Felicity Young - Take Out

Her mouth went dry; she swallowed painfully. Was she being road-raged? She gripped the steering wheel until her knuckles glowed and wondered what the hell she’d done to deserve this.

Her gran would’ve said her sins were catching up with her at last.

She tried to work out where she was on the road and if she knew anyone in the vicinity. The farms here were wide and isolated. Every few kilometres there might be an entrance, but the driveways were often several kilometres long. Turning down one of these was no option; the car following her had shown in the truck stop that it could stick to the gravel a lot better than she could.

The police, she must phone the police, they would intercept this prick and give him the what for. She scrabbled for the phone on the passenger seat, panicked when she couldn’t find it. The skidding and pitching on the gravel at the truck stop must have knocked it off. Then, after some frantic searching, she spotted it peeping out from under the empty food carton at the far corner of the floor.

She drove now at breakneck speed, struggling to keep the car on the road while she stretched for the phone. Finally her fingers closed around it and she straightened behind the wheel seeing no sign of the tormenting headlights. Lost him— Yessssssss.

Her jubilation evaporated into the stifling air of her car as the sinister, streamlined vehicle pulled out of her blind spot. This time she recognised it as the wanky car she’d cut off outside the deli.

What a jerk. He must really have a hair up his arse to follow her all this way. But knowledge didn’t make the situation any easier to take. People had been killed in road-rage attacks.

She grabbed the phone, fingers jabbing at the keys. No service. Shit! But if she was lucky, the emergency numbers might still work. She risked a glance at the adjacent car as she punched 000 and saw the shadowy figure of a man behind the wheel.

Fuck, fuck, fuck —still no service. With a yell of abuse she hurled the phone onto the passenger seat.

Should she slow down, confront him, what should she do? If she continued at this speed she’d surely end up wrapped around a tree.

The driver buzzed his window open. A pale hand flapped, indicating her to slow down.

No way, José.

She caught a green face shimmering in the light from the dash and felt the air leave her lungs with a whoosh.

She knew that face.

Oh God. It’s you.

Fear grabbed her like a python’s coil around the chest. When she breathed out, the coils tightened. It was a familiar, horrible feeling. With asthma, she knew, if you try to fight it, you only make it worse. She tried to stay calm, lifted her foot a fraction off the accelerator and slowed down a little. The other car slowed too. Now it was only a few centimetres from her door. It gave her car the smallest of nudges, not much more than a scrape, but it was enough to do the trick. She panicked and swerved to the left, just missed a tree and attempted to straighten. Then her oxygen-starved brain overcompensated and she veered into the centre of the road. (Image 8.1)

Image 8.1

SUNDAY

CHAPTER NINE

‘I’d kiss you only I’ve just washed my hair,’ Monty slurred around the ET tube. Well, that’s what it sounded like, Stevie thought as she reached for his hand among the morass of lines. She didn’t ask him to repeat it; doped to the eyeballs he immediately fell back into a deep sleep.

Despite the several months she’d had to psych herself up for this, nothing had prepared her for the shock of seeing Monty post-op. His face was that of an old man, his skin the colour of a corpse. It was as if after draining his blood they’d forgotten to put it back again.

Thank God kids were not allowed in the ICU. Izzy would have had a fit if she’d seen her father looking like the living dead.

They could have been on a brightly lit tanker moored with several others on a quiet black sea. Night time in the ICU: raised, oversized beds with lifeless people buried somewhere amongst the bleeping machines and wires, the tread of crepe-soled doctors and nurses, the scratching of pulled curtains, the clanging of stainless steel and the low rumble of trolleys. How she hated hospitals.

Yesterday’s operation had been an unmitigated success, the surgeon had told her earlier. Monty would remain in the ICU for another day or so until the breathing tube was removed and then transferred to a single room in the coronary care unit. Barring complications he should be home in just over a week.

Barring complications. Stevie had made the mistake of looking up the complications on the Internet: thrombosis, infection, myocardial infarction; the list went on and ended with ‘death’.

Some complication.

The glass-panelled nurses’ station glowed like a captain’s bridge. Behind the glass she saw a tall man with wiry hair like a mad professor talking to one of the nurses. A strange time for Wayne Pickering to visit, she thought. Didn’t he know that only close family members were allowed in the ICU?

He saw her looking his way and indicated for her to step outside the ward. They met at the lifts.

Wayne clasped her arm. ‘How is he?’

‘He’s doing fine. They won’t let you see him though, the nurse in charge is tougher than Central’s desk sergeant, she—’

‘No,’ he cut her off. ‘It’s you I need to see. C’mon, I’ll buy you a coffee. You look terrible, the bags under your eyes could pack for a family of five.’

Wayne had always been a charmer.

A few minutes later they were sitting in the hospital canteen with cappuccinos and an oozing jam and cream doughnut for Wayne.

‘You shouldn’t be eating that,’ Stevie said, ‘think about your arteries.’

Wayne ignored her. ‘Do you know someone called Emily Williams?’

‘Emily Williams,’ Stevie repeated, thought for a moment. ‘No.’

‘She’s a nurse.’ Wayne took a bite of doughnut.

‘Oh. I know a nurse called Skye Williams.’

Wayne swallowed before he’d chewed his mouthful properly and appeared to be in pain. ‘That would be her.’ He patted himself on the chest. ‘Her mother calls her Emily.’

A cold stone dropped in Stevie’s stomach. ‘Wayne, what’s this about?’

‘Your name was in her phone. MCI called Sex Crimes trying to contact you. Sex Crimes knew your phone would be off so they called me, knowing Mont was off sick.’ Wayne reached for Stevie’s hand across the plastic table. ‘I’m afraid your friend was killed in a car crash on Friday night.’

Stevie shook her head as it filled with discordant thoughts. ‘No, you said Emily, not Skye. I don’t know an Emily.’

Wayne continued to squeeze her hand.

‘She called herself Skye. According to her mother she thought Emily Williams far too pedestrian.’

Stevie did not immediately respond. She sat still, her gaze switching from Wayne’s hand to a blob of cream on his psychedelic tie. Skye had changed her name, she would. It would be her way of distancing herself from her conservative farming family. When she was older she’d probably change it back again. But she wasn’t going to get older now.

‘They think she had an asthma attack while she was driving, lost control and hit a semi,’ he murmured.

‘She was only twenty-five,’ Stevie whispered to the air between them. She couldn’t cry. Like wheatbelt rain, the tears evaporated before they fell.

‘I’ll drive you home,’ Wayne said.

Stevie pushed hair from her face. ‘No, I have to stay with Mont.’