Harmony

[Ludub]

 

So, I said I wouldn’t do a sequel to Blind Sided but I’ve been thinking about it the last few days and I wanted to see what happened to Kyle and Tamara after the twins were born, so here’s ‘Harmony’…  Hope you like it.

 

Title of Story: HARMONY

Type of Fic: Long Fiction

Main Characters: Kyle & Tamara, Jamie & Tommy Braxton, Kat & Andy, Ricky & Nate, and other main characters.

Genre: Psychological Drama. Family, Romance & Friendship 

BTTB Rating: G / T

Does it contain spoilers: No

Warnings:  Adult Themes, V/D.

Summary: Kyle and Tamara are married with 2 small children (twin boys, Jamie & Tommy). Kyle is still recovering from emergency thoracotomy surgery and in significant pain. He’s taking heavy pain relief medication just to get through the day but what effect is it having on his mental health?

 

CHAPTER 1

 

2:52am

He looked at the clock, quietly humming to himself and rocking gently back and forth in an effort to calm his nerves.  Only another hour and eight minutes to go, he told himself. ‘Only’. He wasn’t sure he could make it that long.  This was a bad night.  He had good nights and bad ones.  He’d been having more good ones in recent times, but it seemed like the bad ones were getting much worse, and this was a particularly bad one.  He gritted his teeth and tried to breathe into the pain. It was coming in waves in rhythm with his heartbeat. A sharp stabbing nerve pain resonated up through his body, setting his teeth on edge, and no matter which way he moved it didn’t want to settle. He couldn’t lie down, that made it much worse, but he couldn’t stand either. He’d found the only position that seemed to make any difference was to lean slightly forward in a sitting position, and to the side, taking some of the pressure off his injured ribs. It wasn’t a comfortable position, and it didn’t do much to help, but it was better than nothing.  He glanced at the body beside him in the bed as she snoozed softly, completely oblivious to his late night suffering. He smiled as he looked at the peaceful expression on her face.  He was glad that at least one of them was having a good night. In the early days he used to wake her up looking for comfort and reassurance but as time went on he’d grown accustomed to this nightly torture and learnt to let her sleep. There was nothing she could do to help anyway so he couldn’t see the point in both of them losing sleep over it. 

Once the twins had arrived it had become more and more important that Tamara get some sleep, especially if he couldn’t.  There were days when he was barely functioning, operating on so little sleep that he could hardly string a sentence together, and Tamara always had to do the lion’s share of the work on those days. She never complained but he always felt guilty about it.  He wanted to do his part, to do the feeds, to change the nappies, to be the one to get up with them at night. He was doing his best, and trying so hard, but the pain was sometimes too much, and sometimes the medication was even worse.  He’d always dreamed of being a dad and finally he’d got his wish, but there were things about his life now that didn’t fit with the vision of parenthood he’d always dreamt of. He’d wanted to be the fun and active dad that taught his kids how to play football and got to run around with them.  He’d wanted to be their hero, the man they admired and wanted to grow into. He’d wanted to be the strong male influence in their lives, the role model he’d never had in his life when he was growing up. Instead, he was the dad that couldn’t even lift them up, as small as they were, and who had to take a cocktail of pain medication just to get through the day.  He couldn’t even sit on the floor with them for very long, so playing with their building blocks was a major ask.  He didn’t want to be the dad who was no fun, or the dad who was in too much pain to play with them.  He didn’t want to be a burden on their tiny lives.  This was not the life he wanted but it didn’t look like there was any way out.

They’d been to see all sorts of pain specialists to find out if there was any way of dealing with this. ‘Post Thoracotomy Pain Syndrome’ they’d called it.  He’d thought that having a name for it might help, that at least he’d be taken seriously now, and that they’d know what to do to fix it. Instead, he’d been passed from pillar to post with no clear course of treatment on offer.  They’d tried a lot of different drugs with mixed success but the side effects of some of them had been worse than the pain they were trying to treat in the first place. Every doctor he’d seen seemed to have a different idea of what ‘might’ help but no-one had anything even vaguely approaching a cure.  He was tired. They said that a lot of people with Post-Thoracotomy pain just have to learn to live with it, that the damage done to the nerves and delicate tissue between the ribs, and even the pleural lining, is something they can’t avoid during this type of surgery, and unfortunately some people are more unlucky than others.  The fact that his surgery was performed as an emergency procedure in the middle of the trauma room, with no prep and insufficient pain relief, would have exacerbated the problems he experienced post-operatively.  He’d also had complications after surgery that would have made matters much worse.  It had been the perfect storm. He’d ticked every box when it came to the specific conditions that cause this type of pain syndrome and it would be impossible to reverse the damage.  He’d been put on a waiting list to see a specialist who was trying a new type of nerve block as part of a clinical trial.  It was his last hope.  He didn’t know if he could cope with this for the rest of his life.

He looked at the clock again - 3:01am. Still another hour to go. He didn’t know how he was going to make it that long. Time was crawling by so slowly that every minute felt like an eternity. He needed to move, sitting wasn’t helping any more. He didn’t think walking would help either but it might distract him a little and he was going to go crazy if he sat here looking at that clock any longer. He could hear the boys stirring slightly in the room next door, he decided to go and look in on them. It took a lot of will power to make any sudden movements and getting out of bed was particularly difficult.  He braced himself for the pain and summoned the courage to pull himself up out of the bed. Finding himself on his feet, he had to stand for a moment, breathing through the pain as a stabbing and burning sensation reverberated through his chest wall.  Tonight was a bad one. He glanced at the clock again – ‘only’ 57 minutes to go.

He pushed the door to the boys’ bedroom open to find the two of them standing up in their cots staring at him and smiling. His heart melted, and for a moment he forgot about the pain. Their chubby little faces beamed at him across the room, excited to see their daddy, and reaching their arms out towards him.  They couldn’t understand how painful it was for him to lift them, especially out over the bars of their cots. All they wanted was to cuddle their daddy and he wanted that more than ever right now.  He went over to the cot nearest him and leaned over the bars, trying not to wince too much. He put his hands under Jamie’s arms and, taking a deep breath, he hoisted him out of the cot and set him down on floor beside the armchair, before going and getting Tommy.  They both stood looking up at him, with their eyes shining, as he held the side of his chest trying to recover himself from the exertion. Lifting anything made him feel like his ribs were tearing apart and sent shooting pains though his chest and up into his jaw. Somehow, the boys knew to wait until daddy calmed his breathing. He laughed as Jamie dragged the guitar, which was nearly the same size as him, across the floor towards him and plonked it at his feet. He picked it up and sat down carefully in the armchair with the guitar in his arms. The boys clambered up on top of him lying on the wide arms of the armchair and snuggled their heads in to his shoulders. He was in a world of pain now, the pressure of their heads on his shoulders was making everything much worse, but he wouldn’t have moved them for the world. These two little boys were everything to him.

He took the guitar in his hands and smiled at 'her' as 'she' watched him from across the room. 'She' always liked to watch him play and sometimes 'she' even liked to sing with him. It made him feel safe that 'she' was there with him at times like these. It was like old times, reminding him of what it was like to be a teenager, pain free, and with a world of possibilities laid out in front of him. He loved to hear 'her' sing too.  'She’d' always had such a beautiful voice and they’d always harmonised so well together.

He strummed on the guitar and began to sing softly as the boys hummed along tunelessly with their pacifiers in. They loved music, like most small children, but he wondered if they were going to be musical or if they’d inherited their mum’s tone deafness. He loved to hear Tamara sing, especially when she didn’t think anyone was listening.  She was always so out of key, so flat and tuneless, that she couldn’t help but make him laugh. It was one of the things he loved about her. It would have been nice to be able to sing with her, and to make music together, but in many ways he loved that Tamara was so fearless in everything that she did. She really couldn’t sing but she sang anyway, at the top of her voice, and didn’t care who heard her. He loved to listen to her singing in the shower, it always made him smile and went some way to making him forget about his pain.  Tamara was funny without meaning to be.

