Chapter 15

The hour of sleep I manage to grab isn’t much, but it should be enough to sustain me for the rest of the morning until my next break. The alarm on my watch wakes me at six and I unenthusiastically get up and move from the on-call room to the break room for a quick coffee before I get back to work.

My first patient has a severe headache that came on suddenly this morning. She’s thirty, a non-smoker, and assures me she hasn’t been drinking alcohol this weekend.

“Have you ever had this kind of pain before?” I ask her, going through the usual questions. She opens her mouth to answer, then claps a hand to her mouth with an unmistakable look of dismay. I leap up to grab her an emesis bag from the supply drawers. She manages to get it in front of her face just in time.

I add vomiting to my notes and wait for her to finish before I resume our twenty questions. Unfortunately, a headache and vomiting can indicate any number of conditions, ranging from very serious to completely banal. I’ve had enough excitement for a while; I really hope this patient has something boring.

“I don’t think I’ve ever had this bad a headache,” she says. “And I’ve never puked from pain before.” She puts a hand gently to her damp forehead as though to rub away the pain.

I ask her to rate the pain out of ten and she tells me it’s at least a nine. She’s taken aspirin, ibuprofen, and finally some leftover prescription pain killers before coming to the hospital, but the headache hasn’t changed. I frown a bit at that and have to tell her we can’t administer any more pain medication for a couple of hours. She looks like she’s about to burst into tears. I scrutinise her face and am pretty sure she’s not drug-seeking. If she were, she’d hardly be the first, and I pride myself on almost always being able to pick out the addicts.

I set down the patient chart and hold out my index fingers to her. “Squeeze my fingers,” I ask her. She does so, looking confused. Then I have her lie back on the exam room bed and lift her feet against my hands.

“Oh, god, you think I’ve had a stroke!” she suddenly blurts, and then she does start crying.

“No, no,” I say quickly. “It’s just routine for us to double check these things when we see sudden headaches. I don’t think you’ve had a stroke.”

After an awkward attempt to comfort the embarrassed woman, I send her to the bathroom to wash her face and get me a urine sample. I’m careful to explain to her how to give the sample. She seems intelligent enough, but the one time you assume a patient knows something like that is always the time you get a sample jar full of toilet water. Worse, once I asked a patient for a stool sample, and he brought back an empty jar and an old ice cream tub that he’d just taken a crap in.

While the patient is in the bathroom I get the needle and tubes ready to draw a blood sample. She doesn’t have any obvious worrying symptoms, so I’m inclined to run a full count just in case and otherwise treat for migraine.

After a minute she returns, trying to sort of palm the plastic bag with her urine sample so as not to flash it around. That kind of modesty usually amuses me, but instead I’m horrified by the look of the sample as she hands it over. Instead of a normal pale yellow, her pee is a really dark amber colour, and there’s not much of it.

“How much water are you drinking?” I ask her.

“Not as much as I should,” she admits. “A couple of glasses a day.”

I sigh. “Well, this is almost certainly what’s wrong,” I say, gesturing with the sample. “I don’t need the lab to tell me you’re badly dehydrated. I’ll take some blood so we can check your electrolytes, and I want you to stay here a few hours while we get some fluids into you.”

Like most doctors, I’m fairly awful at cannulating veins, so I ask Kelly to start an IV for me. She draws me the vials of blood I need for pathology and hangs a bag of saline while I fetch an anti-emetic wafer for the patient to stop the vomiting.

It’s a fairly slow Sunday morning, so I decide to keep her in emergency for now, rather than trying to find a ward bed. Dave and I can check on her periodically while she’s being treated, and as long as she gets better, we’ll let her go in a few hours.

“Hang in there for another hour,” I tell the patient. “Then if you still need it we can give you some more pain relief.” It still hasn’t been long enough to risk giving her more meds on top of what she took at home. I get her a cup of water and ask her to sip it, not wanting to provoke any more vomiting.

Kelly joins me for another quick coffee break later in the morning. We stand outside so she can smoke. I drink an iced coffee from the cafeteria, and follow it with a bottle of spring water, having realised that my own usual habits aren’t optimal for good hydration.

“Sorry to hear about your neuro patient,” says Kelly. “Awesome catch, though.”

I nod, absently raising a hand to wave the topic away. “Did you find yourself a car?” I ask.

“Maybe,” she says. “I don’t have much savings so I’ll have to get a loan if I want to buy it. I guess I need to so I don’t spend the other half of my life commuting, when I’m not here.”

“I hear that,” I say, draining my water and tossing the bottle in the bin. “If I didn’t live so close I couldn’t stand it. The jerks on the train and then the stupid heat between here and the station… it seriously blows.”

“When are you going to get a new car anyway?” she asks.

“Well, maybe I’ll just do without the expense,” I say. “Stick with public transport. Or get a bike. Save the environment, and all that stuff.”

Kelly looks thoughtful. “I wonder how long a bike ride it would be from here to your place,” she says.

I haven’t ridden a bicycle for so long, I have no idea of even what scale of time it would take. If I were to try walking the distance, I guess it would take a couple of hours, but I don’t know how fast I would cycle it. For that matter, I’m not even sure if I can cycle any more. I mean, I assume I can, but I don’t know if I could do it, psychologically. I suppose I don’t know just how broad my craziness about being on the road is yet.

Kelly finishes her second cigarette and we head back into the hospital. The air conditioning is like heaven after standing outside, even in the shade for only a few minutes.

