by JD Nixon
I checked over the rest of my body and noticed I was hooked up to oxygen and an IV as well. But apart from feeling generally bruised and sore, especially on my chest, nothing else seemed to be wrong with me. Maybe it was my brain, I thought, so I reminded myself that my name was Matilda Ann Chalmers, I was twenty-five-years old, almost twenty-six, I was depressingly single, had two parents and two brothers, and I worked for a beautiful man called Heller who I couldn’t decide how much I loved.
Nothing wrong with my brain.
Then I remembered Felicia and sat up in bed in alarm. I had to warn her parents what she and her revolting boyfriend were planning to do. I looked around for my phone but couldn’t see any of my possessions near me. That’s right, I thought, all my things were still at the clinic.
I pulled out my oxygen tube and struggled to get out of bed, dragging the IV trolley with me. But I’d forgotten about the brace and automatically put my full weight on my right foot. A piercing pain shooting up my leg banished every other thought from my mind. My leg collapsed underneath me and I ended up on the floor, the IV stand toppling over on me, pulled down with the momentum.
“Fuckity fucking fuck fuck!” I expressed my feelings strongly and loudly, writhing on the floor in agony, not knowing how I was going to right myself.
Heller and Clive picked that very moment to enter my room, holding a coffee and a sandwich each. They stopped at the door in surprise at my outburst and stared down at me for a moment. I stopped swearing and squirming and looked up at them.
“Oh, hello,” I said.
“Matilda, you’re awake,” Heller said calmly, and putting his refreshments down on my bedside table, carefully hauled the IV stand and me off the floor and settled me back on the bed.
I scrunched my face, knives of pain in my foot distracting me from every other stimulus. After a while the pain faded to a dull throb and I was able to communicate again. Only to find myself with nothing to say. I’d screwed up the job badly – Felicia had escaped for a third time and done God only knew what to her parents, and I’d been drugged and injured – and I was afraid of what he was going to say to me. I was definitely going to cry if he yelled at me.
He didn’t say anything though, but merely sat on the bed next to me and hugged me tightly. I clung to him for a while, before pulling away to look up at him.
“What happened?” I managed to ask, eventually.
“I’ve been trying to piece together what happened to you from talking to the clinic staff,” he said, gently pushing me back into a lying position. His face was grim. “I’m still not sure about everything. It appears that you were administered a double dose of barbiturates – an overdose. Very dangerous, Matilda. You were in a bad way when the clinic staff reached the room and spotted you after you fell from that sheet rope. You were barely breathing and your heartbeat was weak when the staff ran down to you. Then you stopped breathing a few times. Thank God the clinic medics were there to give you CPR while they waited for the ambulance. If you’d stayed in that room alone . . .” He took a deep breath and squeezed my hand. Clive watched on as he ate his sandwich, his face its usual stony facade.
“Oh.” It was all so overwhelming. But I guess that explained the sore chest. “I don’t remember any of that.”
“Luckily the ambulance arrived quickly. You could have easily died, my sweet,” he said gravely, his eyes full of emotion as he stroked my hair. “As it is, you’ve fractured your ankle from the fall.”
Great! I thought morosely. I hadn’t long recovered from having a broken hand.
“I think Felicia drugged my water, because I became sleepy after I drank it and when I woke up I was tied up. She had drugs stashed in the hems of her clothes. I’m pretty sure she was still using. Maybe she brought a stash with her.”
I told him everything I could remember about what had happened.
He listened, not interrupting, his face an unreadable mask. “I informed the clinic staff what you had told me about her running off into the woods. They searched the area and found some heroin secreted in a hollow in a tree. I think she met her boyfriend that day you heard her talking and he left some there for her. Easy enough to slip into a hem when you had your back turned.”
I felt so stupid and incompetent. I couldn’t do anything right in this job.
“I messed everything up,” I admitted sadly. “I struggled so hard not to let them give me more Heller, but I was too weak.” Tears prickled my eyes and I took a shuddery breath.
