Part 5

Zach's obvious distress at Olivia's and his situation shook Fitz very badly. He hadn't realised that this quiet and shy little boy was so attuned to their moods and behaviour with each other, and that he felt so keenly about it all. Having to explain to him why Olivia was so sad reopened his wound more widely, more gapingly than he thought possible. But he knows from hard, painful experience that when the pain is as excrutiating as it is now, there's no point in fighting it. All you can do is let it invade you, wash over you, and trust that it will go away and become more manageable once again. So he is lying on his bed, not trying to fight his grief and sadness, aware that things with Olivia somehow will have to change, but unable to see how he will find the will to make them change.

When he told Zach that he basically still cared about Olivia, that was the truth. But when he also told him how angry and sad he was at Josh's death, how unable he was to reach out to Olivia, that was also the truth. So where does he go from there?

He is gloomily pondering all this when his phone rings.

"Fitzgerald Grant Speaking."

"Fitz, hi, it's me." A silence, then: "Olivia", she adds unnecessarily.

"Olivia. Hi." He can't bring himself to saying more.

"Fitz, what's wrong?"

Everything, he thinks: you, me, Josh, Zach, the fact that I only need to say four words and you can sense that things are not good, and that I can't help liking this connection between us and resenting it at the same time… God what a mess.

He clears his throat, bracing himself. "I'm fine. Don't worry. What can I do for you?"

He can picture her, standing by the phone, stiffening a bit at his formal tone. Well Olivia, I tried being your lover, friend, partner, but you didn't want to hear about it after Josh, so…

"It's just that… well, Zach seemed very out of sorts today. I was just ringing to find out how he is. Look, it doesn't matter, I'll see him in the morning anyway. I'd better…"

"He was worried about you", he cuts her off.

"What? What do you mean?"

He doesn't know whether to carry on. But then, slowly, hesitantly, carefully, he says: "He's noticed that you look very sad sometimes. And he's seen you cry. He asked me why."

He can hear her gasp. "And?", she asks shakily.

"I told him about Josh."

She doesn't say anything, and this time he can't picture as to how she must look right now.

Eventually… "I wish I had been with you."

To his ears she sounds reproachful, and he can't repress his quick flash of anger: "Oh don't worry, Olivia. I only told him the bare facts. That Josh was our baby, and that he died. I didn't say anything I wouldn't have been able to say to him in front of you. Like the fact that afterwards you completely shut me out and…"

"Fitz!" Her cry, full of pain and anguish, stops him: "Fitz, I didn't mean it that way! I only meant that… that telling him must have been very painful for you, and that I wished I had been by your side. That we could have done that together." She is audibly trying to get herself under control. Then: "And by the way, it's not a criticism. You did the right thing. It's just…"

"It's OK, Olivia… I'm sorry I misunderstood you."

They both fall silent. He doesn't know what to say, but he's reluctant to end the call. She seems to be feeling the same. After a while, she asks: "Is he OK? How did he take it?"

"He was upset, but he's fine now. He's asleep."

He can almost hear her swallow. "And you, Fitz? How are you?"

Finally, you ask, he thinks with such bitterness, after months and months of nothing, finally you ask. "I'll be fine", he says, not wanting to go into a long talk about the past.

"Fitz, I… I'm so sorry about…"

"Olivia", he interrupts her, "I don't have the strength for this tonight." This time, though, his tone was gentle.

"I understand", she whispers. "I'll see you tomorrow."

When he wakes up the next day, he realises that for the first time in months, he slept through, deeply, restfully… and without nightmares.

-x-

Olivia can't believe she's been in Ghana for six weeks. At first, she thought she would never be able to hack it – to stand seeing Fitz day in, day out (more so than before in fact, since the clinic is tiny compared to their busy teaching hospital back home), and to come to terms with the fact that Fitz had no intention to talk about Josh's death and the two months that followed it. She finds his formal, polite demeanour with her is more painful than an outright hostility would have been. And had it not been for David, Abby and Zach, she would have left.

David and Abby have been a tower of support. She'd never met them before, but now that she is living with them, she has got very fond of them. They've let her be, making it clear that they were here for her to talk to, but only if she wanted to, and showing her with enormous kindness, that in them she would find support, but above all a friendship. They've never tried to get her and Fitz together socially – displaying a tact and sensitivity for which she is grateful.

As for Zach… she was totally unprepared for him. Reserved, quiet, but so endearing in so many ways. His love for precision – counting days, for example - his gentleness with the smaller children, his sense of humour too, his fragility... And his immense love for Fitz. He talks about him a lot – and for a while she found it difficult. But now, she's got used to it, and finds it touching. But she is worried about it. Because although it's obvious that Fitz loves Zach, it's also clear to her that he won't stay in Ghana forever, and that he doesn't seem to realise that the more he lets Zach attach himself to him, the harder it will be when he has to leave. And she is all the more worried about Zach and that he seems more and more troubled in some unfathomable ways which send uneasy prickles down her spine. His terror of needles shows no sign of abating, in fact, it's getting worse. When he is having his bath, he now insists on being alone in the bathroom –fair enough, from what they know he must be about 7 – but his discomfort when an adult other than her or Fitz gets close to the bathroom makes her very uneasy – as well as the amount of time he spends washing himself. Above all, almost every night now, he has terrible nightmares. These are the only moments when he uses his mother tongue, and as none of them understands it, they don't know what he is dreaming of. His drawings do not seem to offer much of a clue: the colours he uses are darker and darker, the figures more threatening. On the couple of occasions she tried to get him to talk about it, he clammed up so defensively that she decided it was best to leave it: she is not a child psychologist, and she doesn't want to risk harming him by probing too hard.

Thinking back on it, she realised that Zach has been getting worse since Fitz told him about Josh. Yesterday, when she mentioned it to Fitz, he was very defensive about it at first, so much so that she snapped at him. "For God's sake Fitz! Stop taking everything I say as a critique! I'm not implying that you did the wrong thing! You were right to tell him: he'd have found out anyway, and it was better coming from you… it's just that it seemed to have triggered something in him, and I thought I would mention it. And no, I am not suggesting that you were too busy to see the signs! Chill out, will you?!" At which point he calmed down, told her that he had noticed the change in Zach's behaviour too, and that hopefully, the new doctor with lots of experience in pediatrics whom they were expecting in a couple of weeks would help out with him.

She knows of course why Fitz is so sensitive: her behaviour to him after Josh died didn't exactly show him that she trusted him, nor his ability to deal with painful and complex emotions and to exercise his judgement. God knows she feels immensely guilty about that. She tried to get him to talk about it, but he still refuses to, so tough: meanwhile, she has to help Zach as best as she can, and if that means hurting Fitz's feelings, then so be it.

In a way, her explosion did both of them a lot of good. She saw that she could stand up to him without triggering World War Three, and this has enabled her to relax around him. And it seems to her that he welcomed the old Olivia back, with her spunk and fighting spirit, as if he knows how to relate to that Olivia, but not to the woman ridden with pain and guilt which she had become since he left for Ghana.

So things between them are getting better. They are no longer excruciatingly polite with each other: they are able to banter (up to a point), to discuss patients freely and fruitfully, to go for a quick bite at lunch time, sometimes with other members of staff, on one or two occasions alone (when they take great care to avoid any personal and meaningful topics of conversation.) It's not ideal, but at least it works for them.

For now.