Flowers in July

Chapter One

The oversight was forgivable.

Presumably, the moment had been hot and steamy. Foreplay was underway, or imminent, and the tiny lace G-string had been dragged down by someone’s foot, invariably wedging itself into the sheets at the bottom of the bed, scrunching so tightly it almost disappeared, its presence easily forgotten.

Until some time later, when I found it changing the sheets. It’s remarkable how much you can deduce from someone’s choice in underwear. And what lay before me was the discarded remains of someone cheap, slutty and ultimately lacking common sense.

Obviously, the G-string wasn’t mine.

Firstly, I never wore black lace underwear. Every other colour lace, yes, but not black. Somehow, I could never pull it off without feeling like a sex worker. I don’t know why, that was just my position on black lace.

Secondly, they were Cotton On. A perfectly reasonable entry-level item, but for the seasoned lingerie wearer, completely unacceptable.

It’s a false economy to spend less than twenty dollars on a G-string.

The elastic doesn’t last; the lace goes all loose; they make you feel sloppy rather than well put together.

Perhaps shock was numbing my emotions, or maybe I’d been through so many similar turns and episodes with Felix that the whole thing was what I’d come to expect.

Regardless, I moved forward with my usual efficiency and practicality.

It was sheet-changing day – every fourteen days seemed to me like an appropriate time frame for sheet-changing, all unforeseen events aside.

But this was an unforeseen event (relatively speaking) so I stopped changing the sheets.

I wouldn’t be sleeping there anymore, so the task was now superfluous.

I went to the kitchen and found the tongs, then used them to pick up the lace and put it on a plate on the dining table.

Felix would be home from his day shift in approximately forty-five minutes.

That gave me time to pack my few possessions and book a backpacker’s room for the night and an Uber to pick me up in forty-six minutes.

When Felix walked through the door I was ready, sitting at the table with the G-string on the plate in front of me. It took roughly two seconds for his eyes to clock me, the bags and the G.

His smile turned momentarily to dread before trying to recover neutrality.

Too late.

‘Mary …’

‘Felix.’

‘It’s not—’

‘Here’s my key. I’ve stopped my scheduled transfers for the rent.’ I stood up and gathered my bags. He tried to call out but I didn’t look back.

As I approached the waiting car he finally reached me, a hand on my shoulder which I immediately shrugged away.

‘Mary, I’m so sorry. It’s not as bad as it looks—’

‘No, I think it’s worse than it looks. Because I keep coming back.’ I hauled the two bags of my clothes over my shoulder and pushed past him. ‘They stink like hell, by the way. You should tell her to get checked for bacterial vaginosis.’

His flinch was like a triumph.

A little layer of steel settled itself over my heart as the Uber backed out of the driveway.

The Bouncing Blue Tongue was underwhelming emergency accommodation, to say the least.

When the Uber dropped me and my bags on the footpath beside a blue lizard the size of a sheep with enormous breasts spilling over a yellow bikini and a blue tongue dripping seductively out of its mouth, I felt as if someone was making a joke of me.

I stared at the lizard for a few moments, my thoughts stuck on what the marketing goal was.

I was shown to my room and as soon as the door opened to the closet-sized space with its dingy-looking bed and tiny window whose glass was virtually obscured by mould, it was apparent this was not going to work.

When I’d booked the room in this backpacker’s hostel half an hour ago, my choice had been compromised by the fact that I was new to Hobart and could only base my decision on it being cheap, available and walking distance to the hospital. I clearly needed to expand my selection parameters.

‘Is there another room I could have a look at—?’ I couldn’t wipe the expression of distaste off my face.

‘It’s our last room! You were lucky to get it!

’ the pink-haired, South American receptionist said brightly before disappearing down the dark hallway.

My eyes lingered on her retreating figure.

How someone had come from all the way across the world to end up working at the Bouncing Blue Tongue was a mysterious and regrettable situation.

I felt something like kinship with her – I think our luck was on a par.

I reluctantly put my bags on the bed. That seemed like the most likely place to have been washed within the last decade, and while there was no way I was going to put any part of my body on the bed, I could accept my belongings sitting there for a moment.

