‘What on earth’s wrong?’
‘Nothing.’ Ruby brushed past.
‘Ruby…’ Tilly’s feet followed her.
‘I’ve got the worst headache,’ Ruby attempted. ‘I can’t sleep and I have to get to sleep—I’m working tonight.’
‘You’ve got hours till your shift starts,’ Tilly soothed, but the hours slipped away and all Ruby could think was that he hadn’t told her. She had slept with a man, glimpsed a future with a man she really knew very little about. She was embarrassed too, ashamed to share her problem with her friends. His wife had been dead just over a month after all.
She wasn’t sure whether it was nerves, exhaustion or humiliation, but when Tilly heard her retching in the toilet a few hours later, she knew her housemate’s plight was genuine.
‘I can’t go in,’ Ruby said. ‘I’ve hardly slept since…’ She tried to work it out. ‘In ages.’ It would, in fact, be irresponsible to go in with no sleep, but how could she not?
‘It’s okay,’ Tilly said. ‘You go back to bed. I’ll ring in for you.’ Ruby lay there and closed her eyes as she heard her friend on the landline.
‘Who did you speak to?’
‘The ward clerk,’ Tilly said. ‘She said she’d pass it on.’
‘Sheila’s going to be furious.’
‘You can’t help being sick,’ Tilly pointed out, and then she looked at her friend, saw the real trouble in her eyes and wasn’t sure what was going on. ‘Do you want me to go down tonight?’ Tilly offered. ‘I can explain to Sheila that you really are sick—ask if you can make it up over the weekend…’
‘I’ll speak to her myself,’ Ruby broke in. ‘Go on, you get ready for work.’
‘Ruby…’
‘Please, Tilly…’ Ruby said, because that was the good and the bad of sharing a house—there was always someone there when you needed them to be, but there was always someone there too when perhaps you just needed to be alone. ‘You’ve got to get ready for work.’
Cort found himself lingering in the staffroom as the night staff started to drift in.
‘We’re short tonight,’ Siobhan said. ‘We’ve got two from the bank.’
‘We don’t have a student either,’ Sheila said. ‘Ruby rang in sick.’
‘What a surprise!’ Siobhan smirked. ‘She must be worn out from all the agency shifts that she’s doing.’
Cort kept his face impassive, but he would have loved to tell Siobhan to shut up.
‘I’ve swapped her around so she can come in to do Thursday, Friday and Saturday.’
Which were the worst nights.
He couldn’t believe she’d throw it all in—then he thought about Ruby and actually he could. He thought back to the canteen where he’d seen her confident in her own environment, and she was like a butterfly, one who’d found herself fluttering around the coals of hell. This place was damaged and wounded.
Cort walked across the ambulance bay towards the car park, unsure what he could do. He could hardly turn up there, and then what? Insist that she go in?
‘Hi, there.’ It was Tilly who greeted him, walking towards Maternity.
‘Hi.’ Cort gave a brief nod, which was more than he usually did. ‘On nights?’ he asked, and she smiled and stopped.
‘Yep.’
Normally he’d have nodded and walked on, refused to acknowledge what they both knew.
‘How’s Ruby?’ Cort cleared his throat. ‘I heard she’d rung in sick.’
‘I don’t know how she is,’ Tilly said. ‘She’s not really talking to anyone.’
‘If she doesn’t do her nights, she’s going to have to repeat.’
‘I can’t see that happening.’ He was surprised at the thick sound to her voice, and it dawned on him that Tilly had been crying. ‘If she can’t do three nights, she’s hardly going to do another six weeks. I don’t know what to say to her.’
‘I’ll talk to her.’
‘Her phone’s off.’
‘I’ll go round,’ Cort said, because if she wasn’t going in again, there was nothing to keep things quiet for anyway.
‘Door for you,’ Ellie called up the stairs to Ruby. As Ellie was on her way out and left it wide open, it gave Ruby no choice but to haul herself out of bed, pull on a sarong and answer it.
‘Is everything okay?’
She looked at him.
‘Only I wondered…’ She blinked.
