Everything Pales in Comparision

by Rebecca Swartz

  And when Shelley Montgomery came in, a look of concern on her face, Daina gave her a wan smile.

  “Guess I told her,” she muttered thinly.

  Twenty seconds later, she suffered a grand mal seizure.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “So, you’re actually going to get to meet her?”

  Perry’s tone was casual, but there was a definite hint of curiosity that caused Emma to look at her partner with a slight frown.

  They were descending the stairs to the basement of the Public Safety Building, to get in some practice at the shooting range. Emma had suggested the idea to Perry when he’d called her this morning to find out how she was doing. She had casually mentioned the call she’d received from Marlene Buchanan.

  “Yes,” she replied cautiously, “I actually am.”

  “So, when is this supposed to take place?”

  “Later this afternoon. Around three.”

  “Well, I hope it goes well,” he said.

  “Why wouldn’t it?” she asked, more to draw him out than because she actually felt like participating in the conversation.

  “Will it just be the two of you?” He spoke gently, as if she were a child, or incredibly dense. Or both.

  “Well, yes, as far as I know,” she said shortly, taking exception to his tone.

  “I think you should take advantage of the opportunity,” he said with a slight shrug.

  “Oh? And what opportunity would that be? Opportunity for what?” She eyed him behind narrowed lids.

  “Oh, come on, Kirby, aren’t you even a little interested? She’s cute, she’s gay—”

  “Interested?” Emma could not suppress her incredulous laugh. “Just because she’s cute and she’s a dyke? What, is that supposed to mean we’re perfect for each other?” She shook her head in disbelief. “My God, Perry, grab a brain,” she muttered, throwing a look of complete disgust at him, and continued on her way down the hall.

  “Well,” he said, following after her, his tone reasonable, “I just think you’ve been alone too long.”

  “Oh, is that right?” she replied, slowing and turning to face him. “So now you’re my dating consultant?”

  Another shrug. “Couldn’t hurt,” he said simply. “You might not like my taste in women, though.”

  “Yeah, well,” she replied, with an eloquent shrug of her own and a tight, humorless smile, “you don’t like mine, so we’d be even.”

  “You must not like yours, either,” was his quiet rejoinder, “or you’d stick with them longer than one night.”

  Emma’s gut clenched unpleasantly and her spine stiffened; she exhaled sharply. “Perry,” she said with extreme care, “if you have something to say, then say it. Don’t play with me.”

  “I’m not,” he told her with a serious expression. “I just think it’s time you gave someone a chance.”

  She got a sudden inkling of where this might be going. Her expression hardened. “Don’t try to psychoanalyze me, Perry,” she said coldly.

  “Look, Emma, I just think it’s time you realized—”

  “Mind your own goddamn business, Perry, do you hear me?” She kept her voice low, which only served to underscore her implicit threat. “If you have a problem with how I conduct my sexual affairs, that is your problem. I don’t want to hear about it. Understand?”

  “Kirby,” he said heatedly, “just because your parents dumped you doesn’t mean everyone will. Give it a chance, why don’t you?”

  For one or two brief seconds she was stunned into utter speechlessness. His audacity astounded her, even as his words stung her like a slap in the face.

  “Fuck you, Perry,” she snapped, teeth meeting and lip curling in a snarl.

  And then she moved past him, heading for the exit door which led out into the underground parkade. She hit the door at full stride, slamming it open and flinging it wide. Her lean body was rigid, her mind a thunderous cloud shot through with incoherent rage. He had never before pushed her like this. He had never crossed her boundaries. What had possessed him now to do so, she could not guess. And couldn’t be bothered to. She reached her Pathfinder, threw her gun case onto the seat, and leaped in after it.

  She left the parkade with a squeal of tires.

  Fifteen minutes later, just outside the city limits, she had the presence of mind to realize that she had absolutely no idea where she was going.

  “Jesus Christ,” she muttered, whipping off her sunglasses and tossing them onto the dash.