It was obvious I needed to establish plan B ASAP.

A quick glance at Airbnb confirmed that there was absolutely nowhere else in my price range.

And Gumtree listings for rentals were also sparse and expensive.

I was starting to feel panicky and wondered if I might need to sleep in Ressies – the disgusting junior doctor hangout at the hospital where the couches were saggy and beer-stained and smelled like arse – when something caught my eye.

Someone called Vivian was advertising a ‘Granny Flat’ in her backyard in West Hobart for seventy dollars a week. Vivian used suspicious inverted commas and showed a tendency for excessive exclamation marks, yet it was a rental I could afford. And within walking distance to the hospital.

I sent Vivian a message and her response confirming the ‘Granny Flat’s’ availability was almost immediate. She told me to come and see the place at ten the following morning. With no apparent alternatives, I told her I’d take it and would move in tomorrow.

But having secured a rental didn’t resolve where on earth I was going to sleep that night.

Aside from the health hazard of the room in which I was standing, and the undoubtable presence of bedbugs and the DNA of genital warts living in the sheets, it was unlikely I’d be able to sleep.

I was a poor sleeper at the best of times and, let’s be real, this was not the best of times.

It was seven p.m., and with all the events of the last few hours, I hadn’t been for my run yet – a daily ritual that I didn’t forfeit even when I’d been feverish with COVID the previous year – and I needed it more than ever. I put on my gear and headed out into the cool June evening.

The sun was long down, so I stuck to the lamp-lit streets, winding my way through the city, past Salamanca and around Battery Point. My body was thrumming with energy and I could have run for hours. Anxiety and stress did that to me: left me feeling wired.

As I ran, the reality of the situation started to unfurl and I allowed myself to feel its weight.

At least when I was moving, I could digest what had happened without completely falling apart.

The steady beat of my feet on the concrete, the gentle burn in my thighs, the cold air ripping through my lungs were as familiar as a dependable friend.

My phone rang twice in my pocket and I ignored it.

After the third ring, I turned it off. I didn’t indulge any feelings of hurt, or despair, or let myself think about how pathetic it was that, at thirty-two, I was living in a city where I knew no one other than my work colleagues and had zero support or people I could turn to.

I didn’t want to think about those things.

I pushed through the night air, faster and faster, and focused my energy on strength.

Building that fort around my heart bigger and harder, and promising myself I would not succumb to the pull of Felix again.

It was easy, right after he’d done something so clearly not worth forgiving, to think that way.

If only my resolve could last long enough to truly disentangle myself.

I felt better after my run. I’d always been grateful for the health of my body and I treated it with respect and attention.

The feeling of fitness and strength was something I took great comfort in.

My clothes always fitted me perfectly, my body hair was groomed and my fingernails were always clean.

It wasn’t a sense of vanity that made me take care of my physical form, but a sense of a control.

Something I could make good that relied on no one else.

I showered at the Bouncing Blue Tongue in my sandals to avoid contracting tinea and washed my hair with my favourite products, letting the pretty, clean smells envelope me.

I decided my emerald green – colour of renewal and growth – bra and knickers were what I needed, hoping to inspire some sense of refinement that the Bouncing Blue Tongue had really left wanting.

I was scheduled for two days off but there was no way – and nowhere – that I could sleep, so I put on my scrubs and walked to work.

I was fifteen minutes early for night-shift handover and the handover room was, as expected, empty.

As ten thirty approached, stressed-looking evening-shift doctors and bleary-eyed night-shift doctors trickled in.

The large screen on the wall showed a department that was groaning with admitted patients waiting on ward beds and a waiting room full of people who hadn’t yet been seen.

A customary snapshot of the Derwent Hospital, I was quickly learning.

I’d been there for six weeks and was growing used to the chaos.

The inefficiencies of space limitations and bed-block were driving me mad, but the work was always busy and that suited me.

I could forget myself when I was at work – the harder I worked, the more insignificant my life felt.

‘Who’s our night team?’ The night registrar, Jake, had arrived and was sitting in the driver’s seat, controlling the computer screen. He clicked on the roster board where the faces of the staff from the day, evening and night shifts were displayed.

