by Natalie Ward
I follow her, determined not to let her shut me out, knowing this fall back reaction of hers has already caused problems in her other relationships and in ours.
“It’s not nothing, Emma,” I say, standing behind her. “Talk to me, please.”
Emma stands and stares at the fridge even though the door is shut. Her body is stiff and I can practically feel the tension that’s coming from it. I watch as she takes a deep breath before turning and meeting my stare.
I wait for her to speak, to tell me whatever it is that’s going on with her right now, but she still says nothing. I’m starting to understand how Sarah must have felt; am reminded of how I felt after that night we first met when she ran off. The way she could barely speak to me after I found her again.
“What, you’re not going to say anything?”
Emma shakes her head, her eyes flicking between the floor and me.
“Why not?” I ask her.
“There’s nothing to say,” she whispers, her eyes on the floor.
“Yes, there is,” I say, stepping closer. I slide my fingers under her chin, tilting it so she’s forced to look at me. “Tell me what’s going on.”
Emma shakes her head; fear in her eyes as she stares up at me that has me wondering what the hell this can possibly be about.
“Why can’t you tell me?” I ask, my voice softening.
Her eyes close now, as the whispered, “I can’t,” falls from her lips.
A frisson of fear winds its way down my spine, even as my brain is unable to process what it is that’s caused it.
“You can,” I whisper, leaning in to press a kiss to her lips. “Talk to me, Em. Please?”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she whispers quickly.
I pull back a little. “Tell you what?” I ask, confused.
“Why didn’t you tell me Amy was…”
The sudden screaming in my head is so loud that I don’t hear the rest. I don’t need to anyway and I sure as shit don’t want to.
It takes only a second for my body process exactly what she’s just said to me and as soon as it does it hits me, instantly, like a hard punch to the gut. I actually feel the wind being knocked out of me, and it’s crippling, even though nothing physical has touched me.
But then the anger kicks in and overrides everything else.
I feel my body stiffen as I take a step backwards, my hand falling from her face. I open my mouth as though to speak but no words come out. It’s probably just as well because I’m not sure what I’m capable of saying right now.
I only know none of it will be good.
“Nick,” she says, stepping towards me. “Nick, I’m…I’m sorry…I…”
I take another step back, shaking my head in warning. I have no idea how she can possibly know this information. There’s no way my parents would’ve told her at dinner and in any case, they never had the chance. None of us left the table the whole night.
“Please,” she says, reaching for me now. “Please just let me…”
I shake my head again.
“I…” She pauses, biting her bottom lip as she looks up at me. I can see the questions she’s dying to ask but I don’t want to answer any of them. Don’t want to even hear them. “I’m sorry, okay. You’re right, something did happen at work and I…I took a chance and…and well, there…there it was.”
I stare at her, trying to work out what the hell she’s talking about.
“Believe me, I didn’t deliberately set out to look,” she continues as if I’ve got any clue. “But we had this patient and she…she’d attempted…”
And that’s when it hits me, what she’s done. I don’t hear anything else she says though, because that screaming in my head only gets louder, blocking it all out.
How the fuck could she do this to me?
“Nick?” she says, reaching for my hand.
I snatch it away, stepping backwards as that anger is now replaced with fury. Fury at what she’s done. Fury at the questions she’s asking me. Fury at the lame attempt she’s making to justify it. It’s all bullshit and I don’t want to hear another fucking word.
“How could you?” I spit out, the words falling like venom as I finally find my voice.
Emma shakes her head, stepping closer. “I’m sorry, okay? I didn’t mean to.”
“You didn’t mean to?” I ask, incredulous, my words laced with sarcasm. “What, you just accidentally looked?”
Emma freezes, a foot of space between us. The air is thick with tension and anger and betrayal. My body feels as though it’s coiled so tight it’s going to explode at any second, shattering whatever might be left of us.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers, but it’s too late for that.
I shake my head at her words. “I trusted you,” I say. “I can’t believe you…you…”
She reaches for me again but I don’t want to be here anymore. I can barely even look at her, let alone touch her.
So I step backwards, watch the hurt as it fills her eyes. Feel nothing in response before I turn my back on her and walk out of my apartment and away from this.
Away from her.
~ Emma
When you graduate from medicine, one of the first things you do is swear on the Hippocratic oath. It’s an ancient passage of text that all doctors follow and although it’s not the original Greek version anymore, having been modified over the years, the message is still the same.
Do no harm.
I thought I’d always been able to uphold it. That regardless of whether a patient lived or died, I had done everything I could to save them and all without harm. But as I watch Nick walk away from me, I realise not only have I just made the biggest mistake of my life, but I’ve also broken the oath I swore to uphold.
Because I have done harm. I’ve done harm in the worst possible way.
Nick isn’t my patient, but it doesn’t matter because he’s more than that, so much more. Yet I’ve caused him harm in such a huge way that I’m not sure we can ever come back from it.
As the realisation sinks in, the full force of what I’ve done hits me and hits me hard.
Blunt force trauma.