I’m relieved as hell to see that my emergency patient’s blood tests come back close enough to normal. She’s been dehydrated but hasn’t done herself much damage.

“How are you feeling?” I ask her as her second litre of saline is almost finished. She has pillow crease marks on her cheek, so I guess she might have slept a little.

“Better,” she says. “The pain’s about a five now.”

I check my watch. “Do you still want a pain killer?”

“Yes, please,” she replies. I get her a couple of tablets and another cup of water.

“Can I go home soon?” she asks.

I smile, genuinely happy to give someone some good news. “Yes, you can.”

Chapter 14

The long shift is, at the best of times, exactly what it sounds like. After arriving at work on Saturday evening, I won’t leave until Monday morning. I suppose I should consider myself lucky that the hospital started phasing out these marathon shifts a couple of years ago, so I normally only do one a fortnight. The previous generation of junior doctors used to work 80-hour weeks every week, and at a lot of other hospitals they still do. There’s no other profession in the world that would stand for that kind of routine abuse.

After speaking with Chris, tonight goes more excruciatingly slowly than usual. I feel terrible to have had to deliver such awful news to anyone, especially a case I was so keen to solve – a patient I had gotten myself so set on curing. Normally I’d give him a pamphlet or something with some patient information and support group details, but FFI is so rare that there’s no such resources available. Instead I did some internet searching and printed him off a couple of pages in fairly plain language, so he and his family at least have something to refer to. The hospital runs a general support group for terminal conditions, and I’ve given Chris one of their cards as well.

I’m feeling so down that I volunteer to supervise the pair of medical students who are doing sutures tonight. Normally I’d try to avoid such a lame job, but I don’t much want to interact with patients at the moment. This way I just have to watch the students and take notes to appraise their work. I make myself a cup of hot coffee from the machine in the break room and settle down with my clipboards behind the corner desk in the suture room.

I think I’ve met the first student before. She looks familiar but I don’t remember her name – she tells me it’s Maya. I check her student ID and note down her details on one one of my supervisor forms. She seems happy enough to be here on a weekend, but then I guess you have to be happy about that sort of thing to get through medical training.

The second student turns up a few minutes later and all I can do is laugh. He’s a tall young guy wearing a nice, fairly expensive-looking pair of wire-framed glasses. The effect is slightly displaced by the fading blue dye that makes his short blonde hair look almost grey. We’ve definitely already met.

“Hi, Dr… Klein,” he says, glancing at my badge. “I’m Quinn.” He unclips his own ID from his coat and hands it to me to check. Unsurprisingly, his hair is not blue in the photo.

“I bet the senior doctors have been hassling you about that hair, Quinn,” I smirk.

“Yeah,” he says apologetically. “I wash it and wash it but it won’t come out properly.”

“You bleached it first?”

He nods.

“Go to a hairdresser, if you can spend about a hundred dollars,” I advise him. “Otherwise you can try dying over it yourself with a darker colour from the supermarket, or just shave it off and start over.”

“Thanks,” he says with a little smile, taking back his student card as I finish copying his details.

I notice Maya has been listening to us, and feel my cheeks get a bit warm. “I used to sometimes dye mine pink or purple when I was an undergrad,” I explain to them both. “But patients are unhappy enough about being seen by a student doctor, it’s best not to make it worse by showing up with punk hair.”

Quinn takes a seat behind the other suture table in the little room and starts looking over a couple of laminated reference cards taken from his shirt pocket. I smile a bit to myself, remembering our encounter at the club, and I wonder if I might have seen him around the hospital before he dyed his hair.

It’s a fairly normal Saturday night after that. We get the standard range of patients coming through the suture room, and both of the students do a decent job. The only one I step in for is a woman with a small facial laceration who makes a lot of noise about not wanting a scar.

“Why can’t I see a senior doctor?” she demands as I stitch her cheek. Over the patient’s shoulder I see Quinn and Maya exchange a quick roll of eyes.

“I’m the senior medical resident on duty, ma’am,” I tell her, feeling a bit facetious as I really don’t mean her that much respect. I finish the last of the two stitches and cut the thread. “There was a lot of blood, but it’s really only a small cut,” I add. “I’d be surprised if you end up with a visible mark once it’s healed.”

She makes a few more snide, hysterical remarks about her precious face. I imagine she’ll probably be bothering a plastic surgeon about the little cut before it’s even healed. Fine, I think, then she’ll be the surgeon’s problem.

By the time I succeed in moving this patient along, the intern scheduled to cover sutures for the rest of the night has arrived. The two students gather up their things; I assume they get to go home now after working to midnight. I collect my papers and head to the break room to finish filling in my assessments over some dinner.

I grab a can of diet cola and one of my cheese sandwiches from the fridge, then sit down with my clipboard to do the last of the paperwork while I eat. As I start eating, Quinn enters the break room. He’s changed out of his lab coat and is now carrying a backpack on his shoulders.

“On your way home?” I ask as he takes a seat opposite me at the table.

He nods and looks a bit awkward. “About the other week-”

I cut him off. “What happened the other week? Because I don’t remember meeting you before today.”

He digests this fairly quickly as I level a pointed look at him. The prospect of a perceived conflict of interest has crossed my mind, and I’m sure his too. I’ll have to try to avoid working with him again.

“Thanks for your advice tonight about getting rid of my hair dye from the other week,” says Quinn.

I smile. “No problem,” I say. Nice save.

He leaves me to finish my paperwork. I chew my sandwich thoughtfully as I scrawl comments for each student on their forms.