‘I heard you were sick. I bumped into Tilly. Is everything okay?’ Cort checked.
‘You tell me?’
‘I’m here to find out about you. Ruby, you know you have to do these nights.’
‘I don’t have to do anything.’
‘I know you’re having a difficult time. I know this week—’
‘How’s your week been, Cort?’ she interrupted.
‘I thought it was going well.’
‘How’s your month been? Anything happen that you might want to talk about?’
And then he got it—she knew.
She wanted to hop she was so angry. She wanted to shake him as she gave him every opportunity to explain things, to tell her, but he just stood there.
‘You bang on about support, about backing each other, helping each other through…being open.’
‘How do you know?’ Cort said, because to him it mattered. ‘Adam?’
‘Adam?’ Ruby’s voice was incredulous. ‘Of course it wasn’t Adam. Adam doesn’t talk about things that matter. I can see now why the two of you are friends.’
‘Then how do you know?’
‘It doesn’t matter how I know,’ Ruby said. ‘Actually, it does. Do you not think it should have been you who told me? Do you not think…?’ She was close to crying, just disgusted with herself and angry with him. ‘Six weeks?’ Ruby croaked. ‘She’s been dead six weeks.’
‘You don’t understand.’
‘I’ll never understand.’ She wouldn’t. ‘If it had been just that night…’ Ruby said. ‘But you came back, you took me out, we sat in the car…’ She jabbed her finger at the pavement behind. ‘And you took me to your home and you still didn’t tell me.’
‘I don’t talk about it with anyone,’ Cort said. ‘She suffered a brain injury, and for years she was in a home…’
‘So you were embarrassed by her?’ Ruby said. Sometimes she said things; the thoughts in her head popped out and this was one of those times.
That he didn’t deny it really did make her want to cry. ‘Maybe you’re right, maybe there is no point talking about it. As you said, we can never work.’
‘We might.’
‘No.’ Ruby shook her head. ‘We’re at different stages.’ There was so much against them. ‘You’re too closed off.’
‘That’s rich, coming from you.’ He looked at her and did the most bizarre thing—stood on her doorstep in his suit, threw his arms in the air and did a brief dance that looked a lot like the one Ruby had done the night of the party. ‘The life and soul…’ Cort said. ‘Happy Ruby…’ He turned away. ‘You’re the one closed off, Ruby, you can’t even tell your best friends how you’re really feeling.’ He walked down to the gate. ‘You do your happy-clappy dance rather than admit your true feelings. You just avoid everything—like you’re avoiding tonight, like you’re refusing to listen about Beth…’
‘You want true feelings…’ She could not stand that she had a name, that Beth was real and he hadn’t told her. ‘You’re too boring for me, Cort, too old and too staid…’ She pushed him away with words, because he was getting too close, not physically, just too close to the real her, and she didn’t want anyone to see that.
‘Well, at least I see things through,’ Cort said. ‘Just don’t blame me for not showing up.’ He tossed the comment over his shoulder. ‘To anything.’
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
IT WAS a row. Her first row in more than a decade. It was the one thing she tried to avoid and there was no one home so she fled to her room because that was what she did, Ruby realised.
Avoided.
Hid like a wounded cat and licked her wounds till she was ready to come out.
Except she didn’t want to come out to the wreckage she was surely creating.
To repeating A and E or to have thrown it in.
But how could she go back there now, after the way she had spoken to Cort?
He wasn’t or ever had been boring.
‘Men!’ Ellie stood at the door, already back from her date. Clearly the latest love of her life had been relegated to history, but unlike Ruby she wasn’t curled up on the bed because Ellie just moved on, determined to find the true love of her life.
Ruby had just lost it.
‘What happened with Cort?’
‘I said the most awful things…’ She told her friend some but not all of them.
‘It’s called a row,’ Ellie said, but it was far more than that.
‘I found out…’ But she couldn’t tell her, couldn’t reveal the part of Cort that he clearly didn’t want anyone to know, and round and round things went in her head, even after Ellie had gone to bed. When Jess came home, she tried talking to her too, but it was hard when she couldn’t tell her Cort’s truth.
