Chapter 8

Normally I’d give Jo a lift to work on Monday after she’s spent the weekend with me. In my current state of vehicle non-ownership, the best I can do is walk her to the train station in the morning.

“I love working the lunch shift,” she says, adjusting her backpack. “Relatively speaking,” she adds when I give her a slightly dubious look.

“I don’t miss working in customer service at all,” I reply. “I hate dealing with people, but at least now I have some kind of authority over them.”

“Yeah,” says Josie, wrinkling her nose adorably. “Customers are mostly jerks. The restaurant’s always pretty empty at lunch, especially during the week, so at least I don’t have to see many of them. I hope I can get a part-time job in a lab or something instead once I start uni.”

“You’ll probably be able to,” I say. “Especially if you start off doing some volunteer work. There’s always someone on campus who needs an unpaid lab assistant, and it’s a good way to get your foot in the door.”

“Cool!” Jo says. “Thanks.”

I give her a big hug at the station before she gets onto the train. Once she’s safely on her way I head back to my place, sweaty from the hot morning sun and ready for a cool shower and a nap.

---

Back at the hospital on Tuesday afternoon, Dr Zhang and I meet with Charlie Tran from neurology to discuss our patient’s symptoms. I’ve seen Tran around the wards and chatted with him a few times before. He’s a funny guy; I remember him once remarking that, for some reason, there are very few Vietnamese men named Charlie.

“I don’t think we’re looking at a big mystery here,” he says, leaning across his desk on his elbows. “The presentation isn’t typical, but I would say it’s clinically probable MS. Chris is likely to improve with interferon treatment.”

I frown a bit. “I’m just not convinced by the MRI,” I say. “There weren’t any lesions.”

Zhang nods. The way her silky blue-black hair falls past her cheekbones almost distracts me for a moment. “Multiple sclerosis is the great imitator,” she says. “It can look like any number of other diseases, and diagnostic imaging isn’t always helpful when the lesions just come and go.”

“There’s probably no need to look for zebras,” adds Tran, giving me a little smile.

“Yeah,” I concede, “If you hear hoofbeats, look for a horse, right?”

“I think we should trial interferon,” he says.

“Okay,” I agree. “Injections every second day?”

Zhang nods. “We’ll keep him here a bit longer and monitor for changes in his symptoms.”

The diagnosis still doesn’t sit right with me. It seems that with such visible symptoms, there should be something to see on the MRI. But of course, Tran’s right: it’s not unusual for an MS patient to have a normal scan, even most of the time.

I write the prescription after we leave his office. I ask a nurse to take it down to the pharmacy as I pass through the ward, on my way to get myself some seriously strong coffee for the long night shift ahead.

---

Kelly calls me over to the nurses’ station on my way back to emergency. I hand her one of the double-shot lattes that I got from the downstairs café just before it closed for the night.

“Cheers, big ears,” says Kelly, taking off the plastic lid and impressively chugging about half of the coffee.

“Child,” I respond mildly, shooting her an amused look as I sip my own coffee a bit more cautiously.

“By the way, delivery for you,” she adds, gesturing to a small boxed flower arrangement on the counter top. It’s about half a dozen purple irises – my favourite, second only to tulips – arranged with some kind of tiny white flowers in a silver-coloured box with a ribbon.

“Oh!” I say, staring stupidly. “Are you sure?”

“There’s a card,” replies Kelly. She finishes her coffee, crumpling the paper cup and tossing it in the bin, and walks off with some patient charts.

I gently lift the little card out of the flower arrangement. It’s addressed to ‘Lucy K’, which I guess has to be me. Inside the card is written simply, For the one I love. I don’t recognise the handwriting, although I suppose it probably belongs to the florist. I’m not sure what to make of this. I don’t know whether to feel flattered or, well, stalked… although I realise I’m grinning like an idiot, so I guess I’m mostly flattered. I suppose the flowers are probably from some misguided patient, but it’s kind of nice to pretend I have a secret admirer.

The big stupid smile stays on my face most of the night, and almost before I know it my shift is over and I’m carefully carrying the flowers home on the train. I’m no closer to figuring out who they’re from, and in the back of my mind I’m just a little uneasy about it.

Chapter 7

I wake up groggily when I hear the kitchen tap running. Josie is filling up the kettle for coffee, and I seem to be on the couch.

“You didn’t make it to the bedroom,” smirks Jo as I get up. “I slept in your bed, since you took the sofa.”

I rub my face sleepily. “That’s cool,” I say, heading over to the fridge. I feel a bit queasy. Some greasy takeaway might be in order for breakfast. Or lunch, I think, glancing at the clock.

Jo wrinkles her nose as I take a glass from the cupboard next to her. “You smell like sweat and cigarettes,” she says.

“Breakfast first, then shower,” I tell her, pouring myself a big glass of juice.

“I’ll split the leftover pizza with you,” she offers, taking the box from the fridge. I’d forgotten it was there, and I’m glad not to have to leave my apartment to get some greasy food. Josie’s also had the decency to put the air conditioner on early, so it’s cool in here and I’m not too gross and sticky with sweat.

“You seem all right this morning,” I observe. I swallow some painkillers with my multivitamin and antidepressant, and take a cold slice of pizza.

“I didn’t have ten drinks,” she teases. “Shouldn’t you know better than that?”

I stick out my tongue at her and sink back down onto the sofa to eat my breakfast. I take my mobile phone from my purse on the coffee table and flip it open to see if I missed hearing any incoming text messages. There aren’t any, but I have nine missed calls, all from a private number. Whoever it was didn’t leave a voice message either – what a dimwit.

“That’s probably Mum,” I remark around a mouthful of pizza. “Josie, did Mum or Dad call you last night?”

Jo shakes her head as she pours milk into two big mugs of coffee. “I don’t think so. But someone called your home phone and hung up twice after we got in, at like three o’clock. Probably not them.”

I frown. My head hurts and right now I don’t care to think about which jackass from work was trying to stop me from sleeping on a Saturday night. Or maybe someone is so desperately in love with me that they would go to the trouble of finding my numbers, but find themselves too overcome to say anything when they call. Yeah, right.

“I found some apartments I want to look at,” Jo says, passing me one of the coffees and sitting down with me. She’s holding today’s newspaper.

“When the hell did you sneak out for the paper?” I ask, taking a big gulp of the hot milky coffee.

“Got up while you were still passed out,” she says, teasing me again.

“Asleep, not passed out,” I insist. I drain the rest of my coffee in one long swig and set the mug down.

She opens the paper and shows me a page with several rental listings circled in ink. I have to clean my glasses on my shirt before I can read properly. I seem to have fallen asleep with them on and the lenses are pretty smeared. The surgery can’t come soon enough, even if I will be paying it off for years. The thought puts me in mind of Heidi, and my cheeks feel a little warm as I remember her kissing me in her office.

With my glasses slightly cleaner, I take a look at the newspaper. “That one’s a boarding house,” I say, pointing to the first ad Josie has selected. “You might as well live in a campus dorm room if you don’t want to have your own bathroom or kitchen. Or a share house.”

Jo sticks out her tongue. She’s heard about my experiences with both, which led me to start shelling out rent for my own shoebox apartment near the university halfway through my second year.

“What about the others?” she asks with a slight frown.

“They look all right,” I tell her. “You’d have to go and see them to know if they’re any good. If you really want to try getting your own place, you pretty much need to get on it now before everyone else wants accommodation for the semester.”

“I think I do,” she says softly. “I just can’t stand living with Mum and Dad much longer. They’re fighting all the damn time again lately.”

I can totally understand this. Our parents don’t just bicker or quarrel – when they fight, you know about it, along with everyone else in the street. After a big one, Dad usually takes the car and leaves. Sometimes he’s gone overnight. Once he stayed gone for six months.

