Chapter 3

WHEN I SAID that hope wasn’t enough, I wasn’t joking. I’d hoped that two encounters in a row was as far as my bad luck would reach. But he was telling the truth when he said he’d moved to the neighbourhood. I’ve seen him everywhere I frequent: the park, Whole Foods, passing by the windows of my favourite café.

One Thursday evening when I was leaving work, I bumped into him, which left me with my face burning in embarrassment. He winked at me and said something along the lines of me being “glad to see him.”

I thought about it a lot. And I mean a lot.

The idea of changing my schedule is tempting. I could switch days and hours in my routine, fiddle with the time here and there. I’m sure he wouldn’t notice and I want to believe I don’t care what he thinks.

The thing is, I know Theo and I know me.

I know his wicked mind and his smug grin, how much he enjoys putting pieces together. If he realises I’ve changed everything because of him, his poisonous pride will indulge him. He’ll love it, and I would hate to be consumed by imagining the bliss he’d feel from thinking he has power over me.

No.

I won’t have it.

But then again, days are waking colder and slowly but surely staining the leaves orange. I’ll have to change my schedule eventually.

Most of the time, an encounter with him doesn’t go further than waving or small talk. If you can call the back and forth of snarky comments “small talk.” Letting him cross that line would be shooting myself in the foot. I won’t be stupid enough to let him become part of my normal.

These days have been stressful—there’s no point in lying, even when that’s exactly what I do when I’m drowning in sessions, bills, and my dad’s appointments.

My dad’s appointments with the doctor started out as a routine, a prevention I pushed onto him to pay more attention to his health. One appointment per month soon became once a week after he started to feel fatigue and his ankles started to swell. After a lab test came back with his creatinine abnormally high, the doctor wants to see him every time he sees fit.

I can do it. I’ve been doing it since Mum passed away. I’m used to it and it’s no one else's responsibility but mine. It's the least I can do for my father. Even when I have Josephine’s help, it feels weird not to be there at the doctor’s office, trying to keep my face emotionless to his words. I don’t want Jo going through that. I signed up for it when we were left behind by everyone.

“I think you should call them.” Jo’s voice makes me look up from my mug. “You know he’s their father, too. They should help… maybe they want to help.” Sitting next to me, the glow of her computer screen bounces off her perfect cheekbones.

I let a snort come out of me. “I’m sure they have more important things to do than take care of their old father. Ben barely calls, and I think the last text I had from Sonia was three years ago. I keep tabs on her through her Facebook page and by poking Ben with questions.”

Jo’s hand grabs mine over the table to call my attention, which she has, but she doesn't appreciate me looking at my computer while we talk.

“You should try.” The way she strokes her thumb against my skin is distracting. “I know you see yourself as a superhuman but you can only do so much. You think I don’t notice when you get up late at night and pace the corridors.” A statement, not a question.

I hold her gaze as long as I can but she sees all those times I stayed up reading and taking 2:00 a.m showers.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” I hide my grin behind a mug of cold coffee. Her eyes are heavy; she doesn’t approve of my joke.

“You’re not only worried but tired. I can see it. It doesn't matter how hard you try to hide it under concealer. I see you.” Jo moves her chair to give me her full attention.

“I know.”

“No, really. I think you could use some help. You should talk to Ben and maybe take some time away from your practice…”

“Oh, look who’s coming…”

Seeing my dad turning his wheels to us in the dining room relieves me. Jo gives me a smug grin, letting me know that the conversation is not over. I can only shrug.

“Good afternoon, ladies. How are the taxes coming along?”

Jo gets up from the chair to bring him faster so he doesn’t strain his arms or his dialysis fistula. “Oh, you know…” Jo says in amusement. “Having the time of our lives, doing government paperwork so we don’t go to jail for tax fraud.”

“Can you believe we haven’t found a better way to fill in taxes?” my dad complains as he strokes my hair.

“Terrible…” I respond.

When my dad comes into the scene, the world quietens. I hope they both know how lucky I feel to have them in this little oasis of ours. The three of us in this “big” house, apparently not big enough to have an office, so we have to do our paperwork at the dining table. Whether we spend the night talking about taxes or about how politicians are twats, they make me feel I can still do things the way I’ve always done them. On my own.

