The Family Doctor

by Debra Oswald

  The next morning, Anita was sprawled in bed, semi-conscious. She rolled onto her belly to squash her forehead into the pillow, hoping to squeeze the thumping hangover headache out of her skull.

  As she hovered in that little transition moment between sleep and waking, the conversation with Paula from the night before floated beyond any recall at first, then drifted into awareness as an implausible scene from a dream, then slammed into full consciousness as something that had actually happened, as the new reality Anita would have to handle.

  She reached over to her bedside table to guzzle water and swill it around her parched mouth. When she picked up her phone to check the time, she noticed a missed call and several texts from Rohan.

  Good morning, gorgeous woman. How are you? Having a sleep-in? Hope so. Rohan xx

  Anita let the phone fall from her hand onto the sheets.

  She imagined the scene of telling Rohan everything. Anita would calmly admit the truth of what Paula had done, remind him of the context and explain the reasoning behind her actions. She imagined Rohan listening in his respectful way.

  Finally Anita would say, ‘So in conclusion, Paula did unfortunately kill two people, but please understand she thought she was doing the right thing.’

  She imagined Rohan nodding thoughtfully.

  ‘Well, Anita, let’s face it, they were horrible men. Having said that, do remind your friend that murdering is frowned upon and make sure she never does it again. Otherwise, it’s all sweet,’ Rohan would not reply.

  Because that scene was impossible.

  There was no way she could tell Rohan Mehta and expect him, as a cop and as an honourable person, not to report these crimes. Paula’s argument for keeping quiet—that it would only cause distress for Rochelle Ferguson and Brooke Lester if this truth were to be told—that argument had merit. Maybe too, underneath the boiling surface of Anita’s anger towards Paula, she wasn’t ready to betray her friend.

  She then tried to imagine her way through an evening at Rohan’s place, the two of them having dinner and Anita not saying a word about the things she now knew. She imagined meeting Rohan’s parents, and introducing him to her family, and still not telling him. She imagined him asking her why she didn’t see Paula anymore and heard herself making up a lie. Those scenes were all impossible too.

  Anita couldn’t see a way to maintain a relationship with Rohan while this massive secret was sitting there, polluting the air they breathed together, rotting through the floorboards they stood on. She’d been the one to insist they must always keep their relationship candid and open. She could no longer offer that.

  Later in the day, she composed a text.

  Rohan, I know this seems like it’s coming out of nowhere, but I’m afraid I have to end our relationship. I’m sorry. You’re a wonderful man but I’m so messed up with everything that’s happened, I need to be by myself and work some stuff out. I’m so sorry. Anita xxx

  Immediately her phone buzzed as he tried to call her. She didn’t pick up. The phone then dinged with a text.

  ??? I’m confused. Please can we meet and talk? R

  Better not. Easier for me if we don’t. Sorry. A x

  I’m going to worry about you. Please. xx

  This man was no idiot—he would need more of an explanation. And it was ridiculous and cruel to break up with him by text. So Anita agreed to meet at a cafe around the corner from the Downing Street court building at the end of the day.

  Sitting at the cafe table, she looked for the shape of Rohan in the clumps of suited men crossing the street. She wondered if she would break, renege on her decision, blurt out the truth, betray Paula.

  When she spotted him walking towards her, she felt how much she loved him like a pressure on her sternum, and at exactly the same time, she felt how impossible it would be to stay with him now.

  Rohan signalled hello and then paused at the cafe counter to order a pot of tea. When he joined her at the table, she could feel him looking at her searchingly, wanting to understand. That made Anita fidgety, fiddling with the teaspoon, wriggling in the chair, as if by constantly moving, she could avoid being properly seen.

  ‘Are you okay? Has something happened?’ he asked, leaning forward, anxious for her.

  ‘No. Well, only the stuff you already know.’

  After that, he looked less worried and more wounded. He sat back in his chair, defensive.

  ‘Then I’m confused,’ he said. ‘Have I missed something? Am I being thick about something that’s going on?’

