Intensive Care: Escape to the Country (3 page)

Kate knew some tough decisions needed to be made, but first she needed to talk to someone who would offer her a voice of reason. And maybe some advice.

Kate dialed the number from memory.

“Hello. Elizabeth Kennedy speaking.”

“Hi Mum.”

“Oh Katie darling. Hello!” Instantly the formal tone was dropped and Kate pictured her mum settling onto one of the stools near the kitchen bench to chat. “It’s lovely to hear from you. What are you up to?” Without waiting for Kate’s reply, Elizabeth kept speaking. “Are you and Marcus still planning to come down and visit this weekend? I haven’t seen you in the longest time. You’re both always
so
busy. If Marcus
really
can’t take time off from work why don’t you just come on your own?”

“Mum!” Kate interrupted Elizabeth, knowing she had to get the words out. She swallowed the hard lump that had formed in her throat again and told herself she was not going to cry. “If it’s okay with you and Dad I’m going to come down tonight to stay for a few days. Would that be alright?”

“Of course you can. That would be lovely, but what about work?”

“I’m taking some time off.”

“What’s wrong, Kathryn? Are you sick?” Elizabeth’s tone expressed her alarm and Kate scowled at the use of her formal name, which her mum always used when she was worried.

“Oh Mum.” Kate couldn’t hold herself together any longer and the words rushed out like a broken dam. “I just found out Marcus is having an affair.”

“Oh Katie. No! Are you sure? Of course you can come home. You can stay as long as you need. Oh darling. Are you okay? Of course you’re not. I’m going to call Daddy right now and he can come up and get you.”

“No, Mum. It’s okay. Please don’t call Dad. He will only worry and I don’t want him driving up here now. He’ll only get stuck in rush hour traffic. I’m going to pack some stuff up then I’ll just drive down and be at your place late tonight. I’ll tell Dad then.”

“Darling, why don’t I catch the train up myself and I can help you pack a few things up and then we can drive back together?”

“Oh, could you?”

Kate knew her voice sounded like that of a child, but she also knew her mum was the perfect person to hold her and comfort her right now. At that moment she was grateful for the strong bond she had with her parents. Kate hung up, promising to meet her at the station in an hour’s time.

For a moment Kate sat on the edge of the kitchen chair, not knowing what else to do. Out of habit she opened the lid of her laptop and absentmindedly sipped a glass of Diet Coke as she waited for it to power on. She desperately wanted to post a comment on Facebook, telling the world what a creep Marcus had turned out to be, but that would be pointless. Marcus despised all forms of social media and would never read her words. Her sarcasm would be wasted. Plus she would have to deal with everyone’s pity and suggestions for how to get revenge. With a wave of embarrassment, she wondered how many of their friends already knew of Marcus and Cindy’s affair. Kate was painfully aware that most of her “friends” were really just the wives and girlfriends of Marcus’s work colleagues. Closing the laptop, Kate removed the power lead from the socket in the wall and placed everything in a carry bag.

By the time she was ready to pick her mum up from the station she had come up with the first part of her plan. She was moving out, regardless of how much Marcus begged her to stay. She grabbed some cardboard boxes from the basement of the building, feeling energized at having made such a big decision on her own.

It was time to start packing.

Kate collected Elizabeth and as she turned the corner of their street she looked up just in time to see a silver Audi pulling out of the underground car park of their apartment building.
Crap!
Thankfully the car roared past and she needn’t have worried – Marcus was looking straight ahead.

When she stepped into their apartment, everything was as she had left it and she had a sense of déjà vu. Matilda was still meowing and Kate remembered she still hadn’t been fed. The only thing different was Marcus’s phone missing from the kitchen bench. In its place was a note. She rushed to pick it up and her eyes quickly scanned the familiar messy scrawl.

 Hope you had a good day at work. I’m working really late tonight so I won’t see you. Don’t wait up for me. Love you. M.

No mention of his phone and no indication from the wording of his note that anything was any different than usual.
Surely he would have been able to see that I had read his text message.
Her eyebrows pulled together in confusion.

How has it come to this
?
A sob caught in her throat.
I loved him!

