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  ‘Let us do our job, Tim. I’ll let you know what’s happening as soon as I can,’ Mia said, pulling the beige, pleated curtain around for privacy as Chester and a porter transferred Rachel onto a hospital bed.

  When her family arrived, Rachel’s condition was stable, but she was still in a coma.

  Mia left the treatment room for the waiting area to see Jack in discussion with a short, round woman wearing a brown coat and woollen cap from which locks of red hair fading to grey seemed to be struggling for an escape. Her chin jutted as though she was fighting for her life, and even from a distance Mia could see her blue eyes bulging with anger. Beside her, a dungareed man of medium stature, with the stoop that comes from back neglect, listened with no show of emotion or facial expression, his hands clasped behind his back. Tim, morosely silent but actively listening, held the hand of a boy aged about seven whose round face, topped with a mop of dark hair like his sister’s, moved silently and intently from his mother to Jack as they each spoke.

  ‘Mr and Mrs Hooper, I’m Dr Sandhurst.’ Mia stepped up and extended her hand first to Peter, who shook it flaccidly and flicked dark, seemingly bottomless eyes towards her for a brief moment.

  ‘I’m Annie,’ the woman said with a stiff smile and a perfunctory shake of Mia’s hand. ‘And this is Ben, our youngest.’

  ‘Hello, Ben.’ Mia shook his hand to elicit a wry grin before leading the way towards a room in the treatment area. Jack bid his farewells in a way that made it clear to Mia that he and the family knew each other well.

  The moment they entered the small interview room and sat on the trio of mustard vinyl chairs facing the narrow desk, Annie let forth as though she had held back for long enough.

  ‘This cannot be true, Dr Sandhurst. It is not like Rachel,’ she said, absently watching Ben climb onto Tim’s knee. ‘Yes … she can be unpredictable … Yes, she’s stubborn about simple things like refusing to have a shower … But to her credit she has never followed the crowd and she would never ever drink alcohol … and as for taking drugs, well it’s just ludicrous to even entertain the idea.’ Her blue eyes shone more than would be natural and she swallowed with difficulty.

  Gently closing the door, Mia knew she was about to make a highly provocative suggestion, but she was experienced enough to know the reality — a harsh new reality that had to be faced sooner or later by the family. ‘I gather Rachel was on her own in the lounge room for quite a while, once her friend Cassie had gone to bed and before Tim found her in the bathroom,’ she said sitting on the swivel chair behind the desk. ‘It makes me wonder if she deliberately took the alcohol and drugs with the intention of harming herself.’

  Annie sprang from her seat like a giant cork. ‘That’s insulting and ridiculous. How dare you even suggest …’ She promptly sat again as though pushing away any semblance of thought about the words she was about to utter.

  Mia cast a glance at Peter’s persistently bland expression, now intently aimed at the mottled blue carpet. Then at Tim, who muttered something about bullshit.

  ‘No, it’s quite feasible actually,’ Mia persisted, one eyebrow arching. ‘Rachel would not be the first troubled teen to overdose on alcohol or drugs because she is overwhelmed by problems. And she wouldn’t be the last. Hopefully, one of our psychologists will get her to talk about it.’

  Annie Hooper’s eyes widened. ‘I’d prefer the shrinks left her alone. They cause more harm than good in my opinion.’

  Over the following minutes Mia tried to make allowances for the parents’ rigid denial of the possibility that their daughter was deeply troubled. Shock and even the will to protect family dignity may have been factors, but these people stubbornly refused to relent, despite her most determined efforts at convincing them that much care was needed because their daughter could be in grave danger of making a repeat attempt on her life.

  ‘Mm, it’s all a bit of a mystery,’ Mia said, finally giving up. ‘But we shall know more when Rachel regains consciousness. The good news is that there doesn’t seem to have been any damage done to her heart muscle.’ She stood and a spontaneous sigh escaped her. ‘You can see Rachel very briefly, then I suggest you go home and get some sleep. That way you’ll be fresh for her tomorrow.’

