One Heartbeat

by Bowes, K T

  “What are the risks of the infusion?” Hana asked as they walked. She felt embarrassed as they passed the coffee truck and went in completely the other direction.

  “HIV, CJD, anything viral which is passed through human blood. It’s not common nowadays as the blood donations are screened so fiercely. It used to be a big problem as it’s human plasma, but your husband will be regularly tested so don’t worry. The cost of not having it is far greater. Especially if he’s been haemorrhaging.”

  “Dr Singh, Abdul?” The shout came from behind and the doctor turned. Hana was slower, knowing she didn’t want to walk back without him but figuring Dr Singh would be pulled away. Another doctor stood in the corridor facing them, dressed in scrubs with a green hat hiding his hair and a face mask dangling round his neck. His sideburns had run to varying shades of grey and his physique was tall and square.

  Hana swallowed, eyeing the surgeon with apprehension and intense dislike.

  “I’d be grateful if you could assist in this next one,” Hana’s brother said, speaking to Dr Singh while his green eyes raked Hana’s face. “Please could you scrub up? It needs both of us.”

  Dr Singh turned back to Hana, waved the coffee cup and thanked her. He gave her directions to get back to Logan. “It’s not too far away,” he said, smiling kindly, but Hana couldn’t absorb the instructions with her brother staring at her with such intensity.

  “Thank you,” she said woodenly, watching him walk over the smooth lino, his comfy shoes making a squeak as he strode to the theatre door. Hana felt the overwhelming urge to run and turned, dropping the magazine and slopping coffee over her hand.

  “Don’t!” Mark shouted, drawing attention from other staff members milling around. “Don’t run, Hana.”

  Hana gulped and froze on the spot, half turned to face the brother she hadn’t seen in over twenty six years. Phoenix sighed, studying Mark with her brooding grey eyes. Then she gave one of her wonderful, accepting smiles and Mark McIntyre’s face creased into a returning grin. He walked slowly towards them.

  Hana’s arms were full of baby and coffee and she felt paralysed like a rabbit in car headlights. Mark stood close, lifting the hand containing Logan’s coffee. Examining the scar on her wrist, he shook his head and looked confused. “What happened?” he asked, an artist disappointed with the result of his craft. Hana looked up at him with her big green eyes, her useless brain failing to provide her with any ready answer. She said nothing. “Infection?” he asked and she nodded. “Bugger!” he exclaimed. “Sorry.”

  He leaned towards Hana and chucked Phoenix under her chin, receiving a giggle as she turned her face away and quickly back for another peek. Mark looked at his sister and watched her wrestle with the last time she saw him, calling her names and hurling her boyfriend out of the vicarage. Hana shook her head and turned to leave but Mark caught hold of her arm. “I know you saw Dad,” he said haltingly. “Please give me the chance to make it right with you. I’m sorrier than you can imagine for what happened, especially the message after your Mum died. It was an awful thing to do and I’ve sincerely regretted it ever since. Can we meet? I’m a bit tied up at the moment with this emergency, but could you maybe ring me when you’re free?”

  Hana nodded and handed her cell phone over when he asked for it. Mark tapped around on the screen putting his number into its memory. “I’ve no pockets in my scrubs for a phone or business card.” He looked at his sister, knowing Hana wouldn’t remember his number unless he wrote it on her forehead. He handed her phone back and she put it into her pocket, never taking her eyes off his face; trying to see something there and not knowing what she searched for. Mark looked wrong footed and awkward, not like a man about to go into surgery and stick someone’s body back together.

  Noise behind him signalled his patient’s arrival, disappearing into the door behind him on a trolley surrounded by machines and wires and pushed along by orderlies and nurses. Mark looked back, regret playing across his lips. “I’m needed,” he said, his smile wistful. He daren’t touch Hana but he leaned across and placed a kiss on his niece’s forehead, as though loving his sister by proxy. Then he turned and walked away, looking back only once at the carbon copy of the beautiful Judith, standing in the middle of corridor with trolleys negotiating her as though she was a statue.

  Hana returned to Logan in a fog, getting lost twice but having no words to ask for directions. The coffee was lukewarm and a nurse let her heat it in the staff microwave, concerned at how pale and faint the patient’s wife looked. “Are you all right, love?” she asked gently. Hana gulped and nodded, clutching her daughter to her chest.

