Casino Memorial Hospital.
This was the second time Ben had been back here since coming home. He thought he might have spent more time there since being back then he had in the whole time before he left. The last time he'd been there before leaving for Sydney, had been when his father was admitted to hospital. That was so long ago, in such a murky region of his past, he wasn't even sure what his father had been in for. Pulling his car into the small visitors car park, the tires crunching across the gravel, Ben supposed it had been something connected to the fits his father had suffered. He still remembered the nauseous unease that had overcome him when he saw one. They'd been sitting at the table, calmly talking, him, his dad and mother, when all of a sudden his father's eyes rolled back in his head and he started convulsing.
"Ray!" Ben's mother had cried out as she leapt up from her chair.
Ben had grabbed hold of his father's big, rough, callused hand and held it tight, not knowing what else to do. He watched helplessly as his father shimmied away between them.
The fit passed, but after it, came the fears. Cancer, the doctors had muttered. Brain tumour. It filled Ben with a sort of hot, effervescent fear. His father couldn't have a tumour. His father was going to be there forever. Like the moon. Fortunately, it hadn't been a tumour, but all the doctors had been at a loss to explain what it was. A synapse misfiring, they'd suggested. There had been a couple of incidents, Ben recalled, other times his father had seized. Just those pesky synapses shooting excited gobs of electrons like a premature ejaculator.
That had been when Ben was about thirteen. As far as he could remember, there hadn't been any more seizures between then and six years later, when Ben had told his parents where they could stick their 'follow-in your father's footsteps' and left for Sydney. And not long after that they had died. His dad in a farming accident and his mum simply pined away not long after.
Ben looked about him guiltily, as if thinking about his parents had somewhere made them materialise here.
The receptionist looked up and smiled at him as he approached. She was pretty and had long, dark hair. Somewhere back along the line she must have had European blood in her, and it had given her a smooth, olive complexion and big, dark eyes that seemed to look right into him.
"Hello," she said, still smiling.
"Hi," said Ben. "How you doin?" He leant on the counter and placed the package he was carrying on the shelf.
"Good, thank you," she said. "What can I do for you?"
"I'm here to see my," he paused, wondering exactly who he was here to see. Friend? Girlfriend? "Friend," he finished. "Kathleen Bryce."
She typed in the details on her PC. "Your friend's in Intensive Care," she said, not looking up, but still smiling. "Straight down the hall and to the right."
"Thank you, very much," said Ben.
Kath didn't look nearly so bad as he'd feared. She was bruised up and bandaged and had some tubes hooked up to her, but she looked as though she'd only come in for a rest. Gone to the hospital for a bit of a sleep-over. If you ignored the mass of bruises on her face, that was.
She smiled up at him as he walked in like a child that knows it's been naughty. Tears filled her eyes and overflowed down her cheeks.
"Kath," he leant over her bed, hugging her as best he could manage around her bandages and tubes. "Kath, I'm so sorry," he said.
"Don't be stupid," she said, craning her neck so she could give him a kiss. "I had this coming. I know it and you know it. Every night that I go home to him I'm asking, waiting for this to happen."
"Yeah, but if I hadn't—" he broke off as Kath put a finger to his lips.
"If you hadn't," she said, "he would have found some other reason. This didn't start when you came back, y'know."
"I know," Ben said. "What do we do now?"
Damn it, why couldn't he come out and ask her. Say 'Are you leaving him?' and be done with it. That one was easy. Because he was afraid of what she might say.
She caressed his cheek, still smiling up at him.
"I'm leaving him," she said. "It's well past time I went back to the man I love."
Ben faltered for a moment, not daring to believe his ears.
"You... really?" he said.
"I love you, Ben," she said, and started crying again. "It's going to be so hard," she said. "I don't even know where to start. Oh, Ben, what am I going to do?"
"Sh," he said, hugging her. "It's all right. I love you very much and I'm going to help you get through this. We are going to get through this."
"What did I do to deserve you?" she said, her eyes red and nose running.
"You were born," he said. "I'm the one who's lucky to have you. Such a wonderful, beautiful woman who still loves me even after I ran out on her? I must be blessed by the gods."
"Oh, shut-up," she laughed.
"It's true, though," he said. "I don't deserve someone like you. After the way I treated you... You deserve better than me."
She slapped him lightly on the cheek. "No, I don't," she said. "I deserve better than Neil. And I want you."
"How could I have been so stupid as to leave you?" he wondered aloud.
"I don't know, I always did think you were a bit retarded."