I wondered if anyone would notice the fact that my face was not on the roster board.

At that moment, the consultant walked in and the atmosphere in the room stiffened.

Abel Sutherland. He was a retrieval doctor most of the time, tackling the horrors of emergency rescues and helicopter resusci-tation, and only worked in the department occasionally. An absolutely terrifying man of very few words who was impossible to read. The small talk evaporated.

Abel wore black scrubs – such was the consultant etiquette.

Registrars should wear green, nurses blue.

That was the idea anyway, but staff at the Derwent had an affinity for ‘fun scrubs’, so essentially most people looked like colourful clowns and it was impossible to determine anyone’s actual role.

‘Are you in charge?’ Abel directed that at Jake. The Medical Officer in Charge is the most senior doctor on shift – during the day, it’s the consultant; at night, it’s a registrar. Abel scanned the roster board, correlating it with who was in the room.

I studied a spot of peeling paint in the corner, hoping no one would realise I wasn’t supposed to be on shift. There was probably nothing more pathetic than the fact I had nowhere else to be.

I felt Abel’s gaze on me and like a magnet, it drew my eyes to his. They were green like my underwear. And why my brain made that comparison, I can only attribute to my state of total emotional discombobulation.

And then he was looking at my chest and I was blushing—

Ah. The name tag. Of course.

‘Mary? Are you evening shift, or …’

His voice was low and serious and enough to make me feel utterly terrified like maybe I was about to be told to go to ‘time out’.

‘I’m on night,’ I said brightly. (I never said anything brightly.)

A pause. ‘You’re not on the roster.’

‘Oh.’ I gave a surprised laugh. ‘That’s weird. Never mind. I’m here now.’

Everyone was looking at me by this point.

‘Okay …’ Jake said slowly. ‘Shall we make a start then?’

I nodded enthusiastically.

‘In resus one we have …’ Jake began, hovering the mouse over the patient.

‘Eighty-six-year-old lady,’ Michael, one of the evening registrars, said. ‘Infective exacerbation of—’

‘Mary.’ Abel was still looking at me with a puzzled expression.

‘Yes?’

‘If you’re not rostered on, you aren’t covered by the hospital insurance. So, you should probably go home.’

‘Uh …’ My mind whirled, trying to formulate a solution. The idea of going back to the Bouncing Blue Tongue was literally making me nauseous. I scanned the room. ‘I’m really quite happy to work. Anyone want to swap?’

A night registrar, Cleo, looked up from her phone for the first time since we’d started. ‘Fuck, yeah. I’ll go home.’

‘Everyone happy with that?’ I asked.

Abel’s expression was difficult to read, as though he couldn’t quite keep up with the oddity of the situation. ‘Uh … oh-kay.’

‘Sweet!’ Cleo shot me a slightly baffled, but nonetheless grateful, wave as she darted out the door. ‘Toodle-loo team!’

Jake was already updating the roster so I was now officially on shift. Excellent.

Handover continued and I let my attention be absorbed by Shirley and her pneumonia, Robert with his upper gastrointestinal bleed, Cobie with his poly-pharmacy overdose, et cetera, et cetera.

There was nothing more grounding than being in the hospital emergency department.

No matter how shit life was, things could always be worse.

Once all the outstanding jobs were allocated and patients handed over to the night team, it was time to get started. I was out the door and on my way down the corridor when I was stopped by Abel’s commanding voice.

‘Mary.’

I turned to find him at my heel, his serious, lingerie-coloured eyes frowning down at me.

‘Mmm-hmm?’

He didn’t say anything, just carried on frowning. Fuck, this man was weirder than I was.

And somehow, in that bizarre moment, I felt as though he was seeing straight through me. Like he knew something he shouldn’t. Knew I hadn’t mixed up my shifts. Knew I had nowhere else to be.

‘I … better get to work,’ I said eventually, my chest beginning to thump nonsensically.

‘Are you …?’ His voice petered out and his frown deepened. ‘Never mind.’

‘Okay!’ I spun and swiped myself into the department.

I was a generally unflappable person, but it had to be said, Abel Sutherland was extremely unsettling.