“We can go out this morning,” I say, getting up and pouring a glass of water from the fridge. “Or this afternoon,” I add, with another glance at the clock. “Why don’t you give the rental agencies a call to see if we can inspect any of the apartments today?”

While Josie makes the calls, I drink a couple of glasses of water, with a fizzy vitamin dropped into one of them for good measure. My head has started to clear and I feel a bit more like normal. I notice a smudge of blue dye on the back of my left hand and try to rub it off with my thumb.

“The offices are all closed,” says Jo, hanging up the cordless phone. “The only one we can go and see today is this one, ‘cause it’s a private rental and the woman said she doesn’t mind. It’s in West End.”

I give myself a mental slap on the forehead. Of course the rental offices are closed on Sunday afternoon. I think weekend trading was only even legalised in this city a few years ago.

“Okay,” I tell her. “Let me grab a shower and put on some respectable clothes, and we’ll get the bus down there to see the place. You want to take the ferry over to uni while we’re there? Take a look around while it’s quiet, before open day?”

“Yeah, we can have a picnic!” says Jo, a bit too loudly for my slightly delicate head.

---

The late afternoon sun is low in the sky, and the oppressive heat and humidity have subsided a little. On the ferry, I squint against the glare from the river as we cross from West End to the university at St Lucia, carrying plastic shopping bags full of various cheeses, a box of crackers, and a six pack of boutique beer.

There are a couple of people walking around the campus; I assume they are staff, since the start of the teaching semester is still about two months away. I smile as I notice Josie looking around excitedly at the university gardens and surrounding buildings. We find a shady spot near the lake and sit down at a small bench.

“It’s beautiful,” says Jo, enchanted.

“Just don’t feed those ducks,” I advise her, gesturing with a beer. “Every bird here will be all over us, including a bunch of fairly aggressive geese.”

“Gah,” she says with a theatrical little shudder.

I take a long drink of my discounted Belgian beer, grateful for the coolness in the afternoon heat. I must remember to drink a few glasses of water as well later on, or I will have a headache from the alcohol and the sun.

We relax in the shade for a while, chatting and watching birds on the lake, eating crackers topped with slices of cheese that become bigger as we finish more of the beers. Eventually we move our little feast from the bench onto the ground, where we have spread out the empty plastic bags on the grass like a picnic blanket. I sprawl out on my belly, swinging my sneakered feet in the air behind me. I drain my last beer and grab the last wedge of Jarlsberg.

Josie is sitting cross-legged on the grass, lazily sipping her own beer and loading up a water cracker with Brie. The red streaks in her hair shine in the amber light from the setting sun. “What specialty are you gonna do when you finish your residency?” she asks me. She pops the cracker in her mouth and chews while I think about it.

“Yeah, I have to get my applications in soon,” I say. “Maybe sleep medicine; there aren’t a lot of specialist sleep physicians around. As long as fat guys snore there’s a pay cheque there. Or maybe surgery. I did always love dissection and anatomy.”

Jo finishes the last beer and leers a little bit at this. “Anatomy, eh?” she grins, waggling her eyebrows in that hilarious way I could never master.

“Not as sexy a field as it sounds,” I point out, raising one eyebrow in return. “I used to spend my days in the anatomy lab up to my elbows in refrigerated cadavers. You would be better off thinking about fine arts if you want to see any decent naked people in your classes.”

Jo makes a face as she gets up, looking slightly tipsy, and brushes crumbs from her lap. “Well, are you going to show me around the place properly while we’re here?” she asks. She picks up the plastic bag that we have filled with our empty bottles and cheese packaging.

We dump the garbage in a bin and walk up to the main part of campus. It’s getting dark as we walk around the great court, my one-person tour group admiring the old sandstone buildings and exclaiming at the size of one of the libraries.

“I’ve never seen anyone so excited about a library, you geek,” I tease Josie as we make our way back to the ferry.

“Oh, I’m a geek, doctor?” she shoots back, her expression amused. “Maybe we should discuss this back at your place, over some tofu dogs and Doctor Who DVDs.”

“Touché,” I concede wryly. Actually, it does sound like a pretty great plan for the evening.

CHAPTER 6

I somewhat reluctantly buy a monthly train ticket on my way home from work on Saturday afternoon. I’ve resigned myself, for now at least, to keep relying on public transport to get around. The nightmares about driving have been recurring this week. I may ask Dave to prescribe me some sedatives next time I see him. It wouldn’t be illegal for me to write myself a prescription for some benzos, but it might not look very good, either. I’ve got a few days rostered off work now, so at least I can relax for a while.

Josephine meets me at Central station and walks home with me. She has a huge backpack with her, even though she’s only spending the night at my place. We walk by an expensive-looking car with dark windows parked illegally on Adelaide Street, and I smirk a bit as I imagine the ticket he’s going to get. As we pass, the engine roars into life and the car speeds off in a noisy, smoky cloud. “What a jackass,” says Jo.

Once we get home, Jo phones for a pizza while I shower and change my clothes. When I come out of the bathroom, I take a bottle of champagne out of the fridge before sitting down with her at the table.

“Well,” I say, “you’d better tell me what your good news is so we can get to celebrating.”

The first round of university offers for the year came out yesterday. Mum told me on the phone that Jo got an offer, but Jo wanted to tell me herself which university it was.

She gives me a big grin. “I got my first choice course!” she almost sings. “Science at UQ!”

I cheer and pop the champagne cork, pouring us each a glass. There’s a knock at the door and Jo does a happy little dance across the room to answer it. She still has a big dopey smile on her face when she comes back with the pizza.

“Congratulations, little sister,” I smile as we clink glasses. “What are you going to major in?”

She rolls her eyes. “I don’t know,” says. “I think I’m going to take a lot of different classes this year and see what I’m good at.”

There’s another knock at the door, and this time I get up to answer it. “Pizza guy forgot to ask for the voucher,” I say, grabbing it from the table. I open the door to find nobody there; I don’t see anyone in the hall either.

I lock the door again and toss the crumpled pizza voucher in the bin. “I guess he’s not coming back for it after all,” I say, sitting back down and grabbing a slice. “Anyway, taking a range of classes until you know what you like is a good idea. You don’t have to know exactly what you want to do in your first year.”

Our parents always pushed both Josie and I to study medicine. We were both pretty bright kids, and medicine is the kind of prestigious career they wanted for us. I always loved biology, so I did happen to choose medicine after I finished my undergrad degree. Josie has never had a specific area of interest, though; she’s just as likely to major in physics or entomology.

“I’ve already picked out some classes that look interesting for the first semester,” Jo says. “The only thing I’m not thrilled with is the commute to campus. It’s only half an hour to drive from home to St Lucia, but it takes, like, two hours by bus. Well, a bus, then a train, then another bus,” she adds. “I guess at least I’ll probably have plenty of study to do on the way.”

“Jesus,” I say in surprise, taking a sip of champagne. “That’s horrible. I can’t believe you’d have to spend so long travelling. It’s a damn shame you can’t drive.”

“Tell me about it,” she mumbles around a mouthful of pizza. “God, I wish I could move closer to uni.”

I drain my glass and reach for another slice of pizza. “Shit, why don’t you just do it,” I say bluntly. “Screw Mum and Dad. You have your own money, and you’re plenty old enough to move out. They’ll get over it.”

“Not likely,” she says with a crooked smile.

“No, come on,” I insist, getting up and moving over to the sofa. My big secondhand laptop is on the coffee table. “Let’s see how much an apartment would cost you.”

She walks carefully over to join me, wine glass in one hand and pizza box balanced on the other. “Hey, I really could afford that,” she says, peering over my shoulder as I scroll through rental listings around the university.

“Yeah, but it’s only a little studio apartment. That pretty much means one room.”

“That’s what I’m living in now,” she reminds me, “but the landlords are always going through my stuff while I’m out.”

I laugh and turn the computer back off, plugging it in to charge on the coffee table. We’ve made it through about half of the pizza and about half of the champagne, and what’s left goes back in the fridge.

