Strictly Confidential (18 page)

Or so it seemed when I opened the door to my office. Because standing patiently outside, notebooks in hand, guns in holsters, were two of NSW Police’s finest.

‘The cops!’ Holly shrieked. ‘You called the cops!’

I didn’t call the cops. Nor did I have any idea I was opening my office door to reveal said cops. Of course they were the two very kind sirs I’d met downstairs ten minutes ago. Only, rather than explain this to Holly I simply said, ‘Constables. Nice to see you again. Please come in.’

Before I could order an iced Vo-Vo (non-wearable) and a nice cup of tea for the officers, Holly was on her feet. She threw herself urgently in my direction, swung and launched two punches to my face in quick succession. Oh. My. God. Holly
punched
me? She punched me! I slumped to the floor. The officers grabbed Holly and slammed her against the door to my en suite bathroom. The room spun and I lay on the floor gasping for breath. Did that really just happen? Was I just punched by an employee? Twice? I cringed as I thought of the headlines in tomorrow’s
Sun
newspaper:
PR KO’D BY WAG. FASHIONISTA SPOTTED EATING! KNUCKLE SANDWICH ON THE MENU. QUEEN BEE SACKING HAS STING IN TAIL.
The press could never get hold of this one. At least, not unless it came from me.

‘You all right down there?’ One of the constables offered me a hand and pulled me to my feet.

Blood trickled from a cut above my eye. I glared at the twenty-four-carat black diamond knuckleduster decorating Holly’s left hand. Holly glared at me. The cops, having determined that Holly was unarmed, unhurt and unlikely to deck anyone else, began to show signs of a sense of humour for the first time all day. ‘Jesus, this the way you girls normally do business here? Board meetings with a bit of biff? We see less action in Kings Cross on a bad night.’ Just what I needed. Comedy cops.

My head continued to bleed as one cop took down our details and the other towered over Holly. But I didn’t have time for this: I had work to do. I reached for the press release on my desk to blot my bleeding face. ‘It’s fine,’ I protested to the cops. ‘I won’t be pressing assault charges.’ They looked at me dubiously. ‘Really,’ I insisted. Then I raised my bleeding head higher and uttered the words I should have said to Holly weeks ago: ‘Just pack up your desk, Holly.’

I’d make sure she got her just deserts.

Cruising home in my Aston Martin that night I texted Shelley:
Need vodka, painkillers, bandage. On my way over, J x
. My head was still pounding after this morning’s boxing lesson from Holly, but other than a few bruises, it looked like I’d survived unscathed. Nothing a little MAC makeup couldn’t gloss over.

Which was more than I could say for Holly’s career. Whoever said revenge was a dish best served cold hadn’t tasted the piping-hot delicacies I’d whipped up this afternoon. Feeling hungry, fashionistas? Well then, why not try these tasty treats?

For entree, take one fresh BlackBerry, scroll through your contacts list vigorously, select the ripest, most influential members of the PR industry, then phone and offer a step-by-step description of Holly’s manic kleptomania. Serve immediately. For main course, preheat Hotmail to around 180 degrees Celsius. Wash, chop and prepare one scathing email, complete with photo attachment of Holly (for identification purposes and just for spice), then roll out to every PR office and recruitment agency in the greater Sydney region. But save room for dessert! This deliciously decadent dish is worth ditching the diet over. Blend one list of stolen items with two quotes from aggrieved staff members, add a dollop of photographs (including a glamour shot of Holly and her famous fiancé), and garnish with a pic of the police leaving Queen Bee PR (as taken on your personal phone). Then spoonfeed to your favourite social columnist. Bon appétit!

But all this thought of food must have upset my delicate constitution.

Because the next thing I knew I was doubled over the steering wheel with searing stomach pain. Oh, gods of vengeance, is this you? Was my payoff for seeking payback against Holly a hernia? Could you catch karma cancer of the intestine? I clutched at my abdomen and gasped involuntarily. The pain was unbearable.

Slamming on the brakes and slapping on my hazards, I swung my door open and attempted to stumble from the car. Horns blared behind me and brakes screeched as motorists struggled to pull up in time. But I was too busy slumping over the bonnet of my sports car to notice. All I was aware of was the intense pain when I banged my already bruised and swollen face against the finely polished paintwork. This really wasn’t my day. It was going to take a hell of a lot of Nurofen to dull this pain. Someone appeared beside me and made soothing noises along the lines of ‘don’t worry’ and ‘ambulance on its way’. I was hoping for ‘stiff drink’ and ‘heavy-duty painkillers’ but beggars can’t be choosers. Then I blacked out.

Coming to in the back of an ambulance, I stared into the face of a squeaky-clean female ambulance officer, all swishy blonde hair and clear blue eyes and looking like she’d stepped out of a Lorna Jane sportswear brochure. I expected wheatgrass juice and goji berries to ooze out of her unclogged pores at any moment.

She in turn stared back at my blackened eye. ‘Rough day?’ she asked as she fed an intravenous drip of something I guessed wasn’t alcohol into my arm.

‘Had better,’ I slurred. The jolting movement of the ambulance was doing nothing to stop my head spinning.

‘You’re lucky we got to you when we did,’ Lorna Jane went on. ‘I reckon you’ve got yourself a stomach ulcer there.’

I stared at her incredulously. ‘A stomach ulcer?’

‘Looks a lot like it,’ Lorna Jane said perkily, her shiny blonde ponytail bouncing in time with the bumping of the ambulance.

‘Ugh,’ I groaned in reply.

