Saving Amy (38 page)

“You’re lying. I know you too well. Something’s wrong, tell me.”

Ah, shit,
I thought, feeling backed into a corner. Joanna was one hell of a determined, tenacious woman and I knew from experience the only way to shut her up was to tell the truth.

“Amy’s left me.” My voice wavered like I was hitting puberty and I didn’t blink for fear the pressure would tip my tears over the edge and leave me crying like a fucking girl. Joanna’s pupils dilated so fast and so wide there was hardly any visible irises left.

“Wow, I didn’t see that one coming,” she vilified with an almost delighted glint in her hazel eyes.

“You’re fucking pleased aren’t you?” I snapped fiercely at her. She bit her lower lip and I was sure she was trying to suppress a smile. “Do you think this is funny? Because I’m telling you, Joanna, I’m in pieces here. I’ve never felt pain like this before.” Her expression instantaneously turned serious, wounded even, and I knew she was wondering why I never felt like this with her.

“No, Richard, I don’t think it’s funny. It hurts me so much to see you this way,” she said, realising she’d overstepped the mark. “But you know how I feel about the whole thing. It never would’ve worked.”

Whatever happened to sympathy for fuck’s sake?

“Why wouldn’t it?” I found myself scowling at her.

“For starters she’s too young.”

“Don’t give me that bullshit. She’s more mature than half the people my age – she’s had to be.” I fixed my eyes on the nurses station, focusing on the pale wood desk, on the stainless steel plate with ‘Nurses Station’ etched onto it, on the strip lamp, the computer… on anything that wasn’t Joanna’s face.

“That’s another thing… she has
so
much baggage, Richard. I get it’s not her fault, but it sure as hell isn’t yours either. And don’t you see? It’s always going to be there. Controlling her… controlling
you
. You will never be able to fully relax, be
happy
…”

“You’re out of order here. I won’t listen to anymore of this shit,” I said, raising my palm to my face to block out the sight of her.

“Oh, Richard, enough now! Come on, you’re not a stupid man. You have to see this is for the best. It went on too long as it was. I mean, Christ, the bitch couldn’t even handle you going out for the evening with your oldest friend!”

What the fuck!
I dragged in a deep breath - so deep and forceful my lungs throbbed under the pressure - to try and calm this pool of bright red rage that was ripping its way through my body.

It
was
her
…

“How the fuck did you know about that?” I yelled, drawing attention from passing staff and patients alike, innocently making their way down the sunflower yellow corridor.

Could they really have been right about her all along? My mom, Amy…

“Richard, I-I-” she stuttered, ‘busted’ written all over her contrived face. I took a step back, my fingers bound so tightly into fists that my fingernails almost pierced my flesh. I took another step back, for the first time in my life fearing I might actually hit a woman.

“How could you do that to me? Was this all part of some master plan to split us up? Is this why you pushed me into going in the first place?” I fired question after question at her. “I thought you were my friend.”

Peering around I noticed we seemed to have gathered quite an audience. Patients had dragged themselves and their IV stands from their beds and
were
littering the corridor gaining front row seats to our little spectacle. I threw my hands in the air and stomped off to my office four doors down. Joanna followed me - I could hear her heels clicking against the hard floor as her short legs ran to keep up with my long strides.

“I thought we were friends,” I repeated desolately as I sank into my high-back leather swivel armchair.

“We are!” she screeched, her voice like nails on a chalkboard. “Richard you know how much I love you. That’s-” I held my hand up, cutting her off.

“Wait a minute, is that what all this is about? You can’t have me so no one else can?”

“Oh don’t be so obtuse,” she said but I struggled to find the sincerity in her voice. “Look, I know I’ve probably come across quite cold about all this…”

“
Cold?
Try minus fucking five hundred!” She rolled her eyes at me.

“Please, Richard, let me finish.” I offered up my hand telling her to go ahead. Though I doubted she had anything to say that I wanted to hear. “Dealing with people like Amelia-”

“
Dealing?
Shouldn’t that be
helping
?”

