I open one eye. My headache doesn't get worse and I cautiously open the other one. Ugh, my head feels like it's gonna explode. There's damned pollen everywhere and my allergies are going to kill me even though I've already ingested enough Benadryl to kill a horse. Pulling a double shift didn't make me feel any better, and I'm very happy that I don't have to work until Monday evening. I am going to go to the kitchen and pour coffee down my throat and then I am going to go to sleep again. It'll be a great day – just me and the bed, no one else. A day to forget about my life and pretend I am someone else – to daydream about life with no problems and love with no strings attached.
I will finally have time to think over what I have been avoiding for the last couple of weeks, what I like to call the "John situation." Even before our fight, I started to feel like I was going through the motions with John. I smiled when he joked, frowned when he was upset, but my mind was miles away, and sometimes I felt like I could care less what he did. I love him, but at times I feel like he just needs me to satisfy a craving, and sometimes I feel that I need him for the same reason. We got to know each other at the AA, and we are addicts, even though we have pretended we are not for a very long time. We addicted ourselves to each other, but after a while it has become clear to me that John is not enough for me.
People have always needed me. I'm Abby the Caretaker, sweet little Abby who takes care of everyone but can't stand be taken care of. It's a habit that is tough to break – once an independent little bitch, always an independent little bitch. I had to become independent way before other kids my age – I don't blame Maggie, since it was not her fault she was sick (although I've blamed her many times in the past), and even don't blame my asshole of a father, wherever he is. I've always blamed myself for some reason thinking of . If only I was the younger child, if only I had never been born, if only I didn't remind Maggie of my father. It continued even after I left Maggie – Richard, nursing school, medical school, nursing supervisor position, and my crazy family crashing back into my life again and again.
Let's face it – I can't live well without shit happening. I don't enjoy it, but calm life is not for me. I need to be taking care of someone, or destroying myself, to be happy. It's the awful truth John wanted to ignore. I am not worth loving because I don't love calm. I am addicted to madness, in a way. Lucky, lucky me. I also use everyone who I don't have to take care of, want to get the time wasted on being caretaker out of them, suck out their energy and use it for myself, use them and throw them away. I did it to Luka much more then to John, and I feel sorry now, but I don't know how to tell him that. John is much more open with me about his life then Luka was, and this is perhaps why we managed to have a more harmonious relationship. But even harmony can't help a relationship to last for long if the people try to fix each other, to fix the things that secretly frighten or embarrass them in themselves.
Speaking of Luka - I wonder what has happened to him in the last year. Not much is left in him from the guy I used to know and love, and not even much is left from the philandering party boy of last year. Just before he left he seemed tired, even more then usual, and there's something in my mind that wanted to reach out and help, but something stopped me. It's a sort of morbid curiosity that affects us at times – we secretly love to see other people suffer just like we secretly enjoy watching car wrecks on TV. I feel guilty for standing by while Luka's life seemed to become more and more bizarre everyday, for telling myself that I did not owe him anything, ignoring his silent plea for friendship that Christmas. But it's all in the past, and it's too late for me to fix some things between us.
I walk into the kitchen and see John there, reading the morning newspaper. I stare at him like he has dropped in there from heaven, although I perfectly know he must have returned from the Congo last night. I would have liked for him to call me before he showed up and maybe apologize for being an asshole, so his sudden appearance in the kitchen elicits less then enthusiastic feelings from me.
"Hey," I say cautiously. Well, one can't get into a fight with a single "hey."
He looks up, and I frown. He looks tired, his face reflecting more then jetlag. Something in me begins to worry for him but I quench the impulse coldly, remembering his words. "It's not Rio – but it's not here." He walked away from me, walked away when I finally was ready to tell him that I did want to be with him, that I wanted to mend our relationship, that I would let him into my fears. Now it's beyond mending. Two weeks can change a lot, and in our case they have changed everything.
"Morning." Normally, he would sweep me off my feet right now and tell me how cute I look in the morning, but he doesn't even look up at me. He seems about as excited to see me as I am to see him. Well, there goes my date with the bed and here comes the end of relationship showdown. Well, at least we are not in a public place and Carter's is too nice to tell me what he thinks of me, to tell me the truth about what I really am. Luka was right – I'm a bitch. And I am a bitch who sat alone in the dark for two weeks and tried not to cry, not understanding why Carter could not understand my more pressing problem, why he got so mad at me just because I needed to get Eric. He did not know how I felt that evening when Maggie kept droning on about Eric being alive and okay when a part of my mind kept droning on about Eric being dead because of me, because of my fear of my family's madness, the cold, terrible feeling that I would never see my baby brother again... He doesn't want to understand the insanity of Eric and Maggie. He won't admit it to me, but he probably only likes them when they are nice and on their meds. He's ashamed of me when they go nuts, supportive but repulsed at the same time - a normal reaction, but I don't need normal, I need the unusual reaction, I need the support and understanding.
"Morning. How was your trip?"
"Long. They had engine problems on the way back – we had a long layover in Frankfurt." Carter looks down at the newspaper, and then looks up at me, then looks away again.
Great. He might as well just walk out of the door right now. I don't care. I have enough problems to deal with right now without dealing with him.
"Who's we?"
"Me and Gillian, a nurse from Quebec. Another volunteer. Want to see some pictures that I took?" He takes out on of those nifty little photo viewer things that look like little Gameboys and reaches it to me. I flip through the pictures – child after child, smiling weakly at the camera. Several tired-looking women in bloodstained lab coats. John and a woman with dark hair – since she has an I Love Canada shirt on I assume she is Gillian, her hand on his shoulder. Gillian and Luka, standing too close to each other. I feel a little pang of pain in my chest, suddenly jealous at this woman for touching Luka and John. Luka with a little girl. Luka by himself, leaning back in a chair, a cigarette loosely held in one hand and a glass with something in the other, looking directly at the camera. There is something dark and strange about him, something that I saw for a fleeting moment at Susan's Christmas party. I look at the picture again, suddenly scared, because this Luka does not look at all like the Luka I used to know.