He squeezed my hand and leaned forward to kiss me on the forehead. “I’m sure you did, my sweet.”
“I tried to stop them.” I sat up. “They were going to Felicia’s parents’ house to do something terrible to them. Someone should warn them!”
“They’ve already been, Matilda. We were too late. I sent a couple of men around to their house to check on them when the clinic rang me about you. They found them trussed and badly beaten. Their house had been ransacked, furniture smashed and everything of any value stolen. That pair did sickening things to them. Both were raped with various objects several times in front of each other. And they did other degrading, appalling things that I don’t wish to tell you.” His face was neutral, but I couldn’t hide my disgust when I heard that. What kind of a person would do such a thing to her own parents? “As you can imagine, they’re extremely traumatised by the experience. But her parents don’t want to press any charges.”
“No! That’s not fair!” Thinking about what Felicia had done agitated me. I flopped back on the bed. “I completely screwed this assignment up, didn’t I? I’m so thick. I had no idea what she was up to. I should have known. I was with her all the time!” What the hell use was I if I couldn’t even control a forty-kilogram junkie? Worst. Security. Officer. Ever.
“Nothing that happened was your fault, Matilda. It was always going to be a lose-lose assignment for both her parents and us. Some people just don’t want to change, and she’s one of them. She and her boyfriend are heading for a bad end, and I only hope her parents are prepared to face that. Especially now that she’s shown them such disrespect.” A savage expression slipped through his composure. “I’m going to find out about when you can leave. You’re too far away from home here.”
“Where am I?”
“You’re in the local hospital. You needed emergency care and were too unstable to take back to the city.” He looked down on me, a pained expression crossing his face, his hand on my cheek. “I thought I was going to lose you, my sweet. I’ve never driven as fast as I did to get here after I received that phone call from the clinic.”
“Hey, I’m tougher than I look,” I said, giving him a watery smile. “It will take more than an overdose to do me in.” I covered my eyes with my hands, too emotional continue. “I just hate the thought that I’ve had all those drugs in my body. I feel so unclean.”
“I know, but it should all be gone by now. It’s been twenty-four hours. You’ve been out of it for a while.” He dropped another kiss on the top of my head and then sat back down and took my hands in his, a serious and therefore scary expression on his face. “Matilda, we need to talk.”
“What about?” I asked, my heart thumping. Oh God, I thought, he’s had enough and is going to fire me. I flicked my eyes to Clive, but his impassive features gave away nothing.
“The clinic staff found a used syringe in the room. Were you injected at all?”
I breathed a sigh of relief at his question. “No. They just shot up in front of me. I guess Felicia didn’t pack everything up properly and left the needle behind.”
“My sweet.” He looked away for a lengthy moment.
“Heller? What’s the matter?”
When his eyes returned to me, his face was blank again. “I was so concerned that they’d injected you. They’re both at huge risk of having HIV.”
“Oh.” I thought about that for a moment. “Oh. They could easily have done that. I was helpless.”
And after they left, that thought
consumed my mind for the rest of the day and I spent a sleepless night brooding over what could have been.
When Heller returned the next day, he had a kowtowed doctor firmly in his grasp, demanding that I immediately be assessed for release. I think the poor doctor was too afraid of Heller not to agree that I was ready to leave and as I’d passed the observation period for overdoses, he fast-tracked the paperwork and handed me a week’s worth of painkillers. So in less than an hour Heller was pushing me in a wheelchair, despite my embarrassed protests, towards the entrance. He had brought with him some crutches and a hideous black boot that I had to wear for the next six weeks at least. It was heavy and awkward and looked like part of an astronaut’s uniform, but as Heller pointed out, it was better than a cast, and could at least be taken off at night when I went to sleep.
