Afterlife of Alanna Miller

by Carlton, Demelza

"Please stay," I said.

  TWENTY-SIX

  "Oh shit. Dr Miller!" an unfamiliar voice hissed. "Dr Miller!"

  I opened my eyes to see an orderly pacing around my bed, hissing for Dr Miller. I looked around for the elusive Dr Miller, before realising he meant Caitlin. She still sat on the chair beside the bed, but her head rested on her arms on my pillow as she slept soundly.

  "Shhh, don't wake her," I told the orderly.

  He wrung his hands. "But she'll get in trouble if Dr Hogan sees her here asleep and she's on her way."

  "Then let me," I said softly. "Caitlin, angel. It's Nathan. Wake up, angel."

  I reached out and stroked her hair lightly. It was softer than I remembered and much longer, too. "Caitlin, wake up, it's Nathan." I took her hand in both of mine and squeezed her fingers gently. "Wake up, angel."

  Her face lit with an incredible smile, the like of which I never thought I'd see again outside of dreams. "Nathan?" she murmured, her eyes still closed.

  "Right here, angel." I told her. "You've fallen asleep at work, so you have to wake up now."

  "Hmmmm?" She blinked, sitting up slowly. Her hands flew to her shirt. "Oh shit – I didn't mean to fall asleep!"

  "Thank you for staying." I told her. "It looks like I – no, we – got a good night's sleep."

  She smiled, a little embarrassed, and opened her mouth to say something, but didn't get a chance.

  "Ah, you're awake." The voice was unfamiliar and so was the woman it came from. "You're in hospital, Nathan, and I'm Dr Hogan. Do you remember what happened?"

  All of it. What they did to Alanna, what they did to Caitlin, the end of my contract because my job was done. Years of doing nothing but security shifts. Wondering what had happened to Caitlin, dreading that she was dead and one of them had survived to go after her. Years of nightmares and sleep deprivation. Waking up here and finding out she was alive.

  I cleared my throat. "I couldn't sleep, so I took some sleeping pills. When they didn't work, I took some more. I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn't get back to sleep, so I took some more. Then I woke up and she was here." I smiled at Caitlin.

  The smile she returned was brittle and didn't reach her eyes. She looked worried.

  Dr Hogan gave a perfunctory smile, her eyes flicking from Caitlin to me. "Your sister was worried about you when you didn't wake up and she found the empty pill bottle. She called an ambulance, which brought you in here." Because she thought you'd tried to kill yourself, was what she didn't say.

  Caitlin's fingers twined around mine, squeezing my hand. Dr Hogan's eyes settled on our joined hands and she looked disapproving. Annoyed, I replied, "If I want help sleeping, I take Temaze. If I'd wanted to kill myself, I'd have done something else that would have worked. I took a lot of Temaze because I really, really wanted to sleep and it looks like it worked because now I feel really well rested. Thank you for your help. I'm sorry my sister worries so much she called for an ambulance. Are there any problems I should know about, or should I be thinking about being discharged?"

  She looked distracted. "No, it seems like you've had almost no side effects from your overdose, except for a lot of sleep that you clearly needed. If nothing else comes up, I'll probably discharge you today." She turned to Caitlin. "Dr Miller, could I have a word with you outside, please?"

  Caitlin nodded mutely and followed her out.

  I strained to hear what they were saying.

  The orderly finished cleaning the bathroom and started to tidy up the room. "So you know Dr Miller?" he said finally.

  "She and I are old friends," I replied tersely, trying to hear the conversation outside.

  "...Nathan Miller isn't my patient, but he is an old friend of mine. There's nothing unprofessional about visiting a friend in hospital. I have a few days off, I'm not even rostered on today..."

  The orderly switched the vacuum cleaner on.

  "So what do you know about Dr Miller?" I asked him, over the noise.

  "She's an intern from over east. She left her rock star boyfriend over there and decided to come back here to do her internship. She won't mix work and her social life, though – completely professional, no matter what." He looked carefully at me and grinned. "Pity, isn't it?"

