Part 7

Amy brought her wheelchair to a stop in the doorway to the lonely hospital room, squinting through the darkened room to the man lying in the bed, face pale and his limbs lifeless. The machines surrounding him were the only things that showed any real sign of life, forming a kind of rhythmic beat as Tom's chest rose and fell.

A sickening lump formed in her throat at the sight of him, totally defenceless and a victim of the stress that had been consuming them whole for far too long. The last year had played havoc with all of them and she knew that it had left them tired and worn out, both physically and mentally. She knew that they'd all been hoping for a happy reunion, but even that hadn't gone to plan. No matter how hard they tried to pretend, their lives were simply not as perfect as they had envisioned them to be.

She slowly wheeled herself across the hospital room, stopped at Tom's bedside. She reached out, taking Tom's hand in hers, rubbing his rough and worn skin within her soft and delicate touch. She took in every little thing about the weak man lying before her, the wrinkles of his brow, the resigned and tired expression on his face. No matter how hard she tried to tell herself otherwise, Tom was losing the will to fight anymore. Somewhere along the line, he'd lost the will to try.

"Oh, Tom," she whispered softly, her hushed voice almost seeming to resonate down the empty corridors. "You've got to keep fighting, remember? It's all about taking the hits and getting up again. That's what you told me."

The eerie hospital atmosphere was beginning to grate her already frazzled nerves. She had never been a big fan of hospitals, but they were getting harder to handle since the shooting. She'd spent nearly three months within the horribly bland white walls, enduring pain like none other that she'd experienced before.

It was so hard to imagine Tom like this, especially after how strong he'd been when she had really needed him. Tom and Evan had been at her side the moment she had first awoken from the anaesthetic and there again when Sophie Ash had finally told her how serious her injury was. Tom had been there for her when she'd had to face life in a wheelchair, the most obvious sign of disability and weakness that she could think of. He'd offered her support, reminding her that life was about taking the hits and standing up again.

Standing up, she reflected with a wistful sigh. The elusive goal. Evan's love, Tom's support and the goal of standing up and walking again were what kept her sane. If she didn't have those, then she suspected she would have gone to pieces long ago. She always worked better when she had something to work for, something to achieve.

Not to her surprise, Tom didn't respond to her soft words, the steady beeping of the machines drowning out the sounds of his breath as it entered and left his body. Amy tightened her grip on Tom's hand and lent forward to kiss it softly. Three years ago, they had been little more than strangers. Now, they were almost the only things keeping each other going.

Evan guided Susie back through into the public bar of the near-abandoned Imperial Hotel, almost surprised at how Susie didn't reject his sympathy. In the last couple of years, she'd come to push away anything associated with Evan Jones and their disastrous relationship, but not tonight. Tonight, he got the feeling that whatever little fragments remained of their friendship was all Susie had left in the world.

He finally found himself distracted from Susie's predicament as he looked around in renewed horror at his colleagues. Alex was slumped back against a wall, staring intently at his old Nokia mobile as he half-heartedly attempted to beat the Snake high score that Rory had set more than a year previous. It was obvious to Evan as he watched his old schoolmate that he was trying desperately to get his mind off the disaster of that night. And probably Rory, too. Evan could see how distant the two were becoming and it troubled him somewhat. There was an underlying love there – the fact that it hurt Alex so much proved that – but time had changed both of them. Even Evan could see that Alex clung desperately to the past to compensate for every other part of his life that kept changing, while Rory was growing up and slowly morphing from a child into a teenager.

He tore his gaze from Alex, turning it instead to Chris. Good ol' Chris Riley, he told himself with a tiny smile. Predictable, stable Chris Riley. No matter what else happened, she was always there at the end of the day with a cold beer and a sympathetic ear. She was bent over a table, scrubbing so ferociously at it that Evan would have been surprised if she hadn't taken the paint off yet. Her normally vivacious and fiery curls seemed to have lost much of their life over the last few hours, instead hanging limply around her face. It almost seemed to embody what all of them were feeling.

