Chapter Nine
After all the adrenaline had worn off, the reality of my behaviour descended upon me like a slap in the face.
The drive back from the quarry was excruciating.
Even without Felix up front – he’d chosen to sit in the back of the bus with the course participants – I felt I was dying a slow, embarrassing death.
I stared out the window the whole time and wished I had my ear buds with me so I could make it one hundred per cent clear that I was not going to engage in conversation.
I’d carried on like a child at a birthday party in that quarry. I’d thrown my arms around Abel Sutherland like I was fucking unhinged.
I’d shown him a version of Mary that was disorganised, scattered, cheat-worthy and lacking understanding of basic personal boundaries – not to mention work boundaries. I’d talked about vibrators. I was crashing his room. And he’d felt compelled to pretend to be romantically involved with me.
The whole thing was truly, award-winningly appalling.
As soon as we got back to the lodge, I changed into my running shoes and sports bra and got the hell out of there. Running always made me feel better and gave me clarity.
‘Don’t get lost. Do you want a head torch?’ Abel called after me.
I don’t even know if I replied in English; I was so discom-bobulated I might have pulled out some high school Japanese about cherry blossoms. I felt wildly ungathered.
Entirely un-me. I needed to come back from my run with a fresh start.
Pretend none of this had happened. Be professional and normal and go back to the comfort of measured distance that I usually maintained with people.
I cursed Felix for making me believe I should do that stupid climb, leading me to feel so liberated and joyful and spontaneous.
They were not my attributes. I would lose my grip on life if I were to indulge any of those attributes.
I had to overcome them, even if the feeling of elation had been better than anything I’d felt in months.
(Years?) Even if the feeling of being in Abel’s arms for those few seconds had felt natural and his smile hadn’t belied his discomfort—
What was wrong with me?
I ran long enough to feel slightly nervous on the dark, gravel road in the middle of nowhere and reluctantly turned around. With each angry step, I scolded myself for my behaviour and resolved to do better.
When I got back, it was dinner time and everyone was already in the dining room. I obviously couldn’t sit next to Felix. And I obviously couldn’t sit next to Abel.
I was also not so socially unevolved that I was going to sit by myself, so I filled my plate and pulled up a chair next to a friendly looking girl whose name, I believed, was Lilly.
Lilly was a GP who worked in rural west-coast Tasmania.
I used my well-worn tactic of absorbing myself in someone else’s story to help distract me from the mess of my own life and within a few minutes, I was genuinely engrossed.
‘Twins? You delivered thirty-six-week twins in your consulting room?’
‘It all happened so quickly,’ Lilly explained. ‘She came in for her routine checkup and mentioned she’d been having low back pain for the last few hours. Before I had time to even take a look with the ultrasound, her waters had broken and it was all happening.’
‘Oh my God.’ I was horrified on Lilly’s behalf. The very idea of working alone in a small town was terrifying.
Lilly went on to tell me a story about a guy who’d fallen off a horse and impaled himself on a star picket, which meant she’d had to get the guy’s brother to angle grind off the ends of the star picket so they could get the patient into the retrieval helicopter.
All this she described with matter-of-fact ease.
It made my work in the emergency department seem like a walk in the park.
I decided by the end of our conversation that I liked Lilly. She was brave and admirable and she made me forget myself. I concluded I would seek out every opportunity to hear about Lilly’s crazy rural medical stories. She might just be my saviour over the next five days.
Eventually, the plates began clattering as the group returned them to the kitchen. Lilly suggested we go into the common room and I hesitated. It was all going to get guitar-y and Green Ginger Wine-y soon, I could feel it. Totally not my vibe.
But the alternative was going back to Abel’s cabin, which he may or may not already be in, and that was decidedly worse.
I followed her into the common room. There was a fire (and probably squashed marshmallows waiting to make an appearance), couches and soft lighting.
Cosy. I was about to take a seat on one of the couches with Lilly when I spotted Felix huddled up next to a cute brunette, who I recognised as one of the outdoor guides.
They were looking at something on her phone and she was giggling and he was smiling, clearly giving her the full Felix treatment.
As though sensing me watching, he looked up and gave me a challenging little flicker of his eyebrows before returning his attention to the brunette and her phone.
