“Only from the neck down.” Holly guffawed, although she’d made the same comparison. “He’s got the face of a man who’s been around the block a few times.”
“I like faces that show they’ve lived life.”
“Mm.” A fragrant perfume wafted through the room, eliminating the blandness of the hygienic environment. Holly spied gardenias sitting on the window ledge, the creamy white petals of the flowers perfect against the darker green leaves of the plant and soft pink of the low ceramic bowl they nestled in. “I’d guess endured played a part in his life.”
“Prying?” Mona folded her hands on her lap. “That’s not like you.”
Holly squirmed. Mona had few unbreakable rules, but not sharing other people’s secrets was one of them. “The gardenias are from him.”
“I told you I’d found a gardener perfect for the job.” A smile still danced around Mona’s mouth.
“You didn’t tell me he adored you,” Holly teased, taking a seat.
“Jealous, Holly?”
Holly rolled her eyes. “He can’t decide if I’m a delinquent or an idiot.” But the heat in his gaze this morning hinted at other possibilities. Like a swizzle stick in a cocktail, he gently stirred currents that had been flat for a long time. She knew it, he knew it, and they were both wary.
“You could tell him the truth about yourself.”
“I haven’t decided if I want to be the delinquent or the idiot yet.” She scanned the notes from the doctor’s morning visit. “Temperature a little higher than normal this morning.”
“Kit’s a very good friend, and if I were twenty years younger, I’d give you a run for your money.”
“I’m out of the race.” Holly met her grandmother’s stare over the folder.
“So you said when you left Brisbane.” Mona reached for her hand. “How are you? A disembodied face on a screen doesn’t tell me what I need to know.”
“Better.” Confiding in Mona was second nature. “The nightmares still come, just not as often. And the flashbacks, but I’m better at managing them.” She huffed out a breath. “Better at using the breathing exercises to manage stressful moments.”
“Like entering a hospital?”
She should have known Mona would pick up on her tension. And had no ready answer for the anxiety in her grandmother’s voice. She was a long way from returning to emergency if she had to do her breathing exercises before entering this hospital. If you control the breath, you control the calm. Or something like that. “I’m here, aren’t I?”
“If you don’t want to talk about it, I understand.”
“Now I feel like I’m six again.” Holly searched for words to describe the reaction she’d had to the incident in the emergency ward. “I told you I spoke to the psychologist. ‘Everyone’s different,’ she said. ‘Everyone’s reaction is different—in time, in scale, in impact on their daily life.’ I also got permission to see Donna’s killer,” Holly confessed. She’d wanted to understand what had motivated the murder.
“Your father told me. He was worried, said you wouldn’t talk about it.”
“In the emergency ward, he was huge—the incredible Hulk. His rage was almost separate to him; a tsunami of liquid fire destroying everything in its path.” She thrust out a hand, trying and failing to tame a monstrous image. “Unstoppable. You knew you were in the presence of violence.” Holly noted her uneven breathing and paused. She pleated the bottom of her T-shirt. Eight, seven, six... “You knew you should run for your life,” she whispered.
“And in gaol?” Mona pressed.
Holly lifted her gaze. Breathe it out. “A shell. Shrunken. Struggling to deal with grief and guilt and remorse.”
“Tell me, Holly.”
“He was hurt too. That’s why he was in emergency. One minute, he was another restless patient, the next, he’d stolen a security card and was in the surgery with us. A brain snap—he thought he was protecting his brother. Instead, he killed him. Because he swung at Donna, the surgeon left his position at the operating table. Because he knifed the surgeon, the surgeon couldn’t operate on his brother. Donna died, his brother died, and the surgeon may never operate again.”
“How does that make you feel?”
Holly twisted her hands together. “For a while, I was living in a parallel universe. My arms and legs were set in concrete. I was clumsy. Nothing would work, and there was this wind tunnel between me and everyone else. Like I was shouting at people but my voice was snatched away before it could reach them.”
“For a while?”
“I’ve done the training. I know we should be able to separate the actions of a diseased mind from rational premeditation.” Holly pushed her hands through her hair and tugged hard. “But I was afraid of my own hate. Of contagion. That his hate that night was so huge I’d be swamped by it.”
Mona let the silence lengthen, giving Holly the courage to continue. “We were all overstretched that night. Someone should have picked up the guy was drugged out of his mind, not just agitated about his own injury and his brother’s. Security were already dealing with multiple incidents across the hospital and had called for backup. The young nurse whose security card he pinched hasn’t returned to work.
“And you did?” There was an ocean of compassion in her grandmother’s question.
“I took the recommended leave, then went back. I was still seeing the psychologist.” Holly paused.
“But it wasn’t right,” Mona concluded gently, her summation the best Holly had found so far.
“I lasted two weeks.” The idea of returning to who she’d been, as if the automaton who’d tried to staunch Donna’s blood had been her best self, lacked appeal. “And I’m babbling.”
“You’re allowed. Where are you now?” Mona took the role of medico, making Holly the patient.
“I don’t hate him.”
“Celebrate that victory.” Mona reached for her hand.
Holly stared at her grandmother. “I love you for understanding it was a battle. Addiction is an illness, and the human brain has so many puzzle pieces it’s amazing anyone is sane or whole.”
“And the grief?” Mona squeezed her fingers.
“Grief never disappears. You taught me that. It changes. It’s not a steel girder across my chest every morning anymore, pinning me to the bed and making it impossible to breathe.”
“But?” Mona smiled, releasing her hand. “There’s always a but. Get it out now and I won’t ask again.”
“For me, there’s always guilt.” Holly crossed to the window overlooking the hospital entrance. A familiar energy ebbed and flowed, people and vehicles, joy and despair. “What did I do wrong? This time it’s different.”
“How?”
Holly walked back to the bed. “It’s as if I’ve re-opened every wound I’ve ever had.” She shook her head, trying to shake her thoughts free. “It’s taken me months to work this through, to find words to describe how discombobulated I feel. I was a good nurse. I wanted to be a good nurse.”