He couldn't stop himself from turning to Kelly, where she sat on her own at a secluded table, her chin resting delicately in her right hand while she stared almost unseeingly at the gold ring on her left hand. He'd seen the confrontation between Matt and Joss and he wouldn't have needed to be a detective to realise that they were both in love with the attractive young blonde. The sight of a teary and hopeless Kelly almost made his heart ache. She was one of the most positive people he knew, yet even she was drowning in the darkness.

"Where's Joss?" he asked aloud, not quite aware of what he had said until Alex looked up from his mobile phone with narrowed eyes with heavy black bags hanging under them.

Alex nodded towards the Parlour, quickly returning his gaze to his game. Evan glanced sharply towards the private room as his old friend spoke. "In there," he replied in a sharp tone, "drinking himself stupid, I think. Not that I'd blame him. It's been a shocker of a night."

Evan found Susie slipping her hand into his, squeezing it slightly in encouragement. He nodded, glancing back over his shoulder to Susie to meet her gaze momentarily before looking back to Alex. "Has Matt shown up yet?"

Alex shook his head as he finally gave up on the mobile phone game, switching it off as he stuffed it back into the pocket of his police pants. "Nup," he replied in an almost expressionless voice. He sighed, folding his arms across his chest as he looked up at Evan and Susie with hopelessness clear in his eyes. "Some party, eh?"

"Yeah," Evan mumbled in response as he tore his gaze away from Alex and cast it back over the rest of his friends. "Some party."

Matt approached the door of the small florist on the main street, pressing his face up against the cold glass as he stared inside. The chill of the winter night was making goose bumps rise on his arms and his cheeks turn a raw rosy red. The shop was almost like a beacon, with the lights inside turned on and seeping out past the boundaries of the glass and onto the street beyond. The numerous flowering plants drew him ever closer, enticing him with their bright and cheerful colours and beauty, something which he knew was missing from that night.

A young male shop assistant, no older than twenty five, emerged from a back room, a broom clutched firmly in his right hand. He stared at Matt in puzzlement for a long moment, as though the mere thought of anyone wanting to buy flowers at that hour of the night simply absurd, before setting the broom aside and opening the door. "We are closed, you know," he pointed out, folding his arms across his chest in a superior kind of way.

"Yeah, I know," Matt told him, his voice oddly quiet and broken up by the nerves that ran through his body. "But I really, really need to buy some flowers…"

The shop assistant let a knowing kind of smirk spread across his face as he almost danced back to the counter, motioning for Matt to follow. Feeling rather overwhelmed at it all, Matt followed, staring in wonder at the different array of colours that leapt out at him, tearing his gaze in all directions.

"So," the shop assistant asked, leaning forward across the counter as Matt looked at him hesitantly. "What's the occasion? Proposal, birthday, anniversary, just an 'I love you' present…"

Matt stared at him in wonder before chuckling weakly with disappointment, more in himself than anyone else. "Ah…what about 'I've stuffed up really, really badly but I still love as I always have and always will, even though I've probably gone and driven you right into the arms of another man who you may very well love more than you love me and I'm an absolute dickhead for doing that'."

The shop assistant looked rather stunned at Matt's words, drawing away as though he had been burned by standing too close to him. He finally nodded, stepping sideways over towards a large bouquet of deep red flowers that lay on the other side of the cash register. "Ah…" he mumbled, fumbling blindly for the bouquet as he found himself too reluctant to look away from Matt. "Roses it is, then."

Joss felt his stomach tie itself in knots as he approached Kelly, each step made more awkward by a combination of alcohol and nerves. She was slumped back against the wall of the public bar, her face buried deep within her hands. It took all the restraint he could muster to not wrap his arms around her and assure her that everything would be fine. "Kel?"