Their laughter filled the empty room and that was good. Kath was in this room alone, standard for all intensive care patients. You didn't want your recovering patients laying two metres away from brain-dead vegetables who were about to get their life support switched off. It didn't make for good recovery time.
"So what'd you bring me?" Kath asked, seeming to notice the package he carried for the first time.
"Hm?" he said, looking down at it. "This? Oh, it's nothing."
"Come on. Whatcha bring me?"
"Well, it's pretty stupid really," he said. Self-conscious now, feeling like maybe the present was too cutesy.
"If it's from you, I'm sure it's not stupid," she said. "Come on, cough it up."
Ben put the present into her hand and stepped back, looking across at the window. Would she like it? More to the point, would she get it? Jessica wouldn't have. She'd look and go, oh great, you bought me something you want.
Kath unwrapped the brown paper carefully, peeling away each bit of sticky tape with deliberate concentration and Ben fell in love with her all over again. She held the package with her bandaged hand and tried to pick at the tape with the other. Ben had an urge to tear the paper off for her but didn't, it was never the same unless you opened the present yourself.
She finally managed to get one end open and Ben breathed a sigh of relief but she still didn't open it, turning it around so she could go to work on the other end. Unwrap it all at once.
"Oh, Ben," she laughed, tears forming at the corners of her eyes. "Thank you. You're so silly."
"I wanted to give you something so you'd think of me while you were in here. And you always told me you never 'got' Stephen King so..."
He trailed off, watching her turn the book over in her hands, the copy of Night Shift she'd bought him, looking at it. Reading the back cover she'd probably already read when she picked the book out for him a week ago.
"Come here," she said. And when he bent over the bed she kissed him on the lips. More than a peck but not a pash. "You're very sweet, thank you."
Ben shrugged. "It's my pleasure. So when are you up for parole?"
Kath laughed and Ben's skin prickled with pleasure.
"They want to keep me in a couple more days," she said. "You know, for observation." She said observation as though they were giving her a series of rectal probes. "But I wish I could go home tomorrow," she scratched gingerly at her bandaged head and for a moment looked scared. "I don't know," she said. "It all seems more hassle than it needs to be."
"Rich told me you looked pretty bad when they brought you in," said Ben. "Said he was nearly ready to cover you with the sheet himself."
"He told me he was going to see you, " said Kath. She paused. "How was he? With you, I mean. Was it okay?"
"He was fine," said Ben. "Although I think he's still pretty pissed at me leaving the way I did."
"And even more so for blowing back into town without telling him," she winced, a fugitive pain inside, poking at her.
"You need anything?" asked Ben.
"No," Kath gasped, clutching at her side. The pain subsided and she relaxed. "I'm fine."
Ben looked at her worriedly. "Maybe it's not such a bad idea to keep you in for a couple of nights," he said.
"The doctor told me I'm probably going to have a bit of pain for a little while," she said.
"How long's a little while?"
"Maybe a couple of months?"
Ben swore silently to himself that if he ever had the chance he was going to kill Neil where he stood. He would see him repay a thousandfold all the hurt he'd caused Kath.
"Ben," she said, as if reading his thoughts. "It's not his fault. Not really."
"No," said Ben sarcastically. "You just happened to keep falling on his fists. Stop trying to defend him Kath, he's an arsehole."
"That's not what I'm doing," said Kath. "I think he's mentally ill. He needs help."
She was starting to slip away again and there was nothing he could do about it. Making up excuses for him, building that fragile wall of fragmentary memories and passing kindnesses back up, so Neil could tear it down again.
"So what?" he said. "You want to go back to him and help him? Is that it? You're just trying to make an excuse so you don't feel bad about it."
"Ben, no," said Kath. "I told you, I'm leaving him. Come here," she gestured at him to come closer. "Come on."
He bent over her and she slapped him lightly on the cheek. "I love you, Ben. I'm not going back to him. Ever." There were tears in her eyes and her chin quivered. "Okay?"
"Promise?" said Ben.
"With all my heart and soul," she said.
Ben leaned closer and kissed her fully, letting his mouth roam across her soft lips, gently nibbling, his tongue playing and teasing at the moist interior of her mouth. They were both a little breathless when he pulled away, although Ben wondered if that was because he'd kissed her sore lips too hard.
"Come back and see me tonight?" she said as he was leaving.
"Wild horses ridden by beautiful, naked, nymphomaniacs who wanted to chain me down and use me to pleasure them, couldn't keep me away," he said, and she laughed.
Ben grinned with her. "It's good to see you smile," he said.
"It's good to see you."
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO