Mine To Lose Read online

  ‘If that’s the case, maybe you’ll buy me a wardrobe full of them,’ I said as Jordan poured us more wine.

  ‘I can’t wait much longer. Hurry and finish your dinner, woman,’ he ordered, pointing his finger at me. ‘You’re gonna need your strength in a few minutes. I’ve eaten loads of oysters, so be warned.’

  ‘Why should I be scared?’

  ‘They make me hard, blossom,’ he threatened in one of his bad guy character voices.

  ‘Well, then far be it from me to stifle your endeavours.’ I winked. ‘What’s this?’ I had an unidentified hard object on my fork and lifted it up to Jordan for examination.

  ‘Wipe off the sauce,’ he announced triumphantly.

  ‘It looks ...’ I rose a brow as I used my napkin to clean the object. When I saw what it was, I almost fell off my chair. ‘Oh, my God, Jordan. You didn’t!’

  ‘I most certainly did.’

  In my hand, I held a beautiful Tiffany ring. White gold with 16 diamonds. I knew it cost a small fortune. I leapt out of my seat and threw my arms around his neck. Before I had a chance to draw his face down to meet mine, Jordan’s ringtone broke into the moment, and he pulled away to answer it. With his back turned, I admired my ring as I slid it on my finger. I listened to Jordan on his phone as he left the room and walked down the hall. He was in a heated argument with someone, keeping his voice low as he snapped at the caller.

  He came back into the kitchen minutes later as I was clearing the table.

  ‘Who was riling you up like that on the phone? I thought you were going to pop an artery,’ I asked as he wrapped his arms around my waist.

  ‘Leslie.’

  ‘Who’s Leslie?’ I asked. ‘It wasn’t one of the usual names Jordan mentioned when talking about work.

  ‘The new script supervisor Alan hired,’ Jordan groaned. ‘Christ, what a pain in the arse! Almost everything I write is somehow not in keeping with the standards all of a sudden. I refuse to re-write these next four scenes until I have heard it from Jack Denton himself.’

  ‘The director?’ I guessed.

  ‘Correct. I work for him, not for Leslie. So tonight I just made it clear that the script hasn’t been altered yet pending Jack’s go-ahead, see?’ he filled me in.

  ‘Absolutely right, I would say. Imagine if you re-write what wasn’t incorrect in the first place. All that bloody work for nothing,’ I said.

  ‘Precisely so,’ Jordan replied. ‘And what’s more, I am very happy with the lines just as they are right now, so they can all fuck off.’

  ‘That’s my boy,’ I encouraged him. Jordan hardly ever barked about work, so I reckoned that perhaps he sometimes kept stress in the studio to himself to spare me. I kissed his arm where it crossed my chest and supported my head. ‘I love you.’

  ‘I love you too, baby,’ Jordan whispered, cupping my breast and kissing. ‘That’s why it makes me so sad to have to leave you.’

  My shoulders sunk. ‘You’re going into work?’

  ’Fraid so”

  Great! Now I’m going to have to wait a little bit longer to find out if the myth about libido and oysters was true after all.

  Pity.

  Chapter 21

  The green digits on my clock said it was 2.19 a.m. when I reached for my lamp switch. Jordan was lying on his side, facing away from me when I got the light on. My head was spinning, and I felt as if someone was pushing a heavy rock against my diaphragm. I sat up, taking a minute to listen to the rain against the window before panicking about the horrible churning in my stomach.

  My hands were sweating, and I had awful tremors. Trying everything in my power not to admit that I was utterly nauseous, I steadied my breathing to relax, hoping it would subside now that I was sitting up. No matter how calmly I breathed, my heart slammed in rapid palpitations inside my chest.

  ‘Oh, God no,’ I moaned softly when I realised that my centre of gravity did not change the state of my innards. One thing everyone knew about me was how I detested vomiting. As if it wasn’t enough that I previously hurled like a fire hose all over this very carpet, I now had to avoid the horrible business from repeating itself. Slowly, I rose to my feet, feeling as if my belly carried a ton of bubbling hot puke just waiting to spew forth from my throat.