The hours after midnight are always the longest. Once the sun comes up it always feels like a new day – even though it really isn’t – and tricks my body into putting out a bit more energy for a few more hours. Until then, though, it’s an uphill battle to stay alert.

None of the patients coming through emergency are particularly interesting tonight. I’m especially unimpressed by a guy a bit older than me who drunkenly assures us the stinking vomit on the front of his shirt isn’t his… I dread to think.

Around five o’clock, with the first morning sun beginning to stream into the hospital, Dave arrives to take over from the night shift registrar.

“Why don’t you take a break, Luce,” he says, looking over the staff roster. “See you again at six.”

I nod thanks and head straight to the on-call room. I don’t even remember getting onto a bed before I fall asleep.

Chapter 13

I wake up to mid-morning sun shining on my face through the blinds. I startle for a moment, thinking I’m obscenely late for work, until I remember I’m on the evening shift today and don’t need to leave until this afternoon.

I realise I’ve slept naked and last night comes flooding back to me. Waking up a bit more, I notice I’m alone in my bed. I glance around the room but don’t see Heidi. When I manage to get up I look around the small apartment and confirm she’s gone. For a second I feel mildly insulted, but then again, it was just a casual date. I couldn’t really expect her to stick around for breakfast, and for all I know she might be at work this morning.

I pad barefoot into the bathroom and put on my light summer robe, then walk back into the living room to turn on the air conditioning. I’m starving; there’s no cereal left in the kitchen, but I find a container of instant pancake mix in the cupboard. I check that it’s not expired, then fill the container with water and shake it while I get out the frying pan.

It’s been so long since I’ve cooked anything without using the microwave that I’d forgotten how quickly the stove heats up the whole kitchen. I take my robe back off and turn the air conditioning up higher, wiping sweat from my forehead so it doesn’t drip into my breakfast.

I’d also forgotten how long it takes to make pancakes. It takes about half an hour before I’m done, with a big pile of mostly-unburnt pancakes on a plate, and having eaten two during the cooking process. I look in the fridge and see I’m also out of maple syrup. I sprinkle them with sugar and lemon juice instead and park myself on the sofa. I balance the plate on my bare thighs and turn on the television while I eat.

I’m not too surprised to see that Saturday morning television is pretty awful. I settle for music videos. When I finish eating I put my plate in the dishwasher and let the music keep playing in the background while I settle back onto the sofa with a couple of textbooks. I haven’t been studying as much as I should lately, so I figure this is a good time to catch up on my reading.

The alarm clock in my bedroom goes off at four in the afternoon, about an hour before I need to leave for work. I groan as I realise I only got through a few pages of my book before falling asleep on the sofa. Oh well, I must have needed the rest, I think. I get up and turn off the television and the alarm clock, then take a quick shower and throw some clothes on before leaving for the train.

I arrive at work with a little time to spare. I head down to the cafeteria and buy an energy drink, and run into Dave on my way out.

“Hey, Klein,” he says.

“Hi, Dave,” I reply. “How’s it going?”

He shrugs. “Not bad. You spoken to Tran yet?”

“No, I don’t start for another few minutes,” I say, opening my can and taking a drink. My eyes widen as I make the connection. “You mean about my neuro patient?” I add.

“Yeah,” nods Dave.

“Oh, god,” I mutter with a frown. “I guess I’d better go up to pathology now.”

“Okay,” says Dave, apparently missing how upset I am, “Do you want to catch up properly some time this week? When are you off work?”

“Um, okay,” I say. “I’m on the long weekend shift now, but then I have… uh, Tuesday off. Want to come over for a beer?”

“Cool,” says Dave. “I’m still living at Spring Hill, so I can just walk over. Let me know when.”

“I’ll text you,” I promise, draining the last of my energy drink and dropping it in a bin on my way to the elevator.

Pathology does have the test results for me. There’s a sticky note attached to the report asking me to see Tran before I speak to the patient, so his office is my next stop.

“Evening, Dr Klein,” he says when I enter.

“Hi, Dr Tran,” I reply, gesturing with the report. “You’ve read this?”

“Yes, well done,” he says. “I would never have thought to look for FFI. What made you think of it?”

I feel myself blush a little bit, and make an effort not to shuffle my feet like I sometimes do when I’m embarrassed. “Just luck, really,” I say. “I came across it when I was reviewing some neurology stuff, and I realised later that could be it.”

Tran nods. “You know the prognosis, then?”

“Yeah, I do,” I say, glancing away from him.

“I’d like to be there when you speak to the patient, if you don’t mind, Lucy,” he says.

“Of course,” I say. It might actually be very good to have a specialist to back me up for this. Dr Tran probably knows a lot more about Chris’s condition than I do.

We enter Chris’s room on the ward. He looks so tired, with deep shadows around his eyes, and his bed sheets are visibly damp with sweat. I clip the lab report into his chart and take a seat in one of the chairs next to the bed. Tran remains standing.

Chris eyes us a bit warily. “Last time two doctors came in here it was to tell me about the MS,” he says.

I nod. “Yeah, we’ve got some pretty major news for you again, Chris,” I say. I take a breath. “The good news, such as it is, is you don’t have MS. So we can stop the treatment now.”

“No more needles in the belly,” he says with a thin smile. He turns to look expectantly up at Tran.

“Dr Klein has discovered why you are really sick,” Tran says, and makes a small gesture for me to go ahead.

I exhale slowly. “We did a genetic test for a disease called Fatal Familial Insomnia,” I tell him.

Chris closes his eyes. “I don’t suppose it’s just a name,” he says hollowly.