He got to the bit of the song where they normally harmonised and he looked across the room at 'her' smiling face. “C’mon, sing with me” he said, nodding at 'her'.  'She' laughed and joined 'her' voice with his and he started to cry a little as he sang. The tears were rolling slowly down his face, as he watched 'her' sing with 'her' eyes closed, but suddenly he felt Tommy’s little hand wiping at his face.  Tommy peered at his dad with big brown eyes, filled with concern and sympathy, and said “Daddy?” in a muffled kind of way. He still had his pacifier in and was leaning around him to look at his face very closely because he could see he was crying. “Hey, don’t worry little man, daddy’s okay” he said, kissing him on his forehead.  He put the guitar down and pulled the boys down into the chair beside him for a cuddle.  'She' walked across and picked the guitar up, before sitting back down in the chair across the room, and then 'she' began to play and sing quietly. He closed his eyes and started to drift off into some much needed sleep.

“What’s going on here?” said Tamara, looking in at them from the doorway.  She was laughing and shaking her head at them in mock disapproval.  Kyle was sitting in the armchair with the boys curled up on either side and the guitar was lying at his feet.  She knew exactly what was going on. Kyle often came in here to play guitar for the boys when his pain got too much for him. It seemed that music was the only thing that really helped. That, and being close to the boys and having them cuddle up next to him. Kyle looked up at her from the armchair, looking haggard with dark circles around his eyes, and gave her a tired smile. She held up his pill bottle and rattled it. “It’s 4.01” she said, “You can have your pills now”.

[Ludub]

Thanks for the kind comments and thanks again for reading  Hope you enjoy chapter 2.

 

CHAPTER 2

 

Tamara walked into the kitchen, wiping the sleep from her eyes, and was surprised to see the boys in their highchairs finishing off the last of their breakfast.  Kyle was sitting in the chair beside Tommy feeding him the remaining few mouthfuls of his yoghurt, but he looked up and smiled at her when she walked in. “Hey, sleepy head” he said to her as he scooped the very last of the yoghurt out of the little pot.  He made an airplane noise and swooped the spoon into Tommy’s mouth.

“Why didn’t you wake me?” she said, yawning, as she poured herself a glass of orange juice.  He shrugged and wiped Tommy’s mouth with his bib. “Thought you could do with the sleep” he said.  She walked over and kissed Jamie on the cheek making noises like she was eating him “nom nom nom”.  He squealed with laughter, and she did it again. Tommy watched her with his brother and giggled, sticking his arms out towards her, so she walked over to him and lifted him out of the highchair and onto her hip.

Kyle looked at her and smiled a little sadly. He couldn’t hold the boys that way. He wiped Jamie’s face and lifted him out of the chair and onto the floor, groaning heavily as he lowered him onto his feet.  Tamara took Jamie’s hand, and walked, carrying Tommy, over to the couch to sit down.  She looked over at Kyle, while she sat hugging the two boys on her knees, and said “Did you manage to get any sleep at all?”

“Not really” he said, cleaning up the boy’s breakfast things, “It was just a bad night… No big deal.”  He glanced at the clock on the kitchen wall, feeling depressed that it was only a little over an hour since he’d taken his last set of pills, and the pain was already creeping back in.  This was not going to be a good day.

Following his gaze, she knew he must be really struggling today, and watching the minutes tick by in agony. She hated not being able to help him. “We need to speak to that doctor again and see if there’s any way we can get you moved up that list.  You can’t be expected to live like this.” said Tamara, shaking her head at him in sympathy. “I can’t stand seeing you like this!”

He sighed and rubbed his tired eyes. “There are lots of other people in my position, Tam. You know that” he said, shrugging his shoulders in a defeated kind of way. “I’ll get seen when there’s room for me… Besides we don’t know that it’ll work any better than any of the other stuff we’ve tried.”

“We have to stay positive, Kyle, we have to.” she said, biting her bottom lip. She could see he was fighting back tears, furiously wiping down the kitchen counter and putting things away, so he wouldn’t have to look at her. He hated showing his vulnerable side, even to her. He wasn’t a crier.

“It might not work…” he said, his voice shaking, as he started lifting glasses out of the dishwasher and putting them in the cupboard, “Maybe there’s no way to fix this.”  The repetitive movement was irritating his ribs and causing him intense pain, but it was just making him angry, more than anything. He was resentful that this was his life now, that even the most mundane things could cause him such discomfort. He was only 29 years old but his body had been through so much that he felt like he needed a new one. There were days when he felt like he was made of glass, like he was a hundred years old, and his bones might shatter if he wasn’t careful. He was so tired.

Tamara put the two boys down on the floor with their building blocks and made her way over to Kyle. Her eyesight was still far from perfect and she often closed her eyes when she was stressed, and navigated blind instead. Se felt her way around the table and across to the counter where she knew he was standing.  He was leaning with his hands on the kitchen counter, staring out the garden window at the birds flitting about. She came up behind him and put her arms around his waist, being careful not to touch his scar, and leaned her head on the back of his good shoulder. He let her hug him, breathing out a heavy sigh, and held her arms around him. “Thanks Tam… I’m just tired” he said.  He turned to face her and managed a pained smile, “When’s your mum getting here?”

 

*****

 

“How you doing, Joanne?” asked Kyle, smiling at his mother-in-law as she walked through the door. He was on the floor with the boys, playing with a toy car garage, and giggling as they fought over the red car. They had their own ‘twin speak’ and babbled away at each other with little interest in anyone else. He always found it funny. There was usually a very short window of time, immediately after he’d taken his pills, when his pain would be at a manageable enough level that he’d be able to do some fun stuff with the boys. He always tried to take advantage of it.  The meds were starting to wear off now but he was trying to prolong his time with them as long as he could manage.

“I’m fine Kyle” she said, smiling at him, and then beaming at the boys as they turned to look at her. She clapped her hands at the boys and bent down as she talked to them. “How are my two favourite little men?!”

Joanne was here to babysit while Tamara and Kyle went to work.  Tamara’s parents moved to Summer Bay before the babies were born, to be closer to their grandchildren, and because they knew that Tamara and Kyle were going to need help once the boys arrived.  Kyle’s health had been very poor for a long time after his surgery and he’d had a lot of setbacks along the way. He’d had multiple infections from the chest drains, pneumonia from his inability to cough, and had ended up back in the ICU a number of times in the months following the initial surgery. Tamara had reconciled with her parents while Kyle was still in the ICU, and they’d started spending more and more time in the Bay to help her out. They’d helped a lot with Kyle’s recovery, and been a huge support to both of them throughout, especially financially. Joanne and Patrick had finally made the decision to move there when Tamara told them she was pregnant. Kyle looked at Joanne playing with the boys now, and felt very grateful to have their support. He really didn’t know what they would have done without them.

Joanne had one of her grandsons sitting in her lap, and was letting him clap her hands together. She looked at her son-in-law, noticing the dark circles around his eyes, and couldn’t help feeling concerned at how tired and thin he looked. “How are you doing, Kyle?” she asked, tilting her head at him.

“Ah, you know” he said, giving her a weak smile, “I’ve been better, Joanne”.  The pain was kicking back in now and he knew that he’d have to get through another 3 hours one way or another. He didn’t know how he was going to get through his day at work without biting someone’s head off.

“Are you sure you should be going to work if you’re in that much pain?” said Joanne. Much to her own surprise, she’d grown to really care about Kyle over the last few years, and she couldn’t help worrying about him. He didn’t look well.

“It won’t make much difference if I’m at home or at work… Pain is pain.” he said, grimacing as he pulled himself up onto his feet. “I can’t afford to not work when I’m in pain... I’d never work again!”

“Well, Hun, you come home if you need to.” she said, shaking her head at him.  “Don’t be a martyr to it… these little boys need their daddy!”

He grabbed his bag and his keys and turned to look back at his little boys playing with their grandmother on the floor. “Thanks Joanne. I really appreciate this.” he said, smiling at her before he walked out the door.

Joanne watched him leave, feeling sorry for her son-in-law who was so obviously in pain, and thinking it a little odd that he had held the door open as though there was someone else walking out in front of him. She shrugged it off and turned her attention back to her gorgeous twin grandsons who were facing each other and babbling incessantly. They hadn’t noticed Kyle leave at all, which was just as well, she thought.

 

*****

 

“What can I get you, Ash?” said Kyle, avoiding eye contact. He always felt nervous around Ash now. He made a point of wiping the bar, and cutting up lemons, and doing anything he could to make himself look busy. The restaurant was basically closed, with all the chairs upturned on top of the tables, and the kitchen cleaned and closed for the night. All the staff had already gone home. He and Ash were the only two left now and Ash had been drinking for hours.

“I’ll have another one of these beers” said Ash, picking at the label on the bottle. He was slurring his words and was a little slumped over the bar. “You don’t want to join me for a beer, do you? I could use the company” he said, looking up at Kyle, all teary eyed.  Ash often got like this when he’d had a few to drink. He’d start the evening all upbeat and talking about how he was going to go out and meet someone new, and then the drunkenness would set in and he’d start talking about Phoebe. Kyle hated it.

“I can’t really drink anymore, Ash. Not on my medication” he said, shaking his head as he made eye contact with ‘her’. ‘She’ was staring at him with a look of disapproval and he knew that ‘she’ was annoyed with him for letting Ash get into a state like this. ‘She’ always disapproved.

Ash nodded sadly, staring intently at the beer bottle in his hand, and tearing at the corner of the label. He was clearly lost in his own torturous thoughts. He’d never gotten over Phoebe’s death. The gruesome details that had come out in the inquest, outlining the exact manner in which she died, had been too much for him to take. It had broken him, just when he’d been getting his life back on track. Ash was a very different man from the one they’d all known before Tank came into their lives.

Kyle looked back at ‘her’, with an apologetic expression, and said “Fine, no more drink, I promise”. Ash looked a little confused, glancing back up at Kyle who was looking at the empty space in the seat beside him. “Who are you talking to?” he asked, running his hand through his hair to push it out of his eyes.

“No-one” said Kyle, looking at Ash again, “Just that I think you’ve had enough, mate. I think maybe you should go home”. He felt sorry for Ash having to go home to a caravan, all on his own, left alone with his own thoughts. He obviously wasn’t in a good place.  He could feel ‘her’ staring at him too, silently judging him for letting Ash fall apart like this. He knew ‘she’d’ want him to do something, to make some effort to sort him out before something bad happened to him. He didn’t think that Ash should be on his own tonight so he took his phone out of his pocket and dialled Billie’s number. He could see ‘she’ was smiling at him now, nodding at him in encouragement. “Billie, I think you need to come get your brother.” said Kyle. Ash looked at him in disgust and slumped across the bar with a heavy sigh. He was too drunk to argue with him. “He’s here at Angelo’s and he’s not in a good way” he continued, “…Right. Thanks, Billie”.

Billie came and got Ash to take him back to her house. She thanked Kyle, and led Ash out of the restaurant, swaying and babbling gibberish all the way out the door.

Kyle turned back to look at ‘her’ and smiled through his pain. “Happy now?” he said. “What do you mean it’s my fault he’s so drunk? It’s not my fault if he wants to get bladdered!” He walked back over to the bar and started to cash up now that the restaurant was empty. “I know! I know!” he said, nodding at ‘her’.  ‘She’ was always right and it was infuriating.  “Okay, okay, I promise. I won’t let him get drunk like that again… I wasn’t thinking, okay?” he said, leaning on the counter and smiling apologetically at ‘her’ across the bar. He poured ‘her’ a glass of red wine and set it down in front of ‘her’ smiling, “This make up for it?”

“Who are you talking to?!” said Matt looking worried. He’d just come back to hand over the cash from his pizza deliveries and overheard Kyle talking to thin air.

“I was just fooling around, mate” said Kyle flushing red, and tipping the glass of wine down the drain. “This place gets a bit lonely when there’s no-one around.”

“Righto” said Matt, handing the cash over. He gave Kyle a concerned look and said, “Mate, are you sure you’re okay?”

“Yeah, I’m good” said Kyle laughing it off, and patting him on the back. “Never mind your weird boss here.” He was trying not to laugh as ‘she’ made rude hand gestures behind Matt’s head. He’d always loved how weird and silly ‘she’ was sometimes. “I’m gonna lock up now, so I’ll see you tomorrow” he said, guiding him towards the door.

He walked back over to the bar and looked at his watch. It was 11.41pm. He breathed a sigh of relief that it was only 19 minutes till he could take his next dose of pain relief. His skin felt like it was on fire along the incision site and there was a sharp stabbing pain shooting up through his chest. He’d been doing anything he could to ignore it but ‘she’ was the only one that could really distract him. ‘She’ was dancing around the place, doing some incredibly silly moves for his benefit, and he couldn’t help laughing. He picked up his phone and saw a missed call from Tamara, and suddenly felt a pang of guilt like he was being unfaithful in some way. He watched the girl across the room, jumping about like an idiot, as ‘she’ did her best to distract him from the searing pain in his ribs, and he wondered if this could be considered cheating. He loved Tamara with all his heart but he needed this more than he would ever be able to explain rationally. He knew other people wouldn’t understand.

[Ludub]

Thanks everyone for the kind comments once again,  The Easter holidays are providing lots of time to write so I've already finished another chapter! Hope you enjoy this one xxx

 

Chapter 3

 

Tamara squeezed Kyle’s hand, sitting beside him as he lay stretched out on his side on the treatment table. She still wasn’t used to looking at his scars, they looked so savage and painful, and he was still so self-conscious about them that he rarely took his shirt off in front of anyone. Not even her.  He looked so nervous and was shaking a little. She looked up at the doctor and smiled at him, grateful that he’d allowed her to come in with Kyle for the procedure this time. 

“We want to have a party at the weekend and he wants to be able to enjoy himself.” said Tamara, gently stroking the skin on Kyle’s hand with her thumb.

Kyle glanced over his shoulder at the doctor and said “It’s our anniversary… I don’t want to be crippled with pain... I know it didn’t last long the last time, but if I get it today, it might at least give me Saturday”. He grimaced with the pain of lying in this position, wishing he could sit up again.

The doctor nodded at him sympathetically. “We can give it a try again, Kyle. It should give you a bit of relief… I want to try the 3 needle approach this time though, if you’re up for it?”  Intercostal nerve blocks were painful in themselves, and the results weren’t long-lasting, but a lot of people with PTPS chose to undergo this procedure for some temporary relief when their pain got too intense. It involved inserting a needle in between the affected ribs, and injecting a local anaesthetic and a steroid, in an attempt to relieve some of the inflammation around the damaged intercostal nerve that was causing the pain. The doctor was suggesting numbing the nerves above and below the damaged one to try to reduce the pain for longer.  The procedure would be much more painful this way but the hope was that he might get more than a few days out of it this time.