That was more than I could handle. I muttered something to Lilly along the lines of feeling tired and left the room.
Mercifully, Abel was not in the cabin. I looked longingly at my bed. I was still in my running tights, sticky and smelling of mud. I needed a shower and then I was going to crawl into those inviting covers and sink my head into study.
The women’s shower was a short walk down the corridor. It was hot and delicious and the feeling of the water on my skin was enough to make me forget this awful situation for a moment.
When I got back to the cabin, it was still empty.
I pulled my laptop out of my bag and sat cross-legged on the bed with the covers pulled around me.
I took a slightly boring comfort in study.
It was like an old friend, guiding me when I felt lost. Meditation and mindfulness just gave my brain space to get anxious – start worrying about Mum and Ebony, and feeling guilty that I wasn’t doing whatever it was I should be doing.
But study did for me what I’m led to believe those pursuits did for others.
Usually. As in, pretty much at all other times, study did that for me.
Evidently, tonight was the exception. The words were swimming in front of me on the screen and I was reading and re-reading the same sentences without anything seeming to penetrate my brain.
It was almost a relief when the sound of the door knob squeaking relieved me from my futile efforts.
‘There you are.’ Abel’s eyes took me in and I felt suddenly very exposed, sitting there on my bed, in my tank top and pyjamas, my hair still wet. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Studying,’ I said with a sigh. ‘Or at least that’s what I’m trying to do.’
‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt.’
‘No, that’s not what I meant … I’m not concentrating very well.’
‘Maybe you should give yourself a night off.’
‘And what? Go out there to watch Felix hitting on some new girl?’
Abel shook his head. ‘Arsehole.’
He looked clean. And he’d changed his top and pants since the climbing.
He sat next to me on my bed, his shoulder against mine, as though that was an entirely normal thing to do. He smelt like soap and cold air, and something musty, male and inviting that had me imagining for a split second turning my face into his chest and breathing a whole lungful of him.
He peered over to look at my laptop. ‘Diabetic ketoacidosis,’ he said with mild boredom. ‘Give them some potassium? That’s about all I remember.’
‘Bullshit,’ I said with a snort.
He gave a self-deprecating shrug. ‘I’ve forgotten all the medical crap. I just play about in the helicopter. It’s all Mickey Mouse stuff.’
‘Yeah, sure. Perform rapid sequence intubation in the field. Single-handedly manage massive trauma that’s usually done with a team of fifteen people in the emergency department.’
‘There’s usually at least two of us,’ he corrected, managing not to look or sound in the least arrogant. He deserved to look and sound arrogant. Retrievalists were actual superheroes.
‘I don’t know how you do it. I’d be utterly terrified.’
He sighed. ‘You know what, it’s a hell of a lot easier than being a consultant in the emergency department. People managing is what that job becomes. And people are flaky as hell, Mary.’ He looked at me wearily and guilt rose in my stomach.
‘I must seem flaky as hell.’
He actually snorted at that and shook his head with the kind of indulgent look you might give a confused toddler. ‘Mary Roberts. You are the furthest from flaky a person could be. You’re in a pickle at the moment, that’s for sure. But it’s pretty fucking cute, if I’m honest with you.’
I had no idea what he meant or how to respond so decided to pretend he hadn’t said anything. Instead, I asked, ‘You don’t like it? It’s different to what you expected?’
‘I like the medicine, but the people drive me mad. The person-alities, the egos, the politics. It’s a fucking nightmare.
And I don’t think I anticipated how much I’d miss just getting on with the job myself and doing medicine.
Laying a stethoscope on someone. Stabilising a broken bone. Having a conversation with a patient.’
‘Is that why you do retrieval?’
‘Yeah. And I like playing around in helicopters, like any normal five-year-old boy.’
His smile was so absurdly playful I couldn’t help smile back. It was almost impossible to relate him to the person I’d encountered at the hospital.
‘But you still work in the emergency department …?’
‘Yeah. I should stop, but I’m also not totally ready to let it go. I feel like I’ll never come back to it if I leave now.’ He looked at my screen again. ‘Sorry. I should be saying inspiring things like how much you’ll love your job when you finish your exams.’
‘I do love my job.’
‘I can see that. You’re very good at it.’