  "...that patient's head is a mess. Everyone he sees says he should get some psychiatric help, but he won't do it. The guy has vivid nightmares so bad he's afraid to go back to sleep, but not about things he imagines – he dreams of horrible things he's seen. He saw his sister's tortured dead body and not long after that he found another girl's tortured body on a beach. I'm asking you to stay out of his head."

  "Yeah," I replied, distracted.

  Caitlin said something in a low voice that I couldn't catch. My heart leaped at Dr Hogan's reply.

  "Then try to persuade him to get some help. If you really are his friend, maybe he'll listen to you. If he's in here again, I will hold you responsible."

  I could hear footsteps going away down the corridor, but I couldn't tell whose they were.

  The orderly switched the vacuum cleaner off and called, "See you later," as he headed out of the room.

  Caitlin came back in, her face clouded with annoyance.

  "What did you do to her to make her dislike you so much?" I asked her.

  Caitlin looked suspiciously at the doorway, but Dr Hogan didn't appear. "Nothing. She's just very protective of her patients, that's all. I remind her of a patient she had a long time ago who lied about what had happened to her and compromised the level of care she could give that patient. The same patient she thinks you found left on a beach to die, so she doesn't want me anywhere near you."

  "She told you that?"

  "She told me some of it when she was an intern, but that was years ago." She looked angry at the memory. "She gave me a lecture on how I couldn't recover properly unless I had psychological help, which meant telling someone everything. She likes you a lot more now than she did then." Her face cleared as she looked at me. "She'll arrange your discharge papers and you could be out of here in an hour or so." She hesitated a moment. "If you like, I could give you a lift home. My car's still in the doctors' car park."

  "What do you drive?" I asked her, suddenly interested.

  "A little Peugeot," she said quietly, "A white one."

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Caitlin's car looked almost new, a pristine white hatchback that contrasted strongly to Alanna's battered old convertible. I threw my bag in the boot and slammed it shut, almost missing Caitlin's wince at the force I exerted on her car. Virginal car, I guessed, looking at the number plate. She can't have had it for more than a few weeks.

  "So is the car a virgin? Never been touched by a man?" I asked as I slid into the passenger seat.

  The Caitlin I used to know would have blushed and had difficulty answering. The confident woman beside me replied, "Oh no, I insisted she get started early. I had a team of two men detail her, polishing and rubbing every surface, before she was mine, and the same guys service her interior every fortnight. I can't stand that chemical new car smell."

  My jaw dropped. Two men at the same time? Was she saying she'd...surely not Caitlin. How much had she changed in the last five years? "So you've been with other men while you were away?" I wanted to bite my tongue, but it was too late – the words were out.

  Dark eyes drew me into their fathomless depths as somewhere on the surface, Caitlin x-rayed my soul. I couldn't look away.

  "Do you really think it's any of your business, whether I've slept with one man or even hundreds? If you'd wanted to be a part of my life while I was in witness protection, then you should have come with me." She reversed smoothly out of the bay, curving into the lane and accelerating toward the car park exit. "Do you still live in the house you shared with your sister before?"

  My mouth was already open to protest that I'd never been offered witness protection, but the thought of going home to Chris's shrieking fury made me close it again. "Yeah, I still live there, but I
'm not really in a hurry to get home. My sister freaked out when she found me asleep, so she'll want to take her frustration out on me by screaming a lot when I get home. Maybe...maybe I could take you for coffee somewhere so we can catch up?" I glanced at my watch to make sure it was an acceptable coffee time. 10 am was normal for most people, right?

  "The closest place for coffee would be my place," she said, her eyes firmly fixed on the road. "It's one of the few luxuries I allowed myself over in Melbourne, and there was no way I was leaving my expensive coffee machine over there when I left. I might even have a packet of Tim Tams left, seeing as I can't remember eating the ones I bought last week." Her hands tightened on the steering wheel. "You know what? Stay for the whole day if you want. It's my first day off in ages and I have nothing planned. It'd be fun to catch up properly."

  I didn't need to summon a grin to my face – it appeared all by itself. "I'd love to."

  I expected her to head for where she'd lived before – her father's house – but she turned left at the traffic lights instead of right, pulling into the street behind the hospital. I'd thought the place was a parking lot, but as we approached it, I realised that parking only took up the lower levels of the building. The upper levels had windows and balconies. Caitlin parked in a numbered bay and then led the way on foot to a hidden courtyard. Open to the sky above, trees stretched up past the second storey landing.

