Mr Right Now

by Karly Lane

  Olivia had spent her entire life behaving in exactly the right way. Her worst fear in school had been having the teacher call out her name in class for doing something wrong. Not that it had ever happened, but she’d lived in fear that one day it might. She’d always handed in her homework and assignments on time; she’d never skipped school and she’d never lied to her parents—except for the times she’d covered for her twin brother, Ollie. Like when he and Griffin Callahan had decided to skip school and hitch a ride into Griffith when their cricket hero came to town to promote his new book. That neither of them even liked to read hadn’t deterred them. But fibbing because your twin begged you to didn’t really count as lying to your parents, given you weren’t the one who had actually done anything wrong.

  Olivia sighed as she realised that even after all these years she was still a goody-two-shoes. This was why her boss had seemed so bewildered. He couldn’t quite wrap his head around her sudden personality change.

  Some rebel, she thought miserably. At the first sign of trouble you’re sitting here like a quivering mess.

  ‘I don’t understand what happened in there today, Olivia,’ Mr Rothers had said, sounding utterly perplexed. She couldn’t blame him really, it wasn’t like her … the old her, that was.

  She’d been wrestling with frustration for a while now, but it had taken her last trip home at Christmas to realise she needed to make a change. She was tired of being Olivia, ‘the good girl’. Where had it got her? She ignored the little voice that was quite happily listing the things it had got her: a decent job, a great apartment, a new car, savings in her bank account. Other than that, she thought irritably.

  Where was the excitement? She’d excelled in a very complex field, and yet when she tried to explain to someone what it was she actually did, she could almost see their eyes glaze over, and she couldn’t really blame them. Most people usually switched off once she told them she was a corporate lawyer. She usually got a nod and a vague smile, followed by, ‘That sounds interesting.’ But it really didn’t. Not to anyone who wasn’t in her field.

  She specialised in structuring mergers, acquisitions and finance operations. She was hired to assess, plan and implement value-adding processes to improve the financial function and operational processes of a firm.

  Since Christmas her life had been in turmoil. She wasn’t sure who she was any more. Who did she want to be? Her old self had seemed destined to climb the corporate ladder right to the top. Her employers wanted her to head that way, but it was no longer making her happy. She wanted to be more like her best friend, Hadley Callahan—war correspondent, globetrotter and general all-round amazing person. Hadley had always been Olivia’s hero—the bravest person Olivia knew. Even back in kindergarten nothing had scared Hadley. She’d stand up to the bigger kids in the playground when they tried to bully them; she’d throw away a chance at winning a ribbon on athletic days, not even flinching when the PE teacher yelled at her, just so she could keep Olivia company at the rear of the running pack. She was smart, pretty and had a heart of gold—there was nothing Hadley couldn’t do. Unlike Olivia. The only thing Olivia was good at was getting excellent grades and doing what she was told.

  Until now. Telling their biggest client that he was being an unreasonable jerk hadn’t been the smartest move. But he really had been a jerk—for weeks now they’d been bending over backwards to accommodate his demands. The old Olivia would have meekly bitten her tongue and stayed silent. In hindsight, that would have been sensible, but would Hadley have sat there and let the man not only dictate what was going to happen, but do it with a smug smirk because he knew he was the company’s biggest client? No, she would not have.

  So Olivia had decided to embrace her inner Hadley and stand up to the bully. She had imagined the rest of the boardroom would applaud her, give a standing ovation at her courage … Sadly, the reality hadn’t been nearly so epic: an uncomfortable silence, followed by a lot of awkward paper shuffling, and then Mr Rothers had excused himself and Olivia so they could speak privately. It had been humiliating, to say the least.

  This would not have happened to Hadley.

  Hadley’s world was perfect: she’d just married her longtime celebrity reporter boyfriend in a lavish New Year’s Eve wedding. Magazines and TV news had covered the event, celebrating the two darlings of the newsroom on their special day. Olivia was happy for her friend, she really was, but the wedding had brought home just how lonely Olivia really was.

