A nurse
The couple had arrived separately. The man first, taking his seat in the waiting room.
His eyes fixed on the built-in toy in one corner, a maze of wooden beads on a looping array of metal tracks.
The woman came next, small and pale and fifteen minutes late, lost in a large woollen coat.
She’d left a chair’s space between herself and her partner, had stared at the small grey square of sky through the only window until the doctor called them in.
Once the appointment is over, he tells them that they have a lot to discuss, that they can call him whenever they’re ready.
Until then, he says, take as much time as you need.
He closes the door quietly behind him. The nurse is left on the other side of a curtain, knowing the couple will presume they’re alone.
A heartbeat. She decides to remain still, to allow them their privacy.
She tries her best not to watch the two shadows that linger behind a thin boundary of clinical polyester.
‘How is this happening?’ the male shadow says, after a while. ‘How are we here?’
The female shadow is sitting on a bed, shoulders slumped. It’s a while longer before she speaks. When she does, her voice is quiet.
‘Something’s wrong with us.’
‘Don’t think like that,’ he says.
‘Why not?’ his partner replies, quickly. ‘They can’t even tell us what it is. Maybe we’re just incompatible.’
‘Clara…’
‘Other people find it easy.’ Her voice chokes. ‘This was supposed to be a good thing.’
It’s too much for the man. He walks away. He’s wearing heavy boots, and his feet squeak against the linoleum. He stops near the door, seems to be wrestling with his emotions.
‘It can still be a good thing,’ he says. ‘We just need a bit of help.’
‘How much help?’
‘We don’t need to decide now.’
A silence.
‘I hate this,’ the woman says.
The man turns. ‘I hate it, too.’
She shakes her head. ‘No,’ she says. ‘Not just this. Us. Every touch feels like a transaction. Every conversation feels like a fight.’ Her voice is strained.
‘I’m in the middle of filming, Seb. My first film.
And that should be the happiest thing in the world, but all I think about is this, and so I hate that, too. ’
‘I’m sorry,’ the man says, quietly.
‘I don’t want you to be sorry,’ she replies. Her voice is wavering. ‘I just want us to be the way we were. You used to lift me up, to support my work. Until it started to get in the way.’
‘I still—’ He can’t finish the sentence. ‘This isn’t forever.’
The woman’s voice is sharp. ‘If it works, it is the very definition of forever.’
There’s a long silence. Into it, the woman begins to cry.
She does so softly, the shadow of her shoulders bobbing up and down.
The nurse fiddles with her scrubs, wishes she’d left when she had the chance.
The man is hesitating, as if he’s not sure his reassurance is wanted.
He reaches out the silhouette of a hand, places it on the silhouette of a shoulder.
She lets him. She puts her own hand over his, leans towards him.
He kisses her on top of her head, speaks gently.
‘It will happen,’ he says. ‘We just need to be patient.’
The woman stiffens. She shifts away from him, so he withdraws his hand slightly.
‘Please, Seb,’ she says.
‘What?’
‘I can’t keep doing this,’ she says. ‘I can’t keep being tested and prodded and poked.’
The man’s voice is desperate. ‘We can’t just give up.’
The female shadow bats his arm away. ‘We?’ she says. ‘You’re never the one in the fucking stirrups.’
The woman stands, now. She comes near the curtain, her proximity rippling over its sky-blue surface. Her partner is much taller than her, but light and perspective play tricks. Behind her, he seems small.
‘You heard what the doctor said,’ he says. ‘We have options.’
‘I don’t want options,’ she says. ‘Even if it works, I don’t want this to be the story of how it happened.’ She tilts her head. ‘Do you?’
‘Then we just keep trying as we are,’ the man continues, on his own track. ‘No pressure. It’ll sort itself out.’ He doesn’t sound sure. ‘It could still happen for us.’
‘You don’t genuinely believe that?’
‘I don’t know what I believe,’ the man says.
His voice tightens. ‘I don’t care how it happens,’ he says.
‘I just don’t know what I’ll do if it doesn’t.
You have your film, your career, and I have—’ Again, he can’t finish his sentence.
His voice is smaller than his shadow. He sounds far away.
‘If I don’t have this, then I don’t have anything. ’
The female shadow stands for a moment. Then she crosses to him, and two shadows become one.
‘You have me,’ she says. ‘Why can’t that be enough?’