched on the edge of her bed, my hand automatically covering her’s with its long fingers and clean pretty nails. She pulled off her headphones with her free hand and looked up, tiny furrows in her forehead. “Hi Mums. Wussup? You OK?”
I nodded, words suddenly stuck in my throat. I leaned forward and Lara sat up and then we were chest to chest, my dark hair pressed against her red curls.
“Oh, Mum,” Lara muttered. “I was scared last night when I made you so upset.”
“Sweetheart, I’m sorry. It wasn’t your fault, it was mine. I don’t know why that happened. I suppose I’ve been waiting for the day you’d want to know more about Danny and what happened to him and dreading it, and then when it happened I went to pieces.” I was mumbling into Lara’s hair, my eyes screwed tight.
Lara made a sound that might have been a sob or a sniff. She pulled back, her beautiful eyes holding mine. They were Danny’s eyes, exactly. Green pools captured in a circle of dark gray.
“Ask me anything and I’ll tell you whatever I can,” I said, while my heart broke.
“Dad told me how you lost your memory after the accident because you were totally traumatized. Hasn’t anything come back, ever?”
“I only remember that Danny and I were both upset, but I don’t know why. A car picked me up really early the next morning. I was a mess, wandering along the road in a daze. Apparently I was hysterical and covered in scratches and grazes, and soaking wet. The man who picked me up was a farmer from up the road. Back then that road would only have had about one vehicle every two hours along it. Perhaps it’s still like that. So I suppose I was lucky he found me so early. He took me into the doctor in Claris; I think we got him out of bed. I don’t remember much about it but then the police came—there was only one policeman on the island—and I think the doctor gave me something to calm me down and I suppose the police collected some of the locals and set up a search. They found Danny’s body on a ledge near the bottom of the Pa. He could have been swept away and never been found. I couldn’t remember how I got to the road, or why I was soaked to the skin until weeks later after I’d been in the hospital having therapy and hypnosis and probably being drugged up to the eyeballs. I have only the vaguest memories of all that.” I shuddered, the cold green hospital walls closing in on me.
Lara was rubbing my hand and crying, and I stopped trying to talk and breathed: in, out, in, out.
“It’s OK, Mum. Don’t tell me any more just now.”
I took a strand of Lara’s hair and tucked it behind her ear. My hand was trembling. “This is crazy. It’s so frustrating. After all this time I still can’t think about that night without shattering. Thank you, sweet
ie, for understanding.”
“I’m not sure if I understand really, but whatever happened must have been terrible to do this to you.” Lara squeezed my hand. “Perhaps you could try therapy again? It might work better now that it’s so long ago.”
“You might be right. I’ll think about it, I promise.” I bent over and kissed her forehead. “Have you finished your homework? Because I think it’s time I tucked you in and sent you to dreamland.”
“You haven’t tucked me in since I was about ten.” Lara snuggled down in her bed and put her arms around my neck. I breathed in her sweet scent. Still a hint of the little-girl-after-her-bath smell.
“Sweet dreams, Lara-my-Lara. Mind the bugs don’t bite.” I backed towards the door and gave a little wave.
“Do you think Danny…” Lara stopped, and I could see her eyes shining.
“What?” I asked.
“Do you think he wanted me?” Her voice was almost a whisper.
“Oh Lara, he would have wanted you. He would have wanted you so so much.”
Chapter 3
I stood motionless in the scrub room adjacent to Theater Eight, my mass of black hair concealed beneath a cap, and a mask covering my nose and face. It was ten days since Alfie Juvnik had walked into my outpatient clinic, and my hardest task right now was to clear my mind of everything other than the technical processes of the operation I was about to perform. With eyes closed I imagined a string attached to the top of my head pulling me straight and tall. Inside my calmed mind I visualized a brain—not just any brain, but the very individual brain of the young man now prepped and waiting for me. Alfie’s brain was transparent, and I could see the cage of his arteries, almost glowing as they pulsated with oxygen-rich blood. I focused on the aneurysms—two of them—one protruding off the left middle cerebral artery and the other at the bifurcation of the middle and anterior arteries. Luckily they weren’t large and I concentrated on rotating the brain, first this way then that, so I could see more clearly exactly where and how each aneurysm was attached. I’d clip the more difficult one first, and then, all going well, the second. Detailed angiograms and MRI scans would be displayed on the theater monitor throughout the operation, but I’d found that, however straightforward or complicated the operation was, committing the dynamic 3D image to memory gave me the calmness and focus I needed.
