The Colour of Broken

by Amelia Grace

  ‘Out the window isn’t an option,’ he whispered. ‘There’s a long drop and a pool that juts out ...’

  ‘I can swim,’ I said.

  He shook his head.

  There was a knock on the door followed by a British sounding voice. ‘Soon to be, Dr Alexander Parker, we need you for our card game.’

  Dr Alexander Parker?

  Alexander lowered his head and spoke through the door. ‘Not tonight. I’m behind with my study.’

  ‘No you’re not! You’re the proverbial goody-goody academic student. Open the door!’

  Xander looked at me with wide eyes. He pointed to the space between the wall and where the door would open to. I dropped my backpack on his bed and scrambled to that place and flattened myself against the wall.

  Alexander took a deep breath and opened the door, then stood in front of the gap to hide me completely.

  ‘Aaaah, Dr Parker, where are your study books? And your computer isn’t turned on. Plus ... there’s a girl’s bag on your bed!’

  I closed my eyes. We had just been caught out. Xander would be disciplined.

  ‘I found it in the park on the way home. I was just about to look through it to find the owner, before I settled in to study,’ he lied.

  If there ever was such a thing as the power of invisibility, I wanted it. NOW!

  There were footsteps around the room and the sound of the window being opened, then closed.

  ‘I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt, Alex. Now come and join us for a game of cards.’

  ‘What’s the wager tonight?’

  ‘The winner has their drinks paid for, for an entire month.’

  ‘Let the game begin then,’ Alexander said. ‘I’ll be there shortly.’

  I shuddered. Alcohol. Drunkenness. Abuse. Violence.

  One set of footsteps left the room. Xander closed the door and turned to me. ‘They’ll be less suspicious if I join them ... only for a while, and then I’ll take you home,’ he whispered.

  I nodded to him. I didn’t have a choice. At least he had some sort of plan.

  But my plan was different to his ... the window ... four storeys high ... I could do it.

  He left and closed the door. A cheer went up. Male voices. I walked around Alexander’s room and stopped at his bookshelf. Medical books. I took two steps to his study desk. Apple laptop, stationery. Painfully clean and ordered. I took three more steps to the window and opened it. I leaned out and looked around. There was a small drop to the roof below. Good. I went to Alexander’s bed and grabbed my backpack and pulled it over my shoulders. I had learned if you wanted something, you had to do it yourself instead of waiting for other people.

  I climbed out the window and dropped onto the roof, cushioning my landing by bending my legs to absorb the impact, then stilled so the noise of me landing didn’t cause a stir and curious eyes.

  I walked around the rooftop with care, ducking under windows so not to be seen. One edge of the roof ended with a drop into the pool below, like Alexander said, one ended in a drop onto cars, and another ended in a drop onto hedges. I inched closer to the last edge and looked over the side. There were rocks. Jagged rocks, like on that terrible day of the scars.

  I closed my eyes and saw my drop of blood fall onto Mi—I opened my eyes before it landed in my memory. A tingle of anxiety bloomed in the centre of my chest and threaten to spread into a panic attack. I looked around and named five things I could see, out loud, ‘Roof tiles, windows, trees, moon, clouds.’ The distraction method worked, pushing my anxiety back inside its dark place. I let out a loud breath. I had nowhere to go but back to Xander’s room.

  I moved back from the edge of the roof and returned to Alexander’s room, where the window was closed! I let out a low groan of annoyance and sat below it, turned my head and cussed. I had to play the waiting game for Dr Alexander to return. He couldn’t play cards all night, could he?

  *~*~*~*~*

  Two hours later there was a scraping sound above me. I looked up to see the window being opened, followed by a hand reaching down to me, waiting for mine. His hand was lean and strong with defined contours and shape, even in the muted light of the night. Of course, he would have beautiful hands. They matched his attractive genetic pool. Lucky him. No one had a choice with what body they ended up in.

  I closed my eyes. I wanted his hand to go away. I didn’t need his strength to get up. I didn’t need his help. I didn’t need his anything.

  ‘It’s a gentlemanly gesture,’ he said.