In his Mercedes, speeding back to the city and to home, I relaxed against the front seat. Normally with Clive in the car, I’d sit in the back, but as I needed room for my new space boot, for once Heller promoted me to the front. I couldn’t tell how Clive felt about that – he could have been cool about it, he could have been pissed off, but all I received in return for my ‘sorry’ smile was a flat stare. I reminded myself not to ever be tempted into a poker game with him because I’d surely lose the shirt off my back. Not that he was interested anyway.
As we drove, Heller told me more about what had happened. Felicia and her boyfriend had apparently taunted her parents with the details of her escape as they alternately abused them and trashed their house. Felicia hadn’t just concealed drugs on her when she first arrived at the clinic. She’d also secreted a mobile phone in the lining of her Elmo jacket. Probably during her bathroom visit at the airport, I thought, despondent again at my performance on the assignment.
She’d used it to contact her boyfriend via text messages on a regular basis. That would explain all her time in the bathroom. She’d never had any intention of being rehabilitated, only interested in the money her parents had offered, which I already knew. But she couldn’t even last one week at the clinic for that reward without drugs, texting her boyfriend and asking him to drop her off some heroin. He flew up and decided to take the easy way to force some money from her parents while he was here, hatching the plan to rob them.
“I knew I’d heard two voices that day in the woods, although she denied it,” I said quietly, but my voice was rather unsteady. I was incredibly angry with myself about everything. I deserved to be fired this time.
Heller glanced at me sideways and pulled into the next petrol station. I hobbled on the crutches over to the facilities to splash my face and regain some composure. Meanwhile he and Clive went to attached coffee shop. When we climbed back in, he handed me a coffee and then a tiny chocolate bar. I took it gratefully, but raised my eyebrows at him. He didn’t usually condone chocolate.
“I’ve heard that chocolate can help when a woman is upset.”
Despite myself, I laughed. “Oh Heller, you’re so funny sometimes.”
He was a little offended. “I wasn’t trying to be. I was trying to be nice.”
And to my shame, that only made me laugh more.
“Well, with that reaction, I can see why I don’t try to be nice very often.” And with me still giggling, he drove off, continuing his story and sipping occasionally from his coffee.
After I’d pressed the emergency button, clinic staff rushed to the room and noticed the makeshift escape rope hanging over the windowsill. They looked out to witness me falling to the ground after I blacked out. The fact that I was unconscious at the time of the landing meant that my body was looser and although I suffered some awful bruising, I fortunately hadn’t sustained anything worse than a fractured ankle. I was lucky I hadn’t killed myself.
When the clinic staff rushed outside to me, they soon realised I had worse problems than a fractured ankle. My pulse was weak and my breathing shallow and irregular. They summoned an ambulance, but on the way to the hospital I took a turn for the worse and the paramedics had to revive me.
“I don’t remember any of that,” I admitted. “I would have liked to thank them for saving my life.”
“I did it for you,” he assured. “And for me.”
I turned to him with a small smile. “Felicia’s boyfriend offered me a new job.”
“Oh yes?” he asked sceptically, taking another sip of coffee.
“Yeah. He thought I’d be good at swallowing men’s rods for a living.” He choked in surprise at my response, coffee spurting from his mouth in a gush. I turned a puzzled glance at him, my eyes even bigger with mock-innocence, in my most naive voice. “What do you think he meant by that?”
He patted me on the cheek with amused affection, wiping himself down with a napkin.
“I’ll show you tonight, if you like,” he offered, laughing. I smiled back, knowing that he’d let go of his incredible anger at least for a short time.
We arrived home in the late afternoon and I had to suffer the indignity of being carried upstairs to his bed. He called Dr Kincaid, who arrived promptly and examined me, recommending bed rest for the next few days. I spent those days in Heller’s flat, Niq keeping me company during the day as he did his schoolwork and Daniel joining us after work. But then I moved back to my own flat, clumsily learning to manoeuvre myself around with the crutches.