  It hadn’t helped that as a bridesmaid she’d been paired with Hadley’s brother, Griffin Callahan. Olivia let out a small sigh and closed her eyes.

  Griffin was a year older than Hadley and Olivia, and he and Olivia’s twin brother, Oliver, were best friends. They’d grown up next door, and for years she’d only ever been his best friend’s sister. He’d barely given her the time of day. It wasn’t until high school that Griff had finally begun to notice her. He’d kissed her at a school disco, when she was in Year Nine, and that had been the beginning of a teenage love affair she’d thought would last forever.

  It was funny how sometimes just thinking about a time in your life could almost transport you there. When she thought of Griffin back then, she could feel the warm sun on her shoulders and smell the faint scent of chlorine and coconut oil sunscreen. She remembered the feel of beaded water and warm lips on smooth skin. He’d been her first true love.

  Of course, teenage love was very different to any other kind of love, she reminded herself. Everything was heightened with raging hormones and the first taste of grown-up emotions. It was new and exciting and completely unrealistic. Maybe that’s why you always remembered your first love with such reverence. It was untarnished by adult responsibilities and expectations.

  She opened her eyes and shook her head. It was pointless, she thought irritably, dwelling on the past like this. Not to mention irrelevant, as she remembered the last time she’d seen Griffin. It was after she’d gone and made a complete fool of herself at Hadley’s wedding reception. Olivia groaned aloud at the memory, quickly stopping it before the drunken scene could replay itself on a never-ending loop as it liked to do whenever she felt particularly depressed. What had happened to the professional, intelligent woman she’d worked so hard and diligently to become?

  Olivia reached for a file on her desk. Her phone rang and Olivia frowned as she picked it up and saw the name on the screen. Ollie. She swiped the green answer button.

  ‘Liv,’ Ollie said urgently, ‘Dad’s had an accident.’

  Olivia sat on the hard plastic chair in the hospital waiting area. Ollie’s call had been brief and to the point. Their father had rolled the tractor earlier that day and he was being flown to Sydney. He hadn’t had many details, only that Dad was in a bad way and he and their mother were driving down.

  As Olivia sat waiting to hear news of her father’s condition, cleaners pushed trolleys past her and busy nurses speed-walked their way to the next important item on their list of duties. Each time a nurse appeared she tensed, but none of them stopped and time passed like slow, unrelenting torture. She kept her mother and brother updated via texts, and she knew they would be experiencing the same hell of uncertainty as they drove towards the city.

  Just when she thought her patience had stretched to breaking point, a young neatly dressed man in a long-sleeved shirt and tailored trousers called her name. Nausea bubbled inside her stomach. Bracing herself, she got to her feet and tried to take a calming breath as he approached her.

  ‘My name’s Doctor Handoo. We’ve just finished examining your father. They managed to stabilise him on site before flying him here. He is incredibly lucky to be alive.’

  Olivia listened as the doctor began rattling off a staggering list of the injuries they’d identified so far. Among them were fractures of the spine, as well as leg, arm and pelvis. He had broken ribs, a fractured sternum and a multitude of abrasions.

  ‘What happens now?’ Olivia asked, running a hand through her dishevelled h
air.

  ‘We’ll need to perform surgery on the thoracic spine to stabilise the fractures, and he’ll have further surgery to pin and plate the fractures to his femur, arm and pelvis. You can come and sit with him until then if you like.’ He turned abruptly without waiting to see if she followed and she had to walk quickly to keep up.

  ‘Do you have any idea how long he’ll be in hospital?’ she asked, almost running into the doctor’s back as he stopped in front of a door and swiped a card to gain access.

  ‘That will depend on how well the surgery goes, but the pelvic fracture alone will have him off his feet for six weeks.’ He opened a curtain at the far end of the room and Olivia stood and stared, too shocked to do more. The man sleeping in the bed barely resembled her father. His face was bruised and swollen. She would have walked straight past had she not known it was him.

