by Harper Bliss
If only she hadn’t fucked Inez in her sparse, barely lived-in apartment along the canal that afternoon. If only she’d been a little bit stronger.
She knocked back a few large gulps, barely tasting the wine, which had been expensive—she couldn’t afford the nasty headache a cheap bottle would leave her with in the morning—and considered which one of her mistakes was the biggest: not going with Inez when she’d left for Africa, or allowing herself to become so enthralled by her all over again. It didn’t matter. She’d screwed up in both cases, and had lost two people she fiercely loved.
“And now what?” she asked herself, looking at the miserable expression of her face in the reflection of the wide-bellied wine glass. Because going back to the state of harmonious peace and quiet she’d found in between getting over Inez and falling for Claire didn’t seem like an option anymore. Back to the ascetic lifestyle of the top trauma surgeon who had no time for indulgences like love? Back to daily kickboxing sessions to ward off her frustrations? To pretending to everyone around her that everything was just dandy?
If anything, for a woman like herself, this could at least be a learning experience. She looked into the dark red liquid in her glass and shook her head. Everything she believed she had learned had proven to be utter bullshit. So she wasn’t perfect, and she needed to be forgiven, except Claire couldn’t forgive her.
She drank again until the glass was empty. When she grabbed the bottle for a refill she noticed it was near-empty. She poured the remaining drops into her glass and gulped them down as though she was suffering from severe dehydration. She knew better. Margot always knew better. That was her biggest problem.
She let her head fall back onto the sofa, closed her eyes, but immediately, as though her they were still open, the room started spinning on the back of her eyelids. It turned and turned into an unrecognisable spiral of muted tones of brown and beige.
“Fuck it,” she said, in the determined tone of voice she might use to instruct a colleague on how to treat a patient after Margot’s initial emergency treatment was done. “I’m trying one more time.”
Margot ignored the wobbliness in her legs and headed for the door. With an automatic gesture, she grabbed her helmet from its place on the hallway cabinet, paused for an instant, then tucked it under her arm. It was late. The roads would be quiet. She was always a careful driver, and she would pay extra attention to her surroundings tonight. All she wanted was to get to Claire fast. To take advantage of the confidence that glowed inside of her. To deliver the emotional speech that had been brewing in her mind for days—the one she hadn’t been able to conjure up when they’d stood under the Eiffel Tower.
Once on her bike, Margot couldn’t believe she had actually hesitated to take it out. A night drive through the streets of her beautiful city always made her feel better, cleared her head. Right now, it was filled to the brim with the words she wanted Claire to hear so desperately. “I love you,” she would say. “I was wrong to let you walk away. We owe it to this love between us to try again. One more time. But let’s do it properly this time. Let’s approach each other with the cautious respect of people who have just met. No sleepovers before their time. Let’s take it slow, the way I had always intended things to evolve between us.”
Underneath her helmet, Margot broke out into a smile, as though she knew for certain this was going to work. And this was no time for hesitation. Only confidence could get her what she wanted. She wanted Claire. Because Claire brought something out in her that previously only Inez had been able to excavate. A zest for a life she’d always believed was not for her. This was more than love. This was her life. Bone-deep, she knew that, despite this being her very last chance, if she fought hard enough, she could get Claire back. That the two of them together made much more sense in this world than them living separate lives, their path only briefly crossing on occasions when Nadia wanted her there, reminding them both, with bitterness, of what they had lost. No. Margot had to do this. Heat shimmered underneath her skin and her belly was warm with a tingling sensation. She’d done it before. She could make Claire Cyr fall in love with her again.
She took a right onto the Boulevard Gouvion-Saint-Cyr, Claire’s street—so close now—and, without giving it much thought, ramped up the speed of her bike. She’d just passed Nadia and Juliette’s building and could see Claire’s already. She strained her eyes to check if the light was on in the living room. Then, she was blinded. A sound much louder than she’d ever heard tore through her eardrums, and then, she felt as though she was flying. Until she landed with a hard bang onto the cold street, and everything went black.
