Although Kate thought about offering to help, she simply didn’t have the energy to move. She was emotionally wrecked. As the tears kept threatening to fall, she tried to consciously force herself to unclench her jaw. She had to stop replaying the discovery of Marcus’s affair in her mind or she was going to totally lose it. She knew her face would be blotchy and red from crying but at that moment she simply didn’t care.
Elizabeth returned with two steaming mugs of tea and placed them on the table. She then pulled a small plastic Tupperware container from her handbag. Inside were Elizabeth’s homemade Anzac biscuits, Kate’s favorites from her childhood. She hadn’t eaten in hours and her mouth watered as the aroma hit her. “Now darling, drink this.” Elizabeth pushed the mug toward Kate and sat down, crossing one leg elegantly over the other.
“Thanks.” Kate wrapped her hands around it, trying to draw strength from its warmth. She took a tentative sip and swallowed the hot, sweet liquid. Her mum always added sugar to her tea and even though it wasn’t how Kate usually drank it, she wasn’t going to complain. There was something comforting about drinking a cup of sweet tea in the midst of a crisis. And in Kate’s eyes, today constituted a full-blown crisis. With each sip, Kate felt herself beginning to unwind.
She gave Elizabeth a glassy stare as she tried to focus on what her mum was saying.
“Well darling, at least you still have your job. And of course you can stay with us for as long as you need, even though I know the commute won’t be as easy.”
“It’s just so humiliating.”
“What? Marcus having an affair or you having to move back home?”
“Both.”
Kate rubbed her eyes and laid her head on her hands. If she didn’t move soon she would fall asleep right where she was sitting.
“Are you going to call him?” Elizabeth’s question snapped her awake again and she sat bolt upright.
“Absolutely not!” Kate pounded her fist on the table. “I never want to lay eyes on him again after what he’s done, let alone speak to him. There’s no point in even having a conversation with him – all he’ll do is deny it and argue like the lawyer he is. It won’t change the fact that he cheated on me!”
“You have to talk to him, Kate. Maybe there’s another side to the story you haven’t considered. Just because Cindy stayed over doesn’t mean they slept together.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Mum. It’s clear as the nose on my face. He slept with Cindy and he’s obviously going to break up with me. There’s no other possible way of reading the text. And anyway, I’m not going to listen to him grovel and say sorry. Or worse, admit it and leave anyway. I can’t handle any more pain than he’s already put me through.”
Kate knew she was being irrational, but there was no way she could admit to her mum the real reason for the pain Marcus had caused. The text message was just the final nail in the coffin. He had let her down twice now, and she wasn’t prepared to give him another chance.
Elizabeth put her arm over Kate’s shoulder. “Well darling, I have absolute faith in you and I know that all things will eventually work out for the best. It probably doesn’t feel like it at the moment, but these things often happen for a reason.”
“How many more clichés can you possibly fit into one sentence, Mum?”
Elizabeth looked hurt and Kate quickly hugged her mum.
“I’m sorry, Mum. It’s just I feel like I’ve lost everything I’ve always known and I don’t know what to do. I’m freaking out a little.”
“I wish I knew what else to say, darling, I really do. And I wish you’d call him.”
“The answer is no.”
Elizabeth stood up and took the mugs over to the sink.
“Well then, we’d better start packing.”
*
For the next hour mother and daughter worked side by side, folding clothes and packing them into suitcases and cardboard boxes. By the time they finished it was completely dark outside.
As Elizabeth prepared toasted sandwiches for them to eat before making the drive back down the highway to Kate’s childhood home, Kate made multiple trips down to her car. Most of the belongings in their apartment were things she and Marcus had purchased together, but for all Kate cared, he could keep the lot of them. The only things she took were her clothes and some special gifts she had received for her thirtieth birthday. It didn’t take long to pack, and she didn’t have much, but her Mini Cooper was crammed full by the time she had loaded the last bag. Poor Matilda was stuffed in her carry basket on the floor of the passenger seat and was meowing pitifully.
Before she left, Kate took one last long look around the stark lounge room. The thickness in her throat returned and she knew she was about to cry again, yet at the same time it occurred to her how detached she already felt. The uncomfortable black leather couch sat in the center of the living room, devoid of the bright cushions she had squashed into the final box before taping it closed. Although the apartment had always looked sparse and minimalistic, the room already seemed different. She no longer recognized it as a place where, for the past three years, she had lived and loved. It now looked unwelcoming and uninviting, like a display home.
A fresh sense of hurt shot through Kate as she once again caught sight of the photo of them together at the races. The weight of impending loss fell on her, almost crushing her. Her throat tightened as she realized the only link to her baby was Marcus, and now that too had been irretrievably broken. She resisted picking the photo up and throwing it against the wall in anger. Instead she flicked off the lights, squared her shoulders and stepped over the threshold.
It was time to start again.
Chapter 4
The alarm on Kate’s phone loudly assaulted her and she was jolted awake. The sound mocked her, a reminder that once again she had hardly slept at all. Sighing, she reached for her phone to turn the alarm off. As she did, she saw she had another two missed calls from Marcus. She didn’t even bother to listen to see if he’d left a voicemail message for her.