And I’m stronger with them. They keep me going and have done for the past few years.

We move to the kitchen’s island to have dinner and, after laughing over our cold pesto, dad gets too drained to keep chatting. I take him to his room only after catching Jo’s stare, promising that she hasn’t forgotten that we still have an overdue conversation.

“Look…” I say when I return. Jo washes the dishes, and I hug her from behind. “I’m fine. I might be a little tired and I admit I have a lot on my plate.” She turns around when she finishes, wrapping her arms around my waist. I hide my face in the hollow of her neck. “How about you help me with Monday appointments? We can reschedule them, so you can go with him after school and I can go to work on Monday mornings.” Jo grabs my face and squishes my cheeks, threatening me with her eyes. “Or I can sleep in. I’ll think about it.”

“Fine…” Josephine is inches taller than me, and it makes me swoon like I’m sixteen. Her kisses on my forehead feel holy when my face is between her hands. “I’ll do Mondays but please, think about your brother.” We part to look at each other. “If he asked you to help, would you let him? If it was the other way around, wouldn’t you like to help? Just keep that in mind.”

“I will. I’ll think about it.”

Her eyes are gleaming. It is not the help she wanted me to get, but I know she’s content for now.

She kisses me and I melt on her lips. Her soft and delicious lips are the only thing occupying my mind right now. There are no episodes, no stress, when Josephine Nour is kissing me.

I love when she kisses me back with the same eagerness, how she moves so close to me. One day, we’ll fuse into one when she takes my hand and guides me to our bedroom because she knows how hard it is for me to lead her on; knows how bad I want her here, wherever here is—on the counter, against a wall, or on the couch.

“I love you,” I whisper when she leaves burning kisses on my scars and spots. “I love you so much.” That’s what comes out when she trails her lips down my body.

It feels like I’ve loved her my whole life. Even when she tells me that she had a hard time figuring out I was into her, I was head over heels.

I was a social worker in my early years after finishing my psychiatry degree. I did the course alongside it because I needed my time to be consumed by midterms, papers, and due dates after fleeing London.

I was assigned the case of a little girl showing signs of neglect. Her teacher called, concerned about what could be happening to her student at home. The teacher was Jo.

Seeing her for the first time is engraved in my brain. The world moved in slow motion when I arrived in her classroom full of screaming kids, and the only thing that separated her world from mine was a glass door. I remember the colour of her hijab, a deep blue that contrasted with the white walls of her classroom. The dimples at each corner of her mouth. Her passion and care for someone else’s child.

Josephine’s suspicions were right. Unfortunately, we found out that the child’s mother was going through an abusive relationship and that she was drinking as a coping mechanism. As a result, the child would go to class with their hair untamed and full of lice, not showered or fed. I took care of consulting the child and the mother. It wasn't the toughest case I’d had to take on, but it was for Jo.

One morning, I went to the school earlier than usual. I wasn’t sure why. I had a feeling I should show up and wait. Josephine was in her classroom, this time childless. She was sitting at her desk, her face buried between her hands. She was so upset about something that she’d needed a whole empty room for herself.

I knocked on the glass door to call her attention. When she looked up with puffy eyes and wet cheeks, I thought there was no way someone could look so beautiful crying. She looked put together even when she wasn’t. Her graceful aura covered her sorrow.

“Dr Lamb,” she said when I pushed the door to let myself in. “We weren’t expecting you this early.”

“We should drop the we when talking about this case, don’t you think?” I walked to her desk and grabbed a chair on the way. “You and I both know the only two people who care about this are here in this room. The principal only called because it was protocol. And only asked for a report because…”

“That’s also protocol…” she chimed in. “I don’t know.”

“You reported this case because you care, and I took this case because I care, too. Everyone else is just following… protocols.”

“That’s why you and I came early, I suppose.”

“Yes, I think it is.”

She smiled at me and I knew I wasn’t willing to stop seeing that smile after this case was archived in a box. I didn't want to stop seeing the way she cared about others or the lengths she would go to fix the unfixable. I was hooked.

“I’d take you out to dinner if you let me.” It came out of nowhere.

I’d become bold with men. It’s easy to use shock value with them. They aren’t used to it, and they either love it or hate it.