Kyle nodded to the doctor, and turned back to look at Tamara. He gave her a nervous smile, and then closed his eyes tight, tying to breathe through his pain. This would be the sixth time that Kyle had tried this treatment. It wasn’t something that they were willing to give him on a regular basis, but he’d used it to get him through some of the more important events in his life over the last few years. He’d done it for his wedding day, and the honeymoon, and for the birth of the babies, but the last one had been incredibly painful and it had only lasted a couple of days before it wore off. He’d been reluctant, as a result, to try it again but the pain had been getting worse for the last few months and he knew he wouldn’t be able to get through the party on Saturday without doing something more.

The doctor numbed the area around his incision site with some small injections of local anaesthetic and then said, “Okay, Kyle… I’m going to inject the two outer nerve sites first, before going in through the incision to numb the main nerve.”

Kyle clenched his teeth and nodded his head. The first needle went in and he felt a sharp and searing pain in the area just above his scar, a kind of pain that brought back memories of the knife that Tank had plunged in his chest. He tried to push away those thoughts, the flashbacks of the brown wooden handle protruding from his ribs while he slowly bled to death, and the minute by minute struggle for breath that he’d endured.

“That’s the first one, Kyle. Well done” said the doctor, reaching for the second syringe. “The first one’s always the worst” he said, trying to make things easier for him.

He felt the second needle going in, and opened his eyes, gasping as a sharp pain shot up through his chest and throbbed in his jaw and through his teeth. Tamara was gazing at him, with eyes full of tears, just like the moment she’d pulled the knife out of his chest all those years ago. She held onto his hand tightly, smiling at him, and tilting her head in sympathy, but he couldn’t look at her.

He shifted his focus to the other treatment table, just behind Tamara, on the other side of the room. He could see ‘her’ sitting there, swinging her legs back and forth in those bright pink leopard print leggings and Doc Martin boots, and he could see ‘she’ was watching him. ‘She’ raised her eyebrows at him, sticking her tongue out and blowing a raspberry, as the third needle went in through his incision site. He gave a loud cry and squeezed Tamara’s hand so hard she thought he’d nearly broken her fingers. He glanced at her apologetically and then let go.

The doctor pulled the needle out. “Right, you did really well, Kyle... That’s all three” he said, cleaning the puncture sites with an antiseptic wipe and then applying a large self-adhesive bandage. “Now, I’d like you to stay lying down for a few more minutes…  I’ll tell you when you can sit up”. He started to clear away his things onto the metal trays and wheeled it away to the other side of the room.

Tamara brushed Kyle’s hair back in a gentle and comforting way. She wiped away the stray tears that had rolled down his cheeks with her thumb and leaned in to kiss him. “It’s over now” she said, smiling a little and giving him a peck on the lips.

He pulled himself into a sitting position when the doctor told him he could, with Tamara trying to help him, and he was amazed at how much less he hurt. None of the other nerve blocks had given him this much relief, but he was a little scared to believe it was true. He wondered if it was just the position he was sitting in and was scared to move again in case the pain came flooding back. He looked at Tamara and smiled a little nervously. “It doesn’t hurt” he said incredulously, “I don’t think I can remember ever feeling like this… I mean… not being in pain”.

“That’s just the anaesthetic, Kyle. It will wear off in a couple of hours…” said the doctor, trying to manage expectations. “But you should start to feel a lot better in a few days when the steroids kick in… I’d say you’ll be in pretty good shape for Saturday.” He smiled at both of them and said “Happy Anniversary, by the way. Hope you have a good party!”

Kyle gave a heavy sigh and looked at Tamara a little mischievously. “Well, what do you want to do with the new improved ‘pain free’ me?”

The doctor raised an eyebrow at them from across the room and said “Guys, just don’t get carried away. You need to take it easy today. Your chest is anaesthetised but if you overdo it, the pain will be a lot worse later on”

“Maybe just a nice walk then? Enjoy the sunshine, eh, Kyle?” said Tamara, laughing a little. She took his hand and pulled him to his feet, helping to button up his shirt. “Mum has the kids. Maybe we could actually enjoy a lunch together?  You know, like normal couples...? Maybe you might actually want to eat something.” she said.  She hadn’t meant it to sound like a criticism but it had come out that way. She could see that he was a little hurt and she felt bad for taking away what should have been a happy moment. “Sorry, Kyle, I didn’t mean it to sound like that. I’m just tired”.

He put his arm around her shoulder and said, “That’s okay. You’re right… Let’s go somewhere nice for lunch before we have to head back.”

He shook hands with the doctor and thanked him for his help, and then nodded for ‘her’ to follow them out. ‘She’ jumped down off the treatment table and skipped along behind them. He and Tamara walked out the door, with Kyle suddenly walking so much taller, and no longer dragging his left foot. This was the first time in nearly four years that he could take a full breath in without pain, and walk completely normally. None of the other nerve blocks had been this effective. He couldn’t help smiling.

 

*****

 

“I can’t believe how well Kyle’s looking today!” said Andy, looking out the kitchen window and across the garden at his friend. Kyle was standing with a drink in his hand, talking to Ricky and Nate, and looking more relaxed than he had in years. He was clearly laughing about something that Ricky has said, and while he’d instinctively put his hand on his ribs when he laughed, it didn’t look like he was in pain for once. Andy was happy to see Kyle looking so much better.

“Yeah, well it’s only temporary…” said Tamara, frowning and gazing out at Kyle with a slightly worried expression. “He had a nerve block done on Wednesday ‘cos he wanted to be better for today… It takes a few days for it to kick in.” she said. She was worried that Kyle would descend into a depression again when the pain came back. He hadn’t dealt well with it the last time. She looked at Andy and Kat and smiled a little half-heartedly. “There’s a clinical trial we’re hoping we can get him on… It’s some new kind of nerve block thing that’s supposed to be more permanent… Some kind of implant… I dunno…”  She let out a big sigh, looking across the garden at her husband, “He just can’t keep living like this”.

“I don’t know how he’s been managing so well” said Kat, shaking her head. She’d seen him on his bad days, when his pain was at its worst, and she couldn’t imagine how someone could live with pain like that and still get on with their life. She was amazed that he was still running Angelo’s, and playing such a big part in the boys’ lives. A lot of people might have just given up.

Andy put his arm around Tamara and smiled at her, giving her a little hug. “How are you doing with everything?  It can’t be easy on you.”

Her eyes welled up and her chin started to tremble as she tried not to cry. Blinking furiously, and trying to smile, she said “I’m okay. I’m not the one in pain”.

He gave her shoulder a squeeze and threw her a sympathetic look. “Yeah but you’re the one dealing with him, day in, day out… I know it’s not easy being the one who always has to hold things together.”  He thought about the number of times he’d had to pick up the pieces after one of Josh’s meltdowns, or be a shoulder to cry on for Evie when she was falling apart. It hadn’t been easy, and it had meant that he could never really deal with his own feelings about things. He’d been through a terrible trauma too, but he’d had to be strong for everyone else. It had put a lot of strain on him and he’d gone to pieces a little bit himself shortly after they’d left for Uni.  It was a wonder that he and Kat had stayed together through everything, he thought to himself. “You know we’re here if you ever need someone to talk to” he said.

“I know… Thanks, Andy” she said, wiping at her tears with the heel of her hand. “How are Josh and Evie doing?” she asked.

“Yeah, they’re doing really well! They have their exams starting next week but Josh said they might come visit when they’re finished.” said Andy, smiling from ear to ear. He was so pleased that things had gone well for them in Perth.  They seemed to be doing so much better these days, and when he’d spoken to them the other day Josh had sounded really happy. He had to admit that being away from Summer Bay had obviously been good for them, putting some distance between them and the place where it had all happened, but he couldn’t hide the fact that he missed them.