She had been having a dream but its memory now eluded her, and though the fragments were still floating around in her mind, she was unable to pull them together. Kate found herself frowning in frustration and a wave of heaviness came over her. Perhaps the dream wasn’t one she wanted to remember anyway.
She stretched her tired muscles as she lay in bed, willing herself to get moving. She’d worked a late shift the night before and was now back on an early. Unfortunately, even after just one day back at work, she knew it was the last place she wanted to be.
Slowly sliding her legs out of her warm bed, she dragged her feet dejectedly across the carpeted hallway of her bedroom across to the bathroom. Standing under the steaming hot water in the early morning silence, she inhaled and exhaled deeply, rolling her neck from side to side, willing her body to respond. She tried to unravel her feelings, but by the time she had finished and wiped the beads of water off the glass screen with her towel, she was still no closer to a solution about her future.
In the time she’d taken off work since finding the text message from Cindy, she had moped around her parents’ home, ignoring Marcus’s numerous phone calls and texts. She could hardly believe that only two weeks earlier she had been happily planning her future with him, never dreaming how much her world was about to be rocked and changed.
And I thought he was about to propose! She felt humiliated at the memory. How could I have been so wrong?
Standing in the bathroom with the towel wrapped around her body, Kate wiped the steam from the small mirror and critically studied her reflection. Perhaps I should cut my hair? For years she had worn the same hairstyle and for practical reasons always wore it pulled back, but maybe it was time for a change. Thankfully her honey blonde hair was not yet showing any signs of early grays. So far she had managed to avoid having it colored, although her hairdresser was always trying to talk her into getting foils or highlights. She played around with her hair for a minute, trying to imag
ine it in a short bob, then sighed and let it fall loose again. Who am I kidding? It didn’t matter how she wore her hair. It wasn’t like she was trying to impress anyone anymore.
She glanced down at her short nails and sighed at their brittle ends – chipped through over-exposure to alcoholic antibacterial solutions at work. As much as manicured, French-polished acrylic nails seemed appealing at times, practically speaking, Kate knew it was never going to happen.
I’ll bet Cindy has lovely nails, she thought sarcastically.
She dragged a wide-tooth comb through the remaining knots, then scraped her hair up high and pulled the elastic band from her wrist and around her hair. The simplicity of Kate’s hair and makeup routine didn’t change even when she was getting ready to go out. On the occasions she had dressed up for big events, she always felt like she was staring back at the face of a stranger in the mirror. Although, as she reflected now, hindsight dictated that maybe she should have taken more care with her appearance.
She quickly applied a thin layer of tinted moisturizer to her face and covered it with a brush of mineral powder. A few strokes of mascara to her eyelashes and ten minutes later she was dressed in her scrubs ready for work.
Breakfast was a glass of orange juice and a piece of multigrain toast covered with butter and Vegemite. She ate this on autopilot at the same time as she checked things in her oversized bag. Stethoscope, name badge, swipe card, pens, water bottle, lip gloss, deodorant. Kate sorted through each item, mentally ticking each piece off and scowling at the collection of papers and other unidentified objects in the bottom of the bag. She knew she should clean it out but she quite simply couldn’t be bothered. Adding an apple and the container of salad she’d prepared the previous night, she was ready to go.
Working was the last thing she wanted to do, but at this stage, she had no other option.
*
Kate took the stairs two at a time up the four flights to the unit, being careful not to spill the coffee she’d bought. She was breathing heavily and her heart was racing when she reached the top. She mentally reprimanded herself for not even going out for a run once in the past two weeks.
As Kate walked into the unit she was immediately able to tell what sort of shift the night staff had had. She breathed a quick sigh of relief and consciously relaxed her shoulders as she walked in, greeting staff as she went. From the general buzz of activity and the hum of voices from the nurses, Kate could tell that nothing had changed overnight. No deteriorated patients. No new admissions. Everything felt calm. Maybe there is a God. Although she really did love her job, she wasn’t in the mood for dealing with sick patients and emergencies. She already had enough on her plate.
Some of the bed areas had their curtains drawn and as she walked past she could see shoes and the bottoms of scrub pants as her colleagues finished off their early morning duties before handing over to the day shift. Some nurses were washing their patients and others were taking routine ECGs. Blood samples were ready and waiting in a box for the morning pathology collection. It was a busy time as final notes and observations were being recorded on the large pieces of paper on each nurse’s desk.
Kate frowned at an agency nurse who was sitting at the main nurses’ station, phone in hand. As he glanced up and saw Kate, he guiltily tucked his phone back into the pocket of his scrubs and walked off in a vain attempt to look busy.
“Hey Kenz,” Kate greeted her friend. Mackenzie had been in charge of the night shift. She was busy writing the names of the day shift nursing staff onto the allocation whiteboard beside each patient’s name.
“Morning,” Mackenzie replied, briefly glancing in Kate’s direction as she kept writing.
Mackenzie looked tired. Her dark blonde hair was mussed from where she’d probably slept on it during her break and dried mascara was clumped on the edges of her lashes.