Before they set about the task of packing, Elizabeth went into the little galley-style kitchen to boil the kettle. Kate sat at the table and watched her mum bustling around. Elizabeth was slim like Kate and it was obvious where Kate got her looks from. Her mother’s hair was a dark shade of blonde and styled in a short bob that framed her oval-shaped face. The silver hairs were always carefully concealed. She was dressed as beautifully as always and without looking, Kate knew she would be wearing her matching gold fob necklace and bracelet set.

Although Kate thought about offering to help, she simply didn’t have the energy to move. She was emotionally wrecked. As the tears kept threatening to fall, she tried to consciously force herself to unclench her jaw. She had to stop replaying the discovery of Marcus’s affair in her mind or she was going to totally lose it. She knew her face would be blotchy and red from crying but at that moment she simply didn’t care.

Elizabeth returned with two steaming mugs of tea and placed them on the table. She then pulled a small plastic Tupperware container from her handbag. Inside were Elizabeth’s homemade Anzac biscuits, Kate’s favorites from her childhood. She hadn’t eaten in hours and her mouth watered as the aroma hit her. “Now darling, drink this.” Elizabeth pushed the mug toward Kate and sat down, crossing one leg elegantly over the other.

“Thanks.” Kate wrapped her hands around it, trying to draw strength from its warmth. She took a tentative sip and swallowed the hot, sweet liquid. Her mum always added sugar to her tea and even though it wasn’t how Kate usually drank it, she wasn’t going to complain. There was something comforting about drinking a cup of sweet tea in the midst of a crisis. And in Kate’s eyes, today constituted a full-blown crisis. With each sip, Kate felt herself beginning to unwind.

She gave Elizabeth a glassy stare as she tried to focus on what her mum was saying.

“Well darling, at least you still have your job. And of course you can stay with us for as long as you need, even though I know the commute won’t be as easy.”

“It’s just so humiliating.”

“What? Marcus having an affair or you having to move back home?”

“Both.”

Kate rubbed her eyes and laid her head on her hands. If she didn’t move soon she would fall asleep right where she was sitting.

“Are you going to call him?” Elizabeth’s question snapped her awake again and she sat bolt upright.

“Absolutely not!” Kate pounded her fist on the table. “I never want to lay eyes on him again after what he’s done, let alone speak to him. There’s no point in even having a conversation with him – all he’ll do is deny it and argue like the lawyer he is. It won’t change the fact that he cheated on me!”

“You have to talk to him, Kate. Maybe there’s another side to the story you haven’t considered. Just because Cindy stayed over doesn’t mean they slept together.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Mum. It’s clear as the nose on my face. He slept with Cindy and he’s obviously going to break up with me. There’s no other possible way of reading the text. And anyway, I’m not going to listen to him grovel and say sorry. Or worse, admit it and leave anyway. I can’t handle any more pain than he’s already put me through.”

Kate knew she was being irrational, but there was no way she could admit to her mum the real reason for the pain Marcus had caused. The text message was just the final nail in the coffin. He had let her down twice now, and she wasn’t prepared to give him another chance.

Elizabeth put her arm over Kate’s shoulder. “Well darling, I have absolute faith in you and I know that all things will eventually work out for the best. It probably doesn’t feel like it at the moment, but these things often happen for a reason.”

“How many more clichés can you possibly fit into one sentence, Mum?”

Elizabeth looked hurt and Kate quickly hugged her mum.

“I’m sorry, Mum. It’s just I feel like I’ve lost everything I’ve always known and I don’t know what to do. I’m freaking out a little.”

“I wish I knew what else to say, darling, I really do. And I wish you’d call him.”

“The answer is no.”

Elizabeth stood up and took the mugs over to the sink.

“Well then, we’d better start packing.”

For the next hour mother and daughter worked side by side, folding clothes and packing them into suitcases and cardboard boxes. By the time they finished it was completely dark outside.

As Elizabeth prepared toasted sandwiches for them to eat before making the drive back down the highway to Kate’s childhood home, Kate made multiple trips down to her car. Most of the belongings in their apartment were things she and Marcus had purchased together, but for all Kate cared, he could keep the lot of them. The only things she took were her clothes and some special gifts she had received for her thirtieth birthday. It didn’t take long to pack, and she didn’t have much, but her Mini Cooper was crammed full by the time she had loaded the last bag. Poor Matilda was stuffed in her carry basket on the floor of the passenger seat and was meowing pitifully.