I was wrong before; that night I first met him when I thought I knew what that might feel like. Because this feeling I have now eclipses it a million times over.
My heart aches with regret and sadness and anger at the things I’ve done and as I feel myself sinking to the floor I can’t help wondering how I ever thought looking up Amy’s records could be a good idea.
“Oh god,” I practically cry out as I bury my face in my hands. “Fuck, fuck, fuck. What have I done?”
I feel Oscar brush against me, offering some sort of comfort that doesn’t even come close to being what I need. He crawls into my lap, as though sensing my pain and I bury my face in his fur. I’m not sure how long I sit on the floor of Nick’s apartment for but when I finally lift my head and look at the time, I see it’s almost two in the morning.
And Nick still hasn’t come back.
I force myself up off the floor, moving Oscar, who has apparently been in my lap this whole time, to the couch. I grab my phone from my bag, hoping for a message or something, but there’s nothing.
I scroll through to Nick’s number and listen to it ring. He doesn’t pick up though, and eventually it goes to voicemail. As the beep kicks in though, I find myself voiceless and unsure what to say.
Eventually the beep sounds again and I realise I’ve left a message of total silence, which given everything that’s just happened, screams louder than any words I could have said.
I can’t leave it at this, so I dial again.
This time the phone goes straight to voicemail and I hope it’s because Nick is listening to the pointless message I just left him. I hang up immediately; waiting a few minutes to make sure he isn’t still on the phone before calling him again.
But it goes straight to voicemail again, which means he wasn’t listening to my message at all; he’s switched off
his phone.
“Fuck,” I say in frustration, throwing the phone on the couch. Oscar eyes it warily, before lifting his head to look at me.
“What am I supposed to do?” I plead, reaching again for my phone.
I redial Nick’s number, the call still going straight to voicemail. This time I do leave a message, the words out the second the beep finishes.
“Nick, please…” I start. “Please just let me explain how this happened, it’s not what you think.”
Even as I say the words though, I know they are only half-truths. Sure I never intentionally set out to find out what happened to Amy. I always expected it would be Nick that told me everything. I thought that after the night he told me how she’d died, that somehow it would get easier for him to talk about it.
But it hadn’t. Instead, he’d said nothing more and even though I hadn’t specifically asked, I’d always assumed we’d get there soon.
Until today.
God, I don’t even know what it was about that girl that triggered my stupidity. She wasn’t my first suicide attempt and as I now know, the method wasn’t quite the same.
But there was something about her. The long brown hair and those dark blue eyes; the pale limbs lying lifeless on that trolley. Is that what Amy had looked like?
The beep of Nick’s voicemail kicks in again and I realise once more that I haven’t found the right words to say. I don’t call him back though, instead opening the message icon, the last text he sent me the first thing that I see.
It’s the photo of Oscar, lying beside Nick in his bed. It’s a place I wish I was right now, but one that already feels a million years ago. As I stare at the photo, my eyes flood with tears, wishing I could go back to this morning and do everything about today differently.
I wake on the couch. Without opening my eyes, I can tell it’s both early and that the apartment is empty. Nick still hasn’t come home.
I try his phone again, but just like last night, it goes straight to voicemail. My message is brief this time and straight to the point. “Nick, please. Please call me. I need to explain.”
It feels pointless, hopeless, and I wonder if this is how he felt when I ran out of his bar that night, never giving him the chance to explain. But that turned out to be just a simple misunderstanding.
This time, it’s infinitely worse and it’s all my fault.
I get up and feed Oscar for something to do, before making myself some coffee, stalling because I don’t want to leave in case he comes back. By ten though, there’s still no sign of him, and it’s only when my phone chimes out with a message that I realise I’ve been sitting in his silent apartment, waiting.
I reach for the phone, my heart pounding with a nervous energy because I want it to be Nick, yet at the same time, I’m afraid of what it is he’s finally decided to say to me. But as I open the screen, my heart crashes in disappointment.
Sarah: hey, we still on for coffee today? Usual place, 30 mins? X
Shit, I forgot I was meeting her today. In an effort to be more present in our friendship, I’ve been suggesting we catch up on my days off. A part of me wants to bail, knowing there’s no way I’ll be able to act normal or deal with any questions about Nick and me.
But the other part of me knows that bailing is what causes so many of my problems and after everything that happened last night, I can’t add to them. So I text her back knowing I’m going to have to somehow fake it, before dragging myself into the shower.
I dress in the same pants I wore last night but borrow a t-shirt of Nicks that’s way too big for me. As I head to the front door though, I realise I’m scared to leave. Scared in case he comes back and discovers me gone and reads more into that than he should. So I quickly scrawl a note for him, leaving it on the floor right in front of the door.
Then I walk out of his apartment, wondering if I’m ever going to have the chance to walk in there again.
Sarah’s already there by the time I walk in, two coffees in front of her. She smiles at me and I try to return it, but I’m not sure it works.
