I was on my knees without realising I had fallen to them.
I felt calloused hands on either side of my face and a voice that sounded like it was a long distance away. I couldn’t understand what was being said, but when I felt an object being pushed inside of my mouth, my instant reaction was to inhale. The instant I breathed in, a familiar puff of air that tasted like chemicals assaulted my taste-buds on its way down to my lungs. Robotically, I held onto the puff of air for a few seconds before I exhaled it. This process was repeated a few more times and just as quickly as the pain began, it faded.
I opened my eyes, not realising they had closed, and stared into Dr O’Rourke’s worried ones.
“You’re okay,” he said, his hands on my shoulders. “Don’t talk, just breathe in and out.”
I followed his instructions and remained on the cold, tiled floor of my kitchen until the threat of my attack passed. When I felt better, I made a move to get back to my feet and Dr O’Rourke helped me. I was a tiny bit unsteady, but my senses had returned to normal. Dr O’Rourke didn’t take any chances as he aided me in walking over to my table. I eased down onto the chair, leaned my elbows on hard wood, turned my head and watched in silence as Dr O’Rourke re-boiled the kettle and after a couple of minutes, brought over two steaming cups of tea and placed one on a coaster in front of me and the other in front of him. He got milk from the fridge as well as the sugar-pot and two spoons and placed them on the table too.
I said nothing, I only watched him.
“Much milk?”
I bobbed my head to his question. He poured milk into my cup and followed it up with two spoonfuls of sugar. He mimicked his actions with his own cup of tea then sat across from me. We both stared at one another until I broke the contact and picked up my cup. I blew across the top of the steaming hot liquid for a dozen or so seconds, then took a sip, then another. I felt my body loosen as the sweet, familiar taste slid down my throat and did its job of calming me.
“A cuppa Rosie Lee always hits the spot.”
I couldn’t smile, laugh or do anything other than look up and stare at this man who had come to tell me something had happened to my mother. I knew he had and I knew that he knew that.
“Is she . . . is she d-dead?”
My voice broke with the last word as flashbacks of my mother sitting me down when I was thirteen and telling me that my father had gone to heaven and wouldn’t be coming home to us, entered my mind. I could remember screaming as overwhelming pain filled my body. I still carried that pain around to this day.
“No, no, no,” Dr O’Rourke shook his head. “She’s alive, she’s just not well.”
The relief I felt was almost enough to make me sick.
“What’s wrong,” I said, gripping my cup. “Just tell me.”
“She drove to the twenty-four-hour garage a couple of hours ago for some cigarettes and was hit by a drunk driver but she’s doin’ okay,” Dr O’Rourke said in a rushed breath. “Her leg is fractured quite badly, but that is the only physical injury she has sustained apart from a dustin’ of minor cuts. The driver of the other vehicle wasn’t so lucky: he was pronounced dead at the scene. He wasn’t wearin’ a seatbelt.”
I felt like I was having an out-of-body experience. I was looking right at Dr O’Rourke when he spoke, I could hear each word he said clearly, but none of it felt like it was really happening. I don’t know how to explain it other than that I was imposing on an important moment in someone else’s life.
“I . . . I can’t believe this.”
“It’s hard to believe, I know, but your ma wanted me to come and tell you instead of the police showin’ up to inform ye since they took a statement from her about what happened. Luckily, she has her dash cam that you gifted her at Christmas last month as evidence since it was recordin’ at the time of the accident.”
I felt my head bob up and down.
“I can’t process this,” I said, lifting a hand to my temple and rubbing. “This feels like it’s not happenin’.”
“That sounds a lot like shock to me,” Dr O’Rourke said. “Drink some more of your tea.”
I did as suggested and drank some more, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something I was missing. Dr O’Rourke was speaking and acting normally, but his eyes . . . I could see a haunting wave of turmoil within them. I knew there was something that he wasn’t telling me.
“There’s more,” I said, setting my cup down. “Somethin’ else is wrong.”
Dr O’Rourke lifted his hands to his face and scrubbed up and down until his skin was flushed. When he lowered his arms, he took in a deep breath and exhaled it before he glanced around, looking for something.
“Where did I put your inhaler?”
Automatically, I looked to the white plastic box on the wall of my kitchen that Risk had drilled into place. We had one in each room of our cottage; we jokingly called them my air boxes because inside of each container was an inhaler. I had severe asthma and was also prone to panic attacks. I always carried my two inhalers, a blue emergency inhaler for when I had attacks and a brown inhaler to combat symptoms throughout my day-to-day life. I always had a blue reliever inhaler in each air box inside my home just in case.
The air box I was staring at was open and empty.
“There it is.”
Dr O’Rourke
