by Rebecca Lang
'It belongs to another kid,' her father said, giving her a quick hug. 'He's more or less all right, but I though we ought to get him checked. The thing got ,out of control and he ran into a tree.'
'Did he hit his head?'
'Sort of. He hit the side of his face, but not what you could really call a head injury,' her father said matter-of-factly. 'He's getting a black eye, it may be a real shiner. They're getting his head X-rayed and his wrist. There's pain in the wrist, so it might be a sprain. Anyway, dear, here we are, and he's being very brave.'
When Nell entered the treatment cubicle where her son was lying on a stretcher, with his grandmother at his side, his face crumpled when he saw her and held out his arms to her. On seeing her, he knew that he could drop his brave front. 'Mum!' he said.
What a relief it was to enfold him in her arms and see he was apparently all right. 'It's all right, darling,' she said.
Then she hugged her mother. 'What would I do without you?' she said, knowing that her mother understood she was fully appreciated.
'I was wondering the same thing,' her mother said, with a smile.
A young doctor came in to announce that he had arranged for X-rays, which would be done there in the department. A nurse came in and started to clean up cuts and abrasions on various parts of Alec's body, while Nell held his hand.
'You tried to knock down a tree, I understand?' the nurse said, gently cleaning a graze just above an eyebrow. 'And you've got yourself a black eye.'
The clean-up job was going to take some time, as there were grazes on his knees and elbows as well.
'Mum,' Alec whispered to her, his voice wobbly with emotion as he tried not to wince at the pain, 'I want Dad.'
Nell stroked his hair. 'All right. I'll have to go out for a minute or two to call him on my cellphone. If he doesn't answer, I'll have him paged. OK?'
Alec nodded, letting go of her hand and taking his granny's hand.
In the corridor, she saw that her father had gone to sit down near the triage desk, so she went in the other direction to a quiet spot where she could call Joel on her cellphone, dialling his portable phone, which she knew he always carried with him unless he was operating.
'Joel, it's Nell,' she said, her voice trembling. 'I'm in Emergency.' Quickly she went on to tell him what had happened, ending up by saying, 'He's asking for you. He said...he said he wants his dad.'
'I'll be right down. I'm up on the unit, just finished rounds,' he said.
'Thanks,' she said.
When Joel arrived, Nell was back in the cubicle and able to witness how Alec's face brightened when he appeared. The boy seemed relieved, and with a perception that came from knowing her son well she realized that he was relieved that Joel would respond when called, would be in his mother's life at work, would support her. This was in addition to the fact that Joel was living temporarily at their house, which they had explained to him by saying that Nell needed help because of hectic times at work.
Alec had seemed to accept that explanation, or if he didn't, he was doing a good job of pretending that he did.
'Well, little guy,' Joel said, grinning, 'you sure know how to get attention. I just had a quick word with your grandfather and he told me all about it.'
Alec grinned sheepishly. Both Nell and Joel held his hands, which were now bandaged. They tried to keep out of the way of the nurse, who was now working on his knees.
'When I've finished the dressings,' the nurse explained to the assembled family, 'we'll just wheel him down the corridor for X-rays of the head and the right wrist.'
When that time came, Nell excused herself and said she was going out for some fresh air. In truth, she wanted a moment or two to herself to calm the emotions that had been stirred up by the feeling that her son was being taken away from her. It was stupid, she knew, because it was what she had wanted. But, then, she had assumed that she would also mean something to Joel, that he would want her, too. A different equation was sobering and thought-provoking.
Outside the entrance she stood in the sun, leaning against a wall and letting the warmth of it play on her face and closed eyelids. Even the polluted city air had a scent of early autumn in it, a cooling breeze tempering what was left of the summer heat.
'Nell.' Joel was standing there in front of her. 'He's going to be all right. They haven't taken the X-rays yet, but I'm pretty certain he doesn't have a head injury.'
Nell nodded, swaying forward instinctively so that he put his arms out to support her and they closed round her protectively.
'If anything happened to him I would go mad,' she said.
He put a hand up to her head and pulled it against his chest, cradling her, not caring if anyone they knew saw them. In response her arms went round his waist, over his white lab coat.
'We've got to talk to each other,' he said, his chin against the side of her head, as though he was shielding her. 'We've got to stop beating each other up emotionally.'
'Mmm.' Once again, she wanted to howl and sob. All the past was piling up on her.
'There's something I want to know. It can't wait,' he said. 'Is there a possibility that you and John could get together?'
'No,' she said wearily. 'I told him no, and I can tell you no.'
'When I told him that we hadn't exactly planned to marry,' Joel said, 'I could tell that he assumed he still had a chance with you...and there was nothing I could do about it, even though I did believe you when you said you wouldn't marry him. He could be very persistent, I think, and wear you down,'
'No,' she said.