“Ready to go?” I ask, putting on some lipstick. I’ve had this lipstick for about a year, and hardly used it since the work party that prompted me to buy it. I slip the tube into my little purse and grab my keys. Josephine slings her own purse over her shoulder.

“Let’s go celebrate,” she says with a grin.

---

We end up at a club in the Valley that used to be a gay bar, but you’d hardly know it for all the twenty-year-old straight girls in here. This is the first time Jo has been clubbing since her birthday, which was just before Christmas, so we’ve hit a few different places. I’m pretty trashed by now, and Jo is well on her way. She’s sensibly pacing herself, since her medication doesn’t mix well with too much booze.

Jo runs into some friends from high school at the bar, so I leave her to catch up while I get another drink. I’ve been drinking bourbon all night, and I feel like something different, so I order a cosmopolitan.

“We don’t serve cocktails,” shouts the bartender over the techno music.

“Really, not at all?” I yell back stupidly. He shakes his head. There does seem to be a decent range of liquors and mixers behind the bar, and I’m pretty sure I saw a guy drinking cranberry juice earlier.

“Can I have a vodka and cranberry with a shot of triple sec?” I ask hopefully.

The bartender shrugs and takes the twenty-dollar note I’m holding out, and in a couple of minutes I’m drinking a cosmo from a highball glass, but with a bit less change in my purse than I’d expected. I smirk a bit as I sip my drink. Like hell they don’t serve cocktails.

I finish the drink and head over to the dance floor. Jo is still at the bar with her friends, and they’re onto their next round. It occurs to me that I don’t normally care for dancing, but I have a nice boozy sense of wellbeing and tonight it seems like a good idea.

Soon I’m dancing with a guy about my age, tall with funky blue hair. I assume he’s gay until he puts his hands around my waist and pulls me hard against him. He smells of decent cologne and maybe just faintly of marijuana. We dance close, grinding together, and I can feel his hard-on through his jeans.

What the hell, I think giddily, I’m out on the town. I take him by the hand and lead him into the men’s bathroom, a little unsteady on my feet. I don’t know his name, but that’s okay. I haven’t told him mine either, and I’m not exactly looking for a relationship here.

I hike up my skirt as Blue presses me up against the tiled cubicle wall. He slides his hands up underneath my shirt. I breathe harder and reach down to unzip his pants.

His breath is hot on the side of my face as he slides into me. I grip his shoulders and brace myself with one foot against the opposite wall. He slips a hand under my bra and gently brushes his fingers over my pierced left nipple, making me moan softly with pleasure. I tighten my hold on his shoulders as I climax, feeling the sweat running down my back. With a final thrust Blue comes, and we collapse together against the wall, panting.

While I am tidying my rumpled hair, out of breath and still a bit giddy from drinking, I notice him wrapping a used condom in a tissue. That’s good, I muse; I hadn’t even thought about one of those.

He leaves the cubicle first, and I follow once he gives me a grin and an all-clear gesture. At once he’s lost in the crowd of dancing bodies, and I look at my watch and realise I should go and see how Josie is doing.

CHAPTER 5

My accident was about a month ago now. My car was damaged so badly that I sold it to the wreckers rather than pay for the repairs, which would have cost significantly more than the car had. At least I wasn’t hurt. The other person, though, had been hurt very badly.

---

I was driving down the main road to work. It was a Monday, so I was on the morning shift and driving in peak hour traffic. I intended to fill up with petrol on the way home tonight, after my pay came through to my bank account. Until then, I was pretty much broke, and keeping a wary eye on the fuel gauge needle. Although my old Laser was generally in good condition, the fuel gauge had always been broken, and I’d had to get used to reading it. This morning it showed a quarter of a tank, which meant very close to empty.

I had the radio on, playing my favourite alternative-rock station, singing along with Radiohead. The window was down, since I didn’t want to waste any fuel running the air conditioning.

I was most of the way to work when the engine just stopped. I panicked a bit, then realised I was still moving at roughly the same speed as before. I put on my hazard lights and carefully merged into the left lane as the car gradually slowed. As I came to an emergency stopping lane I did a quick check over my shoulder and pulled the car over.

There was a terrible bang and a metallic scraping. God, I hit something! I turned off the engine and pocketed my keys, getting out of the car to see what it was and how bad the damage might be.

The damage, evidently, was quite severe. There was a motorcycle under the back of my car, and both vehicles looked fairly badly banged up. There was a man lying on the asphalt in the emergency lane, still wearing his helmet.

I screamed inside. Maybe I screamed out loud as well; I’m not sure. I had killed someone. This would be the end of my career, and I would be going to jail. Do not pass go, and all that. I looked at the traffic going by and for just a moment considered walking out into it.

The man began moaning softly, and a small spark of hope rose inside me. He was fine, the law didn’t need to get involved, maybe the bike was still okay to drive home, and I could just write him a cheque for the damage, without even involving the insurance companies.

I squatted down to ask if he was all right, but what came out was an incoherent string of curses and sobs as I fell to my knees on the road. I was vaguely aware that other motorists had stopped and a small group of people had gathered around us. Some were tending to the motorcyclist, carefully removing his helmet, revealing it was actually a woman, perhaps a little older than myself. I felt oddly stupid that I’d taken her for a man in her bulky motorcycle leathers.

I knelt on the road, sobbing and desperately trying to ask if the other woman was all right. Someone had put a blanket around my shoulders, and a voice seemed to be addressing me.

An older woman in a cardigan was speaking to me, helping me up and rubbing my back soothingly. I gasped and cried, soaking her shoulder. “You need to come and see the paramedics,” she was saying. I realised two ambulances had arrived, along with a police car and a fire engine for good measure. “I’m a nurse,” she told me, “and you’re in shock.”

I nodded dumbly and allowed myself to be led to the ambulance. I was suddenly embarrassed, realising all my medical knowledge and training had just gone out the window when I needed it. I hadn’t done a damn thing to help. Thank god there had at least been a nurse here.

The next minutes are a blur; I was barely conscious. The police took a statement from me about the accident. I remember the young officer asked if there was anything I could have done to prevent it. I paused, thinking of the broken fuel gauge and empty tank.

Seeing my hesitation, he asked again, shaking his head pointedly as he spoke.

“No,” I whispered, and he nodded as he wrote down my response.

The motorcyclist was being taken away in one of the ambulances. Through my teary, confused haze, I recognised one of the other paramedics and asked him if the woman was okay.

“She’ll be fine,” he told me. “Looks like a few broken ribs and some head trauma, but she’ll live. Relax, she’s fine.”

“Thanks, Akbar,” I said with a weak half-smile. It was far from good news, but I was hugely relieved that she wasn’t dead. At least I hadn’t killed anyone.

Akbar brought me a cup of water to sip and told me what witnesses had said happened. Apparently the woman on the motorcycle, ignoring my hazard lights, had tried to overtake me illegally on the left as I was pulling into the emergency lane. “Goddamn motorbike riders,” he said, “We’d be a hell of a lot less busy without them on the road.”

---

The motorcyclist hadn’t been taken to the hospital where I work, which was a small blessing. I couldn’t have dealt with the possibility of seeing her when I was on duty. I checked up with the other hospital and found she was discharged after a few days, her broken arm set and internal injuries ruled out. She had a hairline skull fracture but would recover just fine.

Now, in my apartment, I sip at my hot chocolate, sitting on the arm of my big red sofa and watching the storm flash outside the window. I had assumed that I’d buy a new car – or a second-hand one, anyway – and start driving myself around again as soon as possible. Now I wonder if I will be able to get back behind the wheel at all. I’ve never been so frightened of the road, but all I could see when I was on the scooter today was the face of the woman I ran over.

CHAPTER 4

I get a cab to work in the morning. I can’t afford to make a habit of this, but my nerves are still too raw for catching the train after last night.

It’s still dark outside when I start work. My patient, Chris, has been transferred to psychiatric. None of our tests have shown anything abnormal, but his mood is still volatile and the intermittent seizures are continuing.

I receive the copy of his polysomnogram results that I requested. I am only mildly surprised to see that over ten hours in the sleep lab, he didn’t actually sleep. I had a feeling this might happen, but it is very unusual for any patient to go all night without sleep, even in the lab. I order another MRI. It’s got to be neurological, if not psychiatric, and I’m still suspicious that we may have missed a tumour or a clot.

The rest of the day is slow. I see the usual coughs and colds, and a couple of fractures. Then, towards the end of my shift, a guy with greying hair limps in, wearing a T-shirt with a towel around his waist. Kelly sends him to me, even though he asked for a male doctor, since everyone else is busy.

“What is the trouble?” I ask him, a bit warily.

He looks embarrassed, and I have a pretty good idea of what kind of trouble he has. He answers hesitantly, “I was getting out of the shower…”

Pause. He drops the towel to reveal his penis is stuck, swollen, inside the neck of a plastic soda bottle. I know exactly what this guy was doing, and it wasn’t just hopping out of the shower. Frankly, I don’t care; I want him fixed and out of here as soon as possible.

“All right, this is easy enough to take care of,” I tell him, with as straight a face as I can manage. “I just need to make a cut to let the pressure out.”

The patient looks horrified and pales a little.

“A cut in the bottle,” I add hurriedly.

I use a pair of surgical scissors to cut the main part of the bottle away, relieving the suction pressure, and slide the bottle neck off with a bit of lubricant. This is obviously not a terribly common problem, but I have still seen it more than once before.

I send the patient home with some stern advice, and once he has left the emergency room I allow myself to break into the big grin I’ve been holding back. What a jackass.

---

Kelly and I are both scheduled to attend the mandatory yearly occupational health and safety lecture this afternoon. We have a few minutes to spare after our shifts finish, so I meet her outside with a couple of coffees, and drink mine while she smokes. I realise pretty quickly that it’s still too hot outside to comfortably drink a hot coffee. I should have gotten a soda.

“I have to get the train home this afternoon,” Kelly tells me. “I wish I lived as close as you. It’s going to take almost an hour for me to get home by the time I walk from the station.”

“What happened to your car?” I ask, and she gives me a thought-you’d-never-ask look.

“It got fucking collected,” she says, blowing smoke in an angry plume.

“You had an accident?”

She raises an eyebrow and shakes her head. “No, it got collected. It was parked on the lawn in front of my place overnight when we had kerbside garbage collection, and they took it, along with all the broken TVs and chairs with three legs.”

It’s all I can do not to spray my mouthful of cinnamon mocha latte at her as I put my hand to my mouth and choke back laughter. Finally swallowing the coffee, I say, “Are you serious? Are you sure?”

She glowers a bit and takes a final drag from her cigarette, before dropping the butt on the ground and extinguishing it with the toe of one of her sensible work shoes. “I don’t see where else it could have gone,” she grumbles. “I’m calling the city council after work to see if I can get it back. I’ll fucking sue if they’ve destroyed it.”

“Probably more likely it’s being held somewhere,” I say, although I can hardly imagine the car would have been collected in the first place, no matter how stupid the garbage collectors might be. “Hey, you wanna guess what was wrong with the guy in consult two this morning?”

---

Sitting through the OHS lecture is torture. I’m thankful that it’s only an hour long. Aside from being boring and largely unnecessary, the woman presenting the talk is mangling and mispronouncing every sentence she reads from her notes. I don’t know her, and I hope she’s an outside contractor, not new hospital staff. I couldn’t handle hearing her speak very often if she actually works here.

“Nusually most people don’t know the evaculation procedure, and things like that,” she drawls, gesturing annoyingly with her green laser pointer.

At the back of the room, I wince and nudge Kelly, who’s sitting next to me. That’s about the fifth time this awful woman has said ‘and things like that’ in as many minutes.

“I guess she means the evacuation procedure,” Kelly whispers with a smirk.

Eventually I find I’m not listening to what the OHS woman is saying, just counting how often she repeats her irritating little mannerisms. In the last half hour of the lecture she says ‘nusually’ eight times.

Once the ordeal is finally over, I head to the locker room to change into my street clothes and pick up my bag. I have a list of car dealerships to check out before I go home today. I’ve had enough of relying on buses and trains to get around the city.

As I’m getting my bag out of my locker, I see someone in my blurry peripheral vision. I turn my head but nobody is in here except me.

Involuntarily, I give a little shiver. A small noise makes me check behind each row of lockers before I leave, feeling a little silly, but pretty sure nobody was there.

It’s been a long week.

---

The train ride out to the car dealerships takes a lot longer than the short trip I’m used to between home and the hospital. I think it’s only about ten kilometres out of the city, but the ride takes close to half an hour. I finish three sudoku puzzles before the train arrives at my station.

This used to be a much nastier suburb, I muse, as I get off the train and start climbing the stairs across to the main road. The heat outside the train hits me like a sticky humid wave.

When I was at university one of my friends lived out here for the cheap rent, but it wasn’t an area I liked to visit, especially at night. There used to be groups of teenaged thug-looking types hanging around the platforms in their oversized pants and stolen shoes. These days the location makes it a boutique inner-city suburb, priced way out of my range. Most of the people getting off the train with me are private school students and thirty-somethings in nice-looking suits. I feel a little out of place in my scuffed high-top sneakers and faded old jeans.

I have my pick of car dealerships here; they line the main road on both sides. I should be able to find something I can afford. I have no savings to speak of – not on a hospital resident’s salary – but I figure I can probably afford repayments on a small car, as long as it’s about as old as me.

I take a look at the offerings in front of a few establishments, but I’m pretty unhappy at the trade-off between price and quality. I can imagine buying one of these two-thousand-dollar wonders and needing to pay twice as much again in repairs before the end of the year.

I come to a motorcycle dealership and notice the price tags are a hell of a lot lower. I could actually almost afford to buy a new bike! I wonder what the running costs are like.

A salesman emerges from the store building and approaches me, calling “How are you going?”

“Not bad,” I respond automatically. “Looking at maybe getting a bike. How cheap are they to run?”

“Cheaper than a car,” he assures me, pulling his baseball cap lower on his forehead to shield his eyes from the searing afternoon sun. It occurs to me that he would say that, since he’s going to want me to buy one of his motorbikes. I should check the internet.

“You’ve got a bike licence,” he says. Ah, hell. That hadn’t even occurred to me.

“No, I don’t.”

He nods as though this is no problem, but as far as I’m concerned my business here is finished. I can’t afford anything new, and I can go back to looking at the rust buckets at the other places.

“You just looking for something small to get you around town, get you to uni?” he asks.

I smile. I’m not quite old enough to take it as a compliment when someone thinks I’m younger than I am, but I’m old enough that it doesn’t bother me anymore either.

“Yeah, just something to get me to work,” I tell him.

“You do have a car licence?”

I smile again. “Only for an automatic,” I say.

He leads me to the side of the building and a row of little Vespa-type scooters. “You can drive one of these with a normal car licence,” he says. “Ever ridden one before?”

I shake my head.

“Why don’t you take it for a test drive, then?” he suggests.

The little black scooter on the end has a price tag equivalent to about a fortnight’s pay cheque for me. I like that.

We head back into the office for me to sign some paperwork before the man – Brian, according to his name tag – will let me try out the scooter. The insurance excess if I crash it while going around the block is huge, so I’m a little concerned, but I’m sure nothing will happen.

Brian shows me briefly what does what – how to start the engine, accelerate, brake, steer. Then I’m crammed into a sweaty helmet and sitting on the little leather seat.

I carefully twist the handlebar to accelerate and the scooter lurches forward. Suddenly I’m motoring slowly down the side street behind the dealership, wavering unsteadily and panicking as I struggle to remember how to brake. There’s a goddamn parked car against the kerb!

I try to turn and almost topple over sideways, sticking my right leg out to keep upright. Once the scooter is stopped, safely out of the way of the parked car, I step off and kick down the stand, keeping my hand firmly on the brake as I’m not sure how to turn the engine off or put it in neutral.

Brian approaches at a jog and takes the scooter from me, driving it back to the dealership. I follow on foot with the helmet in my shaking hands. I have actually broken out in a terrified sweat.

“What did you think?” asks Brian, with a big salesman grin.

“I think,” I say carefully, “I maybe need a few lessons before I decide whether I want to buy one.”

I thank him, shake his hand and take his card, and slink back toward the train station. It’s starting to get dark, and the thickening bruise-coloured clouds suggest it might rain before I get home.

CHAPTER 3

I arrive at work again on Tuesday afternoon. I’m wearing my spare glasses with the thick red frames while my favourite rimless pair is being fixed.

Kelly is on the late shift with me tonight. “I love your new glasses,” she says immediately.

“Oh, they’re an old pair,” I tell her. “But thanks.”

“The frames bring out the red in your hair,” she says. “They’re nice.”

“Thanks,” I say again. “How was your day off?”

Kelly giggles. “Great! I had another date with Jules.” She lowers her voice to a conspirational whisper. “He’s really good in bed!”

I smirk. “Rich and good in the sack? He’s a keeper.”

“I know! God, I want to marry him.”

I raise my eyebrows. “Nurse Kelly talking about marriage! Has the world gone topsy-turvy?”

She gives me a good-natured punch in the arm on her way to the nurses’ station. I know being called ‘Nurse Kelly’ annoys her almost as much as being called ‘sister’. I’ve also been ribbing her a bit lately about finally ‘settling down’. She’s well known for dating widely and often, but she seems pretty serious about Jules. I am yet to meet him, but he sounds like he might be worth it.

I head up to see Chris. He’s asleep, so I page quietly through his chart. It looks like he had another seizure overnight, and he’s scheduled for an MRI this afternoon.

“Hi, Dr Klein,” says Chris, opening his eyes.

“Good afternoon,” I nod. “Sorry to wake you up.”

He sighs. “I’m just resting. I haven’t slept for days.”

“That’s no good,” I say, thinking of my sleep apnea patient yesterday. “Do you often have trouble sleeping?”

He shakes his head. “Only recently. How long have I been in here?”

“Only one night, believe it or not,” I say with a laugh. My smile fades when I realise he is serious.

“Do you remember why you came to the hospital yesterday?” I ask.

Chris pauses in thought for a minute. Slowly, he says, “I can’t remember coming here at all.” His eyes suddenly flash angrily. “Get out!” he yells, throwing a cup from the bedside table at me.

I duck out quickly and call for a nurse to sedate him. At least someone has thought to switch his water glasses to plastic cups.

---

Dr Zhang and I discuss the patient’s symptoms over coffee in the lunch room. “There’s no family history of neurological or psychiatric disease,” I tell her. “The father is still alive and healthy in his sixties, and the mother was killed in an MVA in England about ten years ago; healthy until then.”

“The EEG and MRI both came back clean,” Zhang muses, sipping her latte, “and yet the seizures and mood swings are increasing.”

“It could still be psychiatric,” I suggest. “The seizures could be psychogenic – that’s rare, but it’s possible. And depression could explain the memory lapses and volatile mood.”

“Could be,” she nods. “But that wouldn’t explain the tremors and myoclonus.”

“Well, he could have two conditions,” I say. “What about multiple sclerosis? Clinical depression is pretty standard in patients with MS.”

“Yeah, but no sign of sclerotic lesions on the MRI,” says Zhang, frowning. “Get him a full psych assessment, and get Tran from neurology down here too.”

I make the calls and head back to Chris’s room to see how he is doing. He is sedated but not asleep. “How are you feeling?” I ask carefully.

He shrugs, obviously with effort. I look at his chart and see he’s been given enough diazepam to knock out someone of his slim build. Funny that he isn’t sleeping. It occurs to me that the insomnia could be a symptom if he has a psychiatric condition.

I leave Chris to rest and make a call to the sleep lab downstairs. I want him to have a full polysomnogram tomorrow night, once the diazepam has worn off.

It’s a long night, but I make time to check on Chris every couple of hours. Each time I see him, he’s sitting awake in bed. I make a mental note to ask the ward nurses if they have seen him sleeping since he was admitted.

---

I don’t go home right away when my shift finishes in the morning. I head across the city for my appointment at the laser eye surgery centre.

The practice ophthalmologist calls my name, and smiles when she sees me. “Dr Proctor!” she exclaims.

“It’s Dr Klein these days, Heidi,” I tell her with a grin.

“You didn’t – ”

“Not married,” I add quickly. “Just changed my name. You can imagine why.”

Heidi leads me into her office and gives me a hug, poking me with the pen in her lab coat pocket. “I haven’t seen you in years,” she says. “How are you? Where are you working these days?”

I fill her in briefly on what I’ve been up to since university, which is not a whole lot apart from work. She listens, interested, smiling and nodding.

“But,” she says, “that’s not what you’re here for. You’re looking at having the surgery now?”

“I’m finally getting the shits with my glasses,” I tell her. “The last straw was when someone at karate knocked them off my face and I fell on them.”

We chat while she examines me and puts drops in my eyes. It’s been about four years since we dated, while we were both in medical school. It was an amicable split, when we both just got too damn busy to maintain a relationship. She was in her final year of medicine, two years ahead of me.

“Well,” she says finally, “it looks like you’re a good candidate for laser surgery. Your myopia’s pretty severe, but there’s no astigmatism. It’s possible that you might eventually need to have the procedure repeated, but I think we can improve your vision significantly.”

“Awesome,” I say to the flesh-coloured blur in front of me. “Can I have my glasses back now?”

She hands them to me and slides back into focus as I put them back on.

“I’ll want to have another consult with you before we go ahead, but we can schedule the surgery now if you’re happy to,” she says.

She opens her organiser and gives me some dates, and I pick one a couple of months away, when I think I should be rostered off work.

“You’ll be able to go back to work the next day if you want to,” Heidi tells me as she notes down my details. “Your corneas will heal up in a matter of hours, and you’ll be able to go back to your normal activities almost right away.”

I slip the patient information sheet she gives me into my bag. “It’s always weird to be the patient,” I observe.

“Tell me about it,” she laughs. “I got my wisdom teeth out last month, and my post-op nurse was a kid I used to tutor in anatomy back at uni!”

She gets up to show me out, and surprises me with a passionate kiss on the mouth at her office door. “I’ll see you in a few weeks,” she says with a big smile.

---

The next day I get the train out to visit my family for lunch at their house in Samford. Dad has the car for work today, so I get a cab from the train station. I can feel the driver’s gaze on my thighs and try to hike my skirt down over my knees.

“Hi, sweetie,” says Mum as I arrive, enveloping me in a big hug. She holds me at arms length and approvingly adds, “You’re not carrying so much of that weight anymore.”

Christ, it’s that kind of well-intentioned remark that has me crying in the shower at the gym. There’s no point in asking her again to stop commenting on my body.

“I’m making bagels for lunch,” Mum continues, as we go into the living room. I can smell the sweet fresh bread through the house.

Jo comes hesitantly out of her room wearing black jeans and a grey tank top. Her short black hair now has several bright red curls at the front.
“Lucy!” she says, brightening. I give her a hug, realising as I do that my baby sister has somehow gotten as tall as me.

“I love your hair,” I tell her. “Red looks good on you.”

Mum frowns. “Josie is grounded,” she says sternly. “She knows how your father and I feel about hair dye.”