‘Have you suffered any nausea or vomiting lately?’ the ambo asked. ‘Or noticed any loss of appetite? Any weight loss?’

Was Lorna Jane kidding?
I worked in
fashion
. If I wasn’t seeing weight loss then I wasn’t looking in the right places. As for loss of appetite – sheesh, I hadn’t acknowledged hunger pains since the late 1990s. I wouldn’t recognise my appetite now if it bit me on the arse.

‘Uh, yeah that sounds vaguely familiar,’ I said by way of reply. Lorna Jane wrote this down diligently.

I sat as still as I could to try to minimise the pain and to let the idea of a stomach ulcer settle.
How the fuck did this happen?
I wondered.

‘Any idea how this might have happened?’ Lorna Jane asked me, as if reading my thoughts.

I bit back several sarcastic responses. This woman was a medical professional and I was in charge of nothing more animate than a YouTube clip of BMW Australian Fashion Week and yet she was asking
me
? My head slumped to my chest.

‘Okay,’ she continued. ‘Let’s see if you can help me out here. Do you drink?’ I nodded. ‘Smoke? Take hard drugs? Ever self-medicate?’

At this I raised my head. ‘Yes. I self-medicate.’ I nodded again. ‘Although never more than six Nurofen in any one sitting.’

The ambo dropped her clipboard.

‘I’m in PR,’ I added by way of explanation.

When the ambo finally got her jaw to work her words were not exactly welcome. ‘You’re in PR, huh? Well, not for a while you’re not. A stomach ulcer is really serious. If it’s burst you might need immediate surgery, and even if it hasn’t, you certainly won’t be back on your feet again for weeks.’

Weeks?
I nearly fell off my stretcher.
You’ve got to be kidding me, Lorna Jane.
I couldn’t take weeks off work! Hell, I couldn’t take hours off work. I thought about the new Levi’s account I was pitching for tomorrow morning and the Schwarzkopf Most Beautiful Hair event I was organising for tomorrow night. Then there was Fashion Weekend Sydney the following night and the
Coco
Man of the Year Awards looming fast after that. Of course, that wasn’t to mention BMW Australian Fashion Week. I didn’t have time for this. There was nothing in my schedule about a stomach ulcer and I wasn’t having a bar of it.

‘Immediate surgery, you say? So, what time will I be done?’ As I reached for my BlackBerry, my IV drip wrenched out of my vein. Lorna Jane went into apoplexy so I offered her my drip.

‘I don’t think you understand! The surgery might be immediate but the recovery isn’t. You won’t be discharged from hospital this fortnight!’

Sure, Lorna, whatever you say,
I thought as I dialled the number for my one next-of-kin emergency phone call. ‘Em? It’s Jaz . . . An ambulance . . . No, I’m fine. Just collecting emergency services experiences today . . . No, not for a campaign. Look, can you do me a favour? Can you postpone my meeting with Levi’s tomorrow morning? No, afternoon is fine. Say, 2 pm . . .’

I shoved the IV line back in my arm, adjusted the bandage on my head and beamed a winning smile in the direction of Lorna’s disapproving glare.

They came thick and they came fast. The sick, the wounded and the near-terminally drunk. They all staggered through the doors of the Prince of Wales Hospital that night until I was sure the sanitised, glaringly white Emergency Department was going to buckle under the weight of the wretched and collapse in a heap of broken limbs and ailing organs and crutches and sick bags and drug-fucked teenage girls from the Eastern Suburbs.

A triage nurse looked me up and down. I groaned quietly in agony. ‘Jasmine Lewis?’ she asked. I nodded. ‘Suspected stomach ulcer, potentially burst,’ she said aloud to no one in particular as she scrawled the diagnosis on a medical form.

‘I’m sure it’s not that serious,’ I assured her, ignoring the stabbing pains in my abdomen. The nurse, in turn, ignored me. Apparently she didn’t care for my esteemed medical opinion. Not when she had at least half a dozen screaming, vomiting or swearing patients lined up behind me, all of whom had appeared in the short time since the ambulance had dropped me off. I had no idea ER was so popular. At least not the version without George Clooney. I clutched my stomach and scanned the room. There sure as hell were a lot of people here. I wished I’d brought some branded Queen Bee bottles of water with me. Nothing like a captive customer base, after all.

‘How bad is the pain, Jasmine?’ the nurse asked, her harried voice free of any signs of compassion.

‘It’s a ten on the Richter scale, nurse,’ I said, already planning my fast-track to the head of the queue and, from there, home and back to the comfort of my laptop.

‘Ten?’ the nurse confirmed, not looking up from her form.

‘Ten.’

‘Right, I’ve noted that down. Take a seat and a doctor will see you as soon as possible,’ she instructed.

Take a seat? I pouted. Then lurched off to a row of nearby plastic chairs to wait. And wait. And wait.

Several hours later I was still slumped in my seat and showing no signs of going anywhere fast. If my stomach ulcer hadn’t been burst when I’d arrived, it sure as hell would be soon, I thought grimly. Frustrated and near delirious with pain, I scrolled through my BlackBerry. Surely there was someone I could call to sort this out? I didn’t have time to wait in a queue any more than I had time to have a stomach ulcer. I should be hitting the office in just a few hours. The contacts list in my phone didn’t offer much by way of medical leg-up, however. Party planners, cake decorators, designers, couturiers, muses, fashion editors, beauty bloggers, the who’s who of the Sydney social scene. But not a surgeon to be seen. Someone in the row behind me vomited violently onto the floor. Oh, this really was beyond.