'You told me he wanted to take care of you,' Joel said. 'Well, sometimes that sort of taking care can be taking over. Unless I'm misjudging him.'
'I don't know,' she mumbled. 'I haven't given it much thought, and I don't want to.'
'Are you going to forgive me?' he asked. 'For being overly defensive and boorish?'
'It's something I'll think about over the next little while,' she said. 'I haven't been myself just lately... Or maybe I've been more of my real self—I don't know. Right now I'm concentrating on Alec.'
He pulled back and looked at her, gripping her by the upper arms as though she would take flight. 'There were so many things in the way,' he muttered, as though talking to himself.
Nell said nothing, just took it all in to be processed mentally later. There was no hurry to do anything. Sufficient unto the day...or whatever.
They stood there together, with traffic going by on the street, people walking in and out of the emergency department, an ambulance coming into the unloading bay beside them, and they ignored it all. Their thoughts were acutely attuned to their son. He had looked small and somehow fragile on the large stretcher.
'I find I'm a little jealous that Alec likes you, asks for you,' she said after a while, her voice flat, 'even though I want you to love each other...it's what I've wanted all his life.'
'It's understandable,' Joel said gently, his arms still round her. 'It would be odd if you didn't care in that way. You've had him all to yourself. Your parents don't strike me as being possessive or interfering types. They just get on and do what has to be done.'
'They're not,' she said. 'I'm all talked out, Joel. Maybe in the past I tried too hard to explain everything... came on too strong and apparently demanding. I don't know. Now I find that I don't care, because my emotions are flat. Nature's way of protecting me, perhaps.'
'I'm not going to take Alec away from you,' he said, stroking her hair. 'You're the centre of his universe. I'm grateful to you for giving me a child, as I've said before.'
'All right. I'll keep you to that,' she whispered.
'May I continue to stay at your house? I think you both need me, and I'm discovering that it's good to be needed by someone other than my patients. I'm enjoying it.'
When she nodded, he kissed her on the forehead. 'Let's get back in there, shall we?' he said.
It had been a long and strange day, another apparent turning point in a journey that had, l
ately, brought a lot of turning points, Nell thought as she and Joel sat down to a simple meal in her kitchen that evening.
'Will you have a glass of wine?' he asked, having brought a bottle of white wine home with him and put it in the fridge to chill.
'Please,' she said. 'Just a small one. Thanks for bringing it.' She wasn't going to take anything for granted, anything as her due.
Tired as usual, she found that it was a pleasant kind of tiredness because there was an underlying strange sense of peace that came with not striving any more. She didn't think it odd that Joel was living in her house, apparently keeping an eye on her. For so long she had fantasized about living with him that the reality seemed somehow a matter of course. That he didn't want to many her was something to be put off for future consideration.
Alec was asleep, under the influence of a mild sedative to control the pain of a sprained wrist and multiple grazes. There had been no obvious head injury, nothing that showed up on an X-ray, yet she and Alec had been taking turns to check the pupils of his eyes as an unequal size could indicate a haemorrhage in the brain, something which might not be picked up by an X-ray initially if there was just a very slow, steady ooze.
'I want to say something,' Joel said, sitting there looking darkly handsome as he had always done, his now longish hair slightly untidy, lines of strain etched on his face.
'When have I ever prevented you from talking?'
she said acidly, feeling her sense of humour struggling to reassert itself. One of the first things to go when you were down was your sense of humour.
When he grinned at her across the narrow expanse of the table she was devastated, although she tried not to be. The fact of his illness, of what it had done to him, what it was doing to her, was between them.
'Being with you and Alec has been wonderful for me, so I want to thank you, Nell. It's great being part of a family, and with this accident that Alec's had I'm sure getting my priorities sorted out,' he said.
'It certainly helps to do that,' she said, with no inflection in her voice, staring ruminatively across the room.
'If anything happened to either of you,' he said, 'I would be devastated.'
Nell inclined her head politely in acknowledgement. She had recently read in a book on meditation that happiness was here, now, in this moment. One should not look for it in some mythical future. 'I'm trying to live in the here-and-now,' she said.
'With the illness that I've had,' he said, hesitating, 'I feel that I've eaten of the tree of knowledge, which has brought me into a different level of consciousness, and there's no way of getting back into the garden of Eden. That sounds pompous, maybe. It's the best way I can think of to put it right now.'
Nell sat clasping and unclasping her hands in her lap. 'I think I know what you mean,' she said stiffly, 'but I don't believe in the garden of Eden. Do you think that I live in such a place, Joel? All unconscious of anything that's real? You're still capable of parenthood, you're healthy at this moment, you have a child. That's more than a lot of people can say. Look at Ida Rowley. Her life has been utterly shattered, through no fault or action of hers. She's survived, yet nothing will ever be the same again for her. What happened to her will affect all her relationships, will affect everything that she does in her life from now on. Yet she's so grateful to be alive, so appreciative of the medical care she's had...so humble...she makes me feel ashamed somehow.'