Before I can stop myself, I burst out laughing. “You grounded your adult daughter,” I repeat.

“She might be eighteen, but she lives under our roof,” says Mum mildly.

Jo rolls her eyes. “Come see my new bookshelf,” she says to me.

“Try to ignore the mess in her room,” adds Mum.

Jo’s room is almost immaculate, but for a pair of sneakers on the floor and a couple of books on the bed. “She is insufferable,” Jo whispers, closing the door. “She actually hit me when she saw my hair.”

I’m shocked. “Seriously, she hit you?”

“She slapped my face,” says Jo. “They haven’t hit me for years.”

“God damn it,” I murmur, “You should call the fucking police if they pull that again.”

“You know I won’t,” she says with a small sigh.

“Yeah, I know. But maybe you should tell them you will.”

Jo shows me her new Ikea bookshelf, already overflowing with her vast collection of volumes. She’s a cool kid. I see some of the classics, a couple of Asimov anthologies, something obscure by Hunter Thompson, and an old worn copy of Walden. I also notice a thick course guide book from the university I went to, heavily dog-eared with a lot of highlighter marks visible along the page edges. I am a bit distracted from looking over Jo’s collection, thinking instead about how to get her out of this house.

I was a couple of years younger than Jo when I decided that I would never let our parents hit me again. After taking karate for a while I felt confident enough to secretly vow that the next time they hit me, I would hit back. Once I made that decision, though, neither of them ever tried to hit me again. I suppose I must have just had a different look in my eyes: go ahead, give me an excuse.

I try to keep lunch with my mother civil, but an icy tone creeps into my voice a few times. We talk about work, university for Jo, our parents’ upcoming trip to Malaysia.

The bagels are freaking delicious. For a few minutes I manage to let myself forget my animosity towards our parents.

---

I get a bus home to the city, since I’m in no hurry. I take the single seat behind the driver and settle down with my little sudoku book. After a few stops a homeless-looking man in his twenties gets on the bus and sits across the aisle from me. Jesus, I can smell the alcohol coming off him.

He glances over at me a few times, and I try to avoid his eyes as politely as I can. Then he stands and lurches over to me.

“Can I sit here?” he asks with a slur.

Oh, goddamn it. “It’s not a big seat,” I say, wishing I could be a little more assertive. “I don’t think you would fit on here with me.” I glance around and see that the bus is all but empty. The bastard could sit wherever he wanted to.

He squeezes into the seat next to me. “Do you think I’m a bad person?” he asks morosely. “Sorry, I’m a bit drunk. I’m harmless,” he adds, although this is less reassuring than he obviously thinks it should be.

He keeps talking and I nod agreeably, hoping he is going to get off the bus soon. This will teach me to get the bus home at night, I think to myself.

We’re coming into the city, and he is still there next to me. Now he is talking about the bible and the coming apocalypse. Jesus Christ. I’m feeling less and less comfortable. I send a quick text message on my phone as surreptitiously as I can.

“Well, this is my stop,” I eventually say, squeezing up out of the seat. He moves into the aisle to let me out, and starts following me off the bus. I cast a desperate look at the driver on my way past, hoping he will understand and stop this man from following me. He doesn’t.

I’ll be damned if I’m going to let this creep follow me to my building and find out where I live. In the course of his rambling he has already tried twice to invite himself home with me. I stand by the road at the busway station, glancing helplessly again at the driver, who drives away, oblivious.

“Well, I have to go shopping before I go home to my boyfriend,” I lie. “It was good to meet you.”

“Oh,” he says slyly, as if he has just unravelled a very clever plan. “You have a boyfriend. You were leading me on. I thought we could have had a little get-together.” He leers, unsteady on his feet.

I’m suddenly both very afraid of him and blind with fury. How dare he accuse me of leading him on! I want to kick his ass on principle, but he hasn’t gotten violent with me so far. A detached part of my mind wonders if I’m about to get raped.

I’m mentally floundering, trying to figure out how I will extricate myself from this situation, when I see Dave approaching with some shopping bags. Thank God. I feel like screaming out to him, but I manage to hold it in.

“Hi, sweetheart,” I say as he gets closer, as evenly as I can.

“This is my boyfriend,” I tell the homeless guy, looking pointedly at Dave. “Time for us to go, honey?” I silently beg him to play along and get me out of this.

Dave looks a bit surprised, but catches my desperate glance. “It sure is, baby,” he says, sliding one muscular arm easily around my shoulders.

I take his hand and we walk briskly away. Homeless Guy follows for a few paces before giving up. “Thank you so much,” I whisper to Dave. I realise that I have started crying.

---

I lock myself in my apartment with a big cup of hot chocolate and the cordless phone next to me on the coffee table. I’m completely freaked out and jumpy. God, men are such assholes. I’m so sick of feeling afraid on the street at night. Public transport is the worst; I must try to find the money for a new car.

I stay awake for as long as I can, eyes on the front door, until finally I fall asleep on the sofa.

CHAPTER 2

I walk Jo to the train station on Monday morning. Mum is going to pick her up at their end when she arrives. The trip is less than an hour, but I have given her a couple of books to keep her entertained on the way.

After I see her off, I head across to the opposite platform to get my train into work.

A bearded older guy who smells like he hasn’t bathed in days sits opposite me in the near-empty carriage. I take my little sudoku book out of my canvas shoulder bag and try to interest myself in it so I don’t glare. As I fill in a couple of numbers I can see him over the rim of my glasses, leering in my peripheral vision.

Thank God it isn’t far to the hospital. As soon as we get to my station, I slip the book and pencil back into my bag and get off the train, glancing back to be sure Beardy isn’t getting off as well.

I shiver a little, despite the brutally hot mid-summer sun, as I walk from the station to work. That creep couldn’t have sat somewhere else on a train with practically no other commuters? Damn it, jerks like that piss me off. I realise my heart rate is still a bit elevated. He really did make me nervous.

---

I pass Dave on the way into the building. He’s coming off the late shift that he covered for me.

“Have a good morning, Klein,” he says with a small wave.

I smile. “Good night, Dave?”

“Usual night,” he replies, rolling his eyes. “Keeping ‘em alive till five
forty-five. Oh, and your epiglottitis patient was discharged this morning.”

I thank him for letting me know and head to the lunch room to get a diet cola before my shift.

I’m glad to hear that my patient (Anya, I remind myself, remember they have names) is okay. Not just because I almost missed what was wrong with her initially, but also because she was about Jo’s age. I especially don’t like the idea of losing a patient who’s basically still a kid.

I clip my ID to my shirt pocket as I finish my soda. I am glad every day that I changed my name while I was at university. My parents don’t know, but I have been using my mother’s maiden name for about four years. The name I was born with is Lucinda Proctor, and I just can’t use that in my line of work.

My first patient this morning is a middle aged man who looks about a hundred kilos overweight. He wheezes a bit with each breath.

“I haven’t slept properly for days,” he says gruffly. “I live just across the road, there,” he adds, apparently by way of explaining why he has come to the emergency room for this.

“What kind of trouble are you having?” I ask. “Is there something that you’re aware of disturbing your sleep?”

He gives me a mildly withering look. “It’s just real hard to get a good sleep,” he says, rather unhelpfully. “I want to talk to a doctor so I can have something to help me sleep.”

“Well, let’s figure out what the problem is first, then we can try to fix it,” I tell him gently.

He sighs, with an audible rattle. I notice without surprise a pack of cigarettes in his shirt pocket.

“Can I talk to a doctor,” he says flatly.

I finally realise what he’s saying. God, I think, I did introduce myself to the man already.

“I’m Dr Klein,” I tell him again, as pleasantly as I can manage. I page back through his chart. It looks like this guy has been in here plenty of times, but I’ve never had the pleasure until now. “Mr Rutger, you have sleep apnea. Are you still using your CPAP machine at night?”