“I’m sorry,” I say quietly. “The test was positive.”

“How long have I got?” asks Chris. His voice is steady but his eyes are shining with tears.

I don’t have an answer for that. I turn to Tran.

“Your symptoms have come on at a relatively young age and worsened quite rapidly,” says Tran, sitting down in the chair next to mine. “I would estimate at this point somewhere between six and twelve months.” He pauses. “It’s a very rare prion disease that runs in families. Your family will need to be tested as well.”

“How did I get a prion disease?” asks Chris. “Isn’t that like mad cow?”

Tran nods. “It’s a related disease, but you can’t just ‘catch’ FFI like mad cow disease,” he says. “It’s caused by a genetic mutation. It’s hereditary, so someone with the mutated gene has a fifty-fifty chance of passing it to their children.”

“Jesus,” Chris says quietly with a sniffle. “I’ve got to get my dad to have the test too.”

I feel myself beginning to get teary and struggle to hold it back. I don’t have much experience giving this kind of news to terminal patients. Stay professional, damn it.

Chris turns back to me. “What’s going to happen to me?” he asks.

“We can keep treating your symptoms to try and make you comfortable,” I say.

Tran clears his throat. “You will get worse over the next months,” he says. “As the disease damages your brain you’ll become more confused and even have hallucinations. As it progresses sleep will become more and more difficult, and you’ll probably stop being able to eat. Eventually the disease causes dementia. We’ll transfer you to a palliative care unit where they’ll be able to look after you and keep you as comfortable as possible.”

Chris closes his eyes again and a single tear spills down his cheek. “I think you’d better call my family,” he whispers.

Chapter 12

When I get back home there’s a message flashing on my answering machine. I’m a bit surprised when I play it to hear that it’s Heidi. Guessing it must be about my eye surgery, I call back the number she left.

“Oh, hi, Lucy!” says Heidi. “No, we’re still good to go with your surgery. Actually, I wondered if you might want to just… catch up. You know, socially.”

I feel myself blushing a little. “Um, okay,” I say. “When did you have in mind?”

“How about tonight?” she asks. “Are you free?”

“Yeah, it’s my day off,” I tell her. “Well, shall we meet at my building at, say, six?”

“It’s a date,” says Heidi. She sounds like she’s about to hang up.

“Wait, let me give you the address,” I say quickly.

“Oh, right,” she says. “Hold on while I grab a pen.”

I give her the address and we hang up. I check my watch: I’ve got a couple of hours before she arrives. I guess I’d better figure out what I’m going to wear.

I’m not sure where Heidi and I are going, since I didn’t think to mention it on the phone, so I’m not sure what I should dress for. Eventually I decide on one of my nicer pairs of jeans with ballet flats and a fairly plain silver fitted satin shirt. I tie my hair up in a loose twist, figuring this should be about the right point between formal and casual to cover most date-type activities.

It’s a few minutes before six when the intercom buzzes and I realise I have butterflies in my stomach. I pick up the handset and tell her I’ll be right down. I check my lip gloss one more time, grab my purse, and head out the door.

“You look gorgeous,” says Heidi when I meet her in front of the building. She puts an arm around my waist and draws me close to kiss me on the cheek.

“Thanks,” I mumble, not sure what else to say. “It’s, um, been kind of a while since I’ve really had a date. You look nice, too,” I add.

She does look nice. Heidi is wearing a low-cut top that shows a bit of cleavage, a knee-length plaid skirt and casual sneakers. Her short blonde hair is ironed straight with a little butterfly clip on one side. Actually, she looks amazing.

“I thought maybe dinner first,” she says. “How do you feel about Japanese food these days?”

“That sounds good,” I reply. I realise that I am a little hungry, as I haven’t eaten since grabbing a cupcake for breakfast.

We walk a few blocks to a little restaurant above a bank, near the mall. The Japanese hostess (no, the host, I think, don’t be sexist) shows us to a table. It’s low to the ground, and for a moment I think we’re going to have to kneel, until I notice the Western-style bench seats are recessed into the floor.

Heidi impresses me by thanking our host in Japanese. I’d forgotten she had a pretty decent command of the language.

The restaurant is fairly quiet tonight. There are people at two other tables, but they’re on the other side of the dining room. Our table feels relatively private, especially once we take our seats under the low table.

“There’s a lot of vegetarian stuff on the menu here,” she says. “You are still vege?” she adds, glancing up at me across the table. I nod and begin perusing my menu.

“I’ve been thinking about you since you came into the clinic last week,” she says. “I wasn’t sure for I while if I should call you, but then I figured, you did come to see me.”

“Well, I didn’t know you worked there,” I say, a bit awkwardly.

Heidi nods but doesn’t look like she really heard me. “Anyway, it’s so good to see you again,” she continues, smiling happily.

I return the smile, having never been able to resist that look from her.

When our host returns, Heidi asks for the sashimi plate and I order some tofu rolls and tempura vegetables.

“And a bottle of warm sake,” Heidi adds. “For two.”

I’ve never had sake, but I guess this seems like as good a time as any to try it. We continue chatting while we wait for our meals. The sake arrives first, in a small decorative bottle. Heidi pours us each a drink into the tiny cups and raises hers in a toasting gesture before delicately quaffing it.
I take a hesitant sip of mine and raise my eyebrows at the strong taste of the warm alcohol. Heidi smiles with obvious amusement and I drink the rest a bit quicker. Immediately I feel a pleasant warmth spread through my stomach.