'I know,' he said quietly.
'I know I don't have to tell you that,' she said. 'I don't want to preach.'
Joel got up to carry their dirty plates to the sink and to put the fruit salad on the table that he had helped to prepare. When he served her first and poured her a little more wine, she felt cared for and cosseted, something that had been rather rare in her life until recently when he had come to live with her, and to her alarm the feeling brought tears sharply to her eyes. Again, she thought that uncontrollable crying, or the frequent urge to cry, were signs of an impending breakdown...
'Are you all right, sweetheart?' he said gently.
'I feel so weary...so weary.' She spoke almost to herself.
Later, in her comfortable bed, with the dim bedside lamp still on, she tried to clear her mind of all that had happened that day, using the technique of imagining herself in a wood by the lake, near the family cabin. In her mind's eye she was walking along a woodland trail with Alec, and then Joel was with them too, and the two dogs gambolling ahead of them. So much for living in the moment. She smiled to herself and closed her eyes.
When the door slowly opened and then closed, her reverie was interrupted and she looked up to see Joel standing there, clad in a robe.
'Alec is still OK,' he said. 'Pulse good and steady. No signs of bleeding.' They had agreed that Joel would get up in the night, several times, to check on Alec.
'Good,' she said, staring up at him. 'Thanks.'
'You forgot to lock your door,' he said, pointing out the obvious, still standing there.
'How did you know it ought to be locked?' she asked, her eyes going over him, noting his damp hair from his shower, his bare feet, his broad shoulders...
'Because I've been trying it every night,' he said, with a small smile.
Against her better judgement, she smiled. 'Oh,' she said. 'That's sneaky.'
When his smile broadened she felt herself losing control, noting how attractive he was, remembering how he had been when she had first seen him, her heart beating faster with a deep, powerful rhythm. She had got into the habit of sleeping in his arms...
'You'd better go out, so that I can lock it,' she said.
He came to sit on her bed. 'I prefer to lock it myself, from the inside,' he said, taking her hand and bringing it to his lips.
'I don't know that I'm ready for the continuation of what we seem to have started,' she said truthfully, although every part of her was longing for him to hold her.
In reply, he slowly turned her hand over and kissed the palm, the gesture sending a sudden cascade of desire through her body.
'Your idea of wooing?' she murmured, gazing curiously at her arm as he kissed her wrist gently, moving his mouth higher to her elbow. Each nerve end tingled as he touched her with his warm lips.
'Mmm,' he said.
He kissed her all the way up to her shoulder, until he was lying beside her, leaning over her, propped up on an elbow. It was impossible, she found, not to respond to him when he smiled at her and stroked the hair away from her forehead as he had often done in the past, impossible not to respond to the desire and warmth in his eyes. 'That makes me feel very cared for,' she whispered.
'I love you, Nell Montague,' he said.
So that warmth in his eyes was love manifested, she thought.
'Since when?' she whispered.
'Since you were about sixteen,' he said. 'I didn't want to admit it, because I had written myself off, I guess, where love was concerned. Then when we were all with Alec today, I knew that I loved you, never wanted to be away from you, that I loved Alec too. I'm pretty fond of your parents as well.'
They smiled at each other, allowing time for what he had said to sink in.
'Are you sure?' she said, putting her hands on his shoulders, leaning forward to kiss him.
'I've never been surer of anything in my life,' he said. 'May I stay here with you?'
Without speaking, she moved over and flung back the covers so that he could get in bed beside her, which he did, after shedding his robe and dropping it on the floor without the slightest embarrassment in his nakedness. She loved his male beauty, his lack of false modesty, his lack of arrogance, even though she had accused him of it.
In his arms she rested her head on his shoulder. 'And I love you, Joel Matheson,' she whispered.
'Did you leave your door unlocked deliberately?' he murmured in her ear, kissing it.
'You mean, accidentally-on-purpose? As my—'
'Old granny used to say,' he finished for her.
As they both laughed, a f
eeling welled up in her that she recognized as joy... something she had not experienced properly for some time. 'To be honest, I don't know. Maybe it was a Freudian slip,' she said.
They held each other tightly. 'I've finally come home, Nell,' he said. 'If you'll have me.'
'What about your garden of Eden?' she said softly, drawing back to look him in the face, seeing love there and a certain humility, letting her know that he did not take anything for granted.
'I rather suspect that my garden of Eden is with you,' he said. 'You haven't answered my question, Nell Montague. Will you have me?'
'Yes. Now...and always,' she said. 'You're my very best love.'