The Luka I knew only three years ago was a different man. When he was with me, he could be the opposite of cautious, reserved Luka I saw at work. Luka was definitely a change from Richard, a change for the better. In his better moments, Luka would reveal himself as a closet romantic and could be wonderful, taking me to small cozy restaurants or cooking me dinner. Our sex life was quite good too. Luka really enjoyed "worshipping" me, and I enjoyed returning the favor, since Luka without clothes is eye candy. But sometimes something dark and ugly came up in him and he could be very spiteful, like the night we broke up. At other times, he was overcome with sadness, and despite his attempts to pretend that everything was fine I could feel that he was really upset. Despite my attempts to find out more about the source of that sadness I never could get far and I became more and more frustrated when I could not get through the barriers that Luka managed to put up around his past, and one day I got tired of feeling like I was trying to break down a brick wall every time I tried to talk to him about our relationship.
I put John's photo thing on the table, shuffle to the fridge and stare inside of it for a while. All there is to eat is a moldy piece of cheese and a carton of some very old eggs, along with a large tub of Rocky Road. Deciding that breakfast is not the best course right now I change course and walk to Mr. Coffee the cheap coffeemaker, whom I have abandoned in the last month. It acts accordingly by making strange choking noises when I start it. I turn back to the table and see that John is watching me from behind his newspaper.
"Coffee?"
He nods and returns his gaze to the newspaper. Yep, this conversation can't get any livelier.
I return my gaze to Mr. Coffee. Coffee. Luka used to make coffee that made me so hyper I couldn't sleep for two days and he complained that it was weak. Luka. I think of Luka in the kitchen, sitting at the table in a rumpled T-shirt and boxers, his hair disheveled from sleep, drinking his hair-curling coffee and looking at me with a small smile, a specialty of his. Coffee has an association to Luka in my mind – the taste of strong coffee reminds me of the taste of Luka's lips. Mr. Coffee burps a little and spits out more warm tasteless coffee into the cup. I bring it over to John and put the cup in front of him, careful not to touch him. After that, I go to the stove and decide to make myself Turkish coffee, just out of spite.
"So, how was your trip – really?"
John takes a sip of coffee and stares at the cup with barely concealed disgust, but continues drinking.
"It was an eye-opener. Made our ER seem like a goldmine of supplies. I'd – I'd rather not talk about it yet. I am still a bit shell-shocked." He laughs tonelessly, bites his lip and takes another sip of Mr. Coffee's shitty brew. "By the way, Luka says hi."
Luka. When Luka will come back I need to have a good long talk with him. I've let the "Luka situation" disintegrate for way too long. But even before he comes back, I've got to resolve the "John situation." I've began thinking of people as situations to resolve – soon I'll start describing myself as the "Abby situation." I need a fucking vacation. Yeah, that's exactly what I need. Maybe I should quit my job and run off to some warm place and assume a new identity. I'll be a doctor who has been given a large sum of money by her deceased aunt and whom all the men want to love no matter what her problems are, who will be normal and rootless, a mysterious presence - yeah, right. When hell freezes over.
My Turkish coffee is ready and I take a sip, immediately thinking about Luka. About Luka drinking coffee wearing nothing but socks. About me getting tired of watching him drinking coffee in the buff and finding another use for his mouth-
The phone rings, making my poor head hurt even more and jerking me out of my fantasy. Great. Maybe I should just invite the whole ER to come visit me. Logically the next thing would be doorbell ringing. I grimace and search for the new cordless I got last week, finding it on top of the fridge.
"Hello?"
"Abby, rise and shine – they finally let me use the fucking phone. How about you coming over tomorrow – bring some candy bars, they have no candy machine here and I am dying to eat some chocolate and I feel like a fucking bunny on Viagra with this new med they're giving me-"
At this point I tune Eric out and think that our family must have somehow been cursed. I mean, all I want is a nice, stable life but here I am with my nutty brother going on about how horny he is, my maybe-soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend staring into his coffee like he wants to drown himself in the cup all while I long to do the nasty with my favorite former lover. If Maggie walks into the door right now, I'm jumping out of the window and leaving John to deal with her.
After another ten minutes of Eric raving I promise that I will come over tomorrow and hang up. My coffee has become cold and I suddenly want to cry. I want John to leave so he can't see me cry. I want him to leave because my tears are because of him.
"We've been having a lovely conversation this morning, John."
He looks up sharply when he processes the level of bitchiness in my voice.
"What are you implying, Abby?" His voice is neutral but he looks annoyed. Then, he calms down and stands up, putting the coffee down. He comes over and carefully embraces me, not noticing that I stiffen when his hands touch me.
"Look, Abby, I am very sorry for everything I said before I left. I'm an idiot. I was wrong to treat you like I did. I'm really unsure of what to say – I-I am pretty jetlagged this morning. Long flight." He attempts a feeble smile and draws back from the embrace and I feel strangely relieved.
I couldn't give a flying fuck if he has been flying around the world for a week. I want to be alone today. He did not need me two weeks ago – he doesn't need me now. I don't need him. I never needed him. Never needed anyone. Love just screws with me – and right now I don't want to be screwed with. I just want to be alone and lie under the covers in my dark bedroom and bask in my misery, cry into the pillow because my life will never work out and I push away people that I like if they don't screw with me first.
I take a deep breath. What I am about to say will probably be a first step on a long, rocky road to our breakup. I just wish the break-up would be over already so I can treat myself to a pity party.
"John, I think it would be a good idea if you stayed at your place for a while."