  Doctor Handoo muttered something about getting the nurse and disappeared. Olivia sank into the chair beside the bed, her legs feeling as though they could no longer keep her upright. Her father had lost his usual ruddy complexion and he seemed to have shrunk into himself somehow. It was a terrible shock to see him looking so small and vulnerable.

  There was a cannula in his arm, attached to a saline drip. On his other arm was a blood pressure cuff. A nurse whisked open the curtain and took his blood pressure and oxygen saturations before leaving with the promise of coming right back to get some more details from Olivia.

  From beneath the sheet covering his chest she could see where leads had been attached to monitor his heart rate. An oxygen mask covered his nose and mouth. When the nurse returned he explained her father needed as much oxygen as possible because of the fractures to his ribs and upper back. His lungs were just not able to get the oxygen into his blood that he needed at present.

  Olivia gingerly reached out and touched his hand, the tough skin beneath hers reassuringly familiar. Work hands. A movement caught her eye and she lifted her gaze to her father’s face to see his eyelids flutter open.

  ‘Dad.’ Her voice caught unexpectedly and she felt a rush of hot tears down her cheeks.

  His voice was faint and muffled and she had to lean in to hear him through the oxygen mask.

  ‘Don’t try to talk. You’re okay. You’re in hospital.’

  ‘Your mother?’

  ‘Mum and Ollie are on their way. They’ll be here soon. I’m going to stay right here with you. Do you need anything? Do you want me to call the nurse?’ His face was contorting as he tried to move and Olivia was worried he’d do more damage to himself.

  ‘No. They’ve got me pumped full of painkillers as it is,’ he rasped between painful breaths.

  ‘Well, no wonder,’ Olivia said, shaking her head at him. ‘If you’re in pain you need to tell them.’ She knew he wouldn’t. He’d grit his teeth and bear agony before he’d ask for pain relief. She’d never even seen him take a headache tablet.

  ‘I thought I was a goner, Liv,’ he said after a few moments.

  She swallowed painfully, unable to trust her voice to speak, but she clasped his big hand in hers.

  ‘I can still hear it,’ he whispered. ‘When the tractor rolled … and then it pinned me.’

  Olivia squeezed his hand tightly. She’d only heard the bare details about the accident, but she could imagine the horrific sight it would have made. ‘Everything’s okay now, Dad. You’re safe now.’

  ‘You know what I was thinking while I was lying there?’ he said, ignoring her attempt to reassure him. ‘That I’d left the pump on at the trough.’

  Olivia eyed him warily.

  ‘For all I knew I was about to kick the bucket and the last thing I was thinking of was whether or not I’d turned off the bloody water,’ he said, closing his eyes again.

  Olivia gave a small chuckle that ended on a sob. ‘Oh, Dad,’ she said, dropping her head. He really could have died today. It still hadn’t fully sunk in, but it was starting to. ‘That just means you weren’t ready to kick the bucket just yet.’

  ‘In case I still do,’ he said, his voice beginning to fade, ‘you kids and your mother …’—he was fighting so hard to stay awake—‘you’re what matters.’

  ‘We know, Dad. It’s all going to be fine. Get some sleep. I’m staying right here.’

  She wasn’t sure if it was the painkillers or pure exhaustion, or quite possibly a combination of the two, but something finally conspired to bring down the mighty Bill Dawson. A fierce protectiveness washed over her as she sat beside her father and watched his chest rise and fall in sleep. She would not let anything happen to him now. He was safe and everything was going to be fine.

  Three

  Griff looked up from where he was digging and swore under his breath as he saw his father’s ute heading across the paddock towards him. ‘What now?’ he muttered, hoisting himself out of the muddy hole and wiping an arm across his forehead as he waited for his old man to climb out of the vehicle.

  ‘Just had a phone call from Sue. Bill’s about to go into surgery,’ his dad said in lieu of a greeting. It had been a tense twenty-four hours since Bill Dawson had rolled his tractor next door and almost killed himself.

  ‘Shit.’ Griff rubbed his jaw, thinking about his best mate Ollie sitting in some cold hospital waiting room.

  ‘Yeah. Young Ollie said he tried to call you but couldn’t get through.’