JULIETTE
“Did you hear that?” Juliette asked.
“Jesus.” Nadia leaped out of the sofa. They both headed to the window. Juliette got there first. She craned her neck, but saw nothing out of the ordinary.
“I don’t see anything.” Their living room window only provided a lookout in one direction, towards the Boulevard des Ternes. From that particular vantage point, they couldn’t see what had happened further down the street.
“Must have been around the corner.” Nadia opened the window. “Let’s see.”
Cold air rushed into the warm coziness of their apartment. The double glazed windows blocked out most of the outside noise, but now that it was opened to a crack loud voices rose up from the pavement.
“I called an ambulance.” Juliette heard someone yell with agitation in their voice.
“She’s not moving,” someone else said.
Even when twisting her neck as far as it could go, Juliette couldn’t see far enough to find out what exactly was happening.
“Must have been an accident,” she said. “I’m going downstairs to have a look.”
Nadia shook her head. “Let the medics do their job, babe. You’ll only be in the way.”
Was Nadia so jaded by working in a hospital that she remained unfazed when an accident happened on their street? “No. I need to know what’s going on.”
“Fine. Just don’t go crowding anyone.” Nadia walked towards the door as well and unhooked both their coats from the rack.
By the time they made it downstairs in the slow elevator, an ambulance sped past them, blocking most of their view of the scene. Juliette could only make out the wreck of a motorcycle. One side of it had been completely crushed by the impact. A white van stood half-way emerged from the little side street that crossed the boulevard, its crumpled front providing a horrid clue to what had happened.
“Good lord,” Juliette said, and huddled a little closer to Nadia.
“It’s a Saint-Vincent ambulance,” Nadia said. ”They’ll take good care of them.”
“What wreckage.” Juliette let her eyes roam towards the bike again, and noticed the small white sticker with the red-and-blue circle in the middle near the burst fuel tank. “Oh my god.” She started making her way to the ambulance. “Oh no.”
“What?” Nadia followed close behind her.
Juliette had noticed that sticker of the Korean flag when Margot had driven her from Le Comptoir to her flat in Saint-Germain-des-Prés to reconcile with Nadia. “I think it’s Margot,” she said, her voice barely audible. They reached the ambulance just as the victim was being wheeled in slowly, just in time to recognise Margot’s dark hair and her face, covered in blood.
Nadia grabbed Juliette’s hand. “Fuck,” she hissed.
Juliette held her tight, her brain trying to process what was happening in front of her. The ambulance doors were shut securely, and seconds later, it drove off into the night, its sirens wailing urgently.
The driver of the van sat in the back of another ambulance. He seemed to have gotten off light, although he clearly appeared to be in shock. Juliette gently steered Nadia away from the scene.
“Do you have your phone on you?” Nadia asked.
“Yes.” Juliette reached for it in her pocket. “I’ll call a taxi straight away.”
“No need. There’s one over the
re.” Nadia was already flagging it down.
“Don’t you want to get some things from upstairs first?”
Nadia sighed. The taxi stopped right in front of them. “No time. I need to know how she’s doing.”
They hopped into the relative calmness of the taxi and told the driver their destination. What she’d just witnessed suddenly hit Juliette hard. “Should I call Claire?”
Nadia looked at her while wiping away a tear. “I don’t know.”
“She would want to know.” Juliette was sure of that.
“Okay. Call her.” Nadia looked straight ahead again, her face anaemic.
With trembling hands, Juliette hit the speed dial button for Claire’s number. It rang, and kept on ringing, until voice mail took over. Juliette left a message. “Claire, it’s Jules. Please call me back as soon as you get this. It’s really urgent, okay?”
“She’s not picking up.”
“It’s after ten on a Tuesday. Maybe she had an early night.”