  I opened my eyes and looked at him. ‘The card game or the hand?’

  ‘My hand,’ he said and narrowed his eyes at me.

  ‘Thanks, I guess. I don’t know whether to take it as an insult, or a compliment.’

  ‘Insult?’

  ‘Yes—that you’re implying women are incapable and weak.’

  He hung his head and chuckled. ‘Oh, we’re back to that again.’

  What? I frowned at him.

  ‘There are no weak women, just those who act weak and incapable, purely for the sake of a man’s ego—manipulative, conniving, fake. Puke,’ he said.

  I laughed out loud at the word puke.

  Alexander placed his fingers over his lips. ‘Sssshhhh!’

  I placed my hand into his and was rewarded with an instant flashback—my rescuer’s hand as he dangled beside the cliff face with his safety harness on. Nausea surfaced. When would the flashbacks stop? How I hated them with every ounce of my being and every drop of bile in my gut. Shit happens. But why did it have to happen to Mia and me?

  His warm, strong hand tightened around mine and I felt the uplift. Once I was on my feet I placed my other hand on the window sill and clambered inside his room, our fingertips still touching. I let go of his touch and sat on his study chair.

  ‘And the compliment?’ he asked.

  ‘You ... may—’ I took a deep breath. I didn’t want to say it. I didn’t want to think that he liked me. I didn’t deserve for him to like me in any way, shape or form. Not a smart, good looking doctor, beautiful danseur like him. He wouldn’t like me if he knew how damaged I was. ‘Like me ...’ There. I said it. I released a long breath.

  He connected his eyes to mine. ‘Hmmm? Like you,’ he said, like he was testing how the word, like, felt on his tongue. ‘I do like you ... I like your honesty, your wit, your engineering brain, your flower shop manner and design, that you like to solve problems, that you shun fashion trends. I love your work boots that you wear everywhere.’

  ‘Except when I really need them ...’

  ‘Like now?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘To protect yourself from me?’

  I blew air out between my pursed lips. ‘No ... not from you.’

  ‘From what then?’

  He was digging. Deeper. I looked down because I couldn’t look at him. I couldn’t show him how vulnerable I was.

  ‘Trust me, Yolande. Let me in ...’ he said in a whisper that almost mended my broken heart.

  I swivelled his chair towards the bookshelf. ‘What books do you need for study?’ I asked, changing the subject. I couldn’t let him in. I couldn’t let his light inside my darkness, exposing me.

  ‘The Brukner & Khan’s Clinical Sports Medicine: Injuries, vol. 1, thanks.’

  ‘Oh, Dr Parker, you are way too polite!’

  ‘Compliment or insult?’

  ‘Insult—how can I make fun of you? You’re too nice?’

  He shook his head. ‘I have been called many things, but never “too nice”.’

  ‘Really ... oh, yeah ... at first, I thought you were totally arrogant, entitled and cold,’ I said.

  He smiled at me. ‘Because of the letters in the flower basket of your gram’s bicycle, and the first time we met ...’

  ‘The second. I first time was when I spoke to you at the front of the store, one stormy morning,’ I recalled.

  He ran his hand through his hair and narrowed his eyes at me. ‘Oh yes ... I remembe
r now. I was laughing inwardly at your steel-capped boots—at a flower shop of all places!’

  I leaned forward and gave him a punch on the arm. ‘No one insults my work boots!’

  ‘Ow!’

  ‘You deserved that.’ I found his medical book and handed it to him. ‘I want you to pass those exams, Dr Parker.’

  He took the book from me. ‘I want to pass them too.’

  I vacated his study chair and sat on his bed. ‘How long do you think I’ll be imprisoned here in this clean and ordered room?’

  ‘Compliment or insult?’

  ‘Neither. Just an observation,’ I said.

  ‘I’m not talking about the state of the room. I was talking about the use of the word “imprisoned”.’

  ‘And?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s carries a negative connotation.’

  ‘Well ... I’m in a small room and I can’t leave—that’s like a prison.’