"Don't call me Kel, Peroni," she mumbled in reply, dragging herself to her feet and heading out into the chilly winter night. She never once met his gaze, instead keeping her head down so that her silky blonde hair hid her face from view. Despite the voice in his head that told him not to follow her, he couldn't help himself.

She stared out into the night as she stood with her hands in her pockets, her eyes misting over with tears as he drew up close behind her. "I'm sorry for what I did," Joss apologised softly as he reached out to wrap a soft hand around her slender wrist. "It was really dumb and I was drunk…"

She laughed bitterly at this. "Wake up to yourself, Joss," she told him with a disbelieving shake of her head. "You're still drunk. You've been drunk the whole night. You're lucky Highway Patrol didn't pull you over on the way here or you'd be out of a job by now."

Joss felt hot tears well in his eyes as Kelly recoiled away from his touch, still not turning to look at him. He looked around himself hopelessly, before shaking his head. "I've got absolutely nothing, Kelly," he explained, his voice degenerating into violent sobs. "I've got nothing left worth living for in my life and it's all my bloody fault. Now Mum's died…my career's dead in the water, I've got no friends and…and no you in my life."

Kelly paused at Joss' words, finally turning back to stare at him with wide, disbelieving eyes. "Your mother died?" she whispered, her voice catching in her throat as she reflected back to the strong vision she had of Joss' mother from when she had visited Mt. Thomas over a year ago. "How?"

Joss' sobs seemed to subside somewhat as Kelly's persona became far less frosty and more of the warm, welcoming person he knew well. "Cancer," he replied, almost spitting the word as though it was some foul, filthy phrase not fit to be spoken. "It destroyed her. It literally bloody destroyed her. And it's destroyed me."

Hot, salty tears of sympathy ran down Kelly's cheeks as she reached out to Joss, wrapping her hands around his injured one tenderly. She stepped forward, a kind of confidence in her stride as she closed the distance between them. A tentative smile spread across her face. "She was a wonderful, beautiful woman, Joss," she told him as she gave his hand a tiny squeeze. "She really was."

"I was her sole carer," Joss continued, his sobs continuing to subside and drift away into the darkness as Kelly's presence worked a kind of magic over him. "She relied on me for absolutely everything in the end. I had to thrown in the job to look after her and any friends I had made just stopped calling by. Eventually they even stopped saying hello in the street. I've got nothing left other than booze and memories."

Kelly nodded in understanding as she held his hand close to her heart. "You're one of my best friends, Peroni," she informed him, a genuine smile that lit Joss' heart playing on her lips. "You always have been. You were there for me when my friend was raped and left for dead, you were there for me when my dad's killer showed up in town…you're the one who made me laugh when others couldn't and I'll never, ever be able to forget that."

Joss nodded, Kelly's smile weaving its magic over him as his own lips twisted into the brightest smile he'd been able to manage in months. "But it doesn't go further than that?" he queried, allowing the tiniest amount of hope to slip into his voice.

"No," Kelly replied, shaking her head slowly and deliberately. "No matter how much you mean to me as my best friend, Matt's the one I love the most. But I don't want you to destroy yourself. I couldn't live with myself if the drinking ended up killing you."

"What do you mean?" Joss asked, his eyes narrowing slightly in confusion.

"I want you to put in a transfer as soon as you get back to Melbourne," she told him, her voice forceful and almost mother-like. "Apply for the vacant Constable position where Matt and I are working. You can even stay in the spare room with us for a while, if you'd like. Then, I want you to get some counselling. You're too good a man, Joss Peroni, to waste yourself on beer and loneliness like this." She reached up, tracing his cheekbone with her thumb. "I care about you too much."

He paused, not quite sure what to make of Kelly's offer. Finally he found the promise of a brighter and happier life in the company of his best friend too much to resist. He nodded, his smile broadening tentatively as he reflect on what life could be without the darkness and alcohol he had been surrounding himself with. "Okay," he told Kelly with a smile. "I'll do it."