“That wouldn’t stop her from answering her phone when I call.” Juliette had absolutely no idea what her best friend was up to tonight, but Margot being hit by a car on their street, so close to Claire’s apartment, was no coincidence. If Claire was home, she would have heard, and would have been out there on the pavement with them. “Margot was probably on her way to see Claire,” Juliette stammered.
“Try her again. Maybe she didn’t hear the first time.”
Juliette dialled again, the arm she was supporting her phone with now starting to shake. Still nothing.
“Keep your phone close. I’m sure she’ll call back soon. Hopefully, by then we’ll know more.” Nadia’s voice was tight. She was probably thinking the same thing Juliette was. Their minds inadvertently drifting to that one unthinkable thought. Juliette tucked her phone in the pocket of her jeans and took Nadia’s hand. Then, despite having so many better subjects to occupy her mind with, she thought of her father. She pictured an older, greyer version of the man she once knew, pale and exhausted in a hospital bed in Lille. And she bargained. She didn’t know with whom she could possibly strike up a bargain, but she vowed to some unknown presence in which she didn’t really believe that if Margot made it, she would go see Bertrand. When it came to life and death, certain sentiments needed to be set aside. She knew that now.
When they arrived at the hospital, Nadia went into work mode, although there wasn’t that much she could do.
“Is Dievart on call?” she asked a guy wearing a pair of salmon pink scrubs.
“No. It’s Andres tonight.”
“Call her in anyway. Tell her I asked for her specifically. Tell her Doctor de Hay has been in an accident and we may need her.”
Juliette stood overlooking the scene, but didn’t really see much. Nadia was talking to someone else now. Everyone was walking around in a fast but controlled and organised manner. Juliette studied Nadia’s face for signs of being informed about the worst case scenario, but Nadia just stood there nodding thoughtfully.
“Dievart is coming in,” the guy from earlier yelled at Nadia. “She’ll be here in five minutes.”
Juliette didn’t care that the woman Nadia had cheated on her with would stand in front of her within a few minutes. In that instant, it didn’t matter. All that mattered was saving Margot.
CLAIRE
Claire had been sitting in a chair across from Marie Dievart in room 306 at the Le Figaro hotel for exactly four minutes when the doctor’s phone rang. She knew it had been four minutes because a ridiculously large faux-retro digital clock stood on the mantle behind where Dievart was sitting and Claire had trouble maintaining eye contact, so her glance kept straying to the clock and its giant numbers. The last digit just turned from 18 to 19 when the phone rang and its chime sucked a little bit of tension out of the room.
Claire recognised the urgency with which Dievart reached for her phone. It seemed to be universal among doctors. “You just never know,” Margot had once said to her.
“I’ll be there in five,” she heard Dievart say into the phone, and it reminded her so much of her first date with Margot—when she’d been called away because her dad had taken a nasty fall—she was actually glad this evening wouldn’t be going according to plan.
“I’m sorry, Claire.” It was funny to see Dievart’s demeanour shift so abruptly from seductive to professional. Suddenly, she was all business. Her spine straightened in an entirely different manner than when she had greeted Claire earlier, leaning against the doorframe, her features folded into an expression promising nothing but pleasure. “It was the hospital.” Dievart took a step towards her and put a hand on Claire’s arm. “Doctor de Hay has been in an accident.”
Claire opened her mouth to speak but nothing came out. What did Dievart just say? Had she heard that correctly?
“Do you want to come with me?” Dievart squeezed her arm a bit harder.
Claire’s body felt frozen, her limbs seemingly having been cut off from her heart’s blood supply. Finally, she nodded, her brain still trying to process what she’d just heard.
“Come on.” The doctor handed Claire her jacket and slipped into her own before pulling Claire, whose feet still seemed to be nailed to the floor, towards the door.
