Beauty and the Dark

I chew my lip. Something’s been worrying me. Maybe I won’t wake up from the anesthetic. Maybe this will be my last time with him. I catch his hand. I want to tell him I love him. He should know. He looks at me expectantly, but the words that come out of my mouth are totally different. “Do you think you’ll get bored of eating me one day?”

“I don’t bore easily. I’ve been drinking milk since I was a baby and I still love it,” he says with a wink.

I smile nervously. I really want to tell him I love him. Just in case I don’t wake up, but before I can pick up the courage, there is a knock on the door.

Jack opens the door and a nurse bustles in.

“Oh, doctor,” she says in a flustered voice.

He smiles cheekily at her. “Good morning, Nurse.”

He kisses me on the head. “I’ll be back to see you before they take you down to the anesthetist.”

While the nurse is taking my blood pressure, Lena comes in. I smile broadly at her. She has never been the same since the afternoon I showed her my back. She howled when she saw it, and the pitiful sound reminded me of our mother. The way she wailed when she lost her baby. That is the only time she wept like that, but it’s never left my mind. She never even cried like that when my father broke her limbs, or that time he plunged her hand in boiling water.

I held Lena, but I couldn’t stop her from crying. I learned that day that no matter how strong she seems we are both irreparably damaged, and all it requires is a trigger to expose that incurable wound. There was nothing I could say or do that would comfort her. When she began to call out to our dead brother, I became frightened. I called Guy. He had gone to Manchester for a meeting. He dropped everything and flew back immediately. Only when she was in his arms did she quieten down. Ever since that day she has become even more protective over me.

“Are you ready?” she asks with a gentle smile.

I grin back. “Yes.”

She walks up to the bed. “Good. It’ll go well. Jack’s one of the best.”

At that moment I get emotional and my eyes flood with tears. She entwines her fingers with mine and switches to Russian. “Oh, darling. Don’t cry. You’ll be fine. I’ll be waiting right here for you.”

I swallow hard and nod.

She takes a tissue out of her purse and dries my eyes. “I’m so proud of you. You’ve come so far. You’re the bravest person I know.”

“I’m not brave. I couldn’t have done any of it without you and Guy.”

She shakes her head. “We gave you the knife. You cut the ropes all by yourself. Every single one. You are free now. Fly the way you were always meant to.”

I grasp her hand and kiss it.

“You should be leaving now, Ma’am,” the nurse says.

Lena lays both her hands on my cheeks and kisses me gently on the forehead. “I’ll be waiting outside. All will be well.”

I watch her leave. A male nurse comes in and starts wheeling me down the corridor. At a station full of equipment Jack appears. He already has his face mask on and his eyes sparkle like the bluest, brightest stones.

“Just relax, Princess,” he says.

A mask is put over my face and the anesthetist asks me to count backwards. I don’t count, I stare into Jack’s eyes and tell him with my eyes that I love him … until blackness comes.

When I wake up, my mouth is dry and I am lying on my front with my cheek resting on the pillow. The first thing my searching eyes see is Jack sitting on a chair nearby, but he is not looking at me. He is staring out of the window into the night, his expression far away. For a few seconds I stare at him in shock. This is surely not the face of a happy man. I thought he was happy with me. Then as if he feels my scrutiny he turns towards me and his face changes instantly. He smiles.

“Hey,” he whispers.

I watch him get up and come to me. “Your surgery went well and I think you’ll be really happy with the result.”

He sounds like a doctor talking to his patient. Then he strokes my hair and he becomes my Jack again. I ask for water. He gives it to me and watches me intently while I drink it.

Though I smile and answer all his questions about how I feel, that faraway, unhappy expression I saw on his face when he thought no one was looking remains at the back of my mind, fraying the edges of my happiness.

Thirty

Jack

As a patient walks out of my consulting room, Karen buzzes me to say that Lena is at Reception waiting to see me.

