Dr Graham's Marriage Read online

  She worked along the servery, choosing bacon, scrambled eggs .and grilled tomato. The tongs hesitated over the sausages, but she decided enough was enough and settled for a piece of toast instead. Then coffee, because she knew tea wouldn't be strong enough to calm her overstretched nerves right now. She carried the lot to a table in the far corner of the canteen, then realised food was the last thing she wanted.

  It was tiredness making her edgy and irritable. Tiredness making the possible consequences of a needle-stick injury bang away in her head.

  Contracting hep. B was unlikely because, like all hospital workers, she was regularly vaccinated against it and, unlike some people, her level of immunity was good. But HIV, the insidious virus that lodged in white blood cells, eventually eating up so many of them the body lost its immunity to other diseases, was a different matter.

  Gabi stirred sugar into her coffee, then bit into the toast, knowing she had to eat something. There was almost more chance of winning the lotto than contracting HIV through a needle-stick injury, so her concern levels weren't high, but the worry with HIV was not knowing.

  She prodded the toast into the scrambled eggs, picking up a little bit and nibbling it experimentally. Without donor blood—she rolled her eyes as she thought of the safety officer—to rule out HIV, she'd have to be tested now, then in three months and again in six months. Six months before she'd be cleared of a possible life sentence...

  Possible death sentence...

  She blinked as if a strong light had been shone on her face, while deep within her body she felt a stirring of an emotion she could only describe as revolt. Then she took another sip of coffee and smiled to herself.

  'Damn it all, Gabi Graham—if this isn't exactly what you needed. Something to shock you back to life.'

  She glanced around, hoping there was no one close enough to hear her talking to herself, but continued smiling as she fished in one jacket pocket for a pen and in the other for the tiny notebook she always carried with her.

  So she had six months before she'd know—six months in which to grab hold of life and shake all the good out of it. She'd make a list of all the things she'd always wanted to do, and work her way through them.

  'Go blonde,' she wrote, and underlined it. Would it be too late to get an appointment for today? She could always sleep in the chair.

  'No more diets.' They didn't work anyway. She'd accept she was a natural endomorph, with padded curves instead of jutting bones.

  'New clothes'—boy, wouldn't Kirsten love that one? Her neighbour was forever trying to talk her into shopping sprees, but since Alex's departure—or probably, if she was honest, earlier than that—she'd lost all interest in how she dressed. She liked to be neat and tidy, but beyond that...

  'Take up belly-dancing'—given number two on the list, she'd have the figure for it. Though maybe not belly-dancing. Maybe South American dancing—she'd read about clubs...

  'Get over the plane thing.'

  If she could get over her fear of heights, and its attendant fear of flying, she could go on exotic holidays—maybe Europe, maybe visit Alex in Scotland. Maybe talk to Alex about what had gone wrong in their marriage. Maybe—

  Forget Alex, she told herself sternly. You're doing this for you.

  But getting over the plane hang-up was an excellent idea. Something really positive she could do for herself—for her confidence, her self-esteem.

  She chewed the end of the pen as she thought about it, not sure if it was actually possible to be free of a phobia like this one. Unless she used shock tactics. Like what, lamebrain? a head-voice jeered, then with light bulb brilliance the solution flashed upon her.

  She could do the basic rescue training course and join the list of A and E doctors rostered to work on the rescue helicopter. Once she'd been over a cliff on a rope, and dropped out of a helicopter, the phobia might be dead.

  Or she might be dead—killed by sheer terror and the embarrassment of everyone else on the course witnessing her cowardice.

  But if she survived, she'd either be over it or she'd know for certain it was never going to go away.

  Ignoring a quiver of fear already rattling her nerves and making her palms sweat, she steeled herself. She'd check the noticeboard in A and E before she left and put her name down for the next course.

  Back to the list.

  She thought of some incredibly boring evenings she'd endured at parties she hadn't wanted to attend, and with great deliberation considered the next item, finally writing, 'Never waste your free time doing things you don't particularly want to do, or with people you don't like.'

