The Recovery
"I've never met someone so particular about their food," Claire Anderson admitted to her friend, boss and housemate Gabrielle Jaeger on the way home from the grower's market Gabrielle frequented.
Gabrielle had to laugh at that. "I get that a lot," she said. "I used to drive Jack absolutely bonkers." She went silent and looked out the window of her car. Claire noticed she did that a lot when Jack's name came up. Gabrielle had never confided in her exactly what had happened between her and her former housemate, but it was obvious that Gabrielle missed him. She often wondered if Gabrielle's offer of a place to stay while she was recovering both physically and emotionally from being raped by her ex-boyfriend had been more than a little to do with her wanting the company, and not purely about her wanting to do the right thing by Claire.
She was grateful Gabrielle had offered her a place to stay. Following Ian's attack, Claire had found it impossible to keep living with her new boyfriend Steve Taylor, a colleague of both of theirs. Gabrielle had offered her friendship and a roof under her head – not to mention the state-of-the-art home security system that Jack had installed after moving in. That was another thing that Claire didn't understand; Jack had never struck her as someone who was particularly anal about security. But then, for all that she had liked Jack, she had always felt a little skittish around men – especially men who were perfectly capable of picking up a seventy-kilo Gabrielle and spin her around as if she were a rag-doll. That kind of strength in men had always frightened her a little.
Hell, what was she saying? More than a little.
"You OK?" Gabrielle asked. A week ago she had been desperate enough to get through Claire's defences that she had gotten hold of Jack to know if he had any tips as to how to act with sexual abuse victims. She regretted it deeply. Jack had been cool towards her, and sarcastic in that way that he could be that let her know in no uncertain terms that he had no wish to speak to her.
The funny thing was, she was sure he regretted it. He of all people appreciated what Claire was going through. But she realised she had humiliated him so deeply, hurt him so much that he had lashed out at her on hearing her voice.
"Fine," Claire said. She had been just about to ask Gabrielle the same thing. For the past week Gabrielle had been down about something, and Claire wanted to know. She knew from recent experience that it wasn't good to keep things bottled up. "Just want to get home."
"Almost there." She led up at the lights near her house and waited for them to turn green before taking off again.
Coming in at a right angle to the car, a drunk-drover barrelled through the red lights on the other side of the intersection and ploughed into Gabrielle's car from the driver's side.
Jack was going over paperwork when Talia barged through the door. He knew it was her, one, because he knew her walk like he knew her voice and her laugh and her smell, and two, because only Talia dared enter his room without permission. He looked up to be met by a surly expression on her face and her holding the phone at arm's length as if the person on the other end was capable of spreading toxins and disease through the line. "It's Ben Jaeger," she said sourly, and he immediately understood her foul mood. Talia was the most possessive woman he had ever dated, and she had made her opinions clear when Gabrielle had called a week ago.
His desire to smirk at her obvious jealous streak died a sudden death when he realised that Ben would only be calling if something that incapacitated Gabrielle so badly that she couldn't call herself. He got up and retrieved the phone of Talia, giving her a steady look for her to leave the room. She did so reluctantly, and he knew from the expression on her face that he was going to pay for that later. Bad enough that Ben have the audacity to call, worse still that he insist on taking the call in private.
"Hey, what's up?" he asked Ben when he had shut the door in private.
"Charming girl, you sleeping with her?" Ben asked in his usual blunt fashion. He had thought from the second he had the way his sister and Jack grooved together as friends and housemates that they were meant to be together, and he took Talia's obvious surliness towards him as proof that even this strange woman herself knew that.
"Was it that obvious?" Jack asked dryly. "Look, I'm sorry to be blunt, Ben, but we're really understaffed here so could you get to the point?"
Ben tried not to take offense at Jack's tone. Gabrielle had briefly filled him in that Jack had ended up settling, at least for the time being, at a clinic in a remote Aboriginal community. Ben had no doubt the place was understaffed, it was difficult enough for them to get doctors and nurses to staff the small hospital in their thriving farm community, let alone a remote Aboriginal community. But he suspected the reason for Jack's bluntness was more to do with whatever falling out he and Gabrielle had had, which Gabrielle had not filled him in on. But Ben wasn't stupid. It was obvious that she cared about him, and obvious that she missed him. "It's Gabby," Ben said, getting straight to the point. "She's been in an accident."
Jack felt his knees buckle and he groped for the chair he'd just been sitting in. "What kind of accident?" he asked.
"Drunk driver through a red light," Ben said, the bitter irony of it obvious in his voice. Steve was an alcoholic and Gabrielle was a very mild social drinker because of it (well, most of the time, anyway). And she would never drink-drive. The was a tragic irony in the fact she'd been in an accident at the hands of a drink-driver.
"Is she OK?" Jack asked in a shaky voice.
"No, she's not. She's – Jack, I don't know what went on between you but I know there was a time you cared a lot about her and I thought you had a right..." Ben's voice trailed off, not wanting to speak the words. I thought you had a right to say goodbye if it comes to that.