“Send her in,” I tell her, rubbing the back of my neck. I shouldn’t be here, but I’ve had to work through my backlog. The people I’ve messed around because I can’t get to work in time in the mornings anymore.

Lena comes to sit in front of me. She puts her purse on my table and smiles at me.

I lean back in my chair and look at her curiously. “What’s up, Lena?”

“First of all I want to thank you for what you did for Sofia. I’m so grateful to you.”

That’s not why she’s really here. “You don’t have to thank me, Lena. Anybody in my shoes would have done the same.”

She shifts in her chair. “I don’t just mean the surgery. You’ve made her happy.”

I nod. I know I’ve made Sofia happy, but she’s made me happy too. Very happy. “The emotion is mutual,” I say softly.

She smiles again. “You know how you and Sofia agreed that for the next week she’s going to stay at your place and you were going to take care of her?”

I watch her without expression. “Yeah?”

“You still have to work during the daytime, right?”

“Uh … huh.”

“Who will watch her then?”

“I’m taking tomorrow off to be with her, but once her bandages are removed she will be able to move around and do almost everything for herself. Besides, I’ll only be thirty minutes away. If she needs anything at all she only has to call me.”

She clears her throat. “Here is what I was thinking. I was thinking that you should move into our apartment for the next couple of weeks. This way I can stay with her during the day, and when you come back I can go back to Cheshire and you can take over her care.”

I stare at her, surprised. I have to admit, never in my life, have I come across such dedication and love between two sisters. One part of me resents having to share even an ounce of Sofia, and another can’t help but be in awe of such a rare and beautiful phenomenon.

“There’s no need for that. You’re welcome to come and stay with her at my place during the day,” I offer.

“I have my baby and all her things are at the apartment, but I will come to yours if you’d rather not stay in our place. You can both move into our room since it is much bigger and has an en-suite. It’ll be good for you too. Going to work will be more convenient. You’ll shave ten minutes off your travelling time,” she says persuasively.

I rub my chin reflectively. “What does your husband think of this … arrangement?”

She smiles. “Actually, it was his idea. I was obsessing about how to sort out the problem last night, and he suggested it.”

My eyebrows rise. The last time Guy and I met he wasn’t too impressed with me. In fact, I distinctively remember he was sipping hard on the haterade.

“So, are you okay with the idea?” she asks.

I shrug. “Sure. I could move in for a week.”

She exhales with relief. “Thank you, Jack. I am so glad. In ordinary circumstances I would have preferred to have taken her back to Cheshire with me, but since I honestly believe that she will heal faster with you, I’m happy to come down every day and care for her.”

I spend the first night in the hospital with Sofia. After she falls asleep I go down the corridor, get myself a lousy coffee from the vending machine, and sit down on one of the couches. It is late and there is no one around. It’s an odd feeling to be in the hospital at this time. I look out of the glass door and see people walking past.

The nurse who had come t

o prep Sofia passes the front desk, sees me, and walks towards me.

“That was a nasty thing on her back. What bastard did that to her?” she asks.

“I don’t know,” I say.

“I’d kill him if I saw him,” she mutters angrily. “It’s just not right that he should be walking about alive and well. The idea that a man could do that to a woman and walk about free makes me so angry,” she says.

I say nothing. I can’t. I’m holding it all back by the skin of my teeth. She has no idea how I feel about that monster. I wouldn’t just kill him. I’d flay him alive and make him suffer for days.

“Anyway, that’s me done for the night. I’ve got my daughter flying in from Germany so we’re going out.” She looks happy.

“Have a great time,” I say.

She moves away and I stare into my coffee. It’s Africa all over again. There was not a thing I could do about anything there either. In the end shit happened and I was hired to put a plaster over their rotting cancers. I feel like going out getting totally plastered and smashing something. That always helped in the past, but I know it won’t help tonight. Nothing will help.

I lift my head and look out of the glass walls. The sky is velvety and full of stars. If there is a God out there, then let that sadistic beast find his retribution.