Chapter 16
16
Nadia felt Hudson’s arm around her, felt her legs move as she put one foot in front of the other. They came through the internal door from the hangar, bypassed the office, and went through to reception and the privacy of her own office space.
‘Wait here, I’ll get you a strong cup of coffee,’ she heard him say.
And then the door clicked shut.
She closed her eyes. She’d been there plenty of times as a nurse – felt her own hands on a chest performing compressions knowing it was a desperate and final attempt. She’d seen patients die in front of her, heard that there was nothing else that could be done, been the one to declare the fact.
Hudson was soon back with a hot coffee for her. Despite the pleasant temperature of a warm June day, she felt the need to get some more heat by holding her hands around the mug, even though she knew her shivering wasn’t from the cold but from the shock.
‘Do you want to talk about what happened out there?’ he asked after a while.
She looked up at him. ‘It was horrible.’
‘I know the patient didn’t make it.’
‘It was worse than that…’ Hudson was a good listener. He needed to be in his job. He was a friend too but right now, she needed to think of him in a professional capacity; it was the only way she’d be able to tell him everything. ‘When the call came in, I thought the victim was my sister. I thought it was Monica.’
Hudson pulled the chair on the other side of the desk around so that he was sitting next to her. ‘That’s why you went out on the job.’
‘When I saw the woman on the ground, her hair, it was the same colour as mine, the same as our mother’s was. I thought…’
‘But it wasn’t.’
She shook her head. She’d seen the patient lying on the ground, she’d known the team had done everything they could. And for a split second, before she saw the woman’s face, she’d really thought it might be Monica.
‘I feel terrible, Hudson.’
‘It must have been an enormous shock.’
‘No, it’s not that. It’s because… it’s because all I felt when I saw that poor woman properly was relief.’
‘That’s only natural when you thought it might be your sister.’
‘It makes me a monster.’ She gasped. ‘I haven’t even told Archie.’ She fumbled on her desk for her phone. ‘He was here when I went out with the crew and I said I’d let him know. I didn’t even think. He’ll be going out of his mind…’
She had the phone clutched against her chest. She couldn’t make a move to do what she needed to.
‘How about I do it?’ Hudson offered.
Nadia felt her mouth open but no words came out. She found Archie’s number, pressed the call button and handed it to Hudson.
It was better that she didn’t talk to Archie right now. The whole time she was on board Hilda, on their way to the scene, she’d not only been scared stiff that she was going to find out that it was Monica who needed their help; she was terrified that she’d been the one to do this. Her walking away had led to her sister coming to the country to look for her. Her inability to forgive her sister or Archie for everything that had happened had been the reason Monica was out there somewhere and endangering herself and her baby. Nadia had left her family behind and forged a new life without them in it. And for the very first time, she questioned her own actions.
Hudson made the call, succinct and clear, but Nadia gestured for him to pass the phone before he hung up. Archie would want to know some of the extra information and now that he had the basics, Nadia felt capable of that much.
Her voice shook as she told Archie, ‘We believe the girl at the scene was Lena’s birth mother.’ She listened to his exhale of relief. ‘The hospital will confirm it for sure.’ She’d heard the paramedics; she’d heard her own crew, their assessments and their observations. But not only that; Brad had found identification, the young woman’s purse with a photograph of a baby wrapped in the same blanket Nadia had seen once before on the day Lena was left here at the airbase.
She finished the call. ‘It’s almost 100 per cent certain that it’s her, Hudson.’ She felt all of her energy drain out of her. ‘Poor Lena, she’s lost her mother; we’ll never get a chance to reunite them and it breaks my heart.’
He put his hands over hers. ‘Mine too. What was the woman’s name?’
‘Marissa. The police say the driver who hit her told them she’d just walked out in front of the car; there was no chance to stop.’
He clasped her hand. ‘Do you know whether she has family?’
‘The police will notify her parents.’
‘I’ll take this case rather than Paige and I’ll start going through the details.’
‘Thank you.’ She appreciated him taking away some of her workload.
‘I’ll be on standby once I’ve gone through the crew’s notes and pieced together what happened. They’ll likely have questions. I expect there’ll be a news segment after police talk to the family; the public will be informed that Lena’s mother was found.’
Hudson’s words washed over her. She remembered the circumstances of the accident. ‘The elderly lady who hit her… she’ll be devastated. I could’ve… I should’ve…’
‘I’ll get all the details from Brad and Kate and follow it up. Don’t worry, she’ll be counselled; she’ll get the help she needs.’
‘What will happen to Lena?’