  Stewing in my belly, the seafood mixed and bubbled higher and higher upward by the second, so I made a run for the toilet. This time, I made it fast enough to close the door behind me and sank to my knees over the brim of the toilet seat, waiting for the inevitable. Thankfully, the hard rain would disguise my regurgitation so that Jordan would not have to play witness to my stomach contents again.

  As the obligatory burping started, I dreaded what was to come. Deep in my throat, I could still taste the red wine where it mingled with the smoky trout and prawns and muscles.

  ‘Oh God,’ I lamented just before the mass of hot vomit ripped through my body and forced me to relive the same terrible experience of a few weeks ago. My clammy skin was sore and cold as I shivered, throwing up until I felt like my throat was going to tear.

  A knock at the door exacerbated the experience. Jordan had heard me.

  ‘Baby, are you alright?’ I heard his muffled voice from the other side of the door. In between spurts, I managed to call out to him, ‘Please don’t come in! Go away!’

  ‘I want to help you,’ he argued, but I shouted through my burning throat that I was okay. Finally, he let me be and waited patiently for me to finish vomiting and brushing my teeth before he tried again. Looking like a homeless madman in his half-awake state, Jordan stood on the other side of the door when I came out.

  ‘Jesus Christ, Katie!’ he exclaimed. ‘You look awful! Come on, get into bed. You look like you’re going to collapse!’

  He was spot on with that remark. My head felt like a lead coffer full of granite while my ears hissed. Before me was a white noise tunnel, making Jordan’s voice sound like a hollow robot’s, and my knees buckled under me. Weakened from purging, I could hardly keep my head up as I walked with Jordan supporting me.

  ‘I feel like I am going to faint again, Jordan,’ I slurred. It was the previous nightmare all over again, only with a different cause this time. ‘I think I have food poisoning from that seafood and ... th-that wine w-w-we h—’ I forced through the impending oblivion, but I just felt him lay me on the bed before my thick eyelids covered my bloodshot eyes. I was still nauseous when I passed out.

  When I came to, I wanted to die. The nausea was so bad that my throat felt like a turkey neck contracting dangerously. I felt like someone had cut open my stomach and dumped boulders inside. Inadvertently, I just moaned. Like a zombie, I just uttered long, dragged out groans that somehow alleviated my nausea only until I ran out of breath.

  ‘I’m taking you to the hospital.’ I heard Jordan’s voice through the clatter of the showers on the roof and window glass. I shook my head wearily, unable to even lift my hand.

  ‘Come, on,’ he urged softly, taking me by the upper arms.

  ‘No! No, please Jordan, jusss ... just let m-me sleep it ... off,’ I muttered, exhausted and cold. ‘I just want to sleep. Please.’

  ‘Listen, Katie, if this is food poisoning, you could die and I can’t lose you, for Christ’s sake! This time, you might not make it out, do you understand? Now come on!’ Jordan thundered, more to keep me conscious than to reprimand me. I felt him pull my heavy frame off the bed and onto my feet.

  ‘I’m going to puke!’ I managed to growl. Like a flash, he had me at the toilet bowl where I purged more until I started sobbing. He wiped my mouth and pulled my hair back when I was done while I cried profusely in his embrace.

  ‘Do I have permission now? Huh?’ he pressed. I could hear that he was trying not to lose his temper with me, even though he must have been exhausted too by now. ‘Katie? Katie! Can we go now? You’re going to the hospital. End of story,’ he said abruptly.

  ‘Okay, okay,’ I forced to appease him. I felt a faint kiss on my forehead, and then
he swept me up in his arms and carried me through the quiet apartment while the thunder seemed to clap miles away in another world outside my confusion.

  I remember vaguely how the engine hummed as we drove through the wet darkness, and I fought the temptation to think of the seafood I’d eaten. Had it been out of date? The very idea of it made my stomach pull taut, so I tried to think of Carol, Paris, Pam and her boots, and at one point, I even conjured an image of Martha.

  Suddenly, through my daze, I was blinded by the piercing white lights of the hospital sign overhead when Jordan pulled the car up to the Emergency entrance. The car shook under me as he lunged from his seat to come round and collect me. I heard him shouting for the staff to help him, and inside me, I wondered what my fate would deal me this time.

  Those instances where one becomes too weak to even fight the natural instinct to wipe drool or mucus away to avoid embarrassment were the worst. And I think I endured one of those instances just as they placed me on a gurney to rush me down the short corridor. My body convulsed, and there wasn’t a thing I could do to warn the nurses before the force of the seizure thrust me onto my side.

