While Yvonne drove them down the road, Karen slumped back in the comfortable passenger seat. She had operated on sheer adrenaline, which had focused her concentration to deal with the emergency. Now that the situation had been dealt with, waves of tiredness started to flow through her. It was as if she had been living some dream, and she was starting to feel temporarily removed from the situation. She didn't want to consider the rights and wrongs of the situation right now. All she wanted to do was to let herself be driven wherever the car would take her. She felt the headrest take the weight of her tiredness and she watched the familiar profile of Yvonne's face. Everything was comfortable and, for the first time, she remembered the familiar presence of Yvonne's red Ferrari. It had escaped her attention earlier on. She never thought to give Yvonne directions and hazily assumed , quite rightly that Yvonne would know the way.
Karen fumbled with the house key and let them into the flat. After clicking on the lights, Yvonne's eyes took in the familiar appearance of Karen's flat. It stirred up memories, as if seen through the wrong end of a telescope but it reminded Yvonne that they had never lost their friendship. Rather than conjuring up any feelings of hurt and of lost love, it welcomed Yvonne into a haven where it was right for her to stay.
"Do you want a drink, Yvonne?" Karen offered.
"If you're having a drink, I'd love a large scotch"
"I'll join you."
"I'll fetch the drinks if you want, Karen. You look about done in."
While Karen lay back in her chair, Yvonne poured out generous measures into glasses and passed Karen's drink to her. While Yvonne had been pottering about, serious doubts started to invade her mind as to the wisdom of her actions. She had clicked into action earlier on with the fixed purpose of saving Jo's life and career but that other side of her had started to haunt her. This was the nurse and prison officer who had spent long years in working by organizational rules and more recently, laying them down on others.
"What's up, Karen? You've just played an absolute blinder in saving Jo's neck and you look as if you're regretting it"
"That's just it, Yvonne. By rights, Jo should have been admitted to hospital when I first got the call. It goes against my instincts to take very dangerous risks with another human being's life
"If you had whipped her into hospital, what would have happened to Jo"
"A proper medical team would have dealt with her instead of a one time nurse with a couple of untrained assistants , a doctor on the other end of a phone and a lot of nerve and sheer luck"
"So would they have done any better than we did, wouldn't they"
"They wouldn't have taken such risks and there would have been everything on hand if anything went wrong"
"And would that have been the end of it? They would have let her go home, say there there, and hope you get better? Are you telling me this one, Karen?" Yvonne persisted. It seemed to Yvonne's mind that Karen felt that she ought to beat herself up about the matter.
"Well, no," admitted Karen. The thought hadn't struck her.
"What do they do with women on the outside, who try to OD on a mixture of booze and sleepers, especially when they find out that there's a drink problem? You can't tell me that they'll risk being done for negligence in doing nothing?"
Karen visibly shuddered as Yvonne's blunt words brought back the horrific memories of when her son Ross had taken his life nearly a year ago. She had done her best to suppress that memory, right down into her unconscious where it was safer than in the cruel light of day. The image of the long, brutal gash on the inside of his wrist made her freeze in horror. Suddenly, tears sprang into her eyes. She pressed her fingers against them to blot out that horrible vision and so that no one could see that she was crying.
"I'm really sorry, Karen. I've been talking like a right cow. I just want to stick up for you, stop you thinking that you've done anything wrong, at least not where it matters. Just remember, the doctor was willing to go along with what we've done. He had his reasons and he's not stupid"
Yvonne saw in a flash where she had gone wrong. Her choked stream of works and her arm round her shoulders brought a sliver of comfort to Karen that she needed right now. By launching herself far away from the familiar trodden paths, and dragging the others along with her, she felt very vulnerable.
"You're not to blame. It's just that I freaked out from memories of what happened to Ross. Jo could so easily have gone the same way and I was playing God with her life. The thought of it scares me"
"Karen darling, Jo is alive thanks to you. We got there probably as quickly as an ambulance and we delivered the bacon. No one is going to know apart from me, a top notch barrister, a prison governor and a spot on prison doctor"
Karen was silent while Yvonne comforted her. It was true what Yvonne had said, and she started to work out in her mind if Jo had gone through the inflexible prescriptions of the local hospital. No one knew better than her.
"I really miss your blindingly simple ways of dealing with situations even if they are technically dodgy at times."
Karen's shaky laugh that accompanied her words aroused that tender protective feelings of Yvonne that she felt towards anyone who was hurting inside.
"Now that you've asked, I'd better explain what could have happened, Yvonne," Karen continued in more even clinical tones. "They would have put her on some kind of medication. It is an absolute certainty that Jo would have come under the spotlight of the resident psychiatrist who would have dredged out everything that caused Jo to act as she did. They would have worked their way round the defences of even a top barrister as Jo is, especially in her present frame of mind"
Yvonne listened intently to Karen's deliberately clinical discourse. It all sounded suspiciously like the Muppet wing to her.
"….It isn't impossible that they would section her, oh for her own good," added Karen
with a touch of irony.
"…….which means that she could kiss goodbye to her career. That is the one thing that will hold her together. Some care that is," added Yvonne in laconic tones.
Those brief word shifted Karen's perspective radically. The succession of events following Ross's death, her own recent self harm tendencies and her own struggles to keep her own head above water came back to her. This alternative scenario could have happened to her. Karen could not bear to even contemplate the possibilities of not working. It would make her die inside. For the first time a slow smile spread across her face. The discussion had raised problems of how Jo would be able to get back on her feet but at least the choices were wholly Jo's. They would take their time and place in the future that Jo had tried to deny to herself.
"Thank you, Yvonne." Karen said simply. "It's a long time since we've spent any real time together, Karen." Yvonne murmured in the dim lights. She sprawled out on the settee as the scotch started to make her head swim in a very pleasant way. Karen lay stretched out in her armchair, her feet resting on a small footstool. The soft lights and the peaceful world inside were accompanied by a Tori Amos CD, spreading her sensuous tones round the flat. It was perfect chill out music to accompany the evening and brought back sweet memories. The two of them felt as if the evening would float on indefinitely.
"You don't still blame me for breaking up with you years ago, Yvonne?" Karen suddenly asked out of nowhere while they had been indulging in the idle small talk.
"You did what you had to do, Karen. I ain't got any regrets but I remember how good it was between the two of us. You were my first love."
Karen leant over and kissed her gently on the forehead. Somehow things were plain between the two of them as it should be for two close friends. It was later on that the two of them slipped into Karen's bed and settled down into bed. They were at peace with each other and their last thought before they drifted off to sleep was that they hoped that George and Jo were similarly blessed.