Before she left, Kate took one last long look around the stark lounge room. The thickness in her throat returned and she knew she was about to cry again, yet at the same time it occurred to her how detached she already felt. The uncomfortable black leather couch sat in the center of the living room, devoid of the bright cushions she had squashed into the final box before taping it closed. Although the apartment had always looked sparse and minimalistic, the room already seemed different. She no longer recognized it as a place where, for the past three years, she had lived and loved. It now looked unwelcoming and uninviting, like a display home.

A fresh sense of hurt shot through Kate as she once again caught sight of the photo of them together at the races. The weight of impending loss fell on her, almost crushing her. Her throat tightened as she realized the only link to her baby was Marcus, and now that too had been irretrievably broken. She resisted picking the photo up and throwing it against the wall in anger. Instead she flicked off the lights, squared her shoulders and stepped over the threshold.

It was time to start again.

The alarm on Kate’s phone loudly assaulted her and she was jolted awake. The sound mocked her, a reminder that once again she had hardly slept at all. Sighing, she reached for her phone to turn the alarm off. As she did, she saw she had another two missed calls from Marcus. She didn’t even bother to listen to see if he’d left a voicemail message for her.

She had been having a dream but its memory now eluded her, and though the fragments were still floating around in her mind, she was unable to pull them together. Kate found herself frowning in frustration and a wave of heaviness came over her. Perhaps the dream wasn’t one she wanted to remember anyway.

She stretched her tired muscles as she lay in bed, willing herself to get moving. She’d worked a late shift the night before and was now back on an early. Unfortunately, even after just one day back at work, she knew it was the last place she wanted to be.

Slowly sliding her legs out of her warm bed, she dragged her feet dejectedly across the carpeted hallway of her bedroom across to the bathroom. Standing under the steaming hot water in the early morning silence, she inhaled and exhaled deeply, rolling her neck from side to side, willing her body to respond. She tried to unravel her feelings, but by the time she had finished and wiped the beads of water off the glass screen with her towel, she was still no closer to a solution about her future.

In the time she’d taken off work since finding the text message from Cindy, she had moped around her parents’ home, ignoring Marcus’s numerous phone calls and texts. She could hardly believe that only two weeks earlier she had been happily planning her future with him, never dreaming how much her world was about to be rocked and changed.

And I thought he was about to propose!
She felt humiliated at the memory.
How could I have been so wrong?

Standing in the bathroom with the towel wrapped around her body, Kate wiped the steam from the small mirror and critically studied her reflection.
Perhaps I should cut my hair?
For years she had worn the same hairstyle and for practical reasons always wore it pulled back, but maybe it was time for a change. Thankfully her honey blonde hair was not yet showing any signs of early grays. So far she had managed to avoid having it colored, although her hairdresser was always trying to talk her into getting foils or highlights. She played around with her hair for a minute, trying to imagine it in a short bob, then sighed and let it fall loose again.
Who am I kidding?
It didn’t matter how she wore her hair. It wasn’t like she was trying to impress anyone anymore.

She glanced down at her short nails and sighed at their brittle ends – chipped through over-exposure to alcoholic antibacterial solutions at work. As much as manicured, French-polished acrylic nails seemed appealing at times, practically speaking, Kate knew it was never going to happen.

I’ll bet Cindy has lovely nails,
she thought sarcastically.

She dragged a wide-tooth comb through the remaining knots, then scraped her hair up high and pulled the elastic band from her wrist and around her hair. The simplicity of Kate’s hair and makeup routine didn’t change even when she was getting ready to go out. On the occasions she had dressed up for big events, she always felt like she was staring back at the face of a stranger in the mirror. Although, as she reflected now, hindsight dictated that maybe she
should
have taken more care with her appearance.

She quickly applied a thin layer of tinted moisturizer to her face and covered it with a brush of mineral powder. A few strokes of mascara to her eyelashes and ten minutes later she was dressed in her scrubs ready for work.