Tamara picked up a platter of food and handed it to Andy to carry out to the table for her. She gave Kat a stack of paper plates, and picked up a huge bowl of salad to carry herself, before making her way across the garden to the table.

Marilyn, Roo, and Leah were on babysitting duty, along with Tamara’s mother Joanne.  They’d been having a bit of a chat while minding the three little boys as they played together and got very mucky in the sandpit.  There was a lot of laughter emanating from that corner of the garden as the ladies enjoyed cooing at all the little ones having fun. Casey was busy making sandcastles, and ignoring the twins as they babbled at each other in that funny ‘twin speak’ that made everyone laugh.  Marilyn was totally in her element, making faces, and talking excitedly to the tiny baby in her arms. Baby Sophie was the newest addition to the Barrett family, and at only a month old she was already the apple of her daddy’s eye.  Andy couldn’t talk about her without smiling from ear to ear, and his eyes lit up when anyone asked him about her. He knew she was going to be terribly terribly spoilt.

Alf and John had offered to do the barbecuing and were arguing light-heartedly over the right way to barbecue fish. A small crowd had formed around the barbecue enjoying the banter between them. Chris and Hannah were standing hand in hand enjoying the show, and Chris was stirring things up at every available opportunity.  Ash watched on and quietly drank his beer, trying his best to be normal, and forcing himself to smile and laugh along with the others.

Tamara set the salad down on the table and walked over to Kyle. He was standing in a circle with Ricky, Nate, Oscar, and Andrew. She put her arm around his waist and gave him a little kiss on the cheek, interrupting what looked like quite an intense conversation between him and Andrew.  They’d been talking about physiotherapy for his post-thoracotomy pain and Andrew had been trying to talk him into coming back to the hospital for a few sessions. He was offering to try to help him with a couple of specialised exercises.

“Thanks for the offer, Andrew.” he said, trying to shut down the conversation and move on, “but I don’t think it’s a good idea. You people nearly put me over the edge the last time. Physio really isn’t for me.”

Kyle had stopped doing physio about six months earlier, convinced that it was doing him more damage than good. For about a day after every session he had been in so much pain he could hardly move, and had ended up missing work because of it, so in the end he’d refused to go back. He guessed that the exercises were irritating his chest wall and increasing the inflammation around the damaged nerve in his ribs. Things had actually been a little better since he’d stopped going.  Andrew had been adamant that Kyle just hadn’t found a good physiotherapist and that they could definitely do something to improve the way that he walked now. Kyle had developed a very mild limp, dragging his left foot very slightly because it hurt to lift it properly off the ground, and he also held his shoulder a little low with his arm pulled in against his side to protect the incision site. It gave him very poor posture and caused back problems as a result.  He felt a bit self-conscious about it, especially the limp, and he didn’t really appreciate Andrew pointing it out to him like this.

Tamara sensed the tension between them and decided to diffuse the situation as quickly as possible. “Kyle, honey, I think the food is ready. Do you want to come help me at the table?” said Tamara, taking him by the hand and leading him away towards the table before he even had a chance to answer. “You okay?” she whispered to him, worried that the pain was back.

He glanced at her worried little face, her big eyes filled with so much concern, and he smiled at her. “No, Tam, I’m okay. It’s still working…” he said, nodding, and then he added, “I’m just tired… and probably a bit over-sensitive.”  They stopped at the table and he pulled her into a hug and kissed her on the top of the head. “I haven’t felt this good in so long, Tam!” he said, breathing out a big sigh. “I keep thinking that this can’t be real and that I must be dreaming… I’m just terrified about when it’s going to wear off… and the worst thing is that I know it’s going to… Maybe even tomorrow… I don’t know how I’m gonna go back to that… to pain like that… It’s unbearable”.

She looked up at him and stood on her tiptoes to kiss him. “Just make the most of tonight, Kyle. That’s all you can do.” she said. “I’m going to call that doctor’s office about the medical trial on Monday though”

As the food was served, everyone made their way around the table, loading their plates with an indecent amount of barbecued meats and salads, and things quietened down a little as people began eating. Kyle took one of the patio chairs and sat down with a plate of food. He stared at the modest pile of meat and salad on his plate and wondered when he had last had an appetite to eat a dinner like this. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d actually enjoyed eating, it was something he had to force himself to do now. Eating was just a joyless chore to be got through, and more of a necessity than anything.  It was something that Tamara nagged him about endlessly, causing lots of arguments between them. He knew she was just looking out for him, and worrying about him, but he couldn’t help getting angry when she tried to force him to eat.  Sometimes just the thought of food made him feel sick to his stomach, which was particularly difficult when he worked all day in a pizza restaurant. He picked up the burger on his plate and took a small bite, surprised at how good it tasted, and how much he was actually looking forward to eating it. Life without pain really was so much better in every way. He looked up and saw Tamara beaming at him from the other side of the table, pleased that he was eating, so he smiled back at her and gave her a wink.

Andy sat down beside him and patted his knee. “How you travelling today, mate?” asked Andy, before taking a big bite out of a burger.

Kyle set his burger down again and turned to look at Andy. “I’m okay... Today I am, anyway”. He picked up his beer and took a swig while he scanned the faces of their friends and family. There were a lot of happy faces in the garden tonight, all smiling and laughing, and chomping their way through their food. It was a nice evening tonight, he thought, lovely and warm but with a light breeze. He put his hand on the side of his chest, pressing on it lightly, and was amazed at the lack of intense pain. All he had was a tender bruised feeling from the injections, and even that wasn’t too bad.

“It’s nice to see you looking a bit better, mate” said Andy. He looked at Kyle and felt that familiar pang of guilt, as he thought about how much Kyle had suffered over the last couple of years. He would never understand why Kyle had been dealt such a bad hand in life, and why he’d ended up like this...  He hated Tank for everything he’d done, more than it was possible to hate anyone, but he couldn’t help blaming himself either. He hated himself for just sitting in that chair and letting Tank do what he did.  He wondered if things might have been different if they’d been able to get Kyle some help sooner, or if Tamara hadn’t had to pull that knife out. He wondered if Kyle blamed him for being useless too, or resented him for making it out of the hostage situation unscathed and being able to live a normal life. He hoped that he didn’t, but he wouldn’t have been surprised if he did. He glanced at Kyle, as he picked at his food, and said, “Tamara told me you got some fancy nerve block thing done and you’re feeling better tonight?”

Kyle nodded with his mouth full of food, and smiled a little. He was still amazed at being so free of pain tonight, but he was nearly scared to say it out loud for fear of tempting fate. He looked around the garden, and with a feeling of guilt, like a sudden kick to the stomach, he realised that someone was missing. ‘She’ wasn’t here. ‘She’ hadn’t been here all evening and he hadn’t even noticed. He wondered how that was possible. He got to his feet and did a full 360 degree scan of the garden but he couldn’t find ‘her’ face among the happy shiny faces of the guests. ‘She’ was gone! He tried to think when he’d last seen ‘her’ but he couldn’t be sure. The last couple of days were a bit of a blur. His heart was thumping now as he realised that ‘she’d’ left him on his own, and he wondered what he was going to do when the pain came back. It was going to come back and ‘she’ wouldn’t be there! He wouldn’t be able to deal with that. He needed ‘her’ much more than ‘she’ probably realised. He hadn’t even got to say goodbye…

Andy stood up and put his hand on Kyle’s shoulder a little nervously.  He’d hesitated for a second, trying to remember which was the bad side, before gingerly placing his hand on Kyle’s right shoulder.  He didn’t want to hurt him.  He’d seen Kyle get to his feet, his face blanching white, while he stared around the garden like he’d seen a ghost. Andy was concerned now. “Mate, you right?” he said, thinking that Kyle looked startled, and wondering what he was looking for. “Are you in pain? Do you want me to go get Tam?!” 