“How are you doing?” Mackenzie asked, looking up at Kate with an expression of concern written all over her face. Obviously she had heard the gossip.
“Fine,” Kate replied, hoping her tone of voice would indicate she didn’t want to discuss it. Sympathy and questions about Marcus made the sting of her failed relationship all the more painful. She resolved that she wasn’t going to talk about it at all. “What sort of night did you have? How did bed four go? Did you have him on CPAP much overnight?”
The Continuous Positive Airway Pressure machine was a tightly fitting breathing mask applied over a patient’s mouth and nose. It was used for patients in severe respiratory distress and delivered a mixture of air and oxygen under a high pressure to open up the patient’s lungs and force fluids back into the bloodstream.
Mackenzie put the whiteboard marker down and turned her attention toward bed four. Kate let her gaze follow Mackenzie’s. They could see one of the other nurses fitting the face mask on Mr. McKinnon, an eighty-five-year-old man who had suffered a cardiac arrest on the ward two days earlier. The machine began to alarm at a deafening level and the nurse swiftly reached across the elderly man to mercifully silence it.
Since the breathing tube had been removed from his throat the day before, he was still needing regular CPAP to maintain his oxygen levels. From the sound of his lungs when she had listened to them the night before, Kate thought it was highly likely that he would be diagnosed with pneumonia. Mr. McKinnon was in for a long stay in the unit, if indeed he made it through the next twenty-four hours.
“His numbers don’t look good at all,” Mackenzie said. “His work of breathing is really labored now and he’s got widespread crackles. The doctors are aware.”
Mackenzie described the coarse breathing sounds heard in the lungs through a stethoscope. Kate sighed dejectedly. If Bill McKinnon had suffered his heart attack at home rather than in hospital, he would have quietly and peacefully died. Now he was probably still going to die, but instead it would be after a long, drawn-out hospital stay.
“I hope the family have agreed to make him not for resuscitation,” she said.
“That isn’t your problem to fix, Kate.” With that, Mackenzie headed off toward the handover room.
As Kate watched her go, she knew her friend was right. It really wasn’t her problem to sort out.
As it was, Kate had enough problems of her own.
Chapter 5
“Can I say something?” Melissa’s voice was soft as she looked Kate in the eye.
Kate nodded, recognizing the look of concern, and grateful once again for her friend’s support.
“Sure, Mel. You can say anything you like.” She lifted the latte to her lips and took a sip.
Melissa was short and petite, but her tiny size belied an inner strength. She had been Kate’s rock after the baby, and was once again proving what a great friend she was.
The two friends had been sitting in a quiet corner of their favorite café for almost half an hour. There had been many things Kate wanted to say but she hadn’t been able to find the words. Instead, she had sat mostly in silence drinking her coffee and breaking off small pieces of muffin, putting each one into her mouth and chewing slowly as though unable to taste what she was eating. She had sat gazing at nothing for the longest time as she searched for the right way to express her feelings.
How could she describe the huge ball of pain that sat inside her? Every time she thought of what Marcus had done, the intensity of his betrayal rose up like heartburn, causing an ache that wouldn’t go away. She wanted to ask Melissa how she was supposed to face the future without Marcus, but the words stuck in her throat, like the dry pieces of muffin she was trying to swallow.
Melissa had assured Kate she could have more time off if she needed it. Kate knew she should take her up on the offer as she was finding it difficult to concentrate at work. Some days all she wanted to do was fall in a heap and cry. She was trying to get over the pain of losing Marcus, but her whole world had shifted on its axis and she still had no idea how to fix it.
Not only was she having difficulty moving on from Marcus, she was
finding it increasingly hard to cope living with her parents. While she adored Michael and Elizabeth, it felt strange to be back at home, living under their roof and their rules. She felt like nothing had changed since she had moved out over ten years earlier. On the other hand, her parents were loving having their only daughter home again. Although Kate didn’t want to disappoint them by moving out, she knew she had to do something, and soon.
Melissa’s question had broken into her contemplation.
“I really think you need to talk to Marcus. You can’t keep avoiding him,” Melissa said.
“So far I’ve managed to,” Kate retorted as she banged her glass down onto the timber table, missing the ceramic saucer she had been aiming for. The spoon rattled. She pursed her lips in irritation.
“Has he called you? Tried to explain?” Melissa asked.
“He doesn’t stop calling! He texts me up to ten times a day! I’m going to have to get a new phone number.”
“But how much longer can you keep avoiding him? I’m sure he knows you’re staying with your parents.”
“I know he does. I’ve seen his car drive past.”
“You can’t keep hiding from him, Katie. It’s not healthy.”
“I don’t want to see him.” Kate knew she sounded petulant.
Melissa let out a deep sigh. “Honestly, Kate, if you don’t deal with this and move on, it’s going to eat you up inside. It’s beginning to affect your work.”
Kate frowned and took another sip of her coffee. “I hate confrontation, Melissa, you know that. And what’s it going to achieve? I don’t want him back.”
Intensive Care: Escape to the Country Page 3