For Jack, regardless of what had happened between them, he couldn't just turn his back on the closeness they had once shared. "I'll be there as soon as I can. What hospital is she at?"
"St. Angela's. ICU."
"I'll see what I can do."
They hung up, and Jack immediately went to his supervisor. "You're in luck," Doctor John Parker said. He knew better than to try and talk Jack into staying. The younger man looked prepared to walk every step of the way to Sydney if he had no other option. "We need to airlift a patient to Sydney, we just need to stabilise him. When that's done, you'll have about three minutes notice."
"I'll get packed straight away," Jack said.
Parker left, and Talia glowered at him. "You're going back to her?" she snapped.
"Don't be like that. She's in a coma. She's hardly competition."
"She was never competition," Talia snapped. "Jesus, Jack, don't you remember how she humiliated you?"
He sighed and ran his fingers through his hair. He needed to get it cut, but Talia liked it longer. "Yes, I remember. And I also remember that she was once my best friend. I can't just let her die and not say goodbye. Look, I'll be back before you know it and then we'll talk about the thing, yeah?" he asked, desperate to get her off his case. She kept insisting that it was stupid for the clinic with its ridiculously small budget to be maintaining bedrooms for two doctors who were in a monogamous semi-longterm relationship when one would work just as well. As if wanting to save the clinic money was her only reason.
"OK." Her eyes narrowed slightly the way they did when she was plotting something. "I'll come by your room in fifteen minutes."
"Talia! I need to pack."
"I know. That's what I said fifteen minutes."
Claire woke from her bedside vigil and initially thought she was seeing an apparition. "Hey," Jack said as if his presence was the most natural thing in the world.
"When did you get here?" she asked.
"A few hours ago. I didn't want to wake you. Zoe says you shouldn't even be here."
It had completely slipped her mind that the current head of St. Angela's ED used to be the 2IC at the All Saints ED. Zoe Gallagher had met Steve with suspicion that Claire didn't understand; had Steve done something to incur Zoe's wrath? "I couldn't leave," Claire said. "It wasn't right for her to be alone so Ben, Russel and I have been taking turns."
"Where are they staying?"
"Some motel. There wasn't really room at her place."
Jack had to laugh at that. "Don't tell me she couldn't be assed clearing out that third bedroom of hers and instead just gave you mine?"
"No, she cleared it out. Ben said it just didn't feel right, going through your stuff like that." Claire realised what Jack had been doing. "She always complained about her hair, said no-one could get the knots out without pulling like you could." He'd combed out her hair and fashioned it into two plaits so it wouldn't get tangled again. She frowned in concentration, thinking. That was hardly the actions of a man who didn't care.
"I had a girlfriend who's step-daughter had hair that knotted. Nothing gets your way to a woman's heart more effectively than soothing a screaming toddler," he quipped.
She smiled, then turned serious. "Any change?" she asked.
In three hours? He shook his head. By the time he had gotten here, she had been stabilised, but the damage was done; three broken ribs on her right side, one of which had been pressing dangerously against her lung. Her wrist was broken, and her right leg was broken in four places. About the only good thing was that since the car had rammed into the right side of the car, Gabrielle's right side had taken most of the damage and her heart hadn't been affected. Claire had gotten away with a nasty bruise when her seatbelt had largely restrained her and a minor concussion where it hadn't quite succeeded and she'd hit her head against the dash.
"It's not fair," Claire said. "She's been so good to me."
Guiltily, Jack remembered Gabrielle calling him to ask how was the best way to deal with someone who had been brutally sexually assaulted. He had told her to Google it. OK, so Talia had been a meter away from him at the time and it had seemed like a good idea to put a smile on his current lover's face by being so rude to – but now it just seemed childish, and he cursed himself for it. "I know," he said softly, remembering. "She told me."
Claire looked at him suspiciously. Was that what the whispered phone call a week and a half ago had been about? Was that why Gabrielle had been in a flat mood ever since? "She had no right," Claire said, shaking with rage, at once feeling as dirty and humiliated as if Ian had just finished his assault. "She had no right," she repeated.
"Hey, no need to be upset."
"Of course I'm upset! You have no idea what I went through!"
"I was sexually abused for two years when I was a teenager," he found herself admitting to her. Not that it really mattered now who knew; his life here in Sydney was over, at least for the time being. "She just wanted to know if there was anything she could do – anything that had helped me feel more comfortable about people that she could do for you." Because that was the kind of person she was, Jack remembered, despite the circumstances under which they had parted.
"Oh," Claire said flatly, processing the information. Well, that explained why he was so anal-retentive about security, at least. "What did you say?"
"I told her to Google it and then hung up on her so I could get my new girlfriend's approval," he admitted shame-facedly.
Part of her wanted to ask Jack what had happened between him that he would respond so rudely to a humanitarian request for help, but a bigger part wanted to know how he had gotten over the horror of his own abusive past. "I slept around a lot," he admitted. "I made myself feel like a man by proving that I was the straightest guy I knew. Eventually, I went to therapy and dealt with a lot of stuff."