But women.

Oh, women.

Women scare the shit out of me still, because women aren’t afraid of other women nor are they intimidated by boldness. Somehow, rejection from them hurts more.

Josephine Nour looked at me with her almond-shaped eyes, her cheeks marked by trails of tears. She wasn’t surprised. A sigh of relief came from her lips as a mischievous look settled on her face.

“I was becoming worried,” she said, and I didn’t understand what kind of answer that was.

“About what?”

She reached across the desk, where my hand was resting, and took it.

“I was starting to think that I was going to have to ask you out myself.”

I HATE HOSPITALS.

I hate clinics.

I hate any place that resembles the aseptic image of St. Barts Hospital, the smell of formaldehyde that stings and is so sweet and unbearable. The neon white lights that seem to burn. I despise the feeling.

I’m sitting in the waiting room of the dialysis clinic while my dad is getting a needle as big as a knitting stick prodded through his arm. When he was diagnosed with kidney failure, he refused rotundly to have dialysis twice a week, but then the effects of the urea that his kidneys couldn’t process started to give him nausea. Everything smelled like piss for him, and he had to accept the fact that his life is now this: sitting in a room for three hours while a machine washes all the toxins from his blood that his body can’t handle.

The doctors don’t say much. Sometimes, they say that he’s getting better and he will eventually be able to go about his life with one dialysis per week; sometimes, their faces are grim and they tell him that he has to have an extra session at the end of the month. It drives me insane most of the time. The feedback is that he seems to be on standby, not getting worse or better.

I never thought that I would be sitting in a kidney clinic waiting for my dad. Then again, I never thought that Mum would leave this world so soon. It's been three years, but still, it’s hard to recall when it happened and how fast it happened.

We all thought that Dad would be the first to go, notwithstanding that he was always in excellent condition. It wasn’t until a year later that his body started to fail in things he never used to have problems with.

To be honest, we never thought our parents would leave Earth, not with all their energy and the type of lifestyle they’d had before us and for most of our childhood. Airports, aeroplanes, aisles, and chunky sneakers with high shin socks fill my mind. The imagery of when we went to India, Perú, and Florida takes me down memory lane, leaving me with pressure on my chest and a closed throat.

My phone rings with a new message as Ben’s name appears on the screen.

B: I think I should come to have dinner.

I raise a brow at the text. When I start to type back, the three dots that indicate that he’s typing too stops me.

B: Let me rephrase that.

B: I’d love to have dinner with my father and my sister if I may.

I bite the inside of my cheek to avoid a soft chuckle leaving my mouth. It amuses me, but at the same time, I can’t ignore the sting of irritation.

E: To what do we owe the pleasure?

I shove my phone back inside my coat when a nurse calls my name.

“He’s done,” she says with a smile. “He’ll be out in a second.”

And as suddenly as she appeared, she’s gone. I walk to the door, where Dad is pushed out in his wheelchair. My phone dings again but I have to leave it alone.

“How do you feel?” I kneel to his level as his sleepy eyes meet mine.

“Like shit.” My dad is not the best at filtering his words.

I’m accompanied by the nurse to my car in the parking lot. She helps me to get my dad in the passenger seat even when she doesn't have to.

“Thank you.” I smile at the nurse. I try to put the wheelchair in the boot when a sharp pain in my wrist makes me wince. The nurse looks at me, concern in her brown eyes.

She comes back to me and her strong arms lift the wheelchair effortlessly to place it in the boot. Her dark skin glistens under the cloudy London sky and I feel exposed when she looks at me with motherly eyes. I want to feel protected and understood but instead, shame for being too weak fills me.

“Darling, I think someone should help you. It’s normal to experience carpal tunnel from carrying that thing up and down, but you shouldn’t let it pass.” She taps my shoulder before leaving.

I lean against the boot for a second, grabbing my wrist. Truth be told, I’ve been feeling this pain for quite some time but now someone knows, it makes me want to hide away. My phone goes off again and I take the chance to read Ben’s text before driving home.

B: I just want to see you both, Emma.

B: So?

I have no will to argue with my brother. I text back that we eat at seven. I put my phone away again. Josephine will have to hear me out.