Falling for His Best Friend

by Emily Forbes

  Despite his ordeal, Toshi was able to transfer himself from the stretcher to the examination bed, and Joe smiled at Kitty as he wheeled the stretcher from the room. If he’d noticed her less than friendly attitude towards him it didn’t appear to bother him. He wouldn’t imagine he’d done anything to upset her and, in reality, she wouldn’t normally have been upset by his behaviour. He was just being regular Joe. It was hardly his fault she was a hormonal mess.

  Kitty hung up the bag of saline and attached leads to Toshi’s chest and finger to record his vital statistics. Anna connected him to the oxygen as a precaution but Joe’s assessment seemed accurate. Toshi seemed physically in quite a good state, although Kitty wasn’t sure what a night spent drifting in the Pacific Ocean would do to a person’s mental state. She knew she would have been terrified, imagining sharks circling and all sorts of deadly sea creatures just waiting to pounce. It was just the sort of thing that could lead to PTSD, but there wouldn’t be much discussion about Toshi’s mental health until the interpreter could be contacted.

  ‘Can you organise some food for him?’ Anna asked Kitty when she’d finished her physical examination and declared that he was, indeed, in remarkably good shape. ‘Something simple to start with, perhaps soup, a salad and some juice?’

  ‘Sure,’ Kitty replied.

  ‘And then we’d better see if we can get an interpreter on the phone if one doesn’t turn up shortly. He can have half-hourly obs once he’s eaten, providing he keeps something down.’

  Kitty organised a tray of food and then took her scheduled break while she waited for it to be delivered. The television in the staff kitchen was on the news channel and Kitty recognised the hospital ED entrance in the background of the shot. A reporter stood in the ambulance bay, speaking to the camera. Kitty wondered if this was the same news crew that had followed the ambulance bringing Toshi. She supposed it was an interesting story.

  The emergency doors slid open behind the reporter and Joe stepped outside. Kitty increased the volume when she saw the reporter turn to Joe, thrusting the microphone towards him. Joe stopped, and Kitty wondered if he’d been asked to speak to the media. If so, he was a good choice—after all, he had been one of the paramedics who had transferred Toshi to hospital, and the camera loved him. The angles of his face were thrown into sharp relief by the fluorescent overhead lights of the hospital entrance but his skin still managed to look tanned and healthy and his blue eyes were clear and bright.

  ‘I’m speaking now with one of the paramedics who brought the Japanese surfer here to North Sydney Hospital after his harrowing ordeal lost at sea for sixteen hours,’ the young reporter said to the camera, before turning to Joe. ‘Mr Harkness, what can you tell us about the man’s condition? Is he going to be all right?’

  The reporter knew his name, so Joe must have been asked to speak and from past experience Kitty knew it was the only way to get them to move on. You had to give them something otherwise they’d be hovering around all night.

  ‘He was very dehydrated and sunburnt but in remarkably good spirits considering his ordeal. He’s understandably relieved to be back on dry land,’ Joe replied.

  He looked fresh and relaxed. No one would guess he was nearing the end of his twelve-hour shift. The dimple in his chin appeared as he smiled at the young news reporter. Kitty just knew the effect his smile would be having on the young woman. She’d be surprised if she could remember her next question.

  ‘How did he come to be on his surfboard in a shipping lane six kilometres off the east coast of Australia?’ the reporter asked, and Kitty was sure she could see a blush colouring her throat as Joe looked directly at her.

  ‘As far as we know, he got dragged out to sea in a rip and was unable to paddle back in as the waves were too big.’

  ‘And how did he end up in your ambulance?’

  ‘He was spotted by the crew of a container ship and they were able to pick him up. It was fortunate his surfboard was yellow as they may not have seen him otherwise. The coastguard retrieved him and we met them and transferred him here. He’s a very lucky man.’

