The next day, a Friday, was a particularly bad one for Ric. An endless stream of patients had been through the hospital, and too many of them had left in unadorned wooden coffins. Two of these had been little children, one barely two-years-old. It had broken Ric's heart to be unable to save the life of this tiny little girl, something he had just about managed not to show to the baby's parents. He had left Connie at his house, soaking up the sun and taking a well-deserved rest from her usual run of operations and board meetings. What Ric knew he needed at the end of his horrific day was to go home, have a large drink and maybe a joint, and to take comfort in Connie's soft embrace. He'd been overjoyed to see her sitting on his porch the day before, sitting there as though she had a perfect right to be there. He loved her way of assuming that he would want her there, her total disregard for the possibility that he might have had plans for his evening. She had been utterly sure of a warm welcome, something he would have given her no matter when she had arrived. But he wasn't sure that he could offer her much in return for her solace tonight. Connie was an extremely sexual woman under normal circumstances, and on any other occasion he would have had no problem in matching her still youthful exuberance, but not tonight. He was too depressed, too miserable by the day's events to please her in that way, not something he cared to admit lightly.
They swam, cooked and ate dinner, and sat in companionable silence listening to some music. But Ric had barely spoken, not something to go unnoticed by Connie. She could see that something had happened at work today, something that had deeply upset him, but she wanted to give him the space to talk about it in his own time. She was perfectly happy to wait, letting him sort out his thoughts at his own speed. She wanted to offer him comfort, but she could also see that he didn't want to ask for it. He surprised her at one point by taking and lighting one of her cigarettes, instead of rolling himself a joint. But then she figured that if he were already depressed, cannabis wouldn't do him all that much good, being a drug that usually enhances whatever mood is there to start with. They were sitting in-doors because of a sudden downpour of rain, and Ric had one arm along the back of the sofa, occasionally playing with a strand or two of her hair. His brows were knitted in a frown, his thoughts obviously away in far darker recesses. When the hour grew late, Connie rose to take a shower, the heat not having been lessened all that much by the rain. But when she returned, Ric was in exactly the same position as before, sitting at one end of the sofa, a cigarette between the first two fingers of his right hand, and staring off into space. Seeing that the cigarette was about to drop ash all over the leg of his trousers, she gently took it from him and stubbed it out in the ashtray. "Come on," She said, softly touching his hand. "You should go to bed." Making an effort to rouse himself, Ric looked up into her kind, concerned face. "I haven't been very good company this evening, have I." "That's all right," Connie told him gently. "We all have bad days from time to time." As Ric took a shower, Connie emptied and washed the ashtray and their glasses, locked the front door and switched off the stereo.
When he eventually joined her in bed, she moved into his arms, her silky soft skin nestling up against his. "Connie," He said tentatively, really not sounding sure of himself at all. "I'm afraid I really don't feel in the mood for pleasuring anyone tonight, not even you." "I know," She said quietly. "And I'm not expecting you to." She had her arms round him and her head on his chest, and he knew in that moment that he didn't want to be anywhere else in the world. He wasn't sure why, but he hadn't expected her to be quite so understanding of his lack of interest in her, but she had.
"What happened today?" She finally asked, thinking that he might now be ready to talk about it. "Virtually everyone seemed to die on me today," He explained. "Including two very young children, and all because we don't have the equipment or the drugs to keep them alive. The nurses and junior doctors expect me to perform miracles, and trying to convince them that I'm not the Almighty in different clothes, seems to be something of a lost cause. Somebody asked me where the oxygen was today, and I had to tell them that it was in the air around us, that oxygen cylinders were a thing of richer countries, and not something ever to be purchased over here. Then there are the people who beg us to help them, but if they don't have the money, we're not allowed to give them the time of day." Connie simply let him talk, because all the injustice of his situation needed to come out. "And then I had a visit from my wonderfully tactful brother, who couldn't help but point out today's blatant lack of success. He resents the fact that I stayed over in England for so long, and he resents it even more that I did that because of Lola. Going by my father's and brother's way of thinking, I should have insisted that Lola come back here with me, rather than giving her the choice. One isn't supposed to take one's woman's views into consideration," He said bitterly. "Anyway, seeing Cumi this afternoon got me thinking. Connie, no matter how long this thing, between you and me goes on, I'll probably end up hurting you, and I don't want to do that." Connie had been tracing a gentle pattern along his left arm with her fingers, but at his words of utter certainty she stopped. "What are you saying?" She asked, not wanting to hear it but knowing she must. "I'm saying that I'm not good enough for you," Ric told her, hating the fact that he had to do this to her. "I'm saying that no matter how different from my father I have tried to be over the years, I'm no better than him when it comes down to it." "Considering that I know absolutely nothing of your father, I can't possibly agree with you," Connie told him a little curtly, her sharpness covering up her fear that he would try to end this thing they had between them. "My father gambled away virtually every penny we had, leaving my mother barely anything with which to feed or clothe us, and let's face it, I was hardly much better as a husband or as a father. Granted, I didn't impregnate half the women in the local community or give any of them HIV, or leave any children unrecognised, or conceive any children when I wasn't married to their mothers, but that hardly makes me any better. Throughout my entire childhood I vowed again and again not to be anything like my useless, waste of space of a father, and what did I do? Allow a gambling habit to completely take me over, obtain more wives and children than I could ever support, and utterly fail to be there for any of them." Coming to the end of his tirade, Ric seemed to slump back into the pillows.