Breakfast was a glass of orange juice and a piece of multigrain toast covered with butter and Vegemite. She ate this on autopilot at the same time as she checked things in her oversized bag. Stethoscope, name badge, swipe card, pens, water bottle, lip gloss, deodorant. Kate sorted through each item, mentally ticking each piece off and scowling at the collection of papers and other unidentified objects in the bottom of the bag. She knew she should clean it out but she quite simply couldn’t be bothered. Adding an apple and the container of salad she’d prepared the previous night, she was ready to go.

Working was the last thing she wanted to do, but at this stage, she had no other option.

Kate took the stairs two at a time up the four flights to the unit, being careful not to spill the coffee she’d bought. She was breathing heavily and her heart was racing when she reached the top. She mentally reprimanded herself for not even going out for a run once in the past two weeks.

As Kate walked into the unit she was immediately able to tell what sort of shift the night staff had had. She breathed a quick sigh of relief and consciously relaxed her shoulders as she walked in, greeting staff as she went. From the general buzz of activity and the hum of voices from the nurses, Kate could tell that nothing had changed overnight. No deteriorated patients. No new admissions. Everything felt calm.
Maybe there is a God.
Although she really did love her job, she wasn’t in the mood for dealing with sick patients and emergencies. She already had enough on her plate.

Some of the bed areas had their curtains drawn and as she walked past she could see shoes and the bottoms of scrub pants as her colleagues finished off their early morning duties before handing over to the day shift. Some nurses were washing their patients and others were taking routine ECGs. Blood samples were ready and waiting in a box for the morning pathology collection. It was a busy time as final notes and observations were being recorded on the large pieces of paper on each nurse’s desk.

Kate frowned at an agency nurse who was sitting at the main nurses’ station, phone in hand. As he glanced up and saw Kate, he guiltily tucked his phone back into the pocket of his scrubs and walked off in a vain attempt to look busy.

“Hey Kenz,” Kate greeted her friend. Mackenzie had been in charge of the night shift. She was busy writing the names of the day shift nursing staff onto the allocation whiteboard beside each patient’s name.

“Morning,” Mackenzie replied, briefly glancing in Kate’s direction as she kept writing.

Mackenzie looked tired. Her dark blonde hair was mussed from where she’d probably slept on it during her break and dried mascara was clumped on the edges of her lashes. 

“How are you doing?” Mackenzie asked, looking up at Kate with an expression of concern written all over her face. Obviously she had heard the gossip.

“Fine,” Kate replied, hoping her tone of voice would indicate she didn’t want to discuss it. Sympathy and questions about Marcus made the sting of her failed relationship all the more painful. She resolved that she wasn’t going to talk about it at all. “What sort of night did you have? How did bed four go? Did you have him on CPAP much overnight?”

The Continuous Positive Airway Pressure machine was a tightly fitting breathing mask applied over a patient’s mouth and nose. It was used for patients in severe respiratory distress and delivered a mixture of air and oxygen under a high pressure to open up the patient’s lungs and force fluids back into the bloodstream.

Mackenzie put the whiteboard marker down and turned her attention toward bed four. Kate let her gaze follow Mackenzie’s. They could see one of the other nurses fitting the face mask on Mr. McKinnon, an eighty-five-year-old man who had suffered a cardiac arrest on the ward two days earlier. The machine began to alarm at a deafening level and the nurse swiftly reached across the elderly man to mercifully silence it.

Since the breathing tube had been removed from his throat the day before, he was still needing regular CPAP to maintain his oxygen levels. From the sound of his lungs when she had listened to them the night before, Kate thought it was highly likely that he would be diagnosed with pneumonia. Mr. McKinnon was in for a long stay in the unit, if indeed he made it through the next twenty-four hours.

“His numbers don’t look good at all,” Mackenzie said. “His work of breathing is really labored now and he’s got widespread crackles. The doctors are aware.”

Mackenzie described the coarse breathing sounds heard in the lungs through a stethoscope. Kate sighed dejectedly. If Bill McKinnon had suffered his heart attack at home rather than in hospital, he would have quietly and peacefully died. Now he was probably still going to die, but instead it would be after a long, drawn-out hospital stay.

“I hope the family have agreed to make him not for resuscitation,” she said.

“That isn’t your problem to fix, Kate.” With that, Mackenzie headed off toward the handover room.

As Kate watched her go, she knew her friend was right. It really wasn’t her problem to sort out.

As it was, Kate had enough problems of her own.