“Forget to take some clothes to Nick’s last night, huh?” she asks, gesturing at my shirt and I immediately do the one thing I never expected to do. I collapse into the chair beside her and burst into tears. “Oh shit, Emma, what’s wrong?”
I shake my head, burying my face in my hands as I try desperately to get myself under control.
“Em, what is it?” she asks gently, sliding closer as she puts an arm around my shoulders and hands me a napkin.
I force myself to take a deep breath, swallowing hard as I try to stem the tears. I reach for the coffee, taking a large gulp of hot liquid that burns on the way down, but is exactly the pain I need to feel right now.
Then I turn to Sarah and blurt it all out.
By the time I finish, Sarah hasn’t said a word. I’m too afraid to look at her though, to see the judgment I know will be in her eyes. Her arm is still around my shoulders, and while the rest of my coffee has remained untouched and gone cold, hers is now finished.
Someone comes to clear our mugs and I duck my head to hide my tear stained face while Sarah asks if we can grab two more. I can feel her watching me and eventually I look up, knowing there’s no way I’m going to escape this, not when I’m the one who blurted it all out.
So much for faking it.
“So what are you going to do now?” she asks.
“What do you mean? What can I do?”
Sarah frowns. “Please don’t tell me you’re just going to give up, walk away and pretend it never happened or meant anything like you usually do.”
“That’s a bit harsh,” I say, defensively.
Sarah shrugs. “But true, Em and you know it.”
And despite how shitty that makes me look, I do know it. It’s what I’ve always done, with friendships, relationships, everything. When things got too hard or everything went to shit, I just walked away, or pretended it had never happened. It’s what I’d been doing to Sarah for years, every time we had a fight about me being late or cancelling on her. I was just lucky she hadn’t walked away from me yet.
The same went for any guy I’d tried to see. As soon as my work and all the hours I spent there came up, I’d bail, knowing that walking away was infinitely easier than trying to explain or change things.
It had been different with Nick though, for reasons I still don’t understand.
“You can’t just give up on him,” Sarah says, her words kinder now. “He’s a good guy, but more than that, he’s the right guy for you.” I glance up at her, wondering why she thinks that. Sarah smiles at me. “Come on, even you can see that, surely?”
I nod a little because she’s right. It has been different with Nick, and it’s more than him just getting my crazy work hours. It’s the way he wanted to know about me that night and still does now. The way he asks about my day and understands why I sometimes get held up. How comfortable I feel knowing he does get it, no matter how late I am or how many things I miss.
How he doesn’t ever give up on me.
Until now anyway.
“I don’t want to,” I eventually get out. “But what am I supposed to do? I’ve tried calling and messaging him, but nothing.”
“Do you know where he’s gone?”
“No.”
“Maybe you could call his parents, see if he’s with them?” she suggests.
I shake my head. “No. I only just met them. I really don’t need them to see my crazy side just yet.”
Sarah laughs, squeezing my shoulder. “What about the guy he works with, Tony isn’t it?”
I shrug, knowing he’s a possibility.
“Maybe you should ask him?” she suggests, nudging me. “What time will he be at the bar?”
I glance at my watch, see it’s hours until they are due to open. I wonder if that’s when Nick will finally come back. I wonder if he’ll want me to be there when he does.
“Around three,” I say.
“Alright,�
�� Sarah says as though that’s sorted things. “That gives us a couple of hours to fix this up,” she adds, gesturing to my tear stained face. “And then you’re going to go back there and fix this up,” she continues, gesturing towards my heart. “And hey, you never know, maybe Nick will be there.”
I swallow hard, forcing down the fear at the idea that he won’t be.
The terror that maybe he will.
~ Nick
“Here, try something non-alcoholic for a change,” Amy says, handing me a cup of coffee.
I reach for the mug, forcing myself into a sitting position on the couch, even as my body screams out in protest. Amy sits beside me, watches as I take a tentative sip that still causes my stomach to roll. I’m not exactly sure how much I had to drink last night but I’m going to put it somewhere between a lot and a shit load. I can’t even remember falling asleep and judging by the fact that one shoe is on and one is off, I’m going to go with passing out instead.
“How are you feeling?” she asks, when it becomes apparent that I’m not quite up to communicating.
“Fucked,” I reply, my voice croaky. I scrub a hand down my face, knowing I must look like complete shit right now.
“Excellent,” she says in a voice that is far too cheery and far too loud for this time of the morning. “I’m making breakfast, you want some?”
My stomach churns at the thought and I shake my head, collapsing back onto the couch as Amy disappears into the kitchen. My eyes close with exhaustion, but the second they do, I’m back in my apartment, standing in front of Emma as she asks me the question that’s ruined everything.
Why didn’t you tell me?
Why did you have to go and look for the answers? is what I now realise I wanted to scream back at her. Why couldn’t you have just waited for me to tell you, waited until I was ready to?
But I hadn’t asked that and I hadn’t answered her question either and now it feels like things are so beyond fucked up that I don’t know what to do.
“So,” I hear as I feel the couch depress beside me. “You going to tell me what last night was all about?”