‘The social workers will handle it all.’
‘I need to see her. Lena.’ She wasn’t sure why. She wasn’t family, she never had been, and yet Nadia still felt an inexplicable bond. ‘I want to tell the social worker, tell Lena.’
‘Okay.’
‘You don’t think I’m crazy?’
‘I think you’re a kind, sympathetic human being.’
‘I don’t feel like it, not today. I leapt onto that helicopter for personal reasons.’
‘Hey, anyone else would’ve done the same. How was the elderly lady? Was she hurt at all?’
‘They took her away in the road ambulance; she was standing, talking at the scene so only seems to have minor injuries.’ She had another thought. ‘Do you think Marissa’s remaining family might take custody of Lena?’
‘I’m not sure.’
‘We need to know the bigger story first. The authorities will need to make sure that it’s the right thing to do.’
‘One thing at a time.’ His hand settled on hers again. ‘What’s happening with Monica? Have you heard anything more?’
‘No, not a thing.’
He waited until she’d had a comforting sip of her coffee. ‘Would you like to tell me about your sister? About what happened between you?’
‘There’s so much to say.’
‘So start at the beginning.’
It took her a while to get going.
‘I spent the latter years of my childhood in Switzerland – my father was originally from there and always wanted to return so took us all back when I was ten years old. You wouldn’t know it from my accent – we lived in an area with other expats, I went to an international school with kids from all over the world, and my parents spoke English at home. Even my dad’s accent had faded.’
His understanding and patience encouraged her to continue.
‘My father passed away a couple of years after we settled in Switzerland but apart from that, I had a relatively normal upbringing. Mum didn’t want to disrupt us and leave; she’d grown to love it there. She never married again but the three of us did okay. It was when we were older, when Monica became a teenager, that things really started to unravel.’
She told Hudson about a lot of the good times but she also recalled the punctuation of the moments along the way that set the path for the remaining chapters of their time as a family.
Monica was four years younger than Nadia and looked up to her older sister. When Monica started high school, she began to have real problems. She struggled in class, she was getting behind with her work, and at home, she seemed to get her way no matter how many times she snapped or broke the rules.
Monica got worse as time went on. The way she spoke to their mother made Nadia wince and the disrespect, the condescension and the sheer selfishness of her younger sister really started to affect her. It made Nadia resent her sister’s presence, especially when their mother worried so much about her youngest child that she was regularly unwell – there were doctor visits for stress, pills for this and that, and Nadia was worried something serious might happen. Monica meanwhile just continued to take: their mother’s time and energy, their mother’s money in the form of extra tuition that she often didn’t bother to turn up to. She took their mother’s focus and left very little for Nadia, who tried to fade into the background until Monica got herself sorted, except that never seemed to really happen. Her little sister was all about take, take, take and didn’t care how she did it or who it affected.
‘Mum, you have to talk to her; she’s a mess,’ Nadia told their mother one night as she helped dry up the dishes after dinner. Monica wasn’t back yet, late for curfew again: one of the many things she got away with.
‘I don’t want her to think we’re not there for her, Nadia.’
‘She knows you’re here, Mum, but she needs to take some responsibility.’ It was the most polite way of saying that Monica had been getting away with things for ages – no punishment if she broke curfew, no reprimand for not doing her chores, no threat of stopping tutor sessions if she didn’t show up and wasted their mother’s money again. ‘It’s the only thing that will teach her how to be a part of the real world.’
But her mum didn’t want to hear it. She changed the subject, the way she always did, and when Monica came home stinking of smoke and couldn’t even make polite conversation with anyone, she was allowed to eat her dinner and then take a bath.
‘I know you think I’m being too easy on her,’ said her mum when it was only Nadia and her again. ‘She’s really struggled at school and I feel terrible; I should’ve noticed there was something wrong years ago. I didn’t, and I’m her mother. I feel like I neglected her when I should have got her more help.’
Nadia gave her mum a hug. ‘You’re too hard on yourself.’
But the niceness disappeared when she went upstairs.
‘When are you going to start putting some effort in?’ Nadia demanded when she cornered her sister outside the bathroom.
Monica pushed past without an answer, with no flicker of guilt that she was making things so hard.
Nadia followed her into her bedroom and her eyes were immediately drawn to her sister’s bag, which must have fallen off the bed, its contents spilling out all over the carpet.
‘What is that?’ But she knew even before she paced over to the bag of weed and picked it up. ‘You’re fourteen years old!’
‘All right, Miss Goody Two Shoes.’
She went to snatch it back but Nadia held it out of reach.