He snorts. “I can’t stand it,” he declares. “Used it one night and couldn’t stand it. What I need is some Valium to make me sleep better.”

“You can’t be taking Valium with sleep apnea,” I reply. “The best thing you can do for your sleep is start using the CPAP mask. The reason you don’t sleep soundly is because you stop breathing when you don’t use the machine, and sleeping pills will make that a whole lot worse.”

“But it helps me sleep,” he insists. “Best night’s sleep of me life was after a couple of beers and a couple of Valium.”

“You’re not helping your case here,” I say, irritated and a bit taken aback. “Frankly, I’m surprised you didn’t kill yourself doing that.”

I write Mr Rutger a sleep clinic referral and send him home without any drugs. Unfortunately, he is probably going to shop around until he finds a doctor who will write him a prescription, but I’ve done all I can for him. I feel like a Valium myself after talking to him for fifteen minutes.

---

The patient that catches my attention has a slightly strange set of symptoms. He’s about thirty, skinny, and presents with painful leg cramps and recent mood swings. I notice a slight tremor in his hands as I talk to him and take his history. Until a couple of weeks ago he’s been perfectly healthy; no meds, no admissions. His calves seized up while he was jogging this morning.

I confer with Dr Zhang while my patient waits in the consult room. “Christopher Rossi-Smith, age thirty-two, leg myoclonus. I’m thinking the cramps probably indicate an electrolyte imbalance,” I tell her.

She nods, running a hand over her short cropped hair. “Yeah, get a full blood count. You should get someone from psych down here for a consult as well; it could be due to an eating disorder.”

“Makes sense, with the mood disturbance,” I agree. “Thanks, Wendy.”

I take a blood sample from my patient. “Little sting now, Chris,” I say as I slide the needle into his arm. His arms are so skinny I don’t have to feel for a vein – I can see them perfectly well. A bony guy like this who jogs every day, no doubt for his “health”… yeah, I could imagine he might have a touch of anorexia.

I call for a psych assessment while the sample goes to pathology for testing.

The doctor from psychiatric arrives later in the morning and spends about half an hour talking to Chris. By the time he’s done, I have the pathology results back.

The shrink tells me that Chris seems mildly depressed, but there’s no indication of an eating disorder. That fits with the normal blood test results I have just added to his chart.

I am about to tell the patient that his leg pain is probably just strained muscles and talk to him about considering treatment for depression when he starts seizing. He drops from the chair and convulses on the floor of the consult room. I have time to move the chair out of his way, and then the seizure is over as quickly as it started.

Chris tells me after he’s been cleaned up and admitted that he has never had a seizure before, and no history of epilepsy.

“One seizure can sometimes be just an isolated event,” I explain. “But with your cramps and tremors as well, I want to run some more tests to make sure it isn’t something serious.”

I order an EEG and peripheral nerve conduction tests, more blood work to check for infection, and a glucose tolerance test for good measure. The symptoms might not be related, but if they are, I’ll find out.

---

By the end of the day, all of the tests I ordered for Chris have come back normal. I stop by his room on my way out.

“How are you feeling?” I ask, as I check his chart.

He gives me a small smile. “Not bad, but my legs are still sore as hell,” he says, picking up a glass of water from the table by the bed.

“The bad news is we still aren’t sure what’s wrong,” I tell him, taking off my glasses to clean them on my shirt. “All your tests today came back negative, though, so the good news is we can rule out epilepsy and diabetes. It doesn’t look like you have an infection either.”

“So can I go home soon?” he asks me, visibly hopeful.

“Probably soon,” I smile, “But I want to keep you in for another day or so for observation.”

He nods and takes a sip of water. As he moves to set the glass back down on the table, he falters and drops it. It shatters on the floor.

“Damn it!” he says loudly.

“It’s okay,” I assure him. “It happens. I’ll call for someone to clean up and bring you a new glass.”

He frowns a bit, looking down at his hands, and nods.

---

It’s rare for me to be off work on a Monday evening. I go back into the city on the train and pick up my karate bag from my apartment, then walk to the gym a few blocks away. It will be nice to get to both classes this week.

Karate training is always a tough workout. Tonight it feels good to move my body after just standing still for most of the day. I’m thinking of going to the grading for my brown belt next month, so I am keen to get in as much training and sparring practice as I can.

I work hard tonight, putting all my strength into the practice and fighting hard with my sparring partner. We weave sweatily around each other, blocking punches and making light contact with kicks. The guy I’m sparring with is quite attractive, with long brown hair in a ponytail and a little goatee. He’s tall and well-built, his muscles clearly developed from training. He wouldn’t normally be my type, but as we fight I find myself idly imagining what he would look like naked.

I am feeling good until he floor sweeps me and I fall.

“Ow!” I exclaim as I land heavily with my shoulder on something sharp. I’m unimpressed to see it’s my glasses, and I have warped both arms of the frames.

“God, I wish I wore contact lenses,” is all I can think of to say, my face hot with embarrassment.

I make my way home after training, peering owlishly without my glasses and glad it’s only a short walk. My hand doesn’t leave the panic alarm in my pocket until I am safely in my living room.

CHAPTER 1

Television would have you believe that every day in a hospital is fast-paced and exciting. Unfortunately, that isn’t always true. Some days go more slowly than a shift working a cash register, and just about as much happens.

This is shaping up to be one of those days. I have been working since three in the afternoon, and in ten hours I’ve seen three very uninteresting patients. My favourite was the seventeen-year-old with the sniffles who thought she had bird flu. Just a rhinovirus, a common cold. Nothing I can even really prescribe for that.

Minor illnesses are the bane of our existence as after-hours emergency staff. The few GPs open this late charge more than most people care to pay, so hospital emergency rooms get most of their patients. Things like head colds, minor cuts, heartburn.

Tonight, however, we aren’t even seeing many of those. The exam rooms are empty, the halls quiet. Everyone is either catching up on paperwork or just loafing.

“Doing anything good this weekend?” I ask Kelly, the triage nurse on duty, while I restock a box of suture kits from the supply cupboard.

“Weekend?” she replies, quirking an eyebrow. “I have an infection control workshop Saturday, and I’m on call Sunday.”

“Yuck. At least I have this Saturday off,” I say. “Not that I have much planned for it. I think I’ll be catching up on some sleep.”

Kelly smirks and nods. We’re all in need of more sleep at any given time, especially nurses and junior doctors – we’re basically everyone’s bitch.

The glass front doors swing open and two paramedics wheel in a wheezing, slightly panicky teenaged girl.

I can’t believe it. It’s my bird flu patient again. I turn to roll my eyes at Kelly, but she has already gone, probably to fetch the patient’s recently-filed paperwork.

The patient – Anya something, I recall – doesn’t look much worse than when I sent her home less than an hour ago, but she is making a lot more noise.

It’s Dr Sterling’s turn to see her this time; I’m about to go on break. “Enjoy, Dave,” I tell him as I pass. He runs a hand through his dark hair and grins wryly.

Dave Sterling is a good doctor. He’ll know what to say to placate our common cold victim and stop her from coming back to waste our time again. I smile to myself as I walk to the lunch room. He probably will even be able to talk her out of asking for antibiotics.

I eat my sandwich quietly, thinking about the train ride home that’s ahead of me later this morning. I’ve been using public transport for a couple of weeks, since I wrecked my car. The transit system in Brisbane is horrible, but at least the trains are a bit more reliable than buses. Still, I am regularly spooked by the assorted creepy guys on the train, especially at night. Once my shift finishes, it’s at least a mercifully short ride from the hospital to my place in the city.

As I am tying back my long hair in the mirror, Kelly enters the lunch room with a couple of styrofoam cups of coffee.

“You look like you could use one of these, Luce,” she says, setting the coffees down on a table. “The finest coffee money can buy… at this hour, anyway.”

I gratefully take the cup and have a sip. “I’m pretty sure I’ve had worse from that machine,” I tell her, enjoying the hot drink.