  All I heard were the yelps and gasps of onlookers and staff as more hot liquid spurted over my numb lips onto the clean white gurney and the polished floor. I was mortified, but I was left to the devices of my body’s defence mechanisms, incapacitated by the onslaught. Jordan’s voice was somewhere in the distance as they wheeled me into yet another white room with yet more polished floors and unsuspecting nursing staff.

  ‘Food poisoning!’ I heard someone shout near me, hurting my ears with his sharp voice while my narrowed eyes avoided the terrible brightness. ‘Over here! Quick!’

  I heard Jordan talking to the sister, but I had no idea where they were anymore. I just closed my eyes and heard sporadic words like ‘seafood’, ‘meningitis treatment’, ‘previously admitted’ and ‘dehydration’ as I passed out again.

  Chapter 22

  Whispers hissed on my left, but I could not discern if they were male or female. My nausea had finally released me, thank God, and my heartbeat was steady again. The murmurs continued in incomprehensible words and my curiosity probed, but I remained still. Footsteps sounded toward my right side, and I felt a warm, soft hand check my pulse before fading into the distance. With care, I peeked through my barely open eyelids to see if I was alone. In the corner bed, I saw an inanimate figure under the covers, sleeping soundly and looking quite sinister. There was nobody around in the way of nursing sisters or doctors, so I attempted to move my fingers just to get a bit of activity out of my reflexes.

  ‘Food poisoning, Katie. Well done,’ I bitched in my head. ‘Thank God it wasn’t alcohol again; otherwise, Dr Pane would have a hissy fit again.’

  I wondered where Jordan was. Once again he was absent when I woke in hospital. To be honest, I was beginning to feel like my life was one recurring incident after another. Groundhog Day with a few twists to keep me hopeful, I reckoned. My mouth was bone dry, the inside of it the texture of sandpaper, and I immediately started to look for a bottle or glass of water. Without success, I scanned the other bedside tables.

  Even my tongue felt alien in its place, so I pushed myself to sit up as best I could. Once upright, I found my equilibrium with a bit of effort.

  Not seeing water anywhere, I elected to try and make it to the compact bathroom in the far corner where I could drink from a tap. But my endeavour was short-circuited by a male nurse who just happened to walk in and catch me in the act.

  ‘No, no, Mrs Winston!’ he protested as he rushed to intercept me. ‘You can’t get out of bed yet.’

  My first thought was to ignore him, but I had a drip needle lodged in my hand. He smiled cordially, gently ushered me back onto the bed and covered me.

  ‘Water,’ I said.

  ‘I’ll go get you some. I’m not surprised you need it after how many times you were sick,’ he said.

  Like I needed reminding, seeing as I was there. ‘Is my husband outside?’ I asked.

  He looked a bit confused but assured me that he would check when he got my water. The thick needle in the back of my hand was burning into my vein every time I moved my arm under the heavy blankets, and I could just let out a soft whimper at my ill luck. The nurse came back in with a godsend.

  ‘Wait,’ he said, ‘I’ll pour it for you, and then you can just sit up to drink.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I replied, craning my neck forward to suck up the cool blessing that loosened my tongue from the stickiness of the roof of my mouth and soothed my sore voice as it ran down my gullet. ‘Oh! That was amazing, thanks,’ I told him when I had drunk my fill. ‘Did you see my husband, then?’

  He shook his head, ‘The shift supervisor said he left shortly after speaking to the doctor on duty when you were admitted. He said he’d return for visiting hours.’

  ‘Which is when?’ I asked.

  He checked his watch. ‘In fifteen minutes!’ He smiled cheerfully. ‘So you don’t even have to wait that long.’

  ‘Good. Good.’ I smiled, wondering what Dr Pane was going to say about all this once she came in.

  What felt like an eternity was actually a short eleven minutes while I watched all the other patients light up at the sight of their relatives and friends arriving.

  ‘Where’s Jordan?’ I wondered. He had been quite knackered when he brought me in. Perhaps he was catching up on sleep and hadn’t woken up yet.