‘Give… it… back,’ she spat.
Nadia tossed it onto the bed. She would’ve taken it straight down to her mother if she didn’t think it would distress her even more. She would rather Monica found her own way out of this, did some growing up without having to upset everyone else in the process.
‘You need to sort yourself out, Monica. Mum is tearing her hair out with you.’
‘And what are you, her spokesperson?’
‘I don’t want to see her unhappy.’ She softened. ‘I don’t want to see you unhappy either.’
‘Yeah, right.’
‘I don’t.’ She sat on the bed. ‘Is school getting better now you’ve got some extra help?’
‘School is great, Nadia. I’m crap in every subject. It’s a total ball.’
‘No need to get annoyed with me.’
‘You’re so bloody perfect! You don’t struggle with anything and it’s not fair. You sailed through school; you’re doing the same at university now. You’ve no idea what it’s like for me, getting behind, not able to catch up.’
‘It might help if you turned up to the tutor sessions.’
She swore at Nadia then and Nadia saw red.
‘You need to stop blaming everyone else apart from yourself, Monica. Take some responsibility for once!’
Their talk ended with Nadia leaving and receiving a slam of the bedroom door behind her.
Her mum didn’t even ask about the row she surely must have heard in the quiet of the house. Voices carried after all. But her mum was mending the hem on Monica’s school dress when Nadia went downstairs to sit with her and keep her company watching television. She had study to do, but tonight, she’d stay here a while longer even if her mum didn’t want to talk. And she’d made it pretty clear she didn’t want to do that – when it came to Monica, their mother wasn’t just blinkered; she was blindfolded. Monica could do no wrong and whenever Nadia mentioned anything, she had an explanation, an excuse – Monica had problems and Nadia needed to understand, Nadia shouldn’t make this into a drama, Nadia should leave her little sister alone. It was hard not to begrudge those things when her mum said them, when she wasn’t the one doing anything wrong.
Monica’s behaviour didn’t change over the months, nor over the next couple of years as she struggled to finish school. Nadia was relieved every time she returned to university, to a world away, a world that was her own as she continued studying for her nursing degree.
Nadia met Archie during her time studying at university in Zurich and it wasn’t long before they became firm friends. One winter, in his quest to see Geneva where Nadia’s family lived – he lived in Basel although British too – and because his own family were jetting off to America to share the festive season with his brother who had relocated over there, he made the choice to stay in Switzerland and manage his studies and share Christmas with his friend.
Nadia had taken Archie to spend Christmas at her house.
‘It’s lovely to have you with us,’ her mother told him before she wrapped Nadia in a hug that lasted and lasted.
Nadia and Archie had been to several university parties over the last few days and one last night so had driven to the house that morning. It was good to be here. Over the last few months, Nadia and her mother had talked a lot. The distance now Nadia had moved out had brought them closer with even an apology from her mum at how her attentions had been on Monica when they should’ve been shared between both of her daughters. Nadia had forgiven her, of course, but she didn’t find it so easy to move on from Monica’s manipulations over the years. And every time she came home, she could see that their mother was still totally blind to Monica’s faults.
Monica was by now eighteen, Nadia twenty-two, and Monica still had no plan of what to do with her life. Well, she did: she wanted a year out from education before she did anything else.
‘Where is she going?’ Nadia asked as her mum covered the turkey with foil and slotted the roasting tin into the oven.
‘Going?’ She tugged off her oven gloves and set them on the side.
‘On her year out.’
‘Oh, I don’t think she’s planned to go anywhere.’
‘Nope, no ideas yet,’ came Monica’s voice from behind her. ‘Hey, sis.’
‘Hey.’ Nadia smiled. She wasn’t going to dig any deeper about the year out; she didn’t want any unnecessary tension, especially with Archie as a guest: Archie who was in the bathroom and knew a bit about the sibling rivalry but not all of it. She only hoped a guest might help her sister to behave better. Perhaps this year, she wouldn’t be rolling joints in her bedroom thinking they had all lost their sense of smell when the aroma drifted down the stairs.
Monica picked up a piece of carrot from the chopping board and crunched into it but stopped when Archie came through to join them.
Archie had had to duck slightly to get beneath the door frame and Nadia didn’t miss it: her sister was enthralled by their house guest.
‘I heard you were bringing someone home.’ Monica beamed in Archie’s direction.
‘Monica, this is Archie, my friend.’
‘Friend?’
‘Yes, friend.’
‘With benefits?’ Monica asked.