"Do you ever get completely over it?" she asked, thinking that if Jack, who seemed so at-ease with himself could, then maybe –
"I don't know."
She looked at him squarely. "Did you?"
He squirmed. "No," he admitted. "Not completely." He watched as Claire's face scrunched up in despair and she started to cry. "But my situation is a lot different to yours. I was thirteen and a virgin and it went on for two years and I didn't have anyone who cared about me the way Steve and Gabrielle do about you. You've known that sex can be fun and loving and respectful, I didn't. That was the biggest thing I had to get over." Something he had never fully gotten over. And then someone like Gabrielle could come along and take all his progress and throw it away and make him feel dirty and ashamed all over again. "Claire, you'll be OK eventually," he said in a soft, reassuring voice.
She was sobbing now, letting out all her repressed grief and shame, and he found her sitting in his lap, her arms around his neck, needing his comforting presence. He wasn't comfortable with it – he barely knew her, and he was well aware that she was Steve Taylor's girlfriend – but he didn't have the heart to push her off. God knew that if she could get past her intense fear of being touched to cling to him like this, it had to be serious. Instead, he wrapped his arms around her back. "It'll be OK," he repeated over and over. Her sobs gradually quietened and she seemed to take comfort from him knowing what she was going through, so he let her stay there.
"Sorry," she sniffled when several more minutes had passed and she was composed enough to get out of his lap. She felt a flash of guilt that she couldn't stand to let Steve touch her, yet there she had been in Jack's arms, in far closer proximity than she had allowed Steve since the attack.
"You don't need to feel bad about anything," he said, sensing her thoughts. "You've been through this massive trauma. Hell, you should have seen me after one of my counselling sessions. She seemed to think she hadn't done her job if she hadn't made me cry. What you're feeling is OK. And you don't need to feel bad that you don't like Steve touching you, either. You've had something very personal taken from you by force. I'm sure even Steve doesn't expect you to be ready for intimacy straight away."
"You don't like him much, do you?" In the brief time she had worked with Jack, she had been aware that the two men had a hearty dislike of one another, although Steve had never said why. Or, rather, he had said that Jack was a prat who looked down on anyone who wasn't Sydney born-and-bred, which was not something that Claire had found about him.
"No." She mistook his glance at Gabrielle for concern for the woman, and not an explanation for his dislike of Steve. She wondered if Steve had looked at her like that while she had been unconscious, so concerned, so loving. It was obvious that he still cared for her deeply, but it was just as obvious that something had happened between them that resentment still simmered. Love and hate. She wondered how the two emotions could exist side-by-side, and was glad that she and Steve didn't have to deal with such complication.
She noticed that his bags were parked on the floor next to him; he must have come straight over. "You got somewhere to stay?" she asked.
"I hadn't thought that far ahead," he admitted. It had been less than twelve hours since he had found out about Gabrielle's accident and all he had thought about was getting to Sydney and her bedside before something happened. He couldn't bring herself to face up to the fact that she might die. "I'll look at checking into a motel. If all else fails, I know Dan hasn't rented his house out yet."
"Why don't you come back to our place – I mean, Gabrielle's, your old place?" Claire suggested. "You're room's still exactly as you left it, and to be honest, I don't feel very safe by myself. I could do with having someone else in the house."
He was too tired and distracted to concentrate on another option. "Fine," he said. "I don't have my key, though." He had all but thrown it in her face when he'd suggested she could give it to Steve, since that was clearly what she wanted.
"I've got both of them at the moment. Call me paranoid," she admitted guiltily. When the personal belongings Gabrielle had had on her had been processed, Claire had been adamant about having the second key. The idea of someone being able to get into the house – as unlikely as it was – scared the crap out of her. She fished around in her bag for it and handed him the key. "You look tired," she said. "Maybe you should head home, get some rest."
He shook his head. "If you don't mind, I'd rather be alone with her," he said. She nodded slightly and left him to it.
With Claire gone, he let go of the emotions he was holding in and started to cry. She looked terrible. Her entire face was badly bruised from where she'd hit her head on the steering wheel, the left side badly lacerated from the impact. He could see where her ribs had been taped up through the thin hospital nightgown, and her entire left leg was encased on plaster. Her fingers stuck out from the bulky cast on her hand. Zoe had taken him through her injuries, admitting that someone less physically healthy – not to mention congenitally stubborn – wouldn't have gotten this far. He knew he should take cold comfort out of the fact she was stable, but seeing her looking like such a mess, knowing how long a period of healing – even rehabilitation – she had in front of her should she wake up broke his heart.
It wasn't fair that Gabrielle of all people, who had dedicated her life to healing people, who had taken so much shit from a man who didn't care how his action affected her, should be so close to death at the hands of someone who had been drunk at five in the afternoon. It wasn't fair that he had loved her and his parting words had been so cruel. That didn't matter now.
He took her hand and bawled shamelessly, now that no-one was around. "I love you," he said. "Please don't die before I get to say that. You're the only person who knew how to love me. Who's going to love me if you die?"