  The reporter asked a couple more questions, but Kitty’s mind wandered as she watched Joe. She could tell he’d had enough of being interviewed. He was still being pleasant but the set of his shoulders had changed. He was angled away from the reporter now and although Kitty couldn’t see his feet she suspected he had shifted his weight. He’d be getting ready to move. She could read his body language, knew his movements. She had spent so much time with him, watching him, she knew the set of his head, the curve of his cheek, the exact position of the dimple in his chin. She didn’t want to be cross with him. She acknowledged that it stemmed from being irritated with herself. It wasn’t his fault she was hormonal.

  She felt a flutter in her belly as the baby stretched and moved and reminded her of what was important. Family. Friends. Joe was as important to her as anyone. She’d mend the bridges.

  She didn’t get to choose who Joe spent his time with. That was all up to him and he’d obviously not wanted to kiss her. Thank God when he’d bent his head towards her that night at the pub she hadn’t met him halfway—she would have died of embarrassment. As it was, it was bad enough that he’d hooked up with Victoria. Had that been his plan all along for that night?

  She remembered he’d asked her not to talk about pregnant sex. Did he think her pregnancy made her unattractive? Undesirable?

  Had she just imagined that he was going to kiss her? Had she wanted him to?

  She knew she had. Did.

  But perhaps it was best that she hadn’t. She needed him in her life and she couldn’t afford to jeopardise their relationship. He was one of the few people she could rely on to have her back. She couldn’t risk altering the status quo.

  So she’d better stop being in a huff about Victoria. She didn’t need to socialise with them as a couple but she should stop ignoring Joe.

  Even Jess had noticed that Joe hadn’t been around for the past few days. Kitty’s birthday was next week and she had always celebrated it with Joe. Jess and Cam had been pressuring her to invite him for dinner. She checked the roster. She wanted to know which nights Victoria was working. She could invite Joe and feign ignorance that Victoria had a shift.

  She went out to the ambulance bay, anxious to catch Joe before he left. Suddenly she felt it was important to fix things. To act like an adult.

  She waited until the reporter signed off on her segment and the news crew had started packing up their gear before she hurried after him.

  ‘Joe? Can I talk to you?’

  ‘Hey.’ He turned around with a smile. He looked pleased to see her. Maybe he hadn’t even noticed she’d been avoiding him. He was probably too caught up in Victoria to have time to think about her. She pushed those thoughts aside. She didn’t want to think about Victoria any more than she had to, and basked in the warmth of Joe’s smile instead. ‘How are you?’ he asked. ‘How’s our patient?’

  ‘Hungry.’ She smiled back. ‘Toshi, I mean,’ she clarified.

  ‘That’s a good sign.’

  ‘It is,’ she agreed. ‘I saw your interview.’

  ‘Is that what you came to tell me? Was it terrible?’

  She shook her head. ‘You know it wasn’t. I wanted to ask if you are free for dinner tomorrow night? Cam is going to make a barbecue,’ she said, reminding herself she’d have to remember to tell Cam. ‘It’s an early birthday celebration for me. Would you like to come over?’

  ‘Sounds great.’

  ‘You’re welcome to bring Victoria,’ she offered, hoping that Joe would already know she had a shift and wouldn’t ask her to swap it.

  ‘Thanks, but I don’t think we’re at that point in our relationship yet.’

  ‘OK.’ Kitty did a mental fist pump. That had worked out well—she’d looked gracious while still getting what she wanted. Joe hadn’t ev
en thought about checking Victoria’s roster. ‘See you at seven.’

  That was good. He didn’t seem out of sorts with her. She didn’t want to push him away, to give him a reason to abandon their friendship, abandon her. Everyone left her eventually but she really wanted to keep Joe in her life for as long as possible. She needed him.

  * * *

  Kitty answered Joe’s knock on the door. She was wearing a dress he hadn’t seen before. She looked good. Pink suited her. She was glowing, making him wonder suddenly if she’d had the sex she’d been seeking out the other night. Had sex put the sparkle in her eyes and the glow on her cheeks?

  He didn’t want to think about Kitty having sex. Not if it wasn’t with him. But that wasn’t going to happen, and thinking about it wasn’t going to do anyone any good.

  ‘New dress?’ he asked as he kissed her cheek and handed her the gifts he’d brought.