  ‘No, no. I think it’s just everything that’s happened—I don’t know—I thought I was ready to be in a relationship but I’ve realised I’m not.’

  ‘Is this you wanting to even the score for that time I went to ground after the verdict?’ he asked. ‘I mean, I realise that was annoying, but I’ve explained and apologised and I thought we’d—’

  ‘It’s not that,’ she said.

  Rohan looked at her, waiting for more, so she blathered on, reminding him of her initial hesitation, the weird and painful way they had become connected in the first place. She poured blame onto herself: she had warned him she was an anxious, sometimes unstable person. The ending of her last relationship and then the trauma about Stacey had left her more of a mess than she’d acknowledged. Now she’d hit a wall and needed to be by herself to sort stuff out.

  As she kept talking, not making eye contact, letting a string of unconvincing phrases tumble out of her mouth, Rohan listened silently, which only rattled Anita more.

  She interrupted her own unimpressive ramble to ask, ‘Can you please say something? You can say I’m a terrible, scatty, immature person who’s toyed with your feelings and—I don’t know what you think, but—oh …’

  ‘I think you don’t give yourself enough credit for being a strong person who can get through this stuff. And yes, okay, the way we got to know each other is connected to very painful things, but I don’t … Look, I think you could give me more credit as someone who can handle whatever we need to—I mean, I love you, Anita. I think you should trust that more than you seem to.’

  Anita dropped her gaze to the table. It was almost unbearable.

  ‘Well, thank you,’ she mumbled. ‘I think it’s a horrible shame that we met at the wrong time in my life. I’m sorry for messing you around like this, Rohan. I’m sorry if I’ve hurt you.’

  She tried to give her tone an edge of finality, to make it clear no further discussion was welcome. She heard him sigh. The sigh sounded confused—understandably, because she was making no sense, given the reality of the relationship he’d experienced. And he sounded offended—also understandably.

  ‘Am I supposed to make you feel okay about hurting me in this mystifying way?’

  ‘No, no, it’s not like that.’

  ‘So were you just stringing me along all this time? I don’t get it … Fuck.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Okay, you’ve said the requisite number of sorries.’ There was a hard clip to his voice—something Anita had never heard before. ‘Well, I don’t understand it but I have to respect your decision. I might head off now.’

  ‘Sure. Thanks for meeting me.’

  Rohan got up from the table, gathered his work files, folding into himself, self-protective, and turned to go. But then he twisted around to gaze at her, suddenly defenceless again.

  ‘Just tell me, Anita, are you really alright?’ he asked. ‘Is there anything I can do for you?’

  The tenderness in his voice almost undid her.

  ‘No. I mean, yes, I’ll be okay. I’ll find some professional help or whatever. You don’t need to worry about me.’

  ‘I will worry about you anyway,’ he said. ‘Do you mind if I message you occasionally so I know you’re okay?’

  ‘Of course.’

  He nodded and walked out of the cafe. She could tell by the way he held his shoulders that he was fighting the urge to cry. Which made Anita want to rush out into the street after hi
m and wrap her arms around him, soothe him, beg forgiveness, explain everything, declare her love. But she couldn’t do that.

  Travelling home alone, Anita pressed her cheek against the window of the bus, glad to let the vibration of the diesel engine rattle through her body.

  It was just as well she and Rohan hadn’t yet got around to doing the mutual family introductions. That made things easier now. Anita would not have to untell her parents and her brothers about the gorgeous police detective with whom she’d formed her most mature, healthy and joyful relationship ever.

  She stumbled in the door of her flat and flaked out on the bed, sobbing like a teenage girl. In the last twenty-four hours she’d lost her best friend and the man she loved. That was bad enough. What made it worse was that they were the only two people who could’ve helped Anita get her head around what had happened, and now she couldn’t talk to either of them.

  NINETEEN

  THE MOMENT AFTER ANITA WALKED OUT OF THE EARLWOOD house, it hit Paula with glaring clarity: she couldn’t stay there anymore. Any good memories of Remy, Stacey or the kids that might be embedded in the house had been pushed out by ugly ones. And because of her own actions, and now what she’d done to Anita, Paula no longer belonged there.