Kyle watched Andy make his way across the garden to get Tamara, and wondered what on earth he was going to say to her. How was he going to tell her that he was looking for someone that ‘wasn’t there’? How could he tell her that he desperately needed that someone that ‘wasn’t there’ and that he couldn’t live without ‘her’?  Somewhere deep inside him he knew he was going crazy, but when his body was racked with pain, he couldn’t bring himself to care. Whether ‘she’ was a ghost, or a symptom of his tortured mind, it didn’t really matter.  ‘She’d’ helped him get through some of the hardest times of his life. Now that he was pain free, at least in this moment, it hit him just how insane this whole thing really was.  Phoebe was dead.  She’d been dead for nearly four years, and he’d even seen a photo of her rotting corpse.  He’d been to her grave and he’d grieved for her.  Phoebe was dead.  He knew she wasn’t really there…

[Ludub]

Thanks again to KittCatt, Kristen, and Suzza101 for all the lovely comments. I'm really pleased you're enjoying the story so far. Hope you like this chapter! 

 

Chapter 4

 

Wednesday Afternoon…

 

Kyle sat awkwardly on the edge of the couch in what looked like a very uncomfortable position, leaning slightly forward and to the right. It was the only way he could sit that ever seemed to help things. He’d come home early from work because the pain had been overwhelming today and there’d been a mishap when one of the waitresses had bumped into him at full force with a stack of dishes. She’d hit right in the ribs, and he’d nearly collapsed from the pain, shaking and looking like he was about to vomit. They’d given Ash a call and luckily he’d been sober enough today to come in and cover for him.  Andy had even take a break from the gym and insisted on driving him home. He was grateful to them all for their help, but he couldn’t stand the pity in their faces and the way that people spoke to him at times. It was sometimes difficult to accept being this much of an invalid now, and it often made him feel a little angry and resentful towards all the able bodied people around him.

The twins were napping in their bedroom, and he knew that Tamara would be back soon, so he’d sent Joanne home for the afternoon.  He didn’t think there was much point in both of them being there, and he couldn’t really cope with Joanne fussing round him the way she always did. She was a lovely woman, but she had a way of treating everyone like she was their mum, and it always made Kyle uncomfortable. He’d never really had a mother in his life so he wasn’t sure how to deal with being mollycoddled. He’d needed to be alone for a while.

He had his pill bottle in his hands and was reading the label over and over in an attempt to distract himself. He sometimes fantasized about opening that bottle and taking them all. He visualised popping each and every one of them in his mouth one by one, and bringing an end to all of this suffering. He sometimes wondered why he’d never actually done it. It would be so easy...

He looked at his watch – there was still an hour to go. He wondered why he was so strict with himself about this, always counting down the minutes till his next dose, and never cheating or taking more than he should… On some level he knew why. He knew that he wouldn’t be able to keep things under control once he opened that floodgate. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew that it wouldn’t take much for him to become an addict, and for things to turn really nasty. This was the only way he could stay in control and keep that part of his personality hidden away deep inside him. He would wait patiently for that minute to tick 4pm and then breathe a heavy sigh of relief that he’d made it there one more time. ‘Tick, Tock’ he thought, with a shudder, as memories of Tank came flooding back.

Pushing those thoughts away, he took out his phone to look at some of the photos and videos they’d taken over the last few days. He’d been relatively pain free for the two days following the party so they’d tried to fit in as much as possible before the pain came back. They’d taken the boys to the beach and spent most of Monday splashing about in the water and building sandcastles. They’d all had so much fun. Tamara had been absolutely stunning in her bikini, smiling and laughing, like he hadn’t seen her do in ages. He flicked through the photos and thought how beautiful she looked.  The boys were grinning from ear to ear in every photo, all chubby cheeks, and with their big brown eyes shining with happiness.  He stopped on one of the photos where he was throwing Tommy up in the air and catching him again. Tamara had told him off for lifting him like that, knowing that it would hurt his chest in normal circumstances, and worrying about the inevitable aftermath. She’d been right of course, he was certainly paying for it now, but he looked at the photo and stroked it with his thumb, thinking that it was worth more than he could ever put into words. The nerve block had allowed him nearly four whole days of normality with his wife and kids, and memories to hold forever.  He was in agony now but it had definitely been worth it at the time.

By Monday night he’d known that the pain was coming back, getting huge nerve twinges any time he moved too quickly or when he tried to pick up the boys. He’d done his best to hide it but Tamara had recognised the signs immediately and their day of fun had come to an abrupt end when she’d whisked them all home. By the early hours of Tuesday morning he’d been back, rocking and humming, and desperately willing the clock to move forward at an unearthly rate.

He’d looked for ‘her’ but ‘she’ wasn’t there… Phoebe had abandoned him now to suffer alone.

He continued to flick through the photos, thinking how lucky he was to have these little boys in his life, and to have Tamara.  Without them, this life that he was living would be totally unbearable. They were the only thing keeping him going, day after day. Without them he would have opened that bottle without any hesitation and swallowed every last pill.

The pain was surging now, reverberating through his ribcage, and his hands shook as he made them flick through the photos, trying with everything he had to concentrate on the smiling faces on the screen. As he looked at a photo they’d got a passer-by to take for them, with all four of them smiling happily into the lens, he suddenly noticed the woman standing behind them. She was just far enough away to not be intruding, but close enough to see the expression on her face. She was scowling, her eyebrows drawn together in an angry frown, and she was looking right at Tamara. His heart began to thump as he realised that Phoebe had been there all along! He flicked back through each of the photos, his hands shaking so much with nerves now, that he could hardly see the screen. But sure enough, there she was, in the background of every single photo. She was throwing them ‘evils’ in every single shot. He wondered how he hadn’t noticed before. He wondered how he hadn’t seen that she was there on the beach with them, and why she hadn’t come to speak to him. He wondered why she looked so angry.

Suddenly he became aware of the soft music coming from the boys’ bedroom and the sound of a woman singing. He wasn’t sure if it had just started or if he’d just been unaware of it until now. Had he been humming along? He couldn’t be sure. He recognised the voice, so high and yet so throaty at the same time, and he got to his feet as quickly as he could. He ran towards the bedroom door, moving as quickly as possible, with a fearful sickness in his stomach for a reason he couldn’t put his finger on. He turned the door handle but the door wouldn’t open. He pressed his ear up against the door and heard laughter coming from inside.  The boys’ were squealing excitedly and Phoebe was laughing too. He tried again to open the door but it wouldn’t budge. He was panicking now. He banged on the door and shouted to Phoebe “Let me in, Pheebs. Please let me in”, conscious of how insane this was. How could she be in there? Phoebe was dead, she couldn’t be in the room with his baby boys… he knew she couldn’t be! He banged again, shouting for her to let him in, and started to cry, out of frustration and fear.  He was going to have to break down the door. He took a few steps back and prepared himself to try to kick the door open, unsure if he’d be able to summon enough force with the extent of his injuries. Before he had a chance, he heard a click like someone unlocking the door from inside, and he tried the door handle again. The door opened this time, and he saw Phoebe sitting on the armchair in front of the two cots with the guitar in her arms. She didn’t look pleased to see him.

“What are you doing Phoebe?!” he yelled, racing across the room to check on the two little boys. He checked their little faces as they held on to the railings of the cots, bouncing on their chubby little legs, and gurgling smiles at him. He turned around and glared at her. “What were you trying to do?! Give me a heart attack?!”