‘I’m going to ring Adam.’ Giddy from way too little sleep, Ruby stood up.
Jess, of course, should have suggested she check the time difference, but Jess had an agenda of her own and gave a nod of encouragement, even went and got her the phone. Ruby dialled her brother’s number but, of course, got a recorded message.
‘You didn’t leave a message.’
‘What’s the point?’ Ruby said. ‘Adam won’t tell me anything. I’m going to bed.’
But ten minutes later she heard the phone ring and Jess laughing and talking, and because it was the land-line that had rung she knew who it was.
‘It’s Adam,’ Jess said as she knocked on her door. ‘And he’s not best pleased—it’s four a.m. in South America apparently!’
‘Thanks,’ Ruby said when Jess hovered and rather reluctantly handed the phone then dragged herself out the door.
‘Do you ever look at the clock, Ruby?’ Adam asked, because she did this all the time.
‘No. Anyway, I never know where you are to work out the time difference.’
‘What’s wrong?’ Adam asked, because he could tell by her voice that something was.
‘Nothing,’ Ruby said. ‘I just need to ask you something. It’s just a friend of mine, well, she’s got mixed up with Cort Mason. Apparently you know him.’
‘And this friend wants to know more?’ Adam asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Nice guy,’ Adam said.
‘That’s it?’ Ruby said, and when Adam was less than forthcoming she pushed a little harder. ‘My friend knows about his wife.’
‘Really?’ Adam said. ‘I’m surprised he told her.’
‘He didn’t,’ Ruby said. ‘She found out.’
There was a long pause. ‘Adam, please.’
‘Is this for you, Ruby, or your friend?’
She paused, because Adam didn’t gossip, even to his sister. ‘Me,’ she finally said, and waited through the longest pause.
‘You and Cort?’ She heard the incredulity in his voice.
‘Please,’ Ruby said.
‘Okay, but there’s not much to tell. He took a job in Melbourne some years back. I think he worked at the Children’s Hospital and she was a paediatrician. I don’t know much, we just emailed now and then, just that there was an accident in Queensland on their honeymoon. Beth got a nasty head injury, it would be four or more years ago now. She ended up in a nursing home.’
‘And he moved to Sydney?’ She couldn’t believe he’d just leave her.
‘After a year or so—he’s always back there, visiting. Like I said, we don’t go out when I’m back, because if Cort’s on days off then he’s down in Melbourne. I offered to go once when I was down in Melbourne, but he didn’t want me to see her like that.’
‘And?’
‘And what?’
‘What he did he say? About her, I mean?’
‘I don’t know…’ Adam wasn’t the type to replay conversations in his head, let alone to anyone else. ‘We just play golf… Look, Ruby, there’s no hope with Beth. I mean, I’m glad Cort’s trying to move on, because I do know there’s completely no hope…’
‘Beth died,’ Ruby said, and closed her eyes as Adam went quiet. ‘Didn’t he tell you?’
‘Ruby, I’m in the middle of the jungle. Like I said, we’re not that close—I don’t think anyone is with Cort.’
She put down the phone and padded out to put it back in its charger, and there, of course, waiting, was Jess.
‘How’s Adam?’ She didn’t await Ruby’s response. ‘Did he say when he was coming home?’
‘When does Adam ever really say anything about anything? Honestly…’ She looked up at her friend, who carried a torch for her brother, and even if Ruby loved him, she felt it only fair to warn her, properly this time. ‘I can see why Caroline broke up with him.’
‘Caroline?’
‘His fiancée,’ Ruby said, and saw Jess’s jaw tighten. ‘She really thought she’d change him, that somehow Adam would open up. She just didn’t get that he’s…’ She closed her eyes, because Adam was a whole lot like Cort. ‘He’s an emotional desert. He is!’ Ruby said, when Jess refused to buy it. ‘He was in bed with the next one a week after Caroline…and the next and the next… There is no deeper Adam,’ Ruby reiterated, because there wasn’t. Nice clothes, nice car, lots of women—they were all there waiting for him whenever he returned. It really was just as simple as that with her brother, and she didn’t want him breaking her best friend’s heart. Except Jess refused to hear it.