  "Wow," I said softly, staring up at the soaring branches. "I had no idea any of this was here. It looks like a parking lot from the street. These trees must grow pretty fast."

  Caitlin laughed. "The place is called Fiona's Forest Apartments. The landscapers sourced full-grown trees for the courtyard – it was in the plans, as the place wasn't built yet when I bought it last year. Some of them are fruit trees, too. Mulberry, lemon, pomegranate, mango..." Caitlin pointed as she named them.

  I followed her up two flights of stairs, then lost count of the rest until, panting, we reached the top level of the apartment block. I wondered at my breathlessness. Hadn't I been doing enough cardio at the gym? Or had I been laid up in a hospital bed too long? I needed to get back to the gym and on the treadmill. Or go for a run tonight.

  I stared at Caitlin, her face flushed from exertion, but her eyes sparkling with excitement. If the teenager I'd first met was my perfect ten, this woman was easily an eleven. Maybe a twelve. The girl of my dreams...

  Definitely a long run. I'd need an hour of pounding the pavement to get these stirring thoughts out of my mind. Maybe even two.

  "I'll have to ask you to forgive me," Caitlin said as she turned the key in the lock, "but most of my furniture stayed in the townhouse in Melbourne, so I don't have much here. Well, I have all my stuff, my books and the kitchen stuff, but I haven't had time to do much furniture shopping. Only the stuff I ordered to be delivered when I arrived. I keep telling myself I'll get around to it when I get some time off, but today's the first day I've had off since...well, since I started, I think. I have four days off now, so hopefully I'll get that problem sorted over the next few days."

  She swung the door open and I followed her in, trying not to look surprised at how bare the place was. A tiny sofa stood in a sea of timber flooring, next to a side table that might fit a plate and a glass on it, provided the plate wasn't too big. A folding table with two plastic chairs looked out of place in the spacious dining alcove beside the galley kitchen.

  "Who's the second chair for?" I nodded at the table.

  Caitlin studied the grain of the timber floor, tracing the pattern with her toe. "For a guest. You're the first one I've brought here."

  I whistled. "I'm honoured. So my arse will be the first one to grace your chair?"

  She coughed. "Well, no, not really. I think I've sat in both chairs, so my bum's been there first." A pause. "I should get you that coffee. How do you take it?"

  "Do you have any decaf?" I asked automatically.

  She turned horrified eyes on me. "Oh shit, I forgot. You don't drink coffee."

  "I do," I admitted. "I try to avoid caffeine because I have enough trouble sleeping, is all. But you know that now you've seen my medical records." I wanted to be angry about it, but I couldn't. Caitlin deserved to know the truth about me – every sordid detail. I just didn't have the guts to tell her.

  She blushed. "Not last night."

  "No, not last night." I exhaled slowly. "I never thought I'd get to sleep with you like that again. It was wonderful."

  Caitlin laughed. She didn't seem to want to stop.

  I went over the words again in my head. "Shit. I didn't mean..."

  She reached for my hands. "I know what you meant. For some reason, I'm your security blanket – the one thing you need in bed with you so you can sleep. I've been called worse things."

  I shook my head. "Not a blanket. A teddy bear, maybe. One I want to hold tight to and never let go."

  I reached out for her slowly, my fingers sliding lightly along the sides of her waist until my hands rested on her back. Part of me needed to give her every chance to back away and let me know what I feared most – that in putting her through hell, I'd burned away any chance I had with the girl she'd been. The rest of me was begging her: Please let me kiss you. Even just the once, so I can remember it.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  My eyes locked on hers, vigilant for any change of expression that would be a precursor to the word no. She gazed back at me, a small smile on her face, until my lips met hers and she closed her eyes as I kissed her lightly.

  I pulled away a little, expecting her to break out of my hold, but she stood still, opening her eyes slowly. She let out a fresh peal of laughter, her eyes meeting mine again.

  "You always did touch me like a china doll you were afraid would shatter." She put her hands on my shoulders and pressed her body against mine as she stretched up onto her toes. "You won't break me, Nathan," she whispered into my ear. Her hands moved mine so that I held her tighter.