She narrowed her eyes at him and glared back. “You think you can just cut me out of your life like that?! Forget about me after everything I’ve done for you?!” She set the guitar down and got to her feet, walking towards him with a look of pure anger on her face, and jabbed her finger into his chest. “I saw you two. The way you were together. All smiles and giggles and… It was disgusting… How do you think that made me feel?!”

“Phoebe! You know me and T-Tam are married! I thought we were just f-friends!” he stammered, looking taken aback. She was frightening him, the way she was looking at him, her eyes so full of malice. “You know I a-appreciate the way you’ve helped me all this time”.

Her face softened, and she pushed up against him putting her arms around his waist, but he took a step backwards so his back was up against the bars of the cot. “I just missed you so much…” she simpered.  “But as soon as you got that nerve block thing it was like you just forgot I even existed.” she said looking hurt. “That didn’t make me feel very ‘appreciated’” she said sarcastically, making the ‘inverted commas’ sign with one of her hands. She looked up at him, smiling in a sickeningly sweet way, and giggled. “I just wanted to show you what it feels like to be closed out”.

“Please don’t do that again, Pheebs! You scared me half to death.” he said, still a little frightened of her. She seemed different from her normal self. This wasn’t the fun and silly Phoebe that kept him company in the small hours of the morning, making silly faces at him and getting him to sing stupid songs. There was something threatening about her today, and he glanced with concern at his little boys again, as his heart continued to thump loudly in his chest. “I’m sorry if you felt neglected”.

Her face clouded with anger again. “IF I felt neglected?!” she spat at him in disgust. “IF!” she repeated loudly, “You forgot all about me! All you wanted was her!”  She took a step back from him and hit him hard in the chest with the palms of her hands as though she was pushing him away from her, but his back was already against the baby’s cot so he couldn’t move further back. He wheezed in pain, putting his hand to his ribs, and started to hyperventilate.

She stood back from him, and looked at his pained face as he held on to the side of the cot, trying to recover himself from the shooting pains travelling up through his chest. She smiled at him cruelly and said “You’re pathetic, you know that?!”

He looked at her in shock, still struggling to catch his breath, and wondered at the cruel expression on her face. She looked like Phoebe but this certainly wasn’t the Phoebe he knew.

“What?!” she said, sneering at him, “Did you want someone to cuddle you, and tell you what a great guy you are?” She put her hands on her hips and started to laugh at him. “Can’t you see what a loser you are? I mean, you just whinge on… and on… and on… about how much pain you’re in, and you leave that wife of yours to do everything… She’s been carrying you for years now… I can’t do this, I can’t do that… God, she must be so sick of it!”

She raised her eyebrows at him and drew her lips into a nasty smirk. “How long do you think it’ll be before she hops into bed with someone else? …Someone better? …That’s if she hasn’t already?”

She came over to him and leaned in, as though she was going to kiss him on the cheek, but he flinched just before her lips could touch his skin. She laughed and pushed him hard sideways, so he fell heavily into the armchair, clutching his bad side. The pain was unimaginable, but he could see she was enjoying watching him suffer, so he tried to straighten up and look a little less weak and pathetic.

She glanced at his crotch with a glint in her eyes and tilted her head at him with mock sympathy. “Tell me, Kylie… Does it even work anymore? Is little Tammy even getting any?!”

His eyes filled with tears as he cowered in the chair. He looked up into the face of the woman he had once loved, as she towered over him, and wondered how this was happening. What was going on? He guessed that he must be going crazy because this wasn’t the Phoebe that he knew and loved, but she seemed so real. He’d felt her hands on his skin, and her breath on his face when she’d leaned in to kiss him. He told himself that she wasn’t real, but the pain in his bruised and battered body told him that she was.

The twins had started crying now, seeing how scared and upset their daddy was, and he wanted to reach out to them. She saw him glance past her to the boys and smirked at him. “You think they really want you?!” she said, “What use are you anyway?” She sauntered across to Jamie and started to stroke the hair on his little head as he cried, all red faced and teary eyed, and reaching his arms out to Kyle. “They know you’re worthless and weak. They can see it… Look at you, snivelling and whining right in front of them! They’re only babies but they’re already ashamed of you, anyone can see that! They deserve so much better than you...  You know that, right?” she said.

Nodding at him with a sympathetic expression, she continued, “Maybe if you just took yourself out of the equation, then Little Miss Tammy could find herself someone new… You know, more of a real man… someone who can give her what she wants… someone for the boys to look up to?”

She sidled over to him, with a look of mock concern on her face, and took hold of his hand. He tried to pull away from her but she slapped him hard across the cheek, and said, “Kyle, give me your hand… You don’t want to disappoint me”.

He looked up at her and wondered why he was so frightened of her. After all, she was only half his size, and she was only a woman… Why was he letting her treat him this way? Things would be different once he was up on his feet again, standing nearly a foot taller than her, and not cowering in this chair. He gave her his hand and let her drag him to his feet, while he thought about what to do. She laughed at the serious expression, and the obvious pain, on his face, and began to lead him out of the boys’ bedroom and across the room to the couch. He was relieved that she was leaving the boys behind, and that they were safe in their cots for now, but he wondered what she wanted from him. She picked up his bottle of pills from the coffee table and handed it to him, unscrewing the top, and nodding at him in encouragement, “Why don’t you take them all, Kyle?”

His eyes widened at her, surprised at this new level of cruelty, and he began to shake his head. “No, Pheebs, I’m not doing that!” he said, sounding startled. “The boys need me… Tamara needs me”.

She hissed with sadistic laughter and pushed him back onto the couch. “No-one ‘needs’ you, Kyle” she said, laughing right in his face. It hadn’t taken much to make him sit, all she’d had to do was push on his injured ribs and he’d collapsed and sat down like an obedient puppy. He found himself sitting back on the couch, where he’d been before, with a raw visceral pain resonating up through every inch of his body.  He stared at the bottle of pills in his hand. “Maybe she was right”, he thought…

“Kyle, you okay?!” called Tamara, looking worried as she stood in the doorway. She could hear the boys crying hysterically in their cots and shouting for their daddy. Kyle was sitting on the couch crying softly and staring into the distance. She could see he was shaking and sweating, and then she noticed the bottle of pills that had been emptied out on the floor in front of his feet. There were pills everywhere…  “Kyle!” she cried, running to him, “Kyle, are you okay?!”

[Ludub]

Hi everyone! Sorry it's been a while since the last update, just been a bit busy. Thanks to KittCatt, Kristen, ~JarlieFanEver~, and Suzza101 for all the kind comments, always appreciated! Hope you like this chapter! 

 

Chapter 5

 

 

 

“It’s sepsis” said Nate, peeling off his latex gloves and walking Tamara out to the hallway. He stopped to press the hand sanitiser in the corridor outside Kyle’s room and glanced sideways at Tamara’s worried face. He could see she’d been crying from the puffiness of her eyes, and she was biting her lip in that way she always did when she was anxious.

 

“Sepsis!?” she gasped, “Like blood poisoning?!”  She looked past Nate to her husband’s body, lying in the bed just inside the hospital room, and all sorts of worst case scenarios ran through her head. They’d been here before, and Kyle had spent weeks in the ICU the last time. She wasn’t sure she could cope with this all over again.  As Nate looked at her, the fear was apparent on her face.