  ‘I had to go shopping. I don’t fit into my clothes any more,’ she said as she led him into the house. His gaze dropped to her hips, which were swaying tantalisingly in front of him. This pregnancy had filled her out, rounding her bottom, in a good way, and Joe felt a corresponding tightness in his groin.

  He greeted Jess and Cam and handed Cam a six-pack of beer as he tried to ignore the stirring of lust that threatened to destroy his concentration.

  ‘Good man. I’m living in a teetotaller house these days. I’m trying to be supportive and it’s no fun drinking without company,’ Cam said as he cracked the tops of a couple of the small bottles and handed one back to Joe. ‘Jess isn’t drinking either.’

  ‘I’m keeping Kitty company,’ she said.

  ‘How many weeks are you now?’ Joe asked Kitty. ‘Twenty-two?’

  ‘Twenty-four.’

  His question had purely been conversational. He knew exactly how many weeks she was.

  ‘We had a scan today,’ Jess told him. He thought it was strange that she said ‘we’. He knew that genetically the baby was hers and she obviously felt a connection but Kitty was the one who was pregnant. ‘Would you like to see the picture?’ Jess asked.

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘I’m not sure that Joe is as interested in our baby as we are,’ Cam told his wife.

  ‘It’s fine,’ Joe said, trying to sound enthusiastic.

  Jess went to the fridge and removed a small square black and white picture from where it had been held in place by a magnet. She held it out to Joe.

  This was OK. He’d seen plenty of ultrasound scans before. It was just a baby. As long as he didn’t think that this baby was responsible for the change in Kitty’s shape and the subsequent change in his perception of her it was all good. At this stage, it just looked like any baby. With a perfect profile, sucking its thumb.

  ‘Do you know if it’s a boy or a girl?’ he asked.

  Jess shook her head. ‘We can’t agree. I want to know, but Cam—’

  ‘I want a surprise,’ Cam said, finishing Jess’s sentence for her as she started coughing. Cam fetched her a glass of water and Jess drank it in fits and starts, between coughs, until she could speak again.

  ‘I want to know because I want to decorate the nursery. If we’re only going to do this once I’d like time to be prepared.’

  Joe suspected that meant that they would find out the sex. In his experience the woman got her way in these things. But who would have the final say? Who would the doctor listen to? Technically, Kitty was the mother. What would she say? He didn’t want to ask that question. He decided to stick to a safer topic. ‘Only once, you say?’

  ‘I’d be happy with one,’ Cam said. ‘It’s one more than we thought we’d have.’

  ‘I’d like more, but I’m not going to be greedy,’ Jess admitted.

  ‘Let’s just get this one here safely,’ Cam said.

  ‘I know, I’m not going to get ahead of myself but I loved growing up with a sister. I couldn’t do this without her,’ Jess said as she took the ultrasound picture back from Joe and hugged Kitty, ‘and I’d like to think of my own children having the same relationship with a sibling.’

  Joe had brothers and sisters, but none of them were full siblings, and he certainly didn’t share the bond with any of them like Kitty and Jess had. ‘There’s no guarantee that they’d get along, you know. I’ve got five siblings and I don’t really get along with any of them.’ In fact, he had always thought Kitty was more like a sister than his real ones. Until the past week at least, when he’d started having very unfamilial thoughts about her.

  ‘I find that hard to believe,’ Cam said. ‘I picked you as one of those blokes that gets on with everyone.’

  Joe laughed. ‘Maybe that says more about me than them.’

  Kitty came to his defence. ‘You’re not really close in age to any of them and you didn’t really grow up together. That makes a difference.’

  ‘I guess what I’m saying is that I grew up virtually as an only child, and in a lot of ways I think I had a happier childhood for it.’ His teenage years maybe hadn’t been quite so happy, but that was because he’d been old enough to realise that he didn’t really fit in with any of his families. But that wasn’t because he didn’t have siblings—that was because his mum and dad hadn’t been able to stay married. To anyone. And that had meant he’d constantly had his boundaries and his living arrangements changed around him, completely out of his control. He hadn’t like that and had become rebellious, which had made him difficult to live with. Not just for his parents but probably for some of his brothers and sisters, too. It was circumstances that had made him.