  She pulled over to the shoulder, then into a little-used drive that led onto a farmer’s field. Facing a sea of waving greenery she assumed to be flax, judging by the multitude of tiny blue florets, she switched off the ignition.

  She fingered her key chain briefly, eyes moving across the soothing expanse of blue before her. Behind her, traffic zipped past, hell-bent for leather. A shudder ran through her. She sagged back into her seat.

  “Good God,” she sighed heavily.

  Head thrown back, eyes closed, breathing deeply and evenly as she attempted to restore her equilibrium, she heard birdsong and traffic noise through the open windows as well as the irregular ticking of the Pathfinder’s engine as it cooled. Over all of that, the sound of the wind as it blew through the crop and the grass and cattails in the ditches on either side of her, calmed her in a way her mindless driving couldn’t.

  “Shit,” she whispered. That was a bad scene, Kirby. Very bad.

  And yet, what was she supposed to do? How was she supposed to react? In complete trust and confidence she had discussed with him certain personal details and family matters. She had never wanted any advice. She had told him because he was her partner and her friend and she had felt she could share such things with him. Never once had she thought he would throw her confidences back in her face. She felt angry and betrayed and hurt. And tired. So very tired.

  Yet she knew he had confronted her out of concern. Perry cared about her. She knew that. There was no misplaced sympathy, no attempt to counsel in matters he could never understand. He genuinely cared for her and about her. He had only been trying to get her to realize how potentially damaging her behavior was to herself and to those around her, close or otherwise. And on some level, she herself was aware of what she was denying herself and others by allowing no one any closer than what she considered safe.

  Just because your parents dumped you, doesn’t mean everyone will. Perry’s words echoed through her mind, bringing life to a whole host of memories, thoughts and feelings she had tried to put to rest years ago.

  “Goddamn you, Perry,” she whispered, but there was no heat behind the words.

  Leaning forward to rest her elbows on the steering wheel, she put her hands to her face, digging the heels into her eyes, fingers buried in her hair. Unbidden images flashed behind her eyelids, long-unheard voices from the past filled her mind. Unlike so many times in the past, though, this time she allowed them free rein. She threw open the door she had slammed shut and locked so long ago, and allowed herself the first real look she had taken in years.

  Growing up in the smaller city of Brandon, she had always known she was different in some way. In a very crucial way. Her own private agony for many years had been viewing what passed for normal all around her, and knowing she did not fit in. She sought confirmation of her own questionable identity, but had no idea where to look. Romantic notions of the past and present confused her. And yet, struggling as she was, and as troubled as she felt, she kept her feelings to herself, preferring to find her own answers rather than seek assistance from individuals whose understanding could not be guaranteed.

  In high school, she managed to keep up appearances by accepting a few dates with guys. Maybe what she was feeling was wrong, she just had to find the right guy and everything would be fine. But she knew there was never going to be the right guy. Her dates never coalesced into anything solid. And while these intermittent outings convinced her friends and family that she was no different from them, she became more c
onvinced that she was.

  One area of her life where she was successful was academics. She was awarded a scholarship to the University of Winnipeg, and she left home to attend full-time, residing on campus. It was there that she discovered gay and lesbian collections in the libraries, and finally, coffeehouses and gay bars. She hooked up with a few other women and proceeded to cultivate her sense of self. She met a woman named Crystal, who was slightly older. Intimidated at first, and completely unsure of herself, she awkwardly stumbled through a world that was as new and foreign as it was welcome. She was blindly thrilled when their relationship quickly became intimate.

  Armed with a newfound strength and confidence, she finally came out to herself, and felt a huge weight being lifted from her shoulders. Accepted by her peers outside of her home turf, she saw no reason why she should not share her personal happiness. Courage and conviction in hand, she had approached her family, to include them in the rightness of her self-discovery.