  ‘Not here yet?’ the nurse asked me. My eyes swept over his name tag—it said ‘Ethan’ in bold white lettering on a dark blue background—then up to his face. It was attractive with puppy dog brown eyes and a light stubble on his chin.

  ‘No, a no-show.’ I sighed. Shrugging, suggesting he overslept.

  ‘That’s a pity,’ he replied, looking around the place, alive with mild chatter and hushed exchanges of news among patients and visitors. ‘I can stay here with you for a bit if you’d like?’

  ‘That is really sweet of you, but you really don’t have to.’ I smiled. ‘Besides, I could do with a bit of a nap.’

  I lied, actually. I was being nice. I felt so alone I wanted to weep. All I wanted right now was my husband, to feel his hand over mine and get his reassurance. Ethan shook his head and looked at me with tenderness.

  ‘I really thought your hubby would have made more of an effort, especially given the happy news and all,’ he said. ‘I expect he would have at least brought you a gift or something to celebrate, you know? Maybe you’re right. Perhaps he just overslept. He did look a little tired.’

  I frowned, ‘What happy news?’

  ‘Oh, the baby, of course,’ he smiled happily, locking his fingers in front of him with absolute glee. My heart hit the floor. A jolt of panic shot through me while I processed what he said.

  ‘The ... baby,’ I stuttered, too shocked to say anything cogent.

  ‘That’s right!’ he chirped, but glancing at me, he instantly lost his cheer. ‘Oh, my God, you didn’t know?’

  I had no words. In fact, I couldn’t find any breath in me to even try to ask again, because what he’d told me felt like it was news for someone else. He must have thought I was totally dumbstruck, as I stared at him with an astonished expression, my fingers writhing to force my body to react.

  ‘Oh, my God, I’m so sorry,’ he repeated just to break the tension, ‘I had no idea you didn’t know.’

  My lip quivered, yet I was uncertain if the looming crying spell was some sort of emotional relief to finally get what I wanted so secretly – or if I was having a stroke from shock. For a brief moment, a thousand thoughts darted through my head – all about Jordan.

  This was why he stayed away. My vision blurred behind the sudden flux of tears; you know, the kind that you don’t even feel until they simply escape your eyes and flood your cheeks without reservation.

  ‘I ...’ my voice shook, ‘I didn’t know, no. Um, I don’t think my husband is coming back. Could you please get me ... s-someth
...’

  I couldn’t speak. My brain couldn’t articulate, formulate words. As a matter of fact, I did not know what I wanted to say. To be honest, I think that was what happened when my mouth tried to speak emotion. Feelings have no words, yet I wanted to say what I could only feel. The nurse seemed to sense I was distraught.

  ‘I’ll call the doctor. She’s on the next ward,’ Ethan said as he gently placed his hand on my head.

  ‘Please? If you could? I’m s-s-orry,’ I stammered.

  ‘Alright. Don’t upset yourself now, okay?’ He smiled.

  ‘I ... I won’t ...’ I sobbed as softly as I could without making a scene for the other patients and their visitors. My heart was broken over Jordan’s reaction, but I knew that way deeper inside there was a tiny star blossoming. Stars brought light, I reminded myself, and more so, they helped you navigate during the darkest hours. No matter what happened after this, my baby was my star, and I had to remember that when I felt alone or lost under the night sky.

  ‘Katie,’ I heard from the doorway. It was Dr Pane, followed by Ethan. ‘How’re you feeling? And what’s with the tears? For once, you’ve been admitted for a good thing.’ She winked, and I could have sworn she actually smiled.

  But all I could do was cry. ‘Jordan’s going to leave me.’

  ‘Leave you? Whatever for?’ She dismissed my self-pity.

  ‘He ... he doesn’t want … children.’

  ‘If I told you how many times I’d heard that, I’d be a millionaire living in the Caribbean. The poor man got the shock of his life. I mean, God, look at you! Don’t you think he had the same voltage going through him when he heard the news? Relax.’

  ‘You don’t understand,’ I said sniffing. ‘He must be furious with me. You see, we decided to never have children and ...’

  I didn’t want to unload on strangers, but I had to tell someone. She waited patiently, her face full of compassion, so I just rambled it off. ‘And I don’t know how this happened, but he’ll think it was deliberate. I’m on the pill. I don’t understand how this could’ve happened.’