  ‘I didn’t know you were one of six,’ Jess said.

  ‘Two half-siblings and three step-siblings. In some ways I’m surprised it’s not more. My parents divorced when I was four. Mum was Dad’s second wife, but they’ve both been married three times now. That’s a lot of families to juggle and a lot of different dynamics. I think I preferred it when I was on my own. In a lot of ways it made life easier.’

  Joe didn’t think much of a typical family unit but he knew his reservations were due to watching his parents struggle to keep marriages together. Although struggle wasn’t the right word—neither of them really seemed to put much effort into making their marriages last. They both seemed to prefer just to give up and move on to the next one. Joe knew that Kitty and Jess had grown up in a stable family unit, at least until tragedy had taken both their parents when Kitty had been nineteen, and he could understand why they expected to have the same stable environment. But in his experience that was virtually impossible. The impossible dream.

  ‘I think we’ll just take this one step at a time. One baby at a time,’ Cam said as he kissed his wife. ‘And see how we manage.’

  Joe thought Cam’s logic was practical and sensible. There were a lot of unknowns in Cam and Jess’s future. The new baby was only one of them.

  * * *

  Dinner was finished—steak and a glass of red wine for Cam and Joe, fish and lime-flavoured sparkling mineral water for Jess and Kitty. Cam cleared the plates and said to Joe, ‘Come and join me for a beer while I clean the barbecue.’

  Joe followed him over to the grill and took a swig of his beer. ‘Do you think this surrogacy thing is a good idea?’ he asked as he stood watching Cam work. ‘Actually, scratch that. You must.’

  Cam didn’t answer immediately. ‘It’s what Jess wanted. I love my wife. I want her to be happy and this is what she wanted. I didn’t have the same burning desire to have children. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against the idea, but if it didn’t happen for us I was OK with that. But Jess wants kids. I’m doing this for her. That’s what love is all about.’

  Joe figured he wouldn’t know anything about all that but all the same his gaze was drawn to Kitty. He could see her through the window. She was standing by the kettle, pulling mugs off the shelf.

  ‘Speaking of love...’ Cam’s
voice made Joe jump. He dragged his eyes off Kitty and back to Cam, wondering where he was going with this topic, but Cam was scraping the barbecue, seemingly disinterested in who or what Joe was watching. ‘Kitty tells me you’re seeing someone. Is it serious?’

  Joe almost choked. ‘God, no. I try to avoid serious relationships.’

  ‘Maybe you just haven’t met the perfect girl yet,’ Cam said, echoing the words of so many of Joe’s friends, but Joe thought differently.

  ‘No one’s perfect,’ he said, ‘and nothing lasts for ever. I don’t see the point in starting something that won’t last.’

  Even Cam and Jess’s relationship, as perfect as it might look from the outside, had its downsides in Joe’s opinion. Jess’s cancer and inability to get pregnant was far from their idea of perfect. But Joe wasn’t about to make an example of Cam’s own marriage as his argument.

  ‘What about Kitty?’

  ‘Kitty?’

  ‘Is that so hard to imagine? You and Kitty? You must like her.’

  ‘Of course I like her, she’s my best friend.’

  He’d been trying to remind himself of that every day since he’d nearly succumbed to temptation and almost kissed her. He continued to tell himself he was glad he’d resisted. That would have been disastrous.

  ‘C’mon, Joe. You don’t think Jess and I haven’t talked about this? We think you guys would be good together.’

  Joe wasn’t so sure. As tempted as he had been the other night, he was still convinced that a quick tumble between the sheets would have been a sure way to ruin their friendship. But that hadn’t stopped him thinking about it. And opting to take Victoria home that night instead hadn’t stopped him thinking about it either. But thinking about it was one thing, acting on it was another thing altogether, and there were dozens of reasons why he would steer clear. Starting with the biggest one—he and Kitty wanted different things out of relationships.