  Logan was never a pleasure to look after. He was a man who’d rather be elsewhere, but whose body trapped him on a medical ward like a pin cushion. He was never rude, but not talkative either, sitting on the bed like a caged tiger and resisting attempts at communication by those who checked on his vitals. Despite his sullenness, he was known as ‘that hunky guy’ and the single nurses fought to care for him.

  “How often do you do this?” Hana asked, wincing at Logan’s curt answer.

  “As little as possible.” He looked at the thoughtfully picked magazine in his lap and the take-away mug and felt guilty. “A couple of times in the last year. I’m usually alone. It’s nice that you’re here.”

  Hana let him drink his coffee and flick through the magazine as she sat in an armchair and fed Phoenix. Logan’s occasional disappearances swiftly made sense. “It’s more often than that, isn’t it?”

  Logan nodded. “It’s getting to be.”

  Hana’s phone bleeped in her pocket and she reached for it, noticing the sign over Logan’s head demanding visitors turn off all devices. “Oops,” she said. “I’ll just turn it off.” She checked the screen and wrinkled her nose. “Angus has covered you for the next few days.”

  Logan grunted and pulled a face as Hana flicked through her contacts list, looking for the number Mark put in. She searched under ‘M’ but found nothing.

  “What’s wrong?” Logan asked, watching her with suspicion.

  “Nothing, just checking something.” Hana realised with a jolt she’d already subconsciously decided to get in touch with Mark. She had questions. Replaying their brief conversation, it occurred to her he called Judith ‘your mother’ and she wondered if it was just a slip of the tongue. Frustrated, Hana’s fingers scrolled backwards through the contacts, beginning with ‘Z’. Had he only pretended to give her his number? Why would he play a trick like that when he seemed sincere? Hana got back to the ‘A’ list, her heart sinking lower as her eyes flicked over the screen. At the very top was a new contact. It went into the list first because it began with ‘Aa’ on purpose. Mark had typed his phone number under a new contact called ‘Aarsehole’ and it made Hana smile. Always pedantic and teasing, he had become funny in his old age. She turned her phone off, satisfied.

  Logan watched her through his eyelashes. Hana caught him looking and smiled. His mother, Miriam was the same, possessing an emotional radar which homed in on trouble like a heat seeking missile. “How are you feeling?” Hana asked him, sitting Phoenix up and patting her back.

  Logan looked at his wife, watching her hoist the baby over her shoulder and expose her breast under her blouse. “Horny,” he said, giving her a sultry look.

  Hana laughed. “Want me to call a nurse for you?”

  Logan pretended to look shocked. “You’ll do,” he said facetiously.

  Hana stood up and pulled her blouse down as the baby wriggled over her shoulder, sucking her own hand noisily. She leaned forward and kissed Logan, pleased to see the blood-stained tissue looked no worse than it did a few minutes earlier. The treatment was working and her husband looked less haggard. “You shouldn’t be so secretive about your illness,” she said, seeing Logan’s eyes flash too late to stop. “It’s a disease, not a judgement of weakness on your character.”

  “And you’re qualified to say that because?” Logan challenged. “It’s th
e Du Rose curse, Hana. Michael doesn’t have it, but I do. How is that fair?”

  “It isn’t fair!” Hana saw a nurse appear in the doorway and turn away at the sound of her raised voice. “Life’s not fair, you know that. It’s not a curse, Logan, it’s the culmination of a haemophiliac father and a carrier mother. You never stood a chance.”

  “And what about my daughter?” Logan’s eyes blazed and he seized the tube leading into his vein.

  “Don’t you dare!” Hana spat as Phoenix’s lips puckered in distress. “Your behaviour determines your strength or weakness, Logan and at the moment you’re behaving like a spoilt brat!”

  Logan’s fingers twitched over the tube, his grey eyes locked on Hana’s face. She soothed her baby and glared at him. “Don’t make me spank you,” she said with a straight face, the unfortunate connotation enhanced by a secondary, accidental flash of breast as she hoisted her grizzling daughter higher.

  Logan pursed his lips to suppress the smirk which teased at his eyes. He looked away to hide his amusement, feigning temper.