  Silently standing in a row along the side of her gurney, they each peered down as though viewing a corpse prior to interment. A sob escaped Annie’s lips and she immediately grabbed Rachel’s hand, as though to regain her composure.

  ‘She seems so tiny,’ Annie said, casting a desperate glance at Peter who sank his craggy hands deep into the pockets of his dungarees.

  ‘Can we go now?’ Ben‘s saucer eyes never left Rachel’s face as he spoke.

  Following Mia’s repeated reassurances that the hospital would contact them the moment anything changed in Rachel’s condition, the family eventually shuffled out through the sliding doors of the Emergency section. Tim led the way into the grey dawn with Ben asleep in his arms and Peter and Annie ambled behind them, deep in whispered conversation.

  Mia pulled her pen from the top pocket of her scrubs and signed a stack of files Gus had pushed in front of her. ‘I’m off home,’ she said, handing the files back. ‘I’ve given Rachel Hooper a light sedative. Once she’s out of the woods, we’ll arrange for her to be admitted for further cardiac testing and a psych consult.’

  Her footfall echoed along the empty corridor. Knowing the futility of it, she nevertheless fished her mobile from her pocket and confirmed she had not missed any calls. Shadowy faces presented themselves as though to haunt and heckle while her feet raced for her office and, ultimately, home, and her mind struggled to dismiss her lingering doubts. His smile when they first met was so beautiful she had been momentarily stunned into awkward silence. On their wedding day, his eyes — which still, today, held the same tones as brandy — had seemed to reach down and caress her very soul as they exchanged their vows. Adam’s birth had only brought them closer: two people, both orphaned in their teens, had finally become a family. With eye-watering clarity she remembered their shared pain at not being able to conceive another child. Years of fortnights stretching like the Sahara Desert between ovulation and menstruation … requiring hope anew every time her period came, which it inevitably did. Then there were their arguments, usually springing from trivia like an ugly grim reaper, always heartfelt and defiant and loaded with words they would both later regret — and inevitably they made up in the best of ways. But it was the regard each of them held for the other that sustained her now. Countless discussions with the theme ‘What if …?’ as they pondered the possibility that they could each quite feasibly meet someone else … so that ‘they’ would exist no longer.

  ‘That will never happen,’ Eric would say, his smile reaching his eyes. ‘There is not another woman on this Earth with an arse that could rival yours.’

  She would persist for she knew that even though he did not articulate his fears, he lived them. She knew this because his questions — ostensibly subtle, but to her screamingly open — about a particular colleague or a specific event, would sometimes hold just a whiff of insecurity. She knew the thought of losing each other was always on both their minds. So when he made light of the topic she would tell him, ‘People change. Things happen. Just promise me, Eric, that if the day comes when you cannot love me anymore, you will at least still be able to respect me and that we can remain friends.’ She would go on and tell him, free of shame, that she could not imagine existing without him. His eyes would soften then, for an instant. And he would say, ‘Okay. Okay. I promise. But it will never happen!’

  Unlocking her office door she immediately made her way to sit behind her desk, in front of her computer. She opened her inbox and scrolled through the countless messages. He had not emailed her. But there was an email, with attachments, from Adam which turned out to be images of his weekend on the Gold Coast with friends from Brisbane University where he was in his final year of studying veterinary science. There was no written message as such,
just three kisses and three hugs. She smiled as she quickly typed a response, kissed her fingers and pressed them to the screen as she hit ‘send’.

  Sighing, she rose from behind her desk and turned to remove her black trench coat and leather shoulder bag from the long, narrow cloak cupboard. She checked her watch. Almost 4.00am. It was definitely time for her to be at home. She would figure out what to do about Eric’s apparent disappearance after a good sleep. Perhaps she would phone his assistant in the morning, she thought, pulling her office door closed behind her.

  She had taken only a few weary steps along the corridor towards the car park, when she was confronted by Chester, who half-walked, half-ran towards her, his broad smile noticeably absent.

  ‘Mia … it’s Rachel Hooper,’ he said, uncharacteristically short of breath. ‘You need to see this.’