  Griff had been working in one of the reception dead spots on the property. Bill must be in more trouble than Griff had first thought if his father had taken it upon himself to drive out and deliver Ollie’s message personally.

  ‘Figured you’d want to know.’

  Griff waited for the lecture … there had to be one. After all, it was the perfect opportunity to find something to moan about, seeing as he’d driven all the way out here anyway. But nothing happened. His father stuffed his hands into his pockets and glanced over at the hole Griff had been in. ‘Got a leak?’

  Griff folded his arms across his chest and leaned against the bull bar of his dad’s ute. He’d been out checking the water troughs this morning when he’d noticed the wet ground at the base of one of the troughs. ‘Yeah. Bloody pump needs a new hose.’

  ‘Bugger of a job.’ His father nodded at Griff’s muddy gumboots.

  Okay, this was beginning to freak him out. What the hell was going on? His father never made small talk. ‘Everything all right, Dad?’ Griff asked warily.

  ‘Yeah. Course it is,’ he said, shuffling his work boots in the dirt. ‘Your mother thought I should come out and see how you’re doin’.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Buggered if I know. I told her you’re more than capable of handling whatever needs to be done. I don’t need to come out here and hold your flamin’ hand.’

  Okay. So this was his mum’s big idea to get them talking. A memory of the hopeful look she’d given him flashed through his mind and he gave a silent curse. ‘Actually, Dad, while you’re here I’ve got a heifer in the yards with a bad eye. Do you reckon you can take a look at her for me? Let me know what you think?’ He’d spotted the weepy eye the day before and isolated her, but hadn’t had time to have a proper look at it. His guess was it was a grass seed—there were no signs of pink eye in the other cattle so it was fairly safe to say it wasn’t going to be that, but if asking the old man’s opinion helped keep the peace around the place, then so be it.

  ‘I suppose I could,’ he said, seeming a little surprised by the request.

  ‘Thanks. That’d be great.’

  ‘Well,’ Bob said, taking a step back, ‘you be bloody careful out here. Bill’s accident makes you realise just how quickly things can go wrong,’ he said gruffly.

  ‘Yeah. Righto. I will.’ Griff managed to hide his own surprise at his father’s uncharacteristic concern—he hadn’t told him to be careful of the machinery, he’d told him to be careful of himself. ‘Are you sure everything’s all right, Dad?’ Maybe there was something really wrong with him.

  ‘Of course everything’s b
loody all right. Now get back to work, that leak’s not gonna fix itself.’

  Griff instantly relaxed. There he was. All good, he obviously wasn’t dying or anything. ‘Righto. I’m goin’.’

  He found himself thinking about Bill Dawson as he replaced the broken irrigation pipe. He wondered how Ollie was coping. Coming across an accident was never easy, but finding your own father in a life and death situation—that had to be rough. As much as he bitched and moaned about his old man, the thought of losing him felt like a punch in the gut. If any good came from Bill’s accident, maybe it was the reminder that parents weren’t going to be around forever. It was a sobering thought.

  Olivia and Ollie spent the next few days playing tag, making sure someone was always with their father at the hospital. Their mother spent the majority of the day by his bedside, refusing to leave until evening. ‘He needs company,’ she’d say whenever Ollie or Olivia tried to get her to take a break.

  Bill had undergone two surgeries since his admission to hospital, the first to stabilise his spine and the second to realign the fractures in his arm and leg, which required pins to be inserted. It was upsetting seeing him broken and battered, in such pain and feeling so helpless.

  ‘Mum can’t sit in a hospital all day for the next few months,’ Olivia said to her twin after yet another failed attempt to get their mother to leave the hospital for lunch.

  ‘Looks like she’s planning to,’ Ollie said, stepping out of the hospital elevator as the doors slid open on the ground floor. ‘She’s worried about him.’

  ‘I know she is. We all are, but he’s in a hospital. It’s not like he’s being left home alone. We have to talk about what’s going to happen, Ollie,’ she said, slipping her sunglasses from her head as they stepped out into the sunshine.