  She chose to gather her two sisters and her parents together one Saturday night after dinner. So much easier, she thought. She looked at their expectant faces and, after a few false starts, and a couple of hesitant, half-finished referrals to her past, had finally told them, with care and concern, that she was a lesbian.

  With her heart pounding in her chest, she awaited their reactions, not sure exactly what to expect.

  Her sisters, Debra and Alison, seemed puzzled but not overly affected. Her mother just blinked, becoming rather pale, her mouth forming a soundless Oh, before she immediately closed it and glanced at her husband. It was Emma’s father who broke the silence. Emma’s father, after years of unquestioning and unconditional love and support, the one person she had ever really idolized, and the only person whose approval she had ever sought, slowly got to his feet. His expression was as hard as steel and his voice colder than a January wind. He rose before her and said, plainly and without inflection, “Get out of my house.”

  Shocked into complete immobility, she stood rooted to the spot, mind frozen, eyes staring. “Wha-what?” she finally managed to stammer out.

  In the same flat, cold tone he said, “Whatever the hell they’re teaching you at that university, it doesn’t belong here. And you don’t either. Now get out. I don’t want to see you in this house again, unless you lose these sick ideas of yours.”

  She had flinched at that, flushing hotly. Unbelieving, her eyes had darted between her mother and her sisters, but saw no help or support there. Her eyes flew back to her father as he said, “Get out. Now.”

  Her mind whirling, her actions completely automatic, she threw her stuff into her single suitcase. Within minutes, she was out the front door, not bothering to even look back at a family that, for all she knew, was still grouped together in the living room in a silent cluster, reeling from her announcement.

  It was only on the bus ride back to Winnipeg that night that she had finally begun to realize, with something very akin to horror, that she had, in effect, just been disowned. As the full meaning of her father’s words registered, she suffered a horrible moment where she felt she might just simply throw up. She struggled to get herself under some sort of control, reining in her emotions so she wouldn’t break down completely on a Greyhound bus at eleven o’clock at night.

  Over the days and then weeks that followed, her emotions vacillated wildly between anger, betrayal, fear and sorrow. She railed at the injustice and unfairness of her situation and found herself filled with an overwhelming sense of self-loathing. And one night, full of rage and self-denial, she ditched her girlfriend, Crystal, found some guy at a local bar, got drunk with him, and in a very short while, lost her integrity. Some time later, she turned up on Crystal’s doorstep, sobbing, diminished, and lost. Crystal, upon hearing the turn of events, did not turn her away. Being older and a little wiser, she voiced her understanding of Emma’s torment though she could not support her indiscretion, regardless of the reasons behind it. What she did the next day was arrange an appointment with a therapist she knew, in the hopes that Emma might find some peace from the demons that tormented her.

  And over time, with the help of the therapist and her own resilient nature, Emma was able to come to some sort of terms with herself and the rejection by her family. But she’d lost her naïveté and her faith in people. She would never again take anyone or anything for granted, and her trust would be very difficult to gain. There was a new wariness, a certain watchfulness that threw some people off, even as it attracted others. She became cool and aloof, reserved and cautious. And any relationships she embarked upon were on her terms, and her terms were that they never lasted more than one night.

  Since that night twelve years ago, she’d had no contact with her family and they had not contacted her. She had no intention of setting herself up for any further pain. Her conscious choice had been to put it all away, considering it over and dealt with. When, of course, it hadn’t been. The time had come to feel it once more and turn it over in her mind.

  “Goddamn you, Perry,” she muttered again, but this time with a rueful grin and a shake of her head. For the better part of an hour she pored over her memories and feelings, searching for a peace that would, most likely, continue to elude her for some time yet. But when she again decided to lay it to rest once more, she did so with the knowledge that she was much further ahead than she had ever been. Reliving her past did not destroy her, and the pain she felt was the merest shadow of what she once had.

  Mentally giving herself a shake, she glanced at her watch. With a start, she saw that it was almost one forty-five P.M.