  He leaned back on his chair and looked at me under hooded eyes. ‘Am I that bad to be around?’

  ‘On the contrary. You’re okay for a guy, and that’s saying a lot in my books.’

  ‘You have books of men?’

  I shook my head and smiled at him. ‘You’ll keep!’

  ‘I hope so.’ He held my eyes in his, and there was something deep that seemed to come dangerously close to touching my soul, again. And I wanted it to touch, so I could absorb his soul light to vanquish my darkness. But I couldn’t let it happen. What I felt for him scared me. I pulled my eyes from his and crawled back inside to my darkness, my friend.

  ‘Trust me,’ he whispered, again, his words pleading to my heart.

  I looked back into his eyes. ‘Trust is earned, never given,’ I whispered back.

  ‘Then I’ll earn it.’

  I took a deep breath. He had earned it already, but I couldn’t tell him, and I still couldn’t let him in.

  Loud laughter sounded from outside the door. The card game was still going.

  ‘How long will they be?’ I asked. I needed to go home.

  Xander looked at his watch. ‘Sometimes they’re there until 2am.’

  ‘Great,’ I said.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘You weren’t to know.’ I pulled out my phone and texted my mother, then I went to Xander’s bookshelf and pulled a book out to read. I sat on Xander’s bed and laid on my side to read the book—The Soul of Medicine: Tales from the Bedside by Sherwin Nuland, MD, while he studied.

  I started to get tired after an hour. It was late. ‘Do you mind if I catch some shut eye while you study?’

  Xander looked up at me from his text book. ‘Go for it,’ he said.

  I pulled back the covers of his bed, took off my shoes and my t-shirt that I wore over a sleeveless shirt, and climbed into his bed and turned onto my side.

  I looked up at Xander as I got comfortable. He was staring at me, at the top of my chest, and it scared me.

  ‘Nice scar. What happened?’

  Anxiety shot its poison through me. I looked down and quickly pulled my shirt over to hide the part of my scar that was visible. A nice scar? How can a scar be nice? A scar is the result of pain. Scars are marks for life, reminders of an event that can never leave your body or memory. Scars mean you are damaged. Physically. And for me, it meant emotional scars and crippling guilt.

  ‘I didn’t do anything. It is neither an accident, nor self-inflicted.’ I closed my eyes to stop the memory from returning.

  ‘Who did this to you?’ He sat on the bed beside me. He was angry. ‘A man?’

  I looked out the window and into the distance. ‘I can’t tell you.’

  ‘Can’t, as in you don’t know who did it, or won’t, because you don’t want to tell me?’

  ‘Can’t, as in I don’t want to remember!’ My words were forced through gritted teeth. ‘And won’t, because I don’t want to tell you ... or anyone.’

  I rose from the bed and stood by the window. It had started raining. Like my heart. Tears for the sad earth. Except the tears from the clouds gave life and strength. Human tears are supposed to give strength too. But I wasn’t so sure about that. I held my tears in, only because they would run down the scar line and he would know more than I wanted him to know about my damn bloody scar. I didn’t want to tell him about the bastard who had done this to me. I hated him with a passion, and I hated the ugliness of hate that lived within me. I truly was the colour of broken.

  Alexander’s hand wrapped around mine and he pulled me back to the bed. ‘Give me a closer look at your scar. There may be something that can be done for it.’

  My head told me to run out the door. This was way out of my comfort zone. I wished he’d never seen it. He knows that I’m damaged now, and I could never be perfect to him, like in our foxtrot song.

  I closed my eyes and sat on the bed beside him, like I was in slow motion.

  His finger traced along my raised scar. I screwed my eyes shut at the pain. Not the physical pain; the emotional pain. This moment was too hard to bear. He didn’t trace the scar any further than the top of my shirt, and for that I was truly thankful.

  ‘Your scar tissue is called a keloid. Laser treatment has effective results, and cryotherapy ...’

  Anxiety flooded through me. I knew everything he said was true. I had researched it over two hundred times. But I couldn’t part with my scars. They were my reminder. They were my punishment. I shouldn’t have let go of Mia’s hand ...

