‘Smart woman.’
‘The first time she met him he went to do the kiss on both cheeks.’
‘Yeah, pretentious wanker,’ interrupts Shazz.
‘No, but she pulled back instantly, it’s like she knew.’
‘Clever chick must have met his type before. It’s nice that Finn has got someone with a bit of sense. If Marin had any sense, she’d dump Nate. I know you’re feeling like shit right now, Bea, because you have never done anything like this before in your life. But you have some sort of excuse. Nate hit on you when you were really, really low and he did the hugging and the minding and theI’m always here for you. And then suddenly he’s kissing you and it feels nice to be held. Guys like him, it doesn’t just happen once. I bet there’s a trail of women. I bet he has his own football team of them.’
‘You could be right,’ I say. ‘But that doesn’t take away from the fact that the football team are not friends of his wife, part of his circle. I’ve just destroyed that.’
‘If you’ve destroyed it, he’s destroyed it too. Now you’re going to get over this and you’re going to stop beating yourself up. People are complicated, and life’s mental. That’s my mantra, babes. Drink your brandy, one gulp, go.’
We drained our glasses together. The brandy burns the back of my throat and I start to cough.
‘I thought you said this was good stuff ?’
‘It’s all relative,’ says Shazz, pouring us each a smaller shot. ‘It’s good stuff to me, Lady Muck. OK, one, two, three, shot!’
With two brandies inside me, I’m slightly stabilised, although I doubt if the hospital advise brandy for helping people with shock. We sit together quietly and I myself relax as much as I possibly can. Finally, Shazz looks at her watch.
‘Now, you’ve got to get back to your house, lie down for an hour, get up early, wash your hair, do yourmake-up, have a lot of strong coffee and face the day as normal. I’ll bring Luke to school. You go into work and don’t answer any phone calls, except if they are from me or your mum. Marin might ring you from a different phone, you don’t want that, you’re not ready for it now, OK?’
‘OK,’ I say. ‘OK.’
As I start the short walk home along the totally deserted streets that separate our houses, I think about how grateful I am for Shazz’s friendship.
But mine and Marin’s will never be the same ever again. I’ve broken it.
39
Marin
They won’t let me into cardiac care but a nurse suggests I have a tea or coffee from the machine down the hall.
‘It’s working at the moment,’ she says, as if this is an unusual occurrence, ‘do you have change?’
‘I think so,’ I say, looking around in my purse, ‘yes.’
‘Come back and hopefully in the next fifteen minutes you’ll be able to come in, OK?’
‘Thank you,’ I say.
It’s now half four, and I feel as if I’m starring in a nightmare, somebody else’s nightmare. The machine coffee is horrible, but it’s strong and it wakes me up. Nate has had a heart attack and he was with another woman, one of our friends, one of my friends.
I want to kill him and I want him to live. I didn’t know my mind could hold two such opposing views, but it can. I sit in the little lounge just outside the coronary care, where the television is turned on and where another man sits staring blindly at the box. It’s a grainy TV, not a thing ofhi-definition beauty andMurder, She Wroteis playing. The man and I don’t speak. He’s staring into the middle distance, his eyes wet. I haven’t cried a single tear: shock, I think.
Shock, horror and betrayal. I gulp down my hideous coffee and think that I have to be strong. Strong for Rachel and Joey, strong for myself, and perhaps strong for Nate. All I know is that I love the man on the other side of the perspex doors. And now I hate him too.
‘You can come in now,’ says the nurse, popping her head around the door and looking at me. I gulp down the rest of my coffee, throw the cup in the bin and follow her. Cardiac care is utterly frightening, a land of machines with nurses and doctors walking slowly around. In the middle of the beeping and winking and many corded machines, lies my husband.
‘We think he’s too weak for an angiogram, therefore we are going to do some imaging on his heart and the arteries surrounding it. We need to get a vision of whether he has blockages or not. But we don’t want to push him until he’s out of danger.’
I nod.
A nurse gave me a number for the ward. ‘We don’t let people sit in coronary care overnight,’ she says, ‘it’s too difficult for them and us. So if you want, you can sit with him for ten minutes. We will call you if anything changes or you can call the unit directly. We will need some forms filled in as well, so you could do that on the way out, so we have your phone number. Thenext-of-kin number,’ she says. And the way she says it made me think that news of my husband’s arrival with one woman and subsequent movement up to the cardiac care unit with another has not bypassed the hospital bush telegraph.
I sit with him and hold his hand again.