“That’s not bad,” I remark, feeling a touch giddy already.

“I thought you’d like it,” she says.

When our food arrives she pours two more cups of sake. I feel one of her hands on my thigh under the table as she expertly uses her chopsticks with the other hand to pick up pieces of sashimi. I fumble a bit with my own chopsticks; I’ve never been great with them, and I’m badly out of practice.

I manage to eat most of my dinner without making too much of an ass of myself. Heidi’s hand on my leg is a bit distracting, and the sake has definitely gone to my head, but I’m able to keep myself fairly steady and manage not to spill anything.

When our plates have been taken away Heidi stands up and slides around to sit on the same side of the table as me. She leans in close to kiss me. I can taste the sharp sweetness of sake in her mouth, as well as her strawberry lip balm. The taste brings back memories; I guess she must still use the same lip balm as when we knew each other at university.

I lose myself a little in her sweet strawberry lips and the softness of her skin. My hand is on her knee as we kiss. Forgetting for a moment that we’re in a semi-public place, I move my hand higher on her thigh, under her skirt. She puts an arm around my waist and draws us closer, her breasts pressing against me through our clothes. My hand moves further beneath her skirt and I realise she’s not wearing any underwear.

I give a soft involuntary moan and kiss her again, harder. When we break away I feel myself blushing, and glance around to be sure I haven’t drawn any attention.

“I think I’d better go and pay the bill… so we can get out of here,” whispers Heidi in my ear.

After furiously making out in the elevator, we fall giggling into my apartment. I kick the front door shut behind me. Heidi’s arms are around my waist, her hands in the back pockets of my jeans.

We make it as far as the couch, where I drop down onto the seat and Heidi straddles me. I put one hand on her lower back to pull her in closer, and slip my other hand up under her shirt, cupping a breast through her bra.

She bends a little to kiss me. The feel of her lips, her tongue on mine, is electric. I squeeze her breast lightly and trace the outline of her nipple with my fingers.

Eventually she gently pulls back and moves down from the sofa, kneeling on the carpet in front of where I’m sitting. She starts undoing the button fly of my jeans.

“I haven’t shaved my legs,” I protest, mentally kicking myself even as I say it.

“I don’t care about that, you dullard,” she says with a smirk.

In a few moments my jeans and underpants are on the floor. I arch my back and close my eyes in pleasure as she slowly kisses her way up the inside of my thighs. I feel like I’m going to explode by the time she reaches the top. I push against her mouth and tighten my grip on the sofa cushions underneath me as I come.

I take a minute to recover before we move to the bedroom.

Chapter 11

I have a little trouble getting up in the morning when Kelly and Jules arrive. The buzzing of the intercom isn’t enough to wake me properly, and after a minute Kelly calls my mobile phone to tell me to get out of bed and let them in.

I feel a bit stupid in my pajamas with unruly bed hair as Kelly introduces me to Jules. He’s not bad looking, with dark blonde hair and a very slight British accent. He’s well dressed, seems articulate… not bad for a guy, all told. Nurse Kelly looks to have done all right for herself with this one.

I take out a plastic tray of supermarket cupcakes from the fridge and leave Kelly making coffee while I quickly get ready to go out. I’ve been sort of dreading car shopping all week, at least when I‘ve allowed myself to think about it. At this stage, much as I hate getting the train or bus to work, I can’t even imagine driving a car again. I guess I’ll go along today; I just hope nobody tries to talk me into test driving anything.

“Lucy’s the one I told you about who needs a gun,” says Kelly once we’re on the road.

I laugh. “Oh, yeah,” I agree jokingly. “They make every household safer.”

Jules glances at me in the rear vision mirror and raises his eyebrows. “Well, I went to high school in Logan, but I’m not sure I know anyone these days who could get you one.”

“Watch the road,” I say tersely. “Sorry,” I immediately add, blushing.

“She had an accident recently,” explains Kelly, and I feel my face get hotter. Jules just nods and continues driving in silence. I hope I haven’t offended him.

Kelly looks at a few cars but doesn’t seem really taken with any of them. I’m quietly relieved that she’s too focused on finding herself a new vehicle to hassle me about doing the same.

After we walk around a couple of car yards, she turns to me and says, “You’ve got a face like a cat’s ass.”

I snicker despite myself.

“Child,” she says. “Seriously, what’s up? You look worried.”

“I’m just thinking about that neuro patient,” I tell her.

“Oh, right,” says Kelly. “How is-a Mr Rossi?” she asks with a faux-Italian flourish.

“Not-a so great,” I reply, frowning a bit.

Kelly starts to say something else, but I cut her off with a shout of realisation. “That could be it!” I say, heart thumping.

“What?” asks Kelly. Jules has stopped inspecting a nearby car and is also looking at me quizzically.

“His name is Italian… so he must be Italian, or his family is, anyway,” I say, realising I’m probably babbling. “Jules, would you mind giving me a lift into work, please? Now? It’s important.”

“Well, okay,” he says, looking at his watch. “I guess we can drop you off and then come back here to keep looking.”

“Fine, fine,” I say gratefully, “I can get myself home later. Thanks!”

“What is it?” asks Kelly as we get back into the car.

“Look, I’m probably wrong,” I reply. “I just thought of something we haven’t tested Chris for. It might be important.”

I pass Dave on my way into the hospital. He’s carrying a coffee mug and a paper sandwich bag from the cafeteria. He nods when he sees me and gives me a smile.

“Hey, Sterling,” I say, raising my hand in a half-hearted little wave as I bustle past. “I have to run – I’ll catch you later.”

