the big machine, otherwise there won’t be enough for the weekend. Nespresso is for my clients.” Scratch. I couldn’t help it. Hands off everything, you hear me? is what I meant. I didn’t want to wake Owen to make coffee and then leave him to talk to Courtney in her tiny clothes at the crack of dawn. I hoped he’d sleep until ten when I got back. We could talk to Courtney about the paternity test then.
It must’ve been nearly nine, about one squat from shooting Dean the Machine in the back of his head, when my arm started buzzing.
“You want to take that? It’s the third time it’s gone now,” said Dean, pointing at the call buzzing on my arm.
“What? Oh yes, okay, I just wanted to finish these reps before I checked.” I know he can see my legs are jelly. Wibble-wobble-wibble-wobble jelly on a plate. That’s what they look like – orange-peel jelly. He never says it. It’s why I like him. And he never says “No pain, no gain” either.
I didn’t recognise the number, and I would’ve ignored it (probably someone trying to sell me something I didn’t want) if I didn’t so badly want to stop the squats. Dean looked away, oblivious to how close he had come to death … Or could be he wasn’t that oblivious. He had pointed out the ringing, after all.
“Lily? Is that you?” It was the breathy one, her mouth so close to the phone it almost sounded porno.
“Courtney?”
“Oh, thank you jeezuz, I thought I had the wrong number ’cause no one was answering. Owen sort of had an … um,” another porno breath while my heart stopped, “accident. Jeff didn’t mean to but he accidently punched him. I’m sure he didn’t mean to, but Owen’s eye and nose are a bit banged up. There was so much blood, we came straight to the hospital emergency. The doctor says it’s bruising and a lot of blood, but nothing’s broken.” More breathing as she waited for me to say something. Swallowing. Was she crying?
“Are you at Blouberg Hospital? Who’s Jeff? And where’s Owen, I want to talk to him.” The gym music throbbed around me, the super circuit timer pinging its signal to move on.
“He can’t talk now – he’s still sitting here with his head hanging down to stop the bleeding and he has an ice pack on his eye. Jeff’s this guy I met at the airport in Durban …” Big gulps of air now. She was definitely crying.
“I’m coming,” I interrupted. I didn’t want to have all the Jerry Springer detail; I wanted to see Owen. “I’ve got to go,” is all I said to Dean as I pitched down the gym stairs, holding onto the railings like the stupid sign reminded me to. Damn legs.
I screamed into the Trauma Unit’s parking lot, pulling up next to Owen’s Audi.
“Dr De Angelo, are you all right? Can I help you?” asked one of the trauma nurses as I rushed into the reception area. A short, square, kind-looking woman, I’d seen her around when I was still working at the hospital, but I never remembered her name.
“I’m looking for Owen Fisher. Bit of a punch-up, I’m told.”
“Yes, he’s here, cubicle three. Not too many bloody noses on a Saturday morning in Blouberg. It’s not a real emergency, think the wife panicked,” she said, taking in my gym kit. Black is supposed to be slimming and not show sweat, but the fluorescent strip lights in trauma rooms are worse than the lights in a change room. She would see orange-peel jelly. And I’d forgotten my hoodie and everything was out. “Dr Salem was on duty and checked him. I was thinking of calling him back for the wife – she’s going to need something to help her calm down. Been crying and hanging on the guy. Just watching her, I think she must be more painful than the punch in my books. Oh well, such a pretty thing, I don’t think any man would mind too much. Your patients?” She raised her eyebrows. Nora was her name, I remembered, as I saw the initials on the name-tag clamped onto her square chest. The detail came back to me. This one looked kind, but she was the centre of hospital gossip – nearly all of it unkind.
“Mr Fisher is my fiancé.”
“Oh …” Her eyes rounded up, pushing her eyebrows together, a furrow up into her forehead. A Botox candidate. “That’s right – you do face stuff now, not a GP anymore. I’m sorry, I didn’t realise …” She started to bustle the papers on the reception desk. “Dr Salem said Mr Fisher can leave whenever he feels ready.” What an unexpected bit of news for a Saturday morning in Blouberg, I could see the wheels turning in her unblinking eyes. None of the nurses at the hospital had liked me. Direct and to-the-point wasn’t considered nice.
Owen was sitting on the hospital bed, leaning forward and holding an ice pack against the left side of his face. Courtney had her arms around him. I could hear her crying, see her back shaking, her face squashed into his neck. What is it with this woman? I keep walking into her back, as if I am the intruder. A beefy-looking guy, buffed-up arms crossed over his chest, was slumped in the hospital chair next to the bed. Spiky bits of hair sprouted on the top of his head like horns on the too-old potatoes we sometimes found in our fridge. If this was Jeff, then I felt even more sorry for Owen; those guns would have done some damage.
“Owen?” I said, so that they would all look up. Owen peered at me through one eye, the other a blue-purple slit of dried blood and mush. His red-splattered yellow Polo shirt was a violent abstract painting.
“Don’t freak out, Lily, it’s not as bad as it looks. It was just a misunderstanding. The doctor already said it’s only tissue damage.” And then it was as unbelievable as a scene from Grey’s ER. Courtney started to come over towards me, but she only made it halfway when she stopped and started crying in her hands. Like an overgrown three year old, she made big snotty sobs with gurgling sounds that could’ve been words. I don’t think I’ve ever cried like that, even when I was three.
The beefy one and his guns moved towards her.
“Hey, Courts, I’m sorry, man. I didn’t mean it. Truly,” he said as he stood up to reach out to Courtney. Owen tried to get up from the bed – I hope he was aiming to get past Courtney to me – but he stumbled over his own feet and bumped the nurses’ trolley so that it went crashing, spraying cotton swabs and rolls of plaster and syringes at my feet. The noise seemed to yank open the cubicle curtains next to Owen, and Chiara’s head popped through like the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland. She must’ve been lying on the bed next door; now she looked in as to if to check on the latest developments. Nosy Nurse Nora came running, her quick steps meaning she had the same plan in mind. Great. She’d seen me in gym kit with half my face sweated off and my bum bulging out, and she’d seen my effed-up fiancé with another woman she’d thought was his wife. Probably thought Chiara was their kid too. But if she thought she was going to see more, she had another thing coming.
I would sort this out at home.
“Everything all right, Doctor?” she asked, rubbernecking as I turned towards her.
“Yes, just the trolley got knocked over. We’ll be going now, thanks. Is that the script for the painkillers?” I nodded at the paper in Nora’s hand and walked her back to reception, my trainers squeak-squeaking along to Courtney’s sobs. It took half an hour to get the forms sorted, get out the hospital, and get everyone into cars to go home. Owen drove with me.
“What the hell, Owen? What happened to you? How does it go from leaving you sleeping in our bed to getting a call from Courtney to come see your face all bust up? Who is Jeff? And how can this whole thing be an accident? Did you accidentally run into his fist?” The indicator clicked loudly as I stopped just long enough to eye the traffic barrelling up and down the West Coast Road.
Speeding