The hospital was only a few minutes away on foot from where Marie Dievart was staying. All they had to do was cross a bridge over the canal, turn a corner and there Saint-Vincent’s wide, grey building loomed, its entrance lit up with activity, but most of its windows on the upper levels already darkened for the fast approaching night.
“Nadia’s there. She asked me to come in,” Dievart said, all the while keeping an arm hooked into Claire’s, tugging her along. “I don’t know the details yet, Claire, but I promise to keep you posted.”
Claire hadn’t been able to speak one word during the walk from Le Figaro, that hotel where she had no valid reason to be, and the hospital, her throat too closed up, her brain too afraid to do anything but allow her to carefully set one foot in front of the other.
The first person Claire saw when she walked into the E.R.’s waiting room was Juliette, sat in one of the chairs lining the wall. Dievart immediately started talking to Nadia who pointed her in the direction of a treatment room further down the hall.
“What happened?” Claire stuttered, still not fully grasping the situation, and how she had ended up here while mere minutes ago she’d been sitting in Doctor Dievart’s hotel room, eager to forget about everything that troubled her.
Juliette rushed towards her and hugged her tightly. “It happened on our street, Claire. A van came out of the Rue Ruhmkorff and hit her. We don’t know how bad it is yet.” Juliette let go of her and held her by the shoulders. “I tried to call you.”
“I had my phone on silent.”
Juliette looked puzzled. “How did you know to come here?”
Claire just shook her head. “It doesn’t matter, Jules. Honestly, it really doesn’t matter.” Claire sank down into the chair behind her. Perhaps she should be about to collapse with shame, but all she could think about was Margot in one of the rooms beyond where she could see. Margot, who she couldn’t forgive, and who she was going to try to get over by sleeping with Marie Dievart. As far as low points went in her life, Claire couldn’t imagine hitting rock bottom more than this very moment.
“You and her?” Juliette asked. “But how…” Her voice trailed off. She sat down next to Claire, falling silent.
“We’ll talk about it later,” Claire said, mortified. Then she spotted Nadia rounding a corner and pinning her glance on them. She walked purposefully towards them. Claire reached for Juliette’s hand, her stomach tightening. Dievart followed closely on Nadia’s heels. They both stopped in front of Claire and Juliette, who rose from their seats.
“She’s stable,” Dievart said. “No apparent brain damage. Some internal bleeding and her right leg is broken in several places, but she’ll live.”
“Oh my goodness.” Claire exhaled the breath she
’d been holding since she’d stood up. Juliette squeezed her hand hard.
Just then, two elderly people walked into the waiting room, looking very scared and forlorn.
“Her parents are here,” Nadia said.
“I’ll deal with them.” Doctor Dievart didn’t wait for anyone to reply and headed towards Margot’s mother and father who appeared to be wearing quickly thrown-on overcoats and scarves.
Claire cast a glance at the people she’d never had the chance to meet, but her mind was too restless, her brain too amped up on adrenalin and relief and fear to pay them much attention.
“Jules, come here.” Claire tugged Juliette towards her, fell into her arms and started to sob. She heard Dievart say the same words to Margot’s parents that she’d just said to her while she cried in Juliette’s arms. Juliette, who wouldn’t speak to her for weeks, perhaps even months, once it really dawned on her how Claire had been able to make it to the hospital so quickly.
She had some explaining to do, but it could wait. Because Margot was stable. She was alive.
After Claire had shed most of her tears, Nadia put a hand on her back and said, “You won’t be able to see her until the morning. Jules, why don’t you take Claire back to our place?”
Claire freed herself from her best friend’s embrace and wiped the wetness from her cheeks. “No. I want to stay.”
“I understand.” Nadia was still stroking her back. “But there’s really nothing you can do here except get yourself into a state. I’ll stay. As soon as I have more news, I’ll let you know.”
“It’s for the best, Claire,” Juliette added.
Claire looked around and spotted Mr and Mrs de Hay again. Dievart was done talking to them and they were fumbling with an old school cell phone.