“Oh, just stop picking apart everything I say. You said you’d let me speak!” I shrugged my shoulders like a stroppy teenager. “Well, anyway, that is my job. I deal,
help
, people like her everyday of my life – so I know how to distance myself. That’s where you went wrong. You broke the golden rule of our profession… you let yourself get attached. That means you’re incapable of seeing the bigger picture. Granted, kids like that straighten themselves out sometimes, but you know as well as I do they’ll always be that little bit…” She circled a straightened finger at the side of her head.

My jaw dropped open in disbelief. I had spent hours upon hours of my life in the company of this woman and I had never once witnessed just how cruel, insensitive and downright fucking nasty she could be. Until now…

“You need to remind yourself she’s not Kate,” she said so condescendingly… so cock sure of herself. My love for Amy had
nothing
to do with my sister. It never did.

“What a croc of shit!” Joanna bolted upright - taken aback by the fact I didn’t take a swim in the sea of bullshit that just flowed from her acidic mouth.

“So let’s see, you’ve played the ‘thinking of my interests’ card, the ‘age’ card, the ‘how screwed up she is card’, and now you’re trying the Kate tactic? I’ve heard enough, Joanna. Now get the fuck out of my office.” I swivelled my chair towards the vertical window, my eyes wandering over the hospital grounds that were frosted over by the frigid November air.

“Richard, please! Let’s start again!”

What, the conversation? Or
us?

“Get out!” I barked
,
spinning to face her so fast I almost catapulted out of my chair.

“As you wish,” she complied, her voice rich with anguish. But I didn’t give a damn how sad she was feeling. The scheming bitch could go take a jump under a speeding bus for all I cared.

The door closed behind her and I punched the wall, denting the plasterboard as it slammed into my fist. Fuck, it hurt. Not my hand - my heart. I was almost sure it was beating a little slower with each day that passed. I feared eventually the pain would grow so bad it would stop beating altogether. And the nausea… gut wrenching, not-able-to-eat-a-thing nausea. I’d barely eaten more than a few slices of toast all week and yet I felt so full… so burdened.

I wondered if Amy felt the same. I wondered if she was alone, if she was scared or hurting, if she thought of me… I folded my arms over my desk and let my head fall into them, the sleeves of my navy blue shirt soaking up my pathetic tears.

Where are you, beautiful?

**********

After snapping my laptop closed a little too firmly I peeked inside again to make sure I’d not smashed the screen. Thankfully, it was crack free and I nodded, closing it with a little more respect. I remembered how Amy once said she’d not seen her grandmother since she was nine but didn’t have any definitive proof that she was actually dead. I thought maybe Amy had looked her up, discovered her alive and well on some sunny beach resort and had gone to live with her. But of course, that would be too easy.

I stayed behind at work for a couple of hours two nights ago, scanning the system for any elderly ‘Hope’s’ that died around the time Amy last remembers seeing her. I came away with a Carol Hope – died aged eighty-two from unknown causes, a Victoria Hope – died aged sixty-nine from carbon monoxide poisoning, a Beatrice Hope – died aged seventy-three from respiratory failure and an Evelyn Hope – died aged seventy from a CVA.

Armed with my list of names I headed down to King County Court House to search the BMD records. I was then faced with a list of nineteen Carol
Hope’s,
Twenty-seven Victoria Hope’s, eleven Beatrice Hope’s and seventeen Evelyn Hope’s. Over half of them were dead and I had no way of knowing which one was Amy’s grandmother – if any of them.

I’d just about given up when I came across the birth certificate for a James Arthur Hope – mother… Evelyn Marie Hope. A little more digging turned up a marriage certificate for one James Arthur Hope and one Mary Anne Monroe dated three years after Amy was born. The fact that Amy had already been born when her parents married (assuming I had found the right parents of course) warranted a little more searching to make sure I was onto the right grandmother.