  “I saw Dr Singh when I went for coffee,” Hana said, changing the subject. She squeezed her bottom awkwardly onto the edge of the bed so Phoenix could see her daddy.

  Unable to resist his olive skinned doppelgänger, Logan lifted his hand and stroked the baby’s wrist. She cooed and sang squelchy noises, not removing her hand from her dribbly mouth. Logan laughed, putting his hand level as he noticed the steady drip, drip of liquid freeze in the pipe, unable to defy gravity. “Have you seen anyone else?” he asked her, adding, “Lately.”

  Hana’s heart sank into her boots. How was this man always one step ahead of her? It was as though he moved the battle lines with his mind, leaving her exposed and vulnerable. She wasn’t sure if she could face telling him about her father yet – it felt too raw and fragile. Hana knew her face betrayed her as her husband relented. “Want me to leave it?” he asked and Hana fought tears of gratitude.

  She stared at a poster on the wall with an intense gaze, seeking her inner equilibrium and chastising herself for not being more understanding with her husband. Hana emotionally pushed and shoved, insisting Logan tell her his deepest fears and thoughts, forcing her way into his sensibilities in an awful need to know everything. Yet he consistently showed her compassion, not mimicking her selfish behaviour. For the millionth time since they married, Hana felt woefully inadequate, as though not deserving the handsome Māori on so many levels. “Thank you,” she muttered. “We will talk, just not now.” She leaned in and kissed him, her eyes full of unshed tears.

  Phoenix grabbed hold of the rail at the back of the bed and almost lifted off her mother’s shoulder as Hana sat up again. “You’re a little monkey,” Hana told her and the baby beamed, not caring. She enjoyed another breastfeed and fell asleep, laid flat on her back along Logan’s long legs, her head against his knees. He rubbed her feet in his large slender hand and read the car magazine with the other.

  “Do you know how Barry died?” Logan asked, without looking up.

  Hana shook her head. “Your older brother? No.”

  “He fell off Jack’s horse and landed on a fence post. A shard of wood went through his stomach.” Logan looked up and their eyes met, Hana remaining still and quiet to preserve the moment of confidence. Her husband worried at his full lower lip. “Ironic really, after he and Kane split me open in the same place on purpose. He went to hospital and the surgeons stitched him up. I thought it served him right, but the blood transfusion they gave him was dirty and he caught something nasty. It happened the year I saw you on the train and we left England early after Mum received a telegram from Dad. Mum wouldn’t let them take Barry back to hospital and he died at the hotel after the most miserable year of his life. The post mortem showed he had a nasty strain of hepatitis and HIV.” Logan’s eyes narrowed as he shook the tube in his left hand, causing the bag of fluid to jangle against the metal rack. “If this isn’t a curse, Hana, then what the hell is it?”

  “I don’t know,” she whispered, shaking her head. “I don’t know, darling, but I do know it’s not a weakness.”

  They were silent after that. Hana sat in the armchair and closed her eyes, praying for Logan and agonising over Mark and her father, looking for the place in her heart where forgiveness should be. She saw Logan’s hatred and bitterness and recognised it in herself. It was frustrating to get to this same place again. She believed she’d done it to death and released both men, yet there she was at the same impasse. It was a bridge she crossed countless times, finding herself back on the wrong side with no clue how she arrived there. Her mind wandered to her argument with Bodie and his attitude towards Logan and she mentally explored her son’s emotions. Vik was his father and she had effectively replaced him with this larger-than-life male. The word ‘disappointing’ crawled into her thinking and she wondered how it got there. It wasn’t her word but it fitted. Bodie felt disappointed she’d replaced Vik with Logan. An awful realisation dawned on Hana like a mist crawling off the mountains, taking over and reducing visibility to within its reaches and altering perspective. She was disappointed her father had replaced her beautiful mother with Elaine. As she named the feeling, the sting intensified and left. “I’m disappointed,” she said out loud.

  “Why?” Logan’s voice sounded gruff and sulky.

  “It makes sense.” Hana sat up. “In the same way you’re ‘the spare’ for Bodie, she’s taken over that role for me. I’ve been so cruel. Bodie has no right to dictate my life choices or stand judgement over me, so I can’t do the same to him.”