"I don't think Jess would agree with you," Connie told him quietly, thinking of the conversation she'd had with Jess after Ric had left to go back to Ghana just after Christmas. "After you'd walked away in the airport, Jess could see I was flagging, so we went and had a cup of tea. She said some enlightening things to me that afternoon, but the most important thing being a direct order for me not to treat you in the same way that Sam Kennedy did." "Sam," Ric said in astonishment. "There's a name I haven't heard in a long time." "Well, Jess told me that Sam had been pretty similar to me, in that she was pretty and had the ability to be very manipulative. Jess ended her little speech by telling me not to use how you felt for me for my own ends, and not to take advantage of how much you would think of giving up for me. Now, that doesn't exactly sound like a daughter who doesn't appreciate everything her father has done for her, does it." "Jess wasn't always so protective," Ric said with a slight frown, though inwardly marveling at his daughter's guts in saying something like this to her boss. "Over two years ago now, I went to the casino at the end of a shift, because I owed Lisa some rent money and didn't have it. I was sharing a flat with her and Jess at the time, not an experience I'm eager to repeat. Just for once, I won, but Jess was furious. She knew that I must have got the rent money from the casino, and we had what was probably the worst row I've ever had with Jess. It ended with her raiding my wallet and cutting up my credit cards. Jess despised me that night, because I didn't have the willpower to give up something that had destroyed every single one of my marriages. Quite why Lola agreed to marry me a second time is anyone's guess. She knew what I was like, knew how unreliable I was, but then we had another child on the way, so maybe that was it." "It's always possible that she still loved you, you know," Connie told him with a smile. "It does happen, or so I'm told." "What is there to love?" Ric asked her, without a single hint of a smile on his face, showing her that he was being deadly serious. "An awful lot," Connie told him firmly. "You have an enormous capacity in you to care, not something many men have. You usually put someone else's feelings before your own, even if that isn't in your best interests. As a surgeon, you have more determination to succeed in you than I've ever witnessed in anyone, every ounce of which is centred purely on the patient, and not on the brownie points it might gain you in the long run. Yes, you do have weaknesses, but so do we all, and yes, you do sometimes need help in controlling them, but again, so do the rest of us. Given what you've just told me about your father, and the expectations placed on you by your family, you should be incredibly proud of the man you are, not dismissive of what you have to offer anyone, just because you have a genetic disposition to a gambling addiction." Ric was stunned. Never, not even from Diane, had he heard such words of encouragement and faith in his position as a fellow human being.
When her lips touched his, he held her tightly to him, as though afraid that she might leave at any moment. "I love you," He said, when they eventually came up for air, though he wished it hadn't managed to slip out so easily. "I know you do," She told him gently, seeing that this also had been weighing heavily on his mind. "How do you know?" He asked, slightly astonished by her answer. "Your daughter filled me in as to that little detail," Connie told him with a smile. "As though I didn't know already. I am neither blind, deaf, nor stupid, Ric." "I didn't want to put any pressure on you," Ric told her seriously. "I know," She said, dropping a gentle kiss on his lips. "And you haven't, I promise. But if you want me to be honest," She said a little hesitantly. "I don't think I can put how I feel about you into words. It's not that I don't love you, because I think that part of me does, but I also think that I need time to get over other things, before I can give even part of myself to anyone again." "And that is perfectly understandable," Ric told her gently but firmly. "Connie, it's only two months since what happened at Christmas, barely any time at all to sort out how you feel about that and all its repercussions." "There is also far too much that you don't know about me," Connie told him seriously. "And I don't want you to go on feeling the way you do, under what may possibly be false pretences."