It was dark inside Connie Beauchamp's office that night, but for a single bulb glowing from her desk lamp. Connie sat at the desk, dressed from head to toe in black, a pillbox hat, also black, sat delicately in front of her. She held her head in her hands, her elbows resting against the pinewood of the desk, but she was not crying. Instead she listened to the soft pattering of the rain against the window, the wind softly blowing through the trees of the car park, as she wondered where it had all gone wrong, why it had come to this. She knew she couldn't change it all but she longed to go back, to try.
They'd let it drift apart, before the end…long before the end. She didn't even know if she had still loved him before all this…she couldn't even remember, it all seemed so irrelevant to her now. All she could remember in her mind was following him out of the front door, the covering of her flimsy silk dressing gown not preventing the icy wind from chilling her to her bones. She remembered the shouting, something petty turned into a full scale row, as usual, him walking down the drive, what she had said as he stormed into the road, the headlights coming towards him, the way that when she heard him scream she couldn't feel even the cold anymore for panic. The way she had watched as Ric and Diane fought all night to save him, the way Ric had looked at her when they couldn't. The way she had stood in the mortuary for hours, just staring, not believing that this was Michael on the slab in front of this time, rather than another Joe Nobody. The way she hadn't cried. She still hadn't cried. She couldn't cry.
She struggled to remember the last time she had felt her husband's strong arms around her, the last time they had fallen asleep in each other's arms and meant it. The last time they had slept in the same bed. The last time they had hugged, the last time they had kissed, the last time they had touched. The last time they had smiled at each other across a crowded room. The last time they had smiled at each other across their own front room, kitchen, dining room. The last time they had spoken to each other without it ending up as a shouting match, the last time they had told each other that they loved each other…. the last time they had loved each other.
They had loved each other once…she remembered when they were courting, one Sunday as the steamy atmosphere of late summer afternoons settled in the air, and they had sat at a table in the garden of a pub in the countryside. She had held a cold drink in her hand, and the ice had tinkled against the glass as she had moved it to her lips to taste it. She was twenty-three, he was twenty-nine, and she had watched him speak, fascinated, as he talked about things that mattered too much to him to say in any way but lightly, like politics and family. He had smiled at her softly, and told her that he loved her, and she told him she loved him too. A year later, they were wed.
Where had it all gone? Their relationship had become bitter, as time had passed. He had said she worked too much; that she loved her job more than she had loved him, and she had told him maybe it was true. They would row about how he was sleeping with other women, how she was sleeping with other men. They argued over dinner, argued over breakfast. The loving lunchtime phone calls of yesteryear were replaced with rows, rows that always resulted in one of them hanging up on the other, leaving both feeling angered and dreading of the evening, when inevitably they'd come face to face again.
Funny, how she found herself at work now, hours after gazing down into that wooden casket, pine like the wood she rested her elbows on now, and seeing her husband lying there, peaceful. As she had stood there, she'd tried to remember the last time she had seen him look so content. She had smiled to herself as she noticed his lips were slightly upturned at the corners, remembering how long he used to spend in front of the mirror in the good days, trying to hide this natural smile, telling her that as a politician, he had to have a serious face…he had never smiled, not recently, and she wondered if partly that were her fault. She suspected it was. As he had been laid to rest, she had watched, as all their last chances were lowered into the ground with him. She had thrown the roses on top of him and nodded thanks at his mourners, before getting in her car and driving away. To work.
A soft knock at the door disturbed her thoughts, and she raised her head to see who stood there. It was Ric, gazing at her gently but reprimandingly, pushing the door closed and crossing the room to her desk.
"What are you doing here Connie?" He asked, gently, giving her a soft smile, worried for her. For a woman who had lost her husband a fortnight ago, she was handling things well. Too well. And surely even an ice queen of arctic temperatures such as Connie could not be this composed when faced with widowhood. He hadn't seen her cry…not even when they'd lost him on the table, not even in the mortuary after.
"I don't know…thinking." She said, quietly, gazing at the intricate patterns of the lace that had earlier veiled her eyes, cascading down from the rim of her hat. She traced her finger over the flowers woven into its fabric; it's blackness contrasting with the lightness of the wood. She could feel Ric's eyes upon her, and tentatively, she looked up at him.
"It's okay to mourn for him you know Connie." He told her, following her finger with his eyes, perching on the chair sat facing her desk. "You don't have to be here."
"I need to be here Ric…I need to keep busy." She told him, her fingers now scratching at the lace, her nails creating little snags in its perfection. Gently his fingers closed over hers, stopping her from ruining it anymore, and so instead she watched his hand on hers, not moving away.
" Don't burn yourself out…have some time for yourself." He said, kindly, and she drew her eyes up to meet his.
" Don't you see? I'd lost him long before he died Ric…I have had too much time for myself already." She looked away again, recognizing the feeling that was settling in her throat. Ric frowned slightly, wondering what she meant, but her wedding ring, no longer on her finger and memories of her first day at Holby told him all he needed to know.
"Oh Connie." The two words were soft, simple; there was nothing more to say. He got the feeling that there was more to it than he knew, but he knew that she'd never tell him, nor was he sure he wanted to know. He merely squeezed her hand, letting her know he understood.
She knew he'd never understand, and she gazed at the clock, noticing the time to be much later than she'd imagined it to be, as she told him, almost silently the four words which had been eating her up inside since that day. "We'd been arguing you know. He stormed out the house, telling me he was going to his mistress's house, that he'd get more peace there. I followed him out, yelling at him. The last words I said to him were 'Goddamn you Michael, I hope you die'."
Ric stared at her, as she averted her gaze, from the clock to the floor beneath it, feeling so sorry for the strong woman sat at the desk in front of him. He was out of his seat, walking around the desk to her, holding her tightly. She was standing too, and as he held her in his strong arms, she did not cry, instead she did the only thing she knew to make it better. She kissed him, passionately, her hands running up his back and into his hair. Instinctively he kissed her back, but soon he broke away, and gazed at her softly.
"Connie…are you sure this is what you want?" He asked, gently, seeing the answer in her eyes before she even had to say it.
"No…no it's not." She said. There were tears in her eyes as she looked back at him, and be brushed them away as they spilt over and down her cheeks.
"Come on." He told her, softly. "I'll take you home." Ric put his arm around her shoulders and lead her from the room, switching out the desk lamp as they went, and plunging the room into darkness.