Obviously, fieldwork was out of the question for me, so I was forced to work in the office for the next six weeks, filing, preparing reports, answering the phone. My ankle recovered well and Dr Kincaid gave me some strengthening exercises to do to help mobilise it again.
Two weeks into my office duties, I realised that I hadn’t seen or heard from Heller for a couple of days, and he wasn’t answering his phone.
I turned to Daniel. “Where’s Heller? I haven’t seen him for days.”
“He’s gone interstate for business. He’ll be back later today,” Daniel advised distractedly, busy pounding his keyboard.
The next evening as I watched the late news on TV, one story made my heart stop beating for a moment. A photograph of Felicia flashed up on the screen – the same photo that her parents had given me to identify her. Following it was a more recent photo of Paulie, clearly a mug shot. I turned up the volume.
“. . . have been identified as nineteen-year-old prostitute, Felicia Evelyn Heyne, and her twenty-six-year-old boyfriend, Alberto Paul Vincelli. Police confirm that the bodies were found in an isolated part of the state forest by a bushwalker. Preliminary investigations suggest that both were kneeling as they were shot, each sustaining a single bullet wound to the back of the head. It is believed that they may be the victims of a drug deal gone wrong, as both were known drug users. Police have not been able to determine the last movements of either of the victims, but urge anyone with information to contact them immediately at Crime Stoppers on 1800–” I switched off the TV.
Oh God! I thought, nausea rising in my throat. I went straight to my phone, punching in a familiar number.
“Matilda? Is everything okay?”
I took a deep, shaky breath. “Heller, I’ve just seen the news. What have you done?”
A significant pause. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said coolly, before replacing the handset with a gentle click.
I stood in my living room, the phone dangling from my hand. He was an unforgiving man and it was entirely in his nature to take revenge, especially on anybody who harmed me. In fact, the last person who’d hurt me badly had been fortunate to be taken into police custody rather than being ‘taken care of’ by Heller. I rang Daniel.
“Hi sweetie, it’s me,” I greeted him. “Can you tell me if Heller went interstate by himself?”
“No, he took Clive with him. Problem?”
“No. Thanks, Daniel,” I said softly.
I wasn’t sure how I felt, not really having any experience in caring deeply for a man who might possibly be a cold-blooded killer. The rational side of my mind reminded me that I didn’t really know anyth
ing – I only had suspicions. I was being unfair to judge Heller guilty until proven innocent. So I tried to push those awful, uneasy thoughts from my mind. What was done was done, one way or another, and nothing I felt or did would make the slightest difference to anyone now. But I didn’t sleep well that night.
The next day I rang the Heynes, even though I had no idea what to say to them. They’d suffered the most debasing experience of their lives and then lost their only child. I couldn’t even imagine what they were going through. I spoke to Mrs Heyne for ten minutes, managed to splutter out some remotely genuine condolences and listened with awkwardness as she told me quietly that they blamed themselves for how flawed and troubled Felicia had turned out.
“What do you think happened to her?” I asked, tentative about raising the subject.
“Drug deal gone wrong, just as the police suspect. What else?” She laughed, and it contained all the bitterness that was absent from her voice. “A vigilante punishing her for what she did to us? I don’t think so.”
No, I thought, feeling ill again. But maybe a vigilante punishing her for what she did to me.
“I’m very sorry for your loss,” I said, preparing to ring off.
“We lost Felicia a long time ago,” were her final words.
I felt unbelievably flat afterwards and lay on my lounge for a while thinking about everything – life and death and how some people’s lives are full of love and sunshine and others with misery and darkness. I knew I definitely wanted to be on the love and sunshine side of the ledger, not the other. And that tormented musing probably affected my judgement when I received yet another late night phone call from my love-rat ex-boyfriend, Will, begging me to come and visit him. Instead of hanging up on him as I usually did, I stayed on the line listening, and even promised to think about it. He was ecstatic, obviously imagining that his concerted campaign to win me over again was starting to bear fruit.