But Amy was proving impossible to find. I thought I’d cracked it when I came across an Amelia Anne born to a Mary Anne Monroe on the date of Amy’s birth but then slammed my fists into the shabby wooden table (almost getting my ass kicked out in the process) when I noted the Amelia in question was also a Monroe, and the father was listed as Jack Edmund Monroe.

I ploughed on for another hour or so, switching from the digitalised records to a hefty wad of dust-covered papers, but there were no Amelia Anne Hope’s born June 19
^th
1994 at any Seattle hospital so I moved onto bordering cities. After scanning the records for hospitals in Bellevue, Mercer Island, Kingsgate and then Redmond and drawing on nothing, I gave up.

I shrank back in my chair and like the big fat pussy I’d turned into since Amy left me… I cried.

Where are you, beautiful?

**********

I took some leave from the hospital. Basically by lying through my teeth and saying my grandmother was really sick – praying the whole time that Martin (the MD) didn’t already know that she’d been dead for twelve years. I just couldn’t focus – Amy’s beautiful face crumpling at my betrayal haunted my every waking thought. I couldn’t stop thinking about the first time we met.
The look in her rich caramel eyes peering out from under the veil of her golden hair the night I found her lying in the street – the pain, the fear.
They were silently begging for someone to save her, to love her – for
me
to love her. They drew me in that night and I’d been hooked ever since.

Yesterday I almost killed myself with a defibrillator and prescribed two sets of the wrong meds. Thankfully Jenny (a red-haired resus -nurse) noticed before the poor bastards had them administered. That was when I knew it was time to take some time off – before I inadvertently ending up killing someone.

Since getting home I’d done nothing but wallow on the sofa in nothing but my three-day old boxer briefs, with Against All Odds playing on the loop. It honestly felt like Phil Collins had crept inside my body while I was sleeping and stole the lyrics straight from my heart. We had shared so much laughter, just as much pain. Amy
was
the only one who really knew me at all. There really wasn’t anything left, but the memory of her face… it wasn’t until she’d gone I realised I didn’t even have a photo of her.

And there really was so much I needed to say to her – so many reasons why.

Where are you, beautiful?

My mom suggested that Amy wasn’t doing this because I’d been such a selfish, dumbass bastard. She thought Amy was trying to
save
me. She said, that time when she took her upstairs to ‘find a dress’, she’d mentioned how she didn’t feel worthy of me. Of
me!
All that told me was that I’d failed in my mission to make her feel like the most important person in the world… because that’s exactly what she was.

I wish she could’ve seen me before I met her. She thought I had everything… but I had
nothing
. Yes, I had a career, money, a family I barely spoke to… Well, I never lost touch with David, - he’d been my own personal gofer since he was four years old - but I always asked him not to tell anyone he’d seen me. On reflection that was unfair but he never went against me. I could trust him; I still could. I literally worked, ate and slept. I wouldn’t entertain a relationship that lasted longer than one night and a social life was just something ‘other’ people did – people who deserved to be happy. I was so lonely. Consumed with impervious guilt and the idea that I didn’t deserve to be loved after what I did to Kate. Sometimes, I still felt like that. Sometimes, I felt Amy leaving me was exactly what I deserved.

But I was too selfish to accept it. I
needed
to find her.

I went to see Kate yesterday. I sat by her headstone in the pouring rain until my clothes were more water than fabric. I talked to her for almost two hours. Sometimes I swear I could hear her answer me. In fact I was pretty sure she told me what a prick I’d been on more than one occasion. I asked her what I should do, and I heard her sweet voice as clear as anything in my mind. ‘Fight,’ she said. Instantly I knew what she meant and what I should do. ‘I miss you, Kate,’ I whispered into the grey stone, and then I jumped to my feet and headed home to change.

After wrestling out of my sodden clothes and changing into some dry ones I set straight back out again. I trawled the streets of Seattle until 4 AM in search of Amy. I drove, I walked,
I
waited… I headed everywhere I knew she’d ever been – anywhere she’d ever mentioned even in passing. And I would keep going. I would search until I found her no matter how long it took. I would only come home to shower and sleep. Or rather, lie awake with my eyes closed for a couple of hours.