  This was a hard one. It would mean saying no to well-meaning friends who invited her to dinner and set her up with 'dates', and saying no when Kirsten or Alana insisted she go clubbing with them.

  Sometimes going clubbing was OK.

  Sometimes she felt like it.

  But other evenings she'd rather have her toenails pulled...

  And, though she'd enjoyed being married—lie, she'd loved being married—and sometimes ached for what she'd lost, none of the men she'd met since Alex had left had made much of an impression on her. They certainly hadn't come close to producing that tinglingly alive feeling which being near Alex had always generated.

  She enjoyed her friends' company, so an occasional night with them was OK, but no giving in when she didn't feel like it—not any more!

  With her out-of-work life covered, she considered her career—where she was now and where, before so many other things had happened to deflect her off track, she had once wanted to be by the time she turned thirty.

  She'd wanted to be running the A and E department at a children's hospital. That was where she'd wanted to be.

  She might have missed the thirty mark but it wasn't too late for change.

  With a determination she hadn't felt for years, and a sudden uplifting of excitement in her heart, she wrote, 'Get some more general paediatrics experience.' In fact, when she went back up to the safety officer, she'd see someone in the human resources department and see if there was any possibility of a shift to the kids' ward on a short rotation, sooner rather than later. The extra experience with kids should help when a job came up at the new children's hospital.

  Though, if she was focussing more on kids, was it worth doing the rescue training?

  Wimp!

  She underlined the training programme, then reread the list and grinned to herself. It mightn't look life-altering, but it represented such huge changes she felt as much apprehension as excitement.

  And she'd certainly stopped worrying over HIV infection!

  She doodled a border around the list, then, because it was a dream she'd held for a long, long time, she added one more item and doodled another border around it.

  'Dance all night in a red dress, then drive to the beach to sit on the sand and watch the sun come up over the ocean.'

  It seemed so feeble after the enormous hurdle of getting over her fear of heights and her new commitment to her career, she almost crossed it off, then, mentally chiding herself for backing out before she'd even begun these life changes, she added another border of squiggles to emphasise it.

  The massive hep. B booster dampened her enthusiasm slightly, then realising it was Saturday and no one was working in Human Resources put a further hold on her plans—though she did pick up a slim paper that detailed current and upcoming hospital vacancies and appointments. Back down in A and E, she wrote her name on the list of staff willing to do the basic training course to qualify them for working on the rescue helicopter. Then saw the date. It was next weekend, and once again her palms sweated and her stomach twisted anxiously.

  It's a whole week away, she told her body as she marched out of the hospital. And with so much to fit into the week she'd have no time to think about flinging herself off the top of a cliff with her life depending on a bit of rope and her own ability to not panic.

  Aaargh!

  Think hair instead. She'd sleep, then
phone some hair-dressing establishments. If she couldn't get in today, there was always tomorrow.

  Fearful her determination to change was already weakening, she hesitated outside the hospital entrance. The walk from here to her flat in the Near West apartment building took ten minutes. To get there she turned right, crossed the main road at the corner, then left into Market Street and home.

  Not good enough! she told herself, and deliberately turned left, then left again, circumnavigating the hospital to come at Market Street from a different angle, walking along streets she'd never walked before, looking at houses and apartment blocks she'd possibly seen but never really noticed. The jacarandas were blooming, their purple blossoms spreading an exotic scented carpet beneath her feet. The sun warmed her back and the warmth fed into her blood, renewing her enthusiasm for change so vibrantly she tackled the stairs rather than take the lift to her fourth-floor flat.

  'Not such a good idea,' she puffed as she leaned against the fire-escape door on her floor, hoping body weight alone would force it open. It did, but not by much, so she slid through the opening and promptly tripped over something left lying in the passage.

  Or someone!

  The obstacle moved, sorting itself into a person—male, five-eleven, with red-brown hair and dark brown eyes, and lips that could draw a smile from a statue.

