Mak had called Roy on his mobile and left a message for him to meet her on campus. It was best to just be honest and get it over with. They had barely had a chance to get to know each other, but she had to stop seeing him now. Roy’s arrival in her life could have been a further wedge between Mak and her former lover, but instead, she had found herself in Andy’s bed as well. She didn’t want to be split between two men. It was better to cut it off with both, and be alone until she got her head together.
She spotted Roy approaching along the pathway, right on time. He was dressed in his security guard uniform and carrying a small box wrapped in pretty
gold paper. She knew it would be a gift for her, and that made her want to cringe.
Roy greeted her with a chaste kiss and sat beside her on the bench, smiling boyishly. He had shaved recently and she could smell the Azzaro aftershave. His skin glistened slightly in the sun. His hair was gelled, his uniform neatly pressed. He looked handsome, and she almost didn’t want to let him go.
“Hi, Mak.” He smiled at her—his face positively lit up. “You look very beautiful today. But then again, you always look beautiful.” Mak gritted her teeth. “Thanks. I, um…I actually wanted to talk with you about something, Roy.” He perked up. He shouldn’t have perked up.
“Great.” He extended his small wrapped parcel. “This is for you.”
“Thank you, Roy, but—”
“Would you like to open it now?”
Makedde took a deep breath. “I think we may want to wait on that until I tell you what I need to say. Thanks for the gift, but…I just need to talk with you about something first.”
He nodded and looked at her with those big brown eyes, his face suddenly serious. “It’s not about me following you home that first night again, is it? I’m sorry about that. I was just looking out for you—”
“Roy…I don’t think we should see each other for a while,” she said.
His face dropped.
“There’s a lot going on in my life at the moment which I need to sort out, so I shouldn’t really be seeing anyone just now. I’m sorry.”
He appeared totally confused. “Is it something I did?”
“No, no. You have been lovely. I just would rather be alone.”
Roy looked puzzled, and hurt. Yes, he definitely looked hurt.
Am I doing the right thing? Am I ruining a potentially good thing?
“I’m sorry, Roy. It’s not your fault. It’s mine. I didn’t want to just avoid you or anything. I wanted to be upfront about it.”
He squinted and pursed his lips. “Is there someone else?” he said suspiciously. She didn’t like the look in his eye when he said it. Nor did she appreciate his tone.
“No, not really. It’s just me.”
Don’t bring Andy into this.
Roy’s eyes narrowed. “Not
really
? So there
is
someone else?”
“No,” Makedde repeated, more firmly this time. She didn’t like this sudden aggression.
“Who is he?” Roy demanded.
She saw a flash of anger, and it made her nervous. She stiffened and sat upright.
“
Who is he
?” she lashed back. “I just said there is no one else. I don’t want to see you, okay? Don’t you get that?”
Perhaps that came out a little nastier than necessary.
“No!” he spat. “No, it’s not okay. I want a good reason. I want a good reason for why you would lead me on like this. What are you, some kind of tease?”
Makedde’s jaw fell open. “Roy!”
He shut up and covered his face with his hands.
“Roy, you are being totally unreasonable,” she said.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that,” he said, shaking his head, berating himself. “I didn’t mean to say that. That was wrong. Please forgive me. Won’t you give me another chance?”
“I don’t think we should see each other any more, Roy,” she said firmly.
“But, Makedde, I really care about you.” He reached for her hand and she pulled it away. “Will you let me be your friend at least? Please?”
“Just…just accept my apologies and go. There’s no hard feelings or anything.”
“You don’t want me?” He sounded like a spoilt child.
“Roy.” She was annoyed. He couldn’t have missed it. “Don’t do that.” She gave him a firm and steady “back off” look and felt her body prepare for a possible confrontation.
What if he freaks out and gets violent?
Roy looked at her for a while and she looked straight back.
“But, Makedde, I can help you. I know what you’ve been through, and I can help you.”
A chill went up her spine.
“Professor Gosper told me all about it. It’s terrible what you’ve been through. I can understand why you’re pushing me away, but really, I can help you.”
“Professor Gosper told you about
what
?”
“About the man who abducted you in Sydney. The serial killer.”
Her blood ran cold.
Her toe began to tingle.
“I’m not going to discuss this with you.”
“Don’t do this, Makedde. I can help you,” he pleaded.
“I don’t need your help.”
“Don’t push me away! I understand you! I can help you!” He opened his mouth again to protest, but stopped, stood up and tossed his gift on the ground so hard that it bounced on the pavement. He stormed off in a huff in the direction he had come.
Makedde sat on the bench and hung her head.
Damn.
That hadn’t been as easy as she had hoped.
And he knew all about Sydney!
When Makedde finally left the bench she wasn’t sure what to do about the little gold box. If she gave it back it would mean facing him again, and if she left it at his work station or something similar it would be like rubbing salt in his wounds. She wished he had just taken it with him, whatever it was.
I should at least open it,
she thought.
Makedde bent over to pick up the little box. It felt light in her grasp, the gold paper smooth under her fingertips. Carefully, she peeled open one end of the neat wrapper and pulled out the box.
Chocolate.
Inside was a large milk-chocolate heart sitting in a bed of crimson gift paper, but his act of throwing it to the ground had caused it to break—right through the centre from top to bottom.
The heart was split.
Mak fought a terrible melancholy as she drove home.
In no time at all the weather had turned nasty, just like her day. The clouds had come over as soon as she reached Zhora in the university carpark, and now rain lashed the sides of her car and thunderclouds hung heavy over the city.
You’ll see Ann again tomorrow, and then you’ll be making progress again. You’ll be okay. Don’t panic.
But she
was
panicking. Makedde couldn’t remember the last time she felt so down.
By noon she had locked herself away in her apartment and had immersed herself in a textbook—
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
. There was no way she could face the conference, or face anyone at all.
You’ll be okay…you’ll be okay…
She flipped the textbook open to page three hundred and twenty, “Major Depressive Episode”.
When the phone rang, she didn’t move a muscle. Her answering machine picked it up.
“Hi, Mak.”
It was Jaqui.
“I just got your message. Are you okay? You sounded a little down. I’m worried about you. Call me.”
I’m worried about me, too.
Not long after, the phone rang again, and Mak thought fleetingly of answering it. It’d be Jaqui again.
Her machine got it.
“Makedde, it’s Roy. Pick up the phone.”
Oh no…
“Pick up the phone…”
She didn’t move.
“Pick up the phone, Mak. Pick up the phone, pick up the phone…”
The sound of his voice made her feel cold and she shivered.
Makedde listened to the background noises, the sounds of the wind and the rain. He was clearly calling from outside somewhere. He was calling from his mobile phone, from somewhere rainy and wet, and windy.
Her eyes went to the window, to the trees swaying in the wind.
My God. What if he’s outside?
She jumped up and checked that the door was locked, pulled the security chain and went around
closing the curtains in every room. With trembling hands she peeked through a crack in the curtain fabric of the main window and scanned the street outside. No sign of him.
I’m going crazy. I can’t take this any more.
Breathing hard, she opened the cupboard in the bathroom. Her heart was pounding and so was her head. She pulled out a box of medicines she never used.
There it is.
Makedde popped a small pill out of a foil wrap, and snapped it in half. She slugged it back with a mouthful of tap water. Within ten minutes she felt the drowsiness hit.
It was barely one in the afternoon when Makedde crawled into bed and fell into a deep drug-induced sleep.
Roy drove along the Sea to Sky Highway, frustrated and upset.
She doesn’t want to see me any more. Why? Why?
He really cared about Makedde. He wanted to help her. Why couldn’t she understand that? He wasn’t judging her on her past. He wasn’t judging her on what she had been through or what she was going through. He really understood her. He understood her needs.
She was a nice girl, and she had been through so much, but now she was pushing him away.
Why?