I track down my mentor, Wendy Zhang, as fast as possible to tell her my theory.

“I don’t know,” she says, looking sceptical. “That’s rare as hell. I can hardly even remember learning about it, and God knows I’ve never actually seen it.”

“I know,” I say, flustered. “It’s… a zebra.”

“You’re goddamn right it is,” she says. “He’s more likely to have, I don’t know, the freaking plague.”

“It’ll just take a blood test to confirm,” I point out. “I’ll order it and draw the sample myself.”

Zhang gives me a hard look and finally shrugs. “It’s your day off,” she says. “Go ahead. But don’t even think about mentioning it to the patient unless you know for sure.”

I nod my thanks and head upstairs to order the blood work. Part of me is excited that I might be right, but I’m at least equally hopeful that I’m not.

Chris still looks like shit, but he’s more lucid today. He’s sitting quietly in bed, looking tired and drawn, and still visibly sweating, but conscious. He glances up when I come into the room.

“Hey,” he says.

I smile. “Hey, yourself,” I reply. “Feeling any better?”

He nods and rubs at his red eyes. “I think I might have dozed off a little overnight, so I feel sort of okay,” he says. He notices the kidney dish I’m carrying with a needle and blood sample tubes. “More tests?”

“Yeah,” I say. “Do you mind?”

He shrugs and holds out his left arm obligingly.

“Thanks,” I say with a thin smile. I swab the crook of his elbow with an alcohol wipe and slide the needle into a prominent vein. While I’m drawing the blood, I ask Chris about his family history again.

“I think I already told you my Mum died in an accident,” he says. “And the only person in the family who’s ever really been sick was my grandmother. She had Alzheimer’s before she died.”

“Which side was your grandmother on?” I ask.

“My mum’s mum,” he says. “The Sicilian side.”

I nod and make an effort to keep my mouth shut. “All done,” I say, dropping the two full tubes into the metal dish. I drop the used needle into the sharps bin on the wall.

“What’s this one for?” asks Chris.

“Just routine blood work,” I lie as I leave the room.

I run the blood up to pathology myself. The clinical geneticist, Professor Barlow, should be in today. I mark the request as urgent and hope the test results are in when I come back to work tomorrow night.

Chapter 10

Josie furrows her brow as she watches the locksmith install my new deadbolt. “Tell me again who you think has been coming in here?” she asks me.

“Nobody, exactly,” I reply with a touch of embarrassment. “It’s just in case. And I never changed the locks after I moved in.”

“You mean, after you moved in two years ago,” she says. “And the new extra lock?”

“I’m just worried,” I tell her. “It’s not that I really think I’m going to get robbed or anything… I’ll just feel safer with new locks.”

Josie shrugs and ducks back into the kitchen, returning with a couple of beers. “Relax,” she says, handing me one. I do no such thing, but I accept the bottle and take a couple of swigs while I write the locksmith’s cheque.

After he leaves, we both sit down in front of the TV with our beers and a couple of soy burgers. Jo has brought over her copy of The Meaning of Life, and slides the disk into the DVD player before she settles down. “I can’t believe you’ve never watched this,” she remarks.

About half an hour into the movie, my phone rings. “That’s probably her,” says Josie in an excited stage whisper.

I pause the movie to answer the call. It is indeed her: Jo’s prospective new landlord. Or landlady, I suppose, although that feels kind of sexist, like ‘investor-ess’ or something.

“That’s correct, Josephine lives at this address,” I tell the landperson. It’s not exactly a lie; sometimes Josie lives here, for a few days at a time, anyway.

I give my “tenant” a fairly glowing report, while being perhaps a bit vague a couple of times to avoid outright untruths. I get the important points across: she’s clean and tidy, responsible, no pets, and has never missed a rent payment. Jo snickers quietly behind her hand at the last one. Of course, she’s never owed rent to me, so she couldn’t be late in paying it.

“Thanks, big sister!” she says after I’ve hung up. She leans over and gives me a big hug, and I smile.

“Any time,” I reply, starting the movie again.

I find it a little difficult to concentrate at work in the morning. I keep getting distracted and worrying about my mental state and/or personal safety. Either someone is watching me and breaking into my apartment, or I’m going nuts. I’m not sure which would be worse.

I also find myself investing a lot of effort in pushing images of my stupid father out of my head.

“I wish I could carry pepper spray or something,” I say to Kelly at lunch in the cafeteria.

She takes a big bite of her sandwich and looks thoughtful. “No,” she eventually says, around her mouthful of food, “I don’t even know where you’d get it.”

“This stupid country,” I say, only about half joking. “Can’t even carry around a spray can of caustic chemicals to protect myself.” I sigh and drain my second cup of coffee.

“Paintball gun, then?” Kelly suggests with a grin, making me laugh.

“Anyway, are we still good for car shopping tomorrow?”

“I guess,” I reply. “Jules can still pick us up?”

“Yeah,” she says, “We’ll come by your place around eleven.”

She continues eating her sandwich. I poke at mine a bit. They looked pretty good when we were buying lunch, but I don’t feel very much like eating anymore. I get up for another coffee.

“Jesus, Luce,” says Kelly, giving me a sideways look as I return to the table with a large cup. “You’re never going to sleep again, huh?”

I snerk a bit at that and down about half of my latte. Her words have reminded me of my insomniac patient upstairs in neurology.

Towards the end of my shift I head up to check on Chris. He looks awful, haggard and glassy-eyed, his forehead beaded with sweat. “How are you doing?” I ask softly.

