(This is one of a series of 5 chapters that recounts the experiences of David and Catherine and their interaction with acquaintances, Joshua and Sukhi.)
The Accident:
The last Wednesday of January began in a thoroughly depressing way for Sukhi Kanji. Even as she awoke late in the morning, she recalled the unsatisfactory conversation that she had had with Joshua the night before. He continued to beg her to believe that he still loved her, that he had not, nor intended to have, any relationship with the Chinese girl at work. Perhaps it was because she was dog-tired after an all-day shift on the Wellington to Auckland route, coping with a seemingly cranky lot of airline travellers, that she had been unable to give the emotional and intellectual energy to their problem.
Even as the day progressed, she could not rationalise why she felt so angry, restless, and extremely frustrated by Joshua. He was so wonderfully kind and patient; and that irritated her! She almost wished he would yell, or swear or even come round and pull her hair as he sometimes did when he was mildly displeased with her. Why did she want to hurt him? Did she really not want him back and was she just using this incident as an excuse? He was the nicest guy, and a wonderfully considerate, albeit unimaginative, lover – unlike some Indian men who were quite dreadful, if some of her girlfriends were to be believed, and perhaps it was this mythology that both restrained her and made her very cautious with Joshua.
By tea time, she still had not resolved what she did want. Excitement? Passion? Dream on, she thought. I'm so tired some evenings I wonder if I would know what to do with Valentino himself. But what I do want - no, need - right now, is Joshua - in bed. There was a time when she would not have believed that she needed sex, but in the light of how she was feeling at that moment, she was seriously revising that opinion.
Since she had effectively blown that option, she decided that she would put on her tracksuit and run off some of the accumulated tension. On the way back, she would pick up a can of creamed corn from the supermarket down the road and make a nice omelette for tea. For the first time all day, she felt positive about something.
Sukhi tied her hair back in a pony-tail and applied some lipstick. There, that looks better and she even smiled at herself. She stripped down to her panties replacing her soft filmy bra with a much firmer athletic model. Her breasts were unusually firm for their size and ordinarily needed little support, but she was likely to greatly entertain most male pedestrians if she went jogging with a less supportive bra! Drat all men! She slipped into her tracksuit, donned a pair of sneakers, grabbed her credit card purse and headed out the door. A wave of hot humid air hit her as she reached the footpath and she sensed that heavy rain was imminent. Go to Plan B. Get the groceries first and stay really close to the apartment block! She sprinted towards the supermarket until the pedestrians made her slow down to a jog, by which time she was hot and puffed out anyway.
She strolled around the supermarket until she found the corn, checked out and exited onto the footpath. That was all she remembered of events for the next few minutes after the first shaft of pain in her side.
Dr. David Carr had been summoned back to the real world by the insistent ringing of his phone in the flat he was temporarily sharing in the house surgeons' quarters. He had been woken at least an hour earlier than his shift required, by a staff sister worried about an unexplained drop in old Mrs Brown's blood pressure. One thing David had learned was that senior staff sisters had extremely good instincts, therefore his day had started on the run, fifteen minutes later.
By six o'clock that evening he had managed to shower and get to the supermarket for something tasty for tea. A sausage roll and a cup of tea on the run at midday, had left him famished. He had selected a frozen pack of smoked fish in white sauce that would almost do two people and was wondering if there was any point in phoning Catherine to see what she was doing. Her irrational behaviour over that damned nurse still made him mad when he thought about it. Was there something in his behaviour lately that had made Catherine suddenly feel so insecure and threatened in their relationship? A half-drunk nurse makes a pass at him at a party and she sees that as the beginning of a new relationship! Bloody hell. Perhaps he had been too casual with her, but surely that is one of the benefits and pleasures of a steady relationship, so that when you are tired, you don't have to make a fuss?