  “Shit!”

  She still had to drive clear across town to get to her apartment, shower and get ready, and then drive all the way to the other side of town to get to Winnipeg Memorial.

  “Shit, shit, shit,” she repeated, reaching for her sunglasses and keys.

  “Goddamn you, Perry,” she cursed her partner yet again, as she threw the truck into reverse and waited for a break in traffic. “If I’m late, I’ll kill you.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Grabbing the small bouquet of flowers she’d picked up along the way, Emma hopped out of the Pathfinder and headed across the parking lot to the hospital. At the information desk she was given directions to the ICU and told she would have to report to the nurse’s station.

  Never one to fuss overmuch about her appearance, she nonetheless took a few moments to step inside a public washroom and check herself over. She had deliberately dressed down, in jeans, boots and a clean-fronted, button-down, short-sleeved white shirt, an embroidered knotwork motif adorning half the length of the front. The design lent her appearance a casual stylishness that pleased her. She cocked her head slightly, and then reached up decisively to undo the top two buttons. No point in looking uptight.

  Flowers in hand, she headed for the elevators. Without knowing exactly why, she realized she was feeling somewhat nervous. Since the night she had saved Daina Buchanan, she had felt different somehow, affected in a way she could not put her finger on. The short elevator ride gave her a chance to collect herself. Exiting, she straightened ever so slightly, resisting the urge to smooth the front of her shirt. A tall, attractive nurse rose from her seat at the nurse’s station and came around to meet her.

  “Constable Kirby,” she said softly, her hand outstretched, “it’s so good to meet you. I’m Shelley Montgomery, Daina’s nurse.” She smiled warmly.

  Emma, very much aware of the solemn atmosphere of the unit, pitched her voice to match the nurse’s as she replied, with an answering smile, “Hi, thank you.” She shook the woman’s hand and added, “Please, just call me Emma.”

  “Daina’s resting right now, but she is expecting you. She suffered a bit of a seizure earlier, so we had to give her a mild sedative to relax her.”

  “Oh!” Emma’s smile faltered. “Is she all right?”

  “She’s fine, now,” Shelley immediately reassured her. “It was something we were able to rectify right away, a lo
w sodium level, quite low, actually. She gave us quite a scare, I can tell you.”

  Emma wondered if her being there at that time was a good idea. Her hesitation must have shown, for Shelley Montgomery took a light grip on her elbow and brought her forward.

  “The sedative we administered was a mild one. It happened a couple of hours ago, so it might even be wearing off by now.” They were moving toward a row of four beds, separated by curtains. “A seizure can be very exhausting and disorienting to a patient, not to mention upsetting. We administer the sedative just to calm them afterward.”

  Emma nodded her understanding, but her attention was on the beds and their occupants. She guessed which one was Daina, second from the right, by the spiky blonde hair. She seemed to be sleeping.

  “I’m glad you didn’t wear a uniform,” the nurse was saying, bringing Emma’s attention back to her. “It can be upsetting to the patients to have a uniformed officer in the room.”

  “Well, I’m off-duty and wasn’t told otherwise.”

  “Not a problem, you did fine. I like that shirt, by the way.”

  “Oh, thank you.” Emma was pleased.

  “I’ll let you go ahead and introduce yourself.”

  Emma realized that was her cue to get on with it. Her boot heels sounded loud in the relative quiet of the unit. She wondered at the seeming impropriety of just waking the woman up. A moment later, Daina opened her eyes a bit sleepily. She blinked a couple of times, her forehead creased in a frown, but then she smiled, a puzzled, tentative smile. “Hi,” she said.

  Daina’s face was badly bruised and puffy beneath the bandages, and both eyes sported fading circles of exhaustion. She was pale and drawn, and her resemblance to the vibrant performer Emma recalled on stage was vague, at best. But when she smiled, Emma’s heart did that same confusing little leap in her chest. “Hi,” she said, and offered a smile of her own.