  CHAPTER THREE

  Black skies slowly lightened to pre-dawn silver, with long luminescent stretches of scarlet pink heralding rain. Taking comfort from the 4x4’s low grumble, like a blissfully content tomcat, Tim Hooper glanced into the rearview mirror. Only the grey-black landscape of roadside eucalypts and pastureland stared back. Even though he had followed Peter, Annie and Ben in the four-wheel drive as they had left the hospital car park, he had overtaken them at the first opportunity, so it was not surprising that they were nowhere to be seen. Indeed, he was more than confident they would still be travelling at half his speed and that the distance between them would therefore be widening exponentially with every minute that passed.

  It suited Tim to be the first home and to have as much time alone as possible before they arrived. His parents annoyed the hell out of him at the best of times, but never more than tonight. Besides, there was a lot to think about. His hands tightened on the steering wheel at the image of Rachel just after her cardiac arrest, at the memory of the alien pink pill encased in the dealer’s bag that Jack said he had pulled from his little sister’s pocket.

  Grateful he had made the conscious decision earlier in the night to pace his intake of beers, Tim lightly lifted his foot off the accelerator, aware that the roos, undeterred by roadside fences, would currently be loping and feeding in hordes across the countryside. That was all he needed right now — to plough into a giant red when he was less than a bee’s dick away from finally being able to afford a roo bar for the ute.

  When he had first bought the ute, brand shining new, just over a year ago, he was going out with Tanya Craddock. Tonight had been all about celebrating her 21st. So, even now, he was still coming to terms with the surprise announcement she’d become engaged to the nuggety dude with more gum than teeth who had been hanging off the end of her hand, like some sort of permanent growth, all night and who no one had laid eyes on before now, including her parents. He recalled arriving at the party, her perfume when she had stretched up to kiss his cheek murmuring ‘Hi, Tim,’ and peering at him from under her long eyelashes. And how, in that moment, the scent of her had taken him back to the time when, after going out for a few weeks, she had finally given him the flick.

  Tim turned onto the dirt track that was a short-cut to home and slammed his foot down on the accelerator, sending his tyres spinning and mud and rubble flying. How much worse could it get for a bloke than being shafted by his girl for the biggest drop-kick in town? he thought, righting the wheel without panic, the ute sliding on the track again as gracefully as a gazelle. Shanksie had turned up at the party tonight already half-tanked and then, after the surprise announcement, had been blatantly intent on being seen as comrade-in-arms with Tim by loudly heckling and criticising Tanya’s new fiancé — all the while continuing to refer to Tim publicly and privately as ‘faggot’.

  It pissed Tim off that Shanksie knew his Achilles heel, and that he used the information against him whenever the opportunity presented itself. But what really hurt was that it was Tanya who had handed Shanksie the ammunition. Shanksie, who from as far back as he could remember had always set himself up in competition against Tim, when Tim believed there was no competition to be had. Whether it be smashing down his sandcastles or spilling paint on his drawings at kindy, kneeing him during footy matches at school or making him the butt of crude jokes at teen parties, Shanksie had always been out to rival and intimidate Tim. And now, Shanksie knew the most devastating of truths, uttered from Tanya’s own lips. Tanya, who he had trusted for months with his heart. The lips that Tim had kissed with tender, deeply genuine caring. He realised now, but only in hindsight, that Tanya’s feelings for him had been strictly confined to carnality. She was constantly hot for sex. Writhing and moaning she would beg him for it. But for Tim, the cruel truth of the matter was that even though he was up for it, he was never up for it. The familiar mantra — the dirge that plagued him, the secret that made him a freak and much less of a man than any of his footy mates, regardless of how good he, or they, were on the field — claimed his thoughts to drown out the sweet purr of his motor and play over and over in his mind … 23 and still a virgin … 23 and still a virgin …

  Despite Shanksie’s uncanny ability to get under his skin this way, Tim knew he wasn’t homosexual. When he was alone, he had no problems doing the deed. In fact, he was bloody good at it — several times a day if the urge took him. And it was always women he would fantasise about, never blokes.