  I closed my eyes, wanting to savour the moment, but the memory came unbidden. "I did break you, once. I broke your fingers. On the beach." End it, she'd said, her hands on the gun as she held it to her head. Her eyes filled with despair and defeat as she tried to pull the trigger herself when I wouldn't. The audible snap of bones breaking as I wrenched the gun away from her and her wail as I turned away from her, turned on Mike who'd done this to her, done this to Alanna... How could a girl with all her fingers broken fire a gun? She couldn't shoot anyone, especially herself. So I did what she needed me to do. End it.

  "Re-broke them." Her voice was soft. When I didn't open my eyes, she took my face in her hands, pulling me down to her level. "Look at me, Nathan. You re-broke fingers that weren't healing properly. You wouldn't have been able to break them unless they were as badly healed as they were, and it was only a matter of time before a doctor would have had to do it anyway. You also saved my life. You saved me from more pain." Her eyes bored into mine.

  "I broke your fingers so I could kill Mike." I kept my voice low. "Then I blamed it on you."

  Her voice was equally low as her eyes didn't leave mine. "If I could have killed him, I would have tried. I probably would have failed, too. You saved my life. You saved me from more pain."

  "I still hurt you," I mumbled.

  She smiled then. "Actually, you didn't. I was so cold I didn't feel much of anything. I didn't know I'd been shot until you told me. I still remember seeing that cop pull a gun on you and I couldn't run fast enough to reach you before he shot you. Who else would have taken a bullet for me?" Her smile turned wistful. "There's so much I want to forget from that time, but then I remember all the things you did to help me. Always, my memories of that time come back to you."

  "This is crazy," I said hoarsely. "Talking about what happened to you as if it's nothing but a normal memory. I'd do anything for you to forgive me. It's been five years since you left me outside that church and every day I've wished I'd never let you go."

  Her hands slid under my shirt,
kneading the muscles along my back. "Of course I forgive you. You did what you had to in order to save your sister."

  I shook my head. "No, not all of it. Letting you go when I should've...should've..."

  Caitlin pulled my shirt over my head and dropped it on the floor. "There is one thing you could do for me. Something I've wanted for a long time," she breathed before her lips fused to mine.

  Oh God, kissing her brought back memories. And burned new ones into my lips, my tongue and my head. No other girl could compare.

  "Anything," I gasped. "I'd do anything for you, angel."

  "Come with me." Still kissing me, she walked me further into her apartment. I couldn't look at anything but her eyes burning with...desire? Or had I imagined it?

  She broke the kiss, took a step back and started to undress.

  I glanced around, realising that she'd brought us to the bedroom. Her bedroom. She wanted to...she really wanted to...but what if I hurt her?

  "Ow!" she said suddenly, sucking her finger.

  "What happened?" I asked, immediately concerned. All these years and my heart still jumped into my throat at the thought that she'd been hurt.

  She sounded embarrassed. "Nothing. I just stabbed myself with my name badge and now my finger's bleeding." Turning to face the mirror, she pried the badge from her shirt and threw it on the dressing table. Next, she attempted to undo her shirt buttons with her free hand, swearing under her breath.

  I stepped forward to stand behind her. "Here, let me help." I reached around her to undo the buttons for her. As I leaned down, I pressed my lips to the back of her neck. She shivered suddenly and I noticed goosebumps on her arms. "Are you cold?" I asked with concern.

  "No," she answered breathlessly. "Actually, I feel a little hot."

  I kissed her neck again, feeling the warmth of her skin under my lips. The last button slid out of its snug home and I pulled her shirt down, baring her back. So smooth. Almost no sign of the blood, the ulcers, the cuts, the bruises, the dressings – just a few faint scars on her now smooth skin. I unhooked her bra, letting the straps slide over her shoulders as I moved my lips in a line of kisses down her spine, to the waistband of her pants. I didn't want to stop, but this was Caitlin. I couldn't keep going without her consent. I needed to hear it to know I wasn't making a mistake. "Angel," I began, not sure how to ask. How did you ask a girl you almost raped whether she'd permit you to worship her like she deserved?