He turns to face me but his eyes don’t focus. I notice a slight nystagmus, his eyes flicking rapidly left and right. He makes a vague little sound and slowly lets his head drop forward. He seems barely conscious.

I take a look at his chart. He’s still having trouble with muscle cramps and spasms, and the nurses have noted his affect becoming more flat over the last couple of days. I make a note about the nystagmus in case nobody else has spotted it already. The interferon doesn’t seem to be helping Chris, or at least not yet.

I decide that tonight I will drag out my old neurology texts and do some more reading on MS. There must be something else we could be doing for him.

I get home before midnight and crack the books, as I’d planned. I would put on a pot of coffee if I owned anything so fancy as a coffee pot, but in the absence of such an appliance I boil the kettle and make myself some instant coffee in an oversized mug, then settle down on the sofa with my books.

I’m not particularly heartened by what I read. Apart from using beta interferons to try and slow the disease, all we can really do for Chris is treat the symptoms as they occur. He’s already receiving physiotherapy for his legs to keep his muscle strength up. He could probably benefit from an antidepressant too, I think, judging by how miserable he seemed today. Not that I can blame him for being down.

I think back to the conversation I had with one of the ward nurses about Chris’s condition this evening. He told me Chris’s temperature has been slightly elevated for a couple of days, which led me to think it could be an infection after all, until he showed me the normal results from the latest blood test. No increased white cell count, meaning almost certainly no infection, so we’re back to MS as the most likely culprit. It had been nice to at least briefly think there might be an easier diagnosis.

I flick idly through the neurology text as I sip my coffee. No other condition stands out as particularly likely. I find myself reading about interesting but irrelevant conditions, and when I eventually check my watch I’m surprised to see it’s four in the morning.

With a grimace, I set the textbook aside on the coffee table and get up. I take a small bottle from the bathroom cabinet and swallow half a pill with the rest of my coffee. Then I put the mug in the dishwasher and go to bed.

Chapter 9

I’m woken mid-morning by a shrill alarm. I force my eyes open and struggle to figure out what’s going on for a moment, before I realise it’s my mobile phone ringing. I fumble for it on my bedside table and thumb the button to answer the call.

“Hello?” I say groggily.

Silence.

“Hello?” I take the phone off my ear and check the display to be sure I haven’t accidentally muted the call. No, it’s fine.

“Hello?” I try one more time, with growing impatience. I notice the line isn’t totally silent: I can just barely hear gentle breathing. I hang up with a frown. “Idiot,” I mutter. The call was from an unknown number, meaning probably some jackass at a public phone.

My phone rings again almost immediately.

“Get fucked, I’m trying to sleep,” I snarl down the line.

“Shit, sorry,” says a familiar voice. “I forgot you were on the graveyard shift.”

I roll my eyes. “Oh, for God’s sake, Kelly,” I say wearily. “Was that you a minute ago?”

“I don’t think so,” she replies. “I got through as soon as I dialled. I’ll let you go back to sleep. Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” I say, rubbing my eyes and getting out of bed. “I’m going to get up and have some breakfast now anyway. What’s up?”

“Found my car,” she says, and I can almost hear her pouting. “Or, the police found it, actually.”

“Council didn’t take it, then?” I ask, not bothering to conceal my smirk but trying to keep it out of my voice. I start looking for a clean cereal bowl in the kitchen.

“Someone stole it. It was on fire in a parking lot out at Ipswich.”

I raise my eyebrows at that. “Really? Wow. But you’re insured, right?”

Kelly snorts, sending a sharp burst of static down the line and making me wince. “Not bloody likely,” she says. “It was so old it wasn’t worth it anymore. So I guess you’re going to have company next time you go out looking for a new used car.”

“Um, I’m probably not going to replace my car right away, after all,” I tell her. I’m not really inclined to explain right now.

“Well, Jules is taking me out on Friday to check out some dealers,” she says. “Wanna come? We can go out for lunch or something afterward.”

“Yeah, okay,” I say. “I’m off work this Friday.”

“Cool,” she replies. “I’ll let you go. I’m about to head in for the afternoon shift in a bit, so I’ll catch you tonight.”

“Okay,” I say, hanging up. Having located a bowl, I pour myself some bran cereal and sit down in front of the TV to eat. I glance at the colourful irises on my coffee table and smile.

My phone rings again, showing “unknown number” on the display. I turn it off and continue eating my cereal.

I don’t manage to get back to sleep again until early in the afternoon, so I only get in a few hours before I have to get up again for work. “Night shift can eat a dick,” I mutter to myself as I sleepily get dressed.

As I’m leaving, I turn the deadlock bolt on the front door but it fails to open. I turn the door handle harder and push, then try the deadlock again. I realise it was unlocked in the first place and I locked it just now. Shit, did I leave the door unbolted all day? All night while I was at work? Thank God it’s a secure building. That isn’t like me. I make sure to lock and double check the door on my way out.

I visit Chris again when I get to work. He’s still in the psychiatric ward, which is probably not ideal, but at least he’s in a private room. He looks pretty awful, gaunt with dark shadows under his eyes.

“How are you feeling?” I ask him.

“Okay,” he says. “I’m having injections in the belly now.”

“I know,” I say apologetically. “Hopefully the Betaferon will start controlling your symptoms. It’s hard to test for MS, especially the relapsing-remitting form we think you might have, but if that’s what it is we should see some improvement soon.”