  Then his finger continued to trace my scar. I saw him hold his breath when he realised it wasn’t just on my upper chest. I put my hand over his to stop him before he continued down my breast to where the scar stopped at the start of my areola, around my nipple.

  ‘Who did this to you?’ he asked between gritted teeth. ‘Tell me!’

  I lifted my head higher, trying to find my inner-strength. ‘There are only six people who know little bits—my parents, grandparents, Darcy and Dr Jones.’

  ‘The psychologist?’

  I breathed out deeply. I didn’t want to have this conversation with Alexander. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Darcy knows?’

  ‘Only some parts ... he doesn’t know everything. He doesn’t know the entire story, and he hasn’t seen as much of the scar as you have.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Good?’ How can that be good?

  ‘The only man who should know about this scar is someone you trust implicitly. Someone who will never betray you. Someone who loves you unconditionally ...’

  Alexander looked out at the rain and then back to me. ‘Now I know why Darcy is so protective of you. If no one knows the full story of the event, Yolande, what are you scared of?’

  I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to bury the pain inside of me. The pain of guilt and rejection. ‘That whoever I tell will judge me ... and will leave me. It’s the fear of rejection, I think, and that the person will look at me with different eyes and create a wall between us.’

  A tear ran down Alexander’s cheek. ‘I need to know, Yolande. It is killing me that you have been through a trauma that has profoundly affected you and I don’t know what happened. Trust me … please,’ his voice cracked as he spoke.

  ‘I can’t ... I can’t tell you. I don’t want you to look at me with pity. You already know too much.’ My heart fell. ‘Please ... just leave it be.’

  Alexander looked deeply into my eyes. I didn’t want him there. I looked away from him, ashamed that he knew about my chest scar. His opinion of me, whatever that was, would change. I would be able to tell by the way he looked at me from now on. I counted how many days we had left together. There were four or five more practice sessions and then the competition. And that night would be the last I ever saw him. It was better that way.

  ‘You should get back to your study,’ I said.

  ‘I should,’ he said, his voice monotone.

  He got off the bed and sat in the chair at his desk and returned to his text book. I lied back on his bed and faced him. I real
ly wanted to face the wall so he couldn’t look at me. But I needed to face him, so I could detect any movement that might come my way. It was a self-preservation thing, like wearing my steel-capped safety boots.

  After a while of watching him study, I closed my eyes. I regretted it at once. Part of my memory of that terrible day of my scars came flooding back to me with a vengeance, and I had no way to stop it ...

  The point of the knife pierced my skin. I closed my eyes as I felt the sharp cutting of my flesh, with a searing pain that screamed at my core. With a slow, torturous speed, the tip of the knife traced the path of my tear ... I held my breath as the knife went in a direct tear path to my nipple—piercing, cutting, tearing ...

  I sucked in a loud sharp breath and my eyes flew open, wide. I pushed my hand over my chest scar, checking to see whether it was bleeding, like on that terrible day of the scars, dripping onto my feet and pooling onto the ground.

  Alexander was there by my side at once. He wrapped his arms around me and held me tight, so tight I hoped he could push all my broken pieces back together. But then that would require a miracle. And there were no such things as miracles.

  Not to me, anyway ...

  Chapter Thirty

  THE STARS DISAPPEARED ONE BY ONE when Xander drove me home. The sky was an impressive colour of rosy pinks and sandy yellows, and then whispers of a blue bouquet when we arrived at my parents’ house. He opened the car door for me and we walked along the slumbering garden pathway together. The morning birds did not sing, and the roosters did not crow. It was as silent as my hurting heart. Xander walked me to the front door and knocked on it. He said he wouldn’t leave until my mother was with me. I turned and watched as he got back into his car and left, his tyres leaving tracks on the wet road.

  Tears slid down my face.

  ‘Are you okay, Andi?’ my mother asked. My dear mother, the colour of forever pink, like my grandmother. I loved her with all my heart.

  ‘More than okay,’ I said.

  ‘Then why are you crying?’

  ‘He’s the most beautiful man I have ever met.’