‘Just because someone doesn’t spill out their heart, Ruby, it doesn’t mean they don’t still have feelings.’ Jess would not be swayed. ‘We all hurt, Ruby.’ Jess huffed off to bed, no doubt to stick pins in a little doll she’d name Caroline. ‘We just all have different ways of showing it.’
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
RUBY leapt on the phone when it rang the next evening. Dressed for her shift, her heart leapt in hope that it might be Cort, that he might want to clear the air before she commenced her shifts, but the voice on the other end brought no relief. ‘I just wanted to check that you’re coming to church on Sunday.’ Ruby closed her eyes at the sound of her mother’s voice on the phone.
‘I’m on nights,’ Ruby said, because even if it killed her, she’d at least have died trying.
‘You just said you were working Thursday, Friday, Saturday.’
‘Which means I’ll be home in bed on Sunday,’ Ruby explained as patiently as she could.
‘Your dad does whole weekends without sleep, and he’s doing a reading this Sunday. It would be nice if his family was there,’ her mum said. ‘It’s the nine a.m. service. If you take Adam’s car to work, you’ll get there in time. I’ll do a nice lamb roast.’
And that was it.
There was just no point arguing.
‘How’s your mum?’ Tilly asked when she hung up the phone.
‘Still keeping the peace,’ Ruby said. She was in her navy shorts and white shirt and her hair was tied tight. If you didn’t know how much she was shaking inside, she could almost have passed for a nurse. ‘Still keeping the chief happy!’
‘Come on,’ Tilly said. ‘I’ll walk with you.’
They walked up the hill under the lovely moon that had once held so much promise and Ruby was so glad to have her friend beside her.
‘Cort was widowed recently,’ Ruby said. Was it breaking a confidence to confide in her best friend when her heart was breaking? Probably, but she knew it would never be repeated by Tilly, not even to the others, and she was very grateful when Tilly said nothing for a little while and just walked on.
‘How recently?’ Tilly asked.
‘A month,’ Ruby said. ‘Well, it was a month when we…’ It still made her stomach churn to think of it.
‘She was in a car accident a few years ago—she had a head injury.’
‘It sounds like he lost her a long time ago,’ Tilly said gently.
‘Still…’
‘We had a couple the other week,’ Tilly said, ‘they were just so happy, so excited to be having this baby, and I found out halfway through labour that the baby wasn’t actually his—she’d lost her partner right at the start of the pregnancy.’ And they walked up the hill and Ruby listened. ‘It’s none of my business,’ Tilly said, ‘but I couldn’t get it at first, how she could move on so quickly. And then I saw the love, and I saw how happy they were and how he was with the baby…’ Tilly was the kindest person Ruby knew. ‘Don’t judge him, Ruby.’
‘He should have told me.’
‘When?’ Tilly asked. ‘You wanted him out the next morning…’
‘He hasn’t told anyone about her,’ Ruby said. ‘Even his colleagues don’t know or most of his friends.’ Tilly turned then and looked at her.
‘Hurts, doesn’t it? When someone you care about can’t confide in you?’ But Tilly didn’t hold grudges and she gave her friend a hug as the lights of Emergency came into view. ‘Maybe he had his reasons.’
‘I think I was supposed to be his get back out there fling.’
‘And what was he supposed to be?’
‘I don’t know,’ Ruby admitted. ‘If I’d even thought about it for a moment it would never have happened. I’ve just made things a whole lot more complicated—not only do I have to face Emergency, I have to work alongside him, after all the terrible things that I said.’
‘Then say sorry.’
‘What if he won’t accept it?’
‘Then at least you’ll have said it.’ Which wasn’t the answer Ruby wanted, but it was, she knew, the right one.
‘You’ll be fine,’ Tilly said. ‘No running away.’
‘I won’t.’
Cort Mason - Dr. Delectable Page 10