  She threw a change of clothes in an overnight bag and drove without any direction or plan, letting the stream of traffic take her, allowing the flow of traffic lights and turning lanes to make the decisions, until she ended up on the highway west out of the city.

  As she drove, she found herself saying words aloud—‘selfish’, ‘stupid’—like verbal slaps to her own face. She had vowed never to tell anyone what she’d done, but pressure had built up inside, a feverish need to share her secret with someone, and Paula had given in to that. But dumping it on Anita hadn’t lessened the burden. All she’d managed to do was load this toxic information onto her friend, who didn’t deserve it. She should never have told her. There was no excuse. It was unforgivable.

  On the dark highway, Paula became aware that she was losing her sense of proprioception, unable to feel her body in the car seat, unable to orientate herself or the car in space. There was a risk she would run off the road or, worse, career into the lane of oncoming traffic and hurt someone. She pulled over to the verge and anchored herself by concentrating on the smoothness of the steering wheel under her palms and the tautness of the seatbelt against her collarbone.

  After a few minutes, she steered back out onto the highway, fearing that if she stayed still, she would have to face up to what she’d done and it would be unbearable. She knew that wasn’t logical.

  Further on, somewhere past Lithgow, her eyes felt so gritty it was unsafe to keep driving. She parked in a truck lay-by, tipped the seat back and tried to sleep. Maybe if she got a few hours of rest, she could think her way through this, make some proper decisions.

  But sleep was impossible. There were too many thoughts scratching around inside her skull.

  She could possibly persuade herself that the first time—killing Ian Ferguson—had been a spur-of-the-moment act: she had seized an opportunity that fell across her path, without premeditation or even full self-awareness. But she couldn’t delude herself about John Santino. With him, her criminal actions were planned with complete awareness and undeniable homicidal intent. After the second murder, Paula understood that she had crossed over into some other dimension, irrevocably, permanently.

  She must’ve hoped—probably unconsciously, certainly childishly—that if she told Anita, then she could share the burden of this with someone. But she couldn’t share it. That was impossible as well as being unfair and cruel to her friend.

  Paula was alone with this. She had to accept that she was alone now.

  Reclining in the driver’s seat, sleepless, powerless to scrape unwelcome thoughts out her head, she stared through the window as the headlights of passing cars washed over the dark trees. Paula wondered if this was what it felt like to go mad. She thought about patients she’d dealt with when they were in the process of slipping into a psychotic episode. But she didn’t think she was experiencing the onset of a psychotic break, because this mental disorientation made its own painful sense, given what had happened and what she’d done. This was appropriate anguish.

  She must’ve dozed off for a while, probably a couple of hours, because when she jerked awake, the sky was starting to lighten. She returned the seat to upright and realised there were two semitrailers parked in the lay-by.

  She clambered stiffly out of the car to stretch her limbs and then saw one of the truck drivers was pissing into the scrub, steam rising from the stream of urine in the chill of the early morning air. When the truckie saw her there, he turned his body away modestly and then, as he returned to his semitrailer, he nodded in greeting. The guy was unthreatening but it made Paula uncomfortable to have anyone look at her.

  It was now thumpingly clear that she couldn’t go back to work at Marrickville Family Practice. She couldn’t handle seeing her own patients, couldn’t bear to have their eyes on her, especially the patients who’d known her for years.

  She walked in agitated loops on the gravel near her car, holding her phone, trying to think of the wording. She waited until seven forty-five, when Li-Kim would have arrived to open up the practice for the day.

  Li-Kim picked up the call straight away. ‘Paula. Hi.’

  ‘Hi. Listen … um … I’m not in great shape.’

  ‘Oh no. Are you ill?’ Li-Kim asked.

  ‘Not ill, but I think everything … it’s kind of caught up with me.’

  ‘Oh, Paula, I can hear in your voice, you sound rattled.’

  ‘Can’t really talk about it right now.’

  ‘No, no, totally understandable,’ Li-Kim responded.