  Not that she noticed these features immediately. She just knew them—knew who it was...

  'Alex?'

  Whether it was climbing the stairs or seeing her ex-husband so unexpectedly she wasn't sure, but the word came out as a quavery and very doubtful squeak, while her legs felt as if they'd lost their stuffing.

  She remembered the new Gabi—never spend time with people you don't want to see—and pulled herself together.

  'What on earth are you doing here?'

  He was running his fingers through his hair, scratching at his scalp, trying to wake up—always a difficult task for Alex.

  'Mum. You know she's sick. Didn't sleep on the plane, so when I got here and you weren't home I knew you must be on night duty and you'd be back soon. Had a bit of a kip while I waited.'

  He glanced at his watch, then added, 'More than a bit. You're very late.'

  Gabi ignored the unspoken criticism, too incensed by his earlier assumption.

  'You knew I must be on night duty?' she repeated. 'At dawn on a Saturday morning that's the only place I could possibly be? You didn't think for a minute I might be abseiling down a cliff, or dancing all night with a stranger in a red dress then watching the sun come up over the ocean?'

  Alex looked confused, which, she realised, was hardly surprising, given how predictable his ex-wife had always been.

  'Never in a million years the abseiling—but a stranger in a red dress?'

  There was so much disbelief in his voice that Gabi lost it completely.

  'Me in a red dress, you idiot. Not the stranger. And what are you doing here anyway, apart from blocking the fire exit? Because good old Gabi will put you up! I bet that's why. Well, let me tell you, buster, good old Gabi no longer exists. I might look the same, but not for long. Good old Gabi's gone, and not before time. Miserable creature that she was—'

  'The flat's in my name.'

  Alex was standing up now, and it was more that than the reminder which stopped Gabi's flow of words.

  Alex sitting on the floor, still half-asleep, was one thing. Alex standing, right there in front of her, unconsciously shedding pheromones the way other people shed skin cells, was a whole other animal.

  'I suppose you don't want to stay at your mother's place with Fred,' she grumbled. 'Honestly, Alex, it's time you got over that. It would do your mother more good than all the treatment she's on if you accepted the fact she's remarried.'

  Then she remembered what had happened when Alex and she had split up and how, because he'd been due to go overseas four weeks later, he had gone to live, temporarily, with his mother—and Fred.

  And Fred's daughter, the beautiful Diane, newly returned from a modelling assignment in Japan!

  Gabi pulled the key out of her handbag and unlocked her door. Maybe she should let him stay here. And because Diane Kennedy was a subject never broached between them, and her new-found confidence was wavering slightly, she hurried into more conversation.

  'I've seen your mother every day—she's very positive. And having you come home to visit—I assume that's all it is, a visit?—well, that will cheer her up no end.'

  She dumped her handbag on a lounge chair, so aware of Alex's presence in the flat that her back prickled with pins and needles. But she had no intention of giving in to pins and needles or any other physical discomfort being near Alex might cause. The new Gabi was strong, invincible— and the ultimate in cool!

  'You'll want to see her straight away, so why don't you have a shower and go on over? I'm going...'

  She was far too wired to sleep, so she stopped the words 'to bed' before they had a chance to escape, switching to 'out' just in time to make it sound believable.

  Hopefully!

  'You're going out when you've just come off duty?'

  It must have sounded believable for Alex to be questioning it so disbelievingly!

  Cool! she reminded herself. She turned and raised an eyebrow, an accomplishment that had taken long years of practice to perfect. Now she used it to remind him that what she did was none of his business.

  'I'll have a shower,' he said, proving the eyebrow had retained its potent power, while something that looked almost like uncertainty in his eyes gave Gabi a tingling spurt of pleasure.

  Yes! As he turned away, lugging his loaded backpack into the spare bedroom, she pumped the air triumphantly as the affirmation sounded in her head. OK, so it was only a small triumph, but it was a start. If she could surprise Alex at such an early stage of her transformation, then maybe she could succeed.