“It sucks, but it’s not as bad as that lumbar needle I had when you were doing all the tests before. And I guess at least if it turns out I have MS, the injections will cure it,” says Chris.

“Not cure it, exactly,” I correct him, hating myself for having to say it. “It won’t actually go away, but we can control it.”

Chris sighs.

“How’s your appetite? Are you eating all right?” I ask him. It’s probably a rather transparent attempt to change the subject.

He shrugs. “Yeah, but, you know… hospital food,” he says with a wry smile.

“What about your sleep?” I ask.

“I don’t know,” he says. “I guess I’ve been dozing a little sometimes, but I’m not getting much sleep. Nobody ever died of insomnia, though, right?”

I chuckle a bit at that. “You’ll be fine,” I tell him with slightly more conviction than I feel. I notice there’s a big gift-wrapped potted plant on the table across the room, and a couple of get-well cards on the shelf above. “Had some visitors?” I ask.

“Yeah,” he says. “My dad and my stepsister came by yesterday. And one of the cards is from the guys at work.”

“Nice,” I say. “You take it easy, and I’ll come by again before I leave in the morning.”

I check my pager, which has begun vibrating on my hip, and see to my dismay that we’re down two interns tonight, so I’m supposed to be in the suture room until my break.

“Last year of residency,” I repeat to myself like a mantra as I head back downstairs to emergency.

Doing sutures makes it a longer night than I would otherwise expect. People showing up in the middle of the night with lacerations are occasionally interesting cases, but mostly it’s an idiot parade. Among others, I see a teenager who fell over drunk and clipped a glass coffee table, a woman who slipped cutting vegetables and sliced fairly deeply into her thumb, and – possibly my favourite – a guy in his thirties who tried to open a beer bottle with his eye socket. The latter patient is lucky he only cut open his brow and didn’t actually damage his eye.

Midway through my shift, when one of the interns has taken over the suture room again, I buy myself a cup of very ordinary coffee from the machine in the break room. It’s not great, but the caffeine helps me get through the rest of the night.

In the morning I check in again on Chris. He’s doing about the same as before, although he seems a bit more animated, flipping through the channels on the TV in his room instead of just sitting in bed. I note that his second dose of interferon is due this morning. I hope he starts showing some improvement soon, since I feel pretty lame in the meantime telling him the painful shots in the belly are meant to help.

At the end of my shift I’m so tired I end up crashing in the on call room instead of leaving the hospital right away. I sleep until the early afternoon; then, feeling a bit better, I head to the train station to finally go home.

I’m walking home through the mall on Queen Street, squinting in the bright sunlight, when I spot someone I know. He’s sitting at an al fresco table by one of the outdoor restaurants, sipping coffee. I go over to say hi.

“Hey, Dad,” I say.

My father turns in his seat to face me. He looks just slightly startled. “Hi, kiddo,” he says, seeming to recover a bit. “Not at work today?”

“On my way home. I still work shifts,” I remind him.

He nods and turns to the woman sitting across the table from him, who I hadn’t really registered yet. She looks a bit older than me, and is wearing what looks like a fairly expensive suit. I guess she’s probably a colleague, maybe a boss.

“This is my daughter J- Lucy,” Dad says, barely avoiding calling me by my sister’s name. I suppress the urge to roll my eyes at him. “She’s a doctor,” he adds, sounding proud, which I kind of appreciate. It almost offsets his nearly forgetting my damn name.

“Nice to meet you,” says the woman, a bit curtly, as though it’s actually anything but nice.

I notice the half-finished piece of cake on the table between them is on a plate with two used forks, one of which has red lipstick smeared around the tines. I frown slightly; this is not without precedent.

“This is Stacey,” Dad tells me. “We work in the same office.”

“And share dessert on dates,” I add flatly, without thinking.

They both seem to raise their eyebrows a little at this. Stacey crosses her arms and says nothing, while my Dad opens his mouth as if to say something, but doesn’t.

I close my eyes and sigh. “Stay classy, Dad,” I tell him. Then I turn on my heel and keep walking.

Back at home, I’m halfway in the front door when I realise the deadbolt wasn’t locked again. My eyes widen – I’m completely sure I checked it when I left last night. Shit, has someone broken in?

I drop my bag just inside the door and make my hands into fists, dropping slightly into something like a fighting stance. I look around the living room and kitchen, checking inside the pantry and behind the sofa for an intruder. Heart racing, sweat running down my face, I check the bathroom and bedroom as well.

Nobody is in here. I look around again and realise nothing is missing or disturbed, either; it would seem I haven’t been robbed.

Part of me is still panicky at the thought that someone might have been in here. The more rational part wonders if working nights isn’t starting to get the better of me. Am I just paranoid? My gaze falls to the box of antidepressant pills on the kitchen bench; my God, am I starting to have delusions?

I lock the front door and push the coffee table up against it for good measure. I don’t care how crazy it looks – nobody else is here to see it. Rattled by the whole afternoon’s events, I make myself a big mug of hot milky tea and settle down on the sofa. I’m still a bit uneasy.

Running into my dad – on a date – was just bizarre. I guess I won’t mention the encounter to anyone else. Mum is already well aware of my father’s tendency toward such indiscretions, and Josie doesn’t need to be worrying about our parents right now, especially with uni starting soon.

We all know that he’s had affairs before. During the longest period when my parents were separated, he actually moved in with some girlfriend for a few months. It was so awkward that Josephine and I never visited him during that time. I still don’t know what changed to make him come back to Mum, but when he eventually came home again she took him back for some reason. She always took him back.

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.