‘Monica!’ Their mother apologised to Archie and reprimanded her youngest daughter. ‘Polite, remember.’
‘Oh, I’m joking,’ she said but one look in Nadia’s direction and Nadia knew she had something up her sleeve; she was plotting something either for now or for later.
Nadia hadn’t liked the vibe one little bit and she should have taken it as a warning sign.
As Nadia finished recounting that Christmas in Switzerland to Hudson in the office at the airbase, he asked, ‘So, were you – just friends?’
‘We were at that point. But soon after we returned to university, we started seeing each other romantically. Both of us were twenty-two, neither of us had dated anyone serious; we were exploring things to see where they went, I guess.
‘We were seeing each other for a couple of months when I fell pregnant. We were both shocked, but we didn’t have much time to get used to it or tell anyone because I was rushed to hospital one night with bleeding and tummy pains. The pregnancy was ectopic. We lost the baby.’
‘I’m so sorry.’
She tried to shrug it off, even though it still hurt emotionally almost as much as it had back then. ‘We were so young; I think we both felt as though nature had been trying to tell us something.’
‘Still, it was a loss.’
‘It was, and it happened again when I was married.’ She fought the tears. Two chances to have a baby and both of them snatched away just like that.
‘You were married?’
‘I was. Not for that long, and then when my marriage broke down, I came here to Whistlestop River and started over yet again.’ She smiled. ‘I warned you there was a lot to say.’
‘I’m still listening.’
‘The second time I was pregnant was worse – it was ectopic too and I was lucky to survive. I had a ruptured fallopian tube and severe bleeding.’
‘Nadia, I?—’
She shook her head. ‘Both pregnancies were a long time ago.’
‘Doesn’t mean the pain isn’t still there.’
‘When it happened with Archie, I needed him; he was my best friend more than anything else. He stayed with me at the hospital, we managed a bit of a joke that it was on-the-job training; he kept my spirits up.’
And then her mind went back to what happened in the weeks after that.
‘Archie and I broke up. I think we both realised that we were friends, nothing more. We’d been through a shitty time but it made our friendship even more solid. At least that’s what I thought.
‘Archie had a clinical placement near Basel; I had one in Geneva. After my placement finished, I went home to surprise Mum for her birthday. Nobody knew I was coming. Not even Monica, who had been swanning around Switzerland, still not working, still without direction. I got home and the rest is so cliché. Mum wasn’t there. The house was quiet but I heard giggling coming from Monica’s room. It wasn’t unusual. She’d get stoned and laugh to herself – still my mother denied she was taking drugs – but I went upstairs to dump my things. And that was when Monica came out of her bedroom wrapped in a sheet. I could tell she was naked underneath; it wasn’t hard to work out that she had someone there. I was about to leave the house, give her half an hour to sort herself out with a stern warning that Mum might be home soon and she should get rid of whoever was in her bedroom, when I caught a look on her face. It was a look of triumph, like the one she’d give me when she got away with something and Mum let her off the hook when really she shouldn’t have done.
‘The next thing I knew, I was walking towards her bedroom. I looked in and there was Archie in her bed. I didn’t want Archie, not in that way any more, but he was my best friend. With everything we’d been through, too, he was a part of my life that Monica hadn’t had a say in up until that moment. Both of them had betrayed me and I lost it. I couldn’t handle it. I took off and it was Archie, not Monica, who came running down the stairs.
‘I told him to stay the hell away from me. I told him to go back upstairs, put on his clothes and get out before he gave our mother a heart attack when she saw her eighteen-year-old in bed with a man four years older than her. I stayed with a girlfriend that night and for a week after; I didn’t want anyone to find me. When I returned to university, I refused to speak to Archie. Monica didn’t get in touch, I spoke to Mum on the phone as usual, and then I threw myself into my exams.
‘Monica took my best friend,’ she said. ‘Just like that. She took the one thing I never thought she could.’
A knock at the door was followed by Kate poking her head around the frame.
‘You okay?’ she asked Nadia. She was likely thinking that her distress was the shock of losing the patient at the scene, the fact it was almost definitely Lena’s mother.
‘Yeah, I’m good.’
‘There’s a guy in reception for you.’
Nadia didn’t have to ask who it was.
And neither did Hudson.
‘Want me to deal with Archie?’ he asked when Kate went on her way.
‘No… I’ve got this.’
But before she left, Hudson pulled her close, wrapped her in a hug it took her a while to respond to and she felt herself drift back to the night of the dinner dance, what it had felt like to be in his arms.
‘You’ve got me on your side,’ he said before he left her to go and greet her visitor.