  Paula knew that everyone at the practice had been half expecting her to fall apart after Stacey and the children were killed.

  ‘What can I do? How can I help?’ Li-Kim asked. She was a deeply kind woman. Paula had been lucky to have her as a friend.

  ‘I think I need to take a break,’ Paula said. ‘I’m sorry. I know it’s a hassle.’

  ‘Of course. Don’t worry. Take the time you need, Paula. We’ll cover your sessions.’

  ‘Thanks, Li-Kim.’

  ‘You need a break. Don’t worry about anything here.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Ending that phone call felt decisive, sharp—one more tie to normal life severed.

  Paula pulled back out onto the highway, trying to make her crumbly brain work, unsure what to do next. In the rear-view mirror, she caught a glimpse of the ridiculous blonde hair on her head and she was sure she wanted to be rid of it.

  She continued on into Bathurst, then drove around until she found a hair salon that was open early and could fit her in on the spot.

  The hairdresser was reluctant to cut her hair super short. ‘Are you sure? Sure you want to lose all your lovely long hair?’

  Paula was sure.

  The young female apprentice washed her hair and installed Paula in the chair with a cape around her. When the hairdresser came over, ready to cut, Paula smiled at him in the mirror, then quickly dropped her gaze.

  The hairdresser sussed that this customer wasn’t up for a chat and he began cutting her hair in blessed silence. Paula saw him exchange the occasional look with the apprentice, curious about who this strange woman was.

  As chunks of blonde hair began tumbling to the floor, Paula met her own eyes in the mirror. She wasn’t used to the confronting business of sitting in front of a salon mirror in strong lighting, facing herself. She closed her eyes and focused on listening to the swishing sounds of the guy combing her wet hair into sections and then the satisfyingly crisp snip of the scissors slicing through hunks of it.

  So much had been subtracted from Paula’s life—her parents, then Remy, then Stacey, Cameron, Poppy. Her sense of herself as an ethical person had gone. And now Anita had been subtracted too.

  That was the moment Paula
started to cry.

  She felt the hairdresser rest his hand softly on her shoulder. ‘Are you okay?’ he asked. ‘Too short? I can stop cutting it so short and we could give you some kind of layered bob.’

  ‘Sorry, no. The hair is good. Keep going. Me crying is not about the hair.’

  ‘Okay. If you’re sure.’

  ‘I’m sure.’

  The guy resumed cutting but when Paula continued to cry, he stopped again.

  ‘I’m okay,’ she assured him. ‘Please keep cutting. Sorry about the crying.’

  ‘Well, usually when someone wants the big radical change to their hair, it’s because of a relationship break-up or something along those lines.’

  Paula shrugged. ‘Something like that.’

  ‘Look, if it’s any consolation,’ he said, ‘I think the short cut will suit you.’

  Paula nodded her thanks to him in the mirror. The apprentice passed her a few tissues with a shy smile.

  The crying made Paula feel a little better. So did seeing the blonde hair being swept up from the floor and deposited into the bin.

  Her head cleared enough that she could grab hold of one anchoring thought: as a doctor, she had useful skills. It must be possible to work usefully. It would need to be somewhere no one knew her, where she could keep her head down, somewhere she would not be constantly reminded of unbearable things.

  After Paula walked out of the salon with what looked like a wavy pale yellow swimming cap on her head, she sat in the food court of a nearby shopping centre and started scrolling through websites for GP locum jobs.

  In that same shopping centre, she bought underwear, shoes, a pair of jeans, a few shirts, two cheap but serviceable dresses, plus a suitcase to put it all in. She couldn’t face going back to the Earlwood house—even for the few minutes it would take to fetch some of her clothes. Anyway, this seemed right. She could never be the person she used to be, so wearing new, unfamiliar garments felt appropriate.

  Because Paula was prepared to go anywhere, on short notice, it only took a couple of days to nab a GP locum position. She signed on for a two-week fill-in stint in a town on the south coast. After that, there would be a locum job for a week out west, followed by two weeks on the far north coast.