  The best answer Tim could come up with from his research on the net was that it was either a rare disease he had, which was equal to a fate worse than death because it meant a visit to a doctor to be properly diagnosed, or he lacked confidence, which did not seem right either. His knuckles turned white on the steering wheel as once again in his mind he faced his demons. But, if Dr Sandhurst’s vociferous warnings were to be heeded, his demons were nothing compared to those being harboured by his little sister.

  The memory of her tone as she spat venom about their family during the trip to the party earlier that evening brought unfathomable sadness. The way she had crossed her arms and had stared out at the darkness from the passenger seat beside him, hinted at trouble he had not perceived at the time. ‘Mum’s a loser for staying with him,’ she had hissed at one stage of the conversation. ‘If she wasn’t so bloody fat she could have any guy she wanted.’

  ‘It’s not that simple, Rach,’ Tim had told her, taking little notice, because Rachel was always cutting crook at their mother for one reason or another.

  ‘Well, if I were her, I would make it easy. He is insanely disgusting. I don’t know how she can bear to even be near him.’ There was a beat of silence, then, before she continued: ‘If she only knew that when she’s not around, he slaps Ben across the head. She would go totally mental. One day I’m going to tell her, but I know it’ll be like unleashing the gates of Hades. I don’t get why he has to go psycho at everything,’ she said. ‘He’s weird … telling us it’s for our own good.’ She snorted softly and turned to him. ‘He’s worse to you than any of us. I don’t know how you’ve put up with him all your life.’ She turned to him and he felt her look boring into his mind for a response.

  ‘The older I get, the bigger I get and the easier it becomes,’ Tim had replied. They had both fallen silent then and had remained that way for the rest of the drive to the party.

  Tim noticed as he turned off the bitumen into their property’s driveway that the timber rails either side were only just visible through the bare tangle of apple and pear trees, which in a couple of months would be budding with blossom and another couple of months following that, would feature tiny fruit hidden within a velvety green blanket of foliage. The ute slooshed through the old pothole that had been there for as long as Tim could remember and clunked over the sleeper bridge where he slowed almost to a stop and lowered the window, taking solace from the soft gurgle of the dark, gum-leaf brew flowing in the creek below.

  Corellas hung and swayed like paper lanterns in the tall she-oaks lining their driveway, the dolomite being so worn in places that it was pressed down below the crusted surface. The corellas feasted on the trees
’ tiny cones undeterred. Then Tim gunned the motor and they took frantic flight, shrieking across the grey sky like a giant floating sheet. He lifted his foot from the accelerator when he approached the stable yard of Rachel’s chestnut mare, Monnie, who strained at the post and rail fence, her ears pushed forward and her velvety nostrils quivering, probably making that soft, deep snicker she always gave when her bag of chaff was on its way. And, as always, the sight of Monnie brought a smile to Tim’s lips.

  In the distance their herds of black Angus dotted the green hills behind which the sea was shrouded in dawn’s mist, making the line between ocean and sky barely discernible.

  Their stone house sat squat on the rise immediately at the end of the driveway, mist ringing it like a tutu. Tim loved the house but hated living in it. If it hadn’t been for his mother, he would have left years ago. It gave him comfort to know the property had been in her family for generations. So he linked it more with her, than with the old man. Christ only knew where the old man’s family was today. And Christ only cares. For as long as Tim could remember, the subject of Peter’s family seemed taboo to the point of it now being a family tradition not to mention it — or even to give it a moment’s thought — as though it was a moot point.

  He jumped from the ute after parking it at the back door, dealing a perfunctory pat to the two red kelpies who clamoured at his feet before pushing them aside and stepping in through the screen door as it squealed and thwacked closed behind him. Inside the porch he levered his boots off and left them where they fell on the cement floor, along with countless other pairs, as he did every time he arrived home. He peered around as he stepped into the large open area of their family room and kitchen, separated by a long breakfast bar topped with the same avocado-green laminex that had graced it for the duration of his mother’s childhood. The house looked the same as it had when he’d last seen it some 10 hours before. But below the surface it seemed to be immersed in a palpable pall of sadness.