Earthquake Baby. Amy Andrews

      ‘Don’t tell me how to do my job,’ she snarled, turning to look at him. ‘I am a professional. I’ve been sitting in on awful conversations for years. I haven’t broken down in front of a client ever. Ever! And I’m not about to start. When I go into that room I will be perfectly in control.’

      ‘OK, OK. Calm down. I didn’t mean to upset you.’

      ‘When you question my professionalism it upsets me!’ she said in an angry whisper. ‘You think I want to be part of what’s going to be said in that room? Because I don’t. Every part of me rebels against the idea.’

      Laura took a breath and tried to calm her racing pulse and seesawing emotions. Yes, the swiftness of Mr Gordon’s deterioration was having an effect on her, but she had to make Jack understand why he was wrong.

      She softened her voice. ‘But I am a nurse, I don’t have a choice here. I am compelled to be there because it’s the right thing to do. The only thing to do. I’ve made a connection with them. I can’t just break that connection in their neediest hour because it’s emotionally challenging.’

      Jack nodded. He understood what she was telling him but was worried about her nonetheless. At least he would be present during the talk. He had been paged for Mrs Gordon’s emotional journey but as Jenny rejoined them he knew that Laura’s needs took first place.

      ‘Mrs Gordon.’ Jenny addressed the woman, her face grim, introducing herself and Laura and Jack.

      ‘No.’ Mrs Gordon shook her head wildly, looking from one to the other, knowing from their faces what they were about to say.

      ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Gordon. We did all we could but…your husband died a few minutes ago.’

      ‘No,’ she whispered fiercely. ‘He can’t be dead. He was fine four hours ago.’

      Jenny nodded solemnly. ‘Mrs Gordon, what we think your husband had, meningococcal septicaemia, it probably got into his bloodstream. Its onset is very quick…’

      The woman wasn’t listening. She came closer to Laura and grabbed her by the forearms, her eyes accusing. ‘You said they were the best. You said they’d do everything they could.’ Her voice rose hysterically and she began to shake Laura.

      Laura looked into the woman’s eyes, wild with grief, and was paralysed by her disbelief and anger. Even the bite of the woman’s fingers as they dug into her skin didn’t register. She opened her mouth to say something but the words just didn’t come.

      She had witnessed many emotional moments, working in this field, comforted many grieving people, but most were surprisingly quiet, reserved in their mourning. To feel the full force of such raw emotion directed right in her face was shocking.

      Laura could feel the neutral mask she had slipped on start to fall away. She blinked. Anything to shut out those strangely compelling anguished eyes. Mrs Gordon’s friend was trying to drag her away and Jenny was talking calmly so Laura could be released.

      ‘OK, now. Come along, Mrs Gordon.’ Jack’s soothing but authoritative voice broke through the woman’s hysteria. He gently prised her fingers from Laura’s arms and held her as she sobbed.

      ‘Go to the staffroom, Laura,’ he commanded.

      ‘Wh-what?’ She looked at him, puzzled. She stared at him like she’d never seen him before, her mind refusing to function.

      ‘Jenny, get her out of here,’ he ordered.

      Laura followed Jenny blankly, sitting in the indicated chair in the staffroom, her body on autopilot as she accepted the cup of tea Jenny placed in her cold fingers.

      Laura’s brain tumbled over and over, like a clothes dryer. The staff television prattled as she stared at the images on the screen before her, but all she could see was Mrs Gordon’s utter wretchedness and hear her accusing words.

      She felt…overwhelmed. Helpless. Just like those immediate months following the building collapse. Laura tried not to panic. She couldn’t go there again. It had taken too long to claw her way back to a semblance of normalcy. What was happening to her? She’d told Jack she was over it and, damn it all, she was!

      She drew in a ragged breath and tried to calm her galloping thoughts. I am a professional. I am a professional. The chant helped her retreat from the edge. She felt she’d gained back some control when Jack found her half an hour later.

      ‘Laura,’ he said gently. ‘Are you OK?’

      Laura dragged her gaze to his face. She felt her control teeter and stumble at the concern written there and echoed in his words. She shook her head and he pulled her into his arms.

      ‘It’s OK. I’m here.’

      ‘Just like always, huh?’ His chest muffled her whisper as he slowly rocked her.

      Before she could stop it, her mental proximity to the past had her back in his apartment ten years ago, being rocked and comforted. Smelling him, feeling him. Wanting him.

      She felt the beginnings of an awareness, similar to the one that had possessed her back then. The one that had led to her kissing him and touching him and tearing his clothes off.

      Laura broke away, putting some distance between them.

      ‘That poor woman, that was awful.’ She shuddered. ‘Really awful.’

      ‘It was what I was worried about before we went in.’

      ‘What? That she would attack me?’

      ‘No. That emotionally you were a little too raw still. I mean, you were speechless in there. That’s not normal, I hope?’

      ‘Of course not,’ she dismissed gruffly. The thought that he seemed to know her state of mind better than she did was unsettling.

      ‘So why this time?’

      ‘I’ve never had anyone eyeball me and intimate that it was my fault before. It threw me…that’s all.’

      ‘She didn’t mean it, you know. She wasn’t attacking you personally,’ he said.

      ‘I know that,’ she said, exasperated that he felt the need to explain something so obvious.

      They sat in uncomfortable silence for a few moments.

      ‘Laura. Laura?’ He placed a hand against her cheek and turned her face so she was looking at him. ‘Please, come to the service with me.’

      Laura began to protest but he hushed her with a finger against her mouth. ‘Hear me out, OK?’ He rubbed his finger against her bottom lip and she would have given him anything in that moment.

      ‘Forget about all the reasons you should.’ He pressed his finger against her lips to still her murmured protest. ‘OK, all the reasons I think you should. How about just doing it for me? For us. Sure, I think you need this but I can’t deny that mostly my reasons for wanting you to go are personal. Think of it as completing the journey that we started ten years ago. Coming full circle. If you don’t think you need closure from what happened then, OK. But maybe we need closure, Laura. I don’t feel like there was ever any ending to us. You know? I think this is the perfect opportunity for us to put our relationship in perspective. Lay some ghosts.’

      Laura was stunned by the words. Despite the distraction of his thumb stroking her lips, she managed to absorb most of them. It was true, their relationship had been left up in the air. More so than Jack realised.

      ‘But…there’s work. I can’t just leave.’

      ‘I’m sure Marie can spare you.’

      Laura pulled away from the eroticism of his caress and the seduction of his soft voice, sitting as far from him as her chair would allow. She just couldn’t leave them when they were already short-staffed. ‘No, she can’t. I’m rostered on for the next two days. Marie needs all hands on deck.’

      Marie