  “Who?” Logan’s eyes flashed with suspicion and Hana bit her lip.

  “No-one, sorry. I’m just rambling.” She settled in the chair and fixed unseeing eyes on the poster again. The thought went round and round in her head, justifying and then denying. Logan Du Rose made her life worth living again and no matter which way Hana cut the cloth, it made the same garment. Her children could talk to her about their grief and concerns but they couldn’t touch her marriage. Yet she couldn’t demand that level of loyalty if she wasn’t prepared to give it. She needed to see Robert again and apologise for her behaviour to Aunty Elaine - his wife.

  Logan finished after a few hours, climbing off the bed with a similar level of enthusiasm as a released prisoner. The nurse smiled indulgently as she stuck a plaster over the infusion site in the crook of his arm and as soon as she left the room, Logan ripped it off and flicked it into the bin. It was like a game and explained why Hana saw no signs of his covert hospital visits. They extracted the car from the multi-storey car park, paying an exorbitant fee to a machine near the stairwell. “Well, that was expensive and boring,” Logan grumbled, still clutching his treasured magazine.

  “Not to mention a little lifesaving,” Hana said with a snort. She drove Logan to a cafe on Victoria Street and fought for parking, valiantly winning against a larger SUV which couldn’t squeeze into the space. She fed coins to the meter and led her husband towards the smell of fresh coffee. They settled in a corner, Phoenix snoring over her father’s shoulder.

  “You know I met my father,” she said, fiddling with the sugar bowl. “But you guessed anyway. Tama didn’t confess so you must have extra sensory perception. Or you’ve tagged me somehow with GPS.” Her brow knitted at her casual mention of the small app lodged on her phone which saved her from her kidnapper. “How did you know?”

  “Your dad rang my cell phone last night,” Logan said with a smirk. “It’s the only number he had for us, so he rang it. He saw how upset you got when you realised his new wife was your aunt. He wanted to talk to you.”

  “Oh.” Hana put her head down, ashamed. “I think I was rude.”

  Logan said nothing, not confirming or denying, keeping his opinion to himself as always. Their coffee arrived and Logan smiled pleasantly at the young blonde waitress. Her cheeks flushed and she scuttled away. Hana shook her head in exasperation at the effect her gorgeous husband had on women. He was oblivious. “What?�
�� he said, catching her look of irritation.

  Hana sighed, bored with explaining the source of the nasty jealous streak which flashed in her green eyes. She knew it made her look sour and undeserving of the handsome man at her table. Fixing a serene look on her face, she tried not to scowl at the two girls staring and giggling from behind the coffee machine. Logan shifted Phoenix onto his other shoulder, administering a soft kiss to her head which drove the girls mad with the cute factor. Hana gritted her teeth and kept smiling. “What do you normally do after one of those transfusion thingies?” she asked, sipping her coffee.

  “Go back to work,” Logan shrugged.

  “Oh, but Angus has given you the next couple of days off sick,” Hana said, sounding disappointed. “Don’t you want them?”

  Logan pulled a face. “I don’t need that long; I’ll go back tomorrow. What do you want to do today, seeing as you have my undivided attention?”

  Hana considered lovely pastimes, like going up to Culver’s Cottage for peace and privacy. Logan’s phone bleated its annoying sound from his pocket and Hana’s dreams floated away into the winter sky. Logan answered with a curt, “Yeah.” It made him sound busy and impatient, but he handed the phone straight to Hana. She took it with a perplexed look on her face. Logan shifted Phoenix, laying her over his thighs and patting her back as she grumbled with stomach ache and brought her knees up to her chest.

  Hana heard Robert McIntyre’s Scots accent wavering from the phone. “Hello hen,” he began, using the familiar expression. “I asked your husband last night if you’d like to meet up today. I thought I’d ring again when I didn’t hear back.”

  “He was late home.” Hana defended her husband, irrationally as his face told her he didn’t need her to. “We’ve been busy with an appointment.”

  Hana’s father sounded needy and it made him pushy. She tried to imagine not seeing either of her daughters for twenty-six years and then having less than a month to catch up. She took a deep breath. “We’re in town now. We can be with you in the next half an hour. Where would you like to meet?”