I have a few more minutes before I’m back on duty. I make the most of the time, lingering over my coffee and stretching my back while chatting with Kelly.

Heading back to the floor after my break, I decide I will go and see Dave if he has finished sending Anya home. As I come to the emergency room, I break into a jog.

The dividing curtain around exam room one is open, and I can see Dave is starting to intubate the patient, who is unconscious and pale.

“What happened?” I yell. “She was fine!”

“She’s not fine, she’s in respiratory arrest,” Dave grunts. “And I’m having trouble here, even with a small gauge trach tube.”

This isn’t right – Dave is easily better at intubating than I am. And then I realise.

“We need to do a tracheotomy!” I say to Dave and the young nurse who has appeared.

“No, I can get this,” says Dave, obviously annoyed.

“It’s not you,” I tell him shortly, grabbing a ten blade from the nurse. Dave
sensibly gets out of the way as I make a careful incision and insert the endotracheal tube. “It’s epiglottitis. Her throat is totally blocked.”

If the girl had been conscious, that would have hurt like a bastard. Now she is breathing close to normally again, through the tube.

“Good call,” says Dave, patting me on the shoulder. “I’ll get her admitted and start her on corticosteroids and amoxicillin.”

Kelly, back from her break, runs over with Anya’s chart. “Christ, Sterling, she doesn’t actually have bird flu, does she?”

---

The train home is almost empty at four in the morning. I walk briskly from the station to my building. It’s already getting hot outside and the sun isn’t even up yet. My hands are in my pockets, keys in the right and tiny hundred-decibel panic alarm in the left.

Once in my apartment I slouch into the living room, grab a breakfast drink from the fridge, and play back my answering machine messages.

Apparently, I have overdue DVDs again, and have sadly missed a call from a flustered-sounding telemarketer. The third message is from Josephine.

“Hey Lucy, it’s Jo. Mum and Dad are driving me freaking crazy. You know, again. Can I come and stay with you for a couple of days soon if you’re off work? Gotta go. Love you.”

Poor Jo, I think to myself, finishing my chocolate breakfast drink. It wasn’t too long ago that I lived with our parents, before leaving to go to university. That was back when they lived out in the sticks, and university was too far away for me to stay with them. Now at least they live near the city, so Jo isn’t as isolated as I was at her age. Still, Mum and Dad can be very difficult to live with.

I look at my watch: it’s still too early to call her back. I can probably get out of my shift this Sunday if Josie wants to come and spend the weekend with me.

I worry about my little sister. My parents aren’t monsters… but they aren’t terribly good at raising kids either. Although I managed to turn out okay, I think as I pour a glass of juice. I swallow my vitamin tablet and pop an antidepressant pill from its blister packaging, smiling ironically to myself.

But Jo’s a good kid. She finished school in November, with decent grades, and is waiting to find out which university she got into. She keeps herself out of trouble, and she does a better job than I did at coping with our parents.

I pick up my mobile phone and send Dave a text message to see if he can cover for me on Sunday.

---

Josephine is wearing jeans and a short-sleeved black button-down shirt, with a pair of red Doc Martens. She is curled up on my sofa, which is made up with pillows and my spare blanket, with a big cup of coffee in her hands.

“Dad found a box of No Doz in my bag and went completely mental,” she tells me. “Demanded to know where I got them. I told him the truth… from the supermarket!”

I laugh. “What, he thought it was a prescription drug?”

She shakes her head, dark curls bouncing. “I’m not completely sure what he thought. Anyway, he took them off me. I don’t know where the hell I can keep things that they won’t rummage through.”

“I have something for you that might be useful,” I say. “Hang on.”

I go to my room and bring back a small cardboard box, handing it to Jo. “Check this out,” I smile.

She opens the box and looks inside. “A dictionary?”

“Open it,” I say to her.

She takes out the book and opens the front cover, revealing the locked panel underneath. I toss her the keys.

“Just keep it on your bookshelf and hide the keys somewhere else,” I suggest. “It’s not quite the end of all your problems, but it might help with a few things.”

“Oh, this is so cool,” she says, opening and closing the hidden compartment. “Thanks, Lucy!”

“No problemo, little sister,” I tell her. I smile and put the kettle on for another coffee.

I have my own fake dictionary on a shelf in my bedroom, between my Scrabble dictionary and a photo album. It used to occasionally conceal small quantities of pot, but these days I wouldn’t even know where to buy any. At the moment I think I have a couple of pieces of jewellery in it instead.

“You were so lucky that you got to move out for uni,” she muses. “All the campuses in Brisbane are close enough for me to commute now.”

I recall Jo’s plan to apply for university courses that were only offered in other states. Not a bad idea, but the few courses not available here didn’t hold much interest for her.

“Well,” I say slowly, “You are old enough to just move out if you want to. I was your age when I moved to uni. You could always find yourself somewhere to live.”

She scoffs. “Mum and Dad would kill me. When I was talking about going to uni in Melbourne, Mum was furious that I would consider leaving after they moved closer to the city for me to go to university.”

“I know,” I tell her. “But they do know you’ll eventually move out on your own?”

“I guess so,” she says, draining her coffee. “They just think it should be after I finish uni. Can you talk to them again?”

“I can try,” I reply, furrowing my brow a bit. “You know how much they listen to me.”

“I could afford a little apartment in West End,” says Jo, after a pause. “If I end up going to uni at St Lucia, I mean. Between my student payments and working at the restaurant, I could afford the rent, and it would be just across the river.”

I give her a little smile. “So you have thought about it. You know you could stay with me if I had another room, but I couldn’t let you just live on my sofa.”

“Yeah,” she says, “I appreciate it. Even if you did, though, I think I’d prefer my own space. Anyway, it’s not going to happen. I just wish I could keep Mum and Dad off my back a bit.”

“I’ll talk to them again,” I promise.

---

I make a quick call while Josie is in the shower, to let Mum know she got here all right.

“I gave Josephine twenty dollars to spend while she’s there,” says Mum. “And it’s not for alcohol.”

“Okay, thanks Mum.” I hesitate for a moment. “You know, even though I had to move out for uni when I was her age, I really think it helped me to develop personally and learn some responsibility -”

“Not this again,” she snaps down the phone. “Jo couldn’t look after herself, Lucinda. She doesn’t eat properly; look at her weight.”

Through clenched teeth I say, “Jo is a normal and healthy weight for her age and height. She is not overweight.”

Mum clucks her tongue. “How would you know?”

I groan inwardly. “I’m a doctor, Mum, that’s how I know. Anyway, I have to go and finish making dinner. Love you.”

Dinner is a big pot of homemade spinach tortellini. Well, not strictly homemade, but reheated at home after purchase, which I figure almost counts.

Jo emerges from the bathroom, wearing red flannelette pajamas and barefoot, hair dripping a little. “Hey, big sister,” she smiles, grabbing a bowl. “Do you have some low fat cheese for this?”

I open the fridge and pass her the cheese. She doesn’t need to lose any weight, really.

“Did I ever tell you about the time Mum made me stop taking the contraceptive pill?” I ask her.

Jo raises her eyebrows. “No, why’d she do that?”

“It was when I was in year twelve. She stopped paying for my prescriptions, and she said I could go back on the pill when I decided to start dating boys again.”

Josephine drops her fork and laughs uproariously. “You’re shitting me!”

“I shit you not,” I tell her, deadpan. “That was when I was seeing Lisa, and that was Mum’s brilliant solution to my little phase.”

“And it really worked, too,” she smirks sarcastically.

“It actually wreaked a lot of havoc with my hormones,” I add. “I’m lucky I didn’t get knocked up that week.”

She winces and shakes her head. “Ack, too much information!”

We eat our tortellini, talking and joking. Later, we sit on the balcony, drinking what’s left of a bottle of chardonnay and watching the lights of the city until it’s time for bed.