He’d stay away for a while and calm down. He would spend the time with his brother and the wilderness, and get his head together, and then he would think of a way to get her back.
Danny would be a good ear to his sorrows. He always was.
Perhaps we’ll even go hunting together?
It was Danny’s favourite thing. And they hadn’t gone together in a while.
“See you next week, Martin.”
Dr Ann Morgan rose from her chair to see Martin Sawyer from her office. He was her last appointment of the day, and it had become a late day, indeed. Another after-hours patient, but Martin had been insistent that he needed to see her right away.
She was pleased to note that the thirty-four-year-old paranoid schizophrenic was responding well to a recent change in his medication. After some time spent using the standard anti-psychotic drug haloperidol with limited success, she had prescribed the olanzapine variety, which was a comparatively new drug. So far it appeared to be working wonders. Martin seemed like a different man from the nervous, angry and confused patient who was first referred to her. He had just been a bit panicked about his prescription being found by his new partner, but she felt she’d eased his mind.
He stopped in the doorway to shake Dr Morgan’s hand vigorously before leaving. “Thank you so much,” he said, smiling broadly with crooked teeth.
“There is no need to thank me,” she assured him, and meant it.
Although such a positive change was always rewarding to observe, Ann knew that his recovery was far from a mission accomplished. One of the biggest challenges that psychiatrists face is to keep their patients committed to their medication once they feel well again, and Ann dearly hoped that Martin would continue his daily dose when it came time to wean him off their regular appointments. The studies on olanzapine showed a higher level of compliance than with many of the other antipsychotic drugs, and she allowed herself a feeling of cautious optimism about Martin’s future as she watched him walk out of the clinic.
With her last patient now gone, her mind focused with neat precision on her next task, and a tiny cloud of apprehension threw a shadow across her heart. Her official day was complete, but there was something else Ann felt she needed to do. She wanted to check a name in the basement files before she left the office, and she suspected that what she would find there would not make her happy.
Ann made her way down the hallway and walked around to the large front desk where the clinic receptionist was busy at the keyboard. “Sai,
could you pass me the key for the storage room, please?”
Sai flashed her wise dark eyes in Ann’s direction, her neat ponytail snapping to one side like a black whip as she turned her head. Without a word she fished the small key out of the top drawer of her desk and turned her striking, symmetrical face back to Ann.
In Japanese, the name “Sai” refers to intelligence. Ann thought her parents named their girl well. She was by far the best receptionist they had employed at the clinic.
Ann thanked her, and Sai nodded and turned her attention back to her work at the computer terminal.
“Will you be staying on much longer?” Ann asked the top of Sai’s head.
Sai turned and looked at her quizzically, broken again from the focus on her work. “I wasn’t planning on it. I have a dinner date—”
“That’s okay. I’ll close up today,” Ann said. “I’ll be downstairs if you need anything.”
Any break from routine in the clinic was unusual, and Ann’s comment appeared to give Sai pause.
“Is everything alright?” Sai asked, a worry line flawing her smooth forehead. Such a question was inevitable.
“Yes, everything’s fine. I just need to check some old client files and I don’t know how long it will take.”
Sai nodded.
With the single key warming slowly in her hot palm, Ann made her way towards the rear exit of the building and the staircase that led down to the storage room. The corridor grew cold as she ventured further into the bowels of the building, and she was glad for the warmth of her wool Donna Karan pant suit. She pulled the collar close around her neck.
What if I am right about this?
Ann supposed that she would have to consider her options carefully, but only if her concerns were confirmed. For now she simply had to check.
She made her way to the base of the stairs and was met with the stale smell of neglect as she unlocked the storage room door. Blindly, she flipped the light switch on with one groping hand, reaching around the wall in the dark. The overhead lights came on with a flicker and a dull buzz, the fluorescent tubes illuminating the grey filing cabinets that held every file from the clinic that had been inactive for more than two years. The tops of the cabinets were thick with dust, and Ann was glad she didn’t have to come down here too often.