  And by concentrating on the new Gabi she could—perhaps—pretend he wasn't here, wasn't back in the flat they'd shared, albeit in a different bed. Though he'd be with his mother most of the time, she reminded herself when a quiver of what could only be alarm ran through her body.

  And when he wasn't visiting at the hospital he'd be catching up with friends.

  He'd only use the flat to sleep and change his clothes.

  But no assurances could mask the new tension inside her. It was the sound of the shower starting in the bathroom at the exact moment she mentally considered the clothes-changing thing that threw up an image of Alex naked.

  In her flat!

  Their flat, as it had been.

  She squeezed her eyes shut, hoping lack of light might blot out the picture in her mind, then, as something—possibly resolve—crumpled inside her, she straightened, shoring up her weakened defences with reminders of all the reasons she and Alex had split up.

  Not least of which had been Diane Kennedy.

  No, that was unfair. Diane Kennedy hadn't come into the picture until after they'd split up. And just how far in she'd come, Gabi had never been sure. But seeing Alex out with Diane had been the final nail in the coffin of their marriage as far as Gabi had been concerned. Proof positive that things would never work between them again.

  If only she could get her body to accept it, she thought when she glimpsed Alex, his lower abdomen modestly swathed in a towel, crossing the passage from the bathroom to the second bedroom.

  A phone book, that was what she needed. Thick yellow pages. Not to rip apart in frustration or hurl at the head of her visitor, but for a hair appointment.

  A hairdresser in the trendy El Centro shopping mall had a cancellation at midday. Gabi took it, then headed for the kitchen to find a pack of garbage bags. If she was going to do this, she had to do it properly, and keeping blah clothes that belonged to the old Gabi just wasn't on. She'd pack them into garbage bags and drop them in a charity bin on her way to the hairdresser.

  The little boutiques in El Centro would have just the style of clothes the new Gabi needed!
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  'I'm off. I don't know when I'll be back.' Alex's casual announcement reminded her of her uninvited guest.

  'Wait. I'll give you a key. I've no idea when I'll be back either.'

  Ha! Second look of surprise on Alex's face. The old Gabi would have waited in for him, made sure she was here, and probably had a meal cooked as well. Talk about a doormat!

  Though it hadn't always been that way, she admitted sadly as the door closed behind the man her heart still hungered for. The doormat thing had only begun after she'd lost the baby, and the gap that had started opening up between them even before she'd become pregnant had widened so far she hadn't been able to find a way back to where they'd once been.

  And she hadn't been sure that Alex had wanted to find one.

  The domesticity route had been suggested by the counsellor she'd seen, but it had angered Alex more than it had appeased him, and in the end the tension and unresolved conflict between them had been so bad it had been a relief to see him go.

  Water under the bridge! That was then and this was now!

  Duh!

  She banged her forehead with the palm of her hand. Surely the new Gabi should have said no to Alex's invasion of her flat. After all, the man had friends!

  Though having him here would steel her to follow this new path she'd chosen, and—she grinned to herself—seeing his reaction to it all would certainly be entertaining.

  She continued to shore up her confidence as she hauled sensible clothes out of her wardrobe and rammed them into garbage bags, continued to remind herself of the new Gabi as she emptied drawers full of sensible undies into another bag for disposal.

  Then she came across the dress.

  The Dress!

  It was red and slinky and she held it against her cheek to feel the cool silkiness. It was a dress like nothing she'd ever worn, bought when she had been less than three months pregnant but already feeling bloated, constantly sick and thoroughly uncomfortable. And although Alex had been insisting they go to Scotland, as planned, she'd still been hoping he'd change his mind.

  In her wonderful dream they would stay in Queensland, and by the time the hospital ball came around, she'd figured, when the dress had tempted her from a shop window, the baby she was carrying would be three months old, and she'd leave him—or her—with Alex's mother and they'd go to the ball, dance all night, then drive to the beach to sit on the sand and watch the sun come up over the ocean.