 

He touched her arm gently to bring her attention back to him.  “He has a chest infection, Tamara…  It’s particularly bad in Kyle’s case because he finds it so hard to cough. His body hasn’t been able to clear the infection and his immune system has just been overwhelmed.” Getting her to sit down on the chairs in the hallway he crouched down in front of her and gave her a sympathetic smile. “Now, we’ve been lucky. We’ve caught it in time.” he said, patting her on the knee, “We’ve got him on some IV antibiotics and some steroids. Hopefully we’ll see some improvement soon”.

 

He started to get up to leave but Tamara grabbed his hand and pulled him back to where she was sitting. She looked down at him with fear in her eyes, as they welled up with tears, and she said “He was being so weird, Nate! He said some really strange things!”

 

“That’s not surprising, Tamara. He has a really high fever…. It wouldn’t be unusual for someone to hallucinate” said Nate, trying to give her a reassuring smile. “I wouldn’t pay too much heed.”

 

She ran her fingers through her hair and breathed out a heavy sigh. “It was scary, Nate! It was like he was talking to someone who wasn’t there. He wasn’t making any sense.”

 

“That would be pretty standard, Tamara. I wouldn’t worry too much.” he said. “But if it puts your mind at ease, I’ll have a chat with him when we get his infection under control and we’ll make sure there’s nothing more going on with him.” He stood up again and checked his watch. “Why don’t you go back in and sit with him?” he said.

 

 

 

*****

 

 

 

“Hey baby” said Tamara, relieved to see him waking up. “How are you feeling?” she asked with her head tilted sympathetically. He really didn’t look good but she thought he looked a million times better than when they’d rushed him in yesterday evening. He was still using an oxygen mask, and his breathing didn’t sound great, but at least his fever had broken and the shaking had stopped now.

 

He slowly brought his eyes into focus to look at Tamara and gave her a half-smile. “What happened?” he wheezed. “How did I get here?”

 

“You don’t remember the ambulance?” she said, thinking about how crazed he’d looked and how he’d fought the paramedics and had to be restrained.  He looked at her with a startled expression and shook his head.

 

“You had a bad chest infection and you went into sepsis again but they’ve got it under control now… You’re going to be okay” she said, leaning over and gently stroking the hair out of his eyes. “How’s the pain?”

 

He grimaced and said “Bout an 8”, while he brought the bed end up so he was in a sitting position.

 

“Kyle, you were saying some really weird stuff… do you remember any of it?” she said, looking down at her hand intertwined with his and chewing her lip nervously. “You know that I love you, don’t you?”

 

“I don’t remember” he said, shaking his head. He still sounded quite drowsy and he was wheezing as he spoke. With his voice a little muffled by the oxygen mask, he asked, “What was I saying?”

 

She looked up at him again with tears in her eyes and said “You were talking to someone else… Like someone who wasn’t there… and you kept saying that you didn’t want to die, that you didn’t want to take the pills. You were telling them that I do love you, and that I’m not ashamed of you”. Her chin trembled as she broke down in tears, “Why would you ever think I was ashamed of you?! Or that I didn’t love you?!”

 

He shuddered as he glanced across the room at the girl sitting on the counter top, staring at him and swinging her legs back and forth. Flashes of memories flooded through his mind. He remembered her trying to force his pills down his throat and him spitting them out on the floor. Phoebe blew him a kiss from across the room and raised her eyebrows at him with a sarcastic smile.  He looked back at Tamara, and stammered “I… I… don’t know… I must have been pretty out of it…” He squeezed her hand and gave her the most reassuring smile he could manage, “I’m sorry that I scared you”.

 

“You don’t have anything to be sorry about Kyle, I’m just worried about you” said Tamara, leaning over to kiss him on the forehead “I love you so much!”

 

Phoebe smirked at him again from her vantage point across the room and then stuck her tongue out at him and blew a raspberry. Remembering her doing that during the nerve block treatment, he wondered how something that had been such a comfort to him only a short while ago could have become so threatening.

 

 

 

*****

 

Kyle woke with a start, staring up into Phoebe’s eyes, as she pulled at his hair violently. She had her face so close to his that he could feel her hot breath against his cheek and she had an evil look in her eye.

 

“Wuh…what?” he stammered, putting his hand up to try to loosen her grip on his hair. “Stop, Phoebe, please stop” he said, looking frightened.

 

“You and I need a little chat, Kylie…” she said, peering down at him with a cruel smile on her face, and pulling a little harder on the clump of hair in her hand. “You nearly gave me away the other day, whinging and whining to that wife of yours… ‘Oh boo hoo, Phoebe says you don’t love me… wah wah…!’  You need to learn to keep that pretty little mouth of yours shut!”

 

She let go of his hair and sat down on the side of his bed and tilted her head at him in mock sympathy. “Do you know what would happen if they found out about me…? Do you?!” He flinched as she put her hand up to his face to caress his cheek. He noticed that her fingers were stained with congealed blood and that she was missing a number of fingernails. “Little Kylie here would get himself locked up, that’s what! They’d put you in a mental hospital and little Jamie and Tommy would grow up without a dad”

 

“Is that what you want, Kyle?!” she asked looking at him with what almost looked like concern.

 

He shook his head and said, “But you’re not real. There’s something wrong with me…. You died Phoebe, you can’t be real.”

 

He watched, paralysed by fear, as she traced her hand down his neck, pausing for a moment as though she was going to strangle him, and then moved it on down onto his chest to the incision site. She looked up at him with a sadistic smile and leaned heavily on his damaged ribs. “This feels real enough, doesn’t it?”

 

He screamed in pain, retching and nearly choking himself, and wheezed heavily as she took her hand away. He was shaking now with the pain, and frantically looking around for the button that controlled his morphine, but she found it first and moved it away from him. “That didn’t feel very imaginary, did it?” she said, smirking at him. “Will I show you again?”

 

He flinched, terrified of what she might do, as he watched her glide her hand over his skin, leaving it resting over his heart. He couldn’t move. He knew his heart was thumping in his chest at an alarming rate and that she’d be able to feel his fear through his flesh. His face burned with shame. Her eyes flicked up to meet his and her mouth drew into a cruel sneer. “What have we here? One of the Braxton boys, ‘All Or Nothing’, and he’s frightened of little girly Phoebe? What would Brax and Heath think of you now? You’re too pathetic for words!”

 

He wondered what Brax would think of him if he could see him lying here, being terrorised by the ghost of his ex-girlfriend. He’d never felt more small or more pitiful in his life. He was ashamed of this man he’d become, this weak and feeble version of himself, that Tank had left behind in his wake. “Phoebe, please…” he said, tears streaming down his face.

 

“Please…oh please” she mimicked, laughing at him. “They’d be so ashamed of you… But then, they always did think you were a waste of space.”

 

She traced her fingertips lightly over the skin on his chest in a way that might have been seductive if it hadn’t been so tinged by underlying menace. She trailed her hand down his stomach towards the waistband of his tracksuit bottoms, gazing lovingly into his eyes, and began to play with the drawstring. “I noticed that Tamara isn’t here” she said, sweetly, “Tired of waiting for you to grow a pair, huh?” she said, glancing down at the crotch of his trousers.

 

“Phoebe, please, stop it!” he said, sobbing and wheezing with the pain of his chest. “Can you please just leave me alone?!”

 

“No, I don’t think so Kylie, we’re having too much fun!” she said, smiling at him mischievously.

 

 

 

*****

 

 

 

Nate ran his eyes down Kyle’s chart and then looked up at Kyle with a smile. “I think we can probably let you go home this evening, Kyle.”

 

Kyle nodded and looked down at his hands, hoping that Nate would finish up and leave him alone. “Thanks, Nate” he mumbled, “Tamara said she’d be in later so I’ll let her know I’m coming home.”

 

Nate tilted his head and looked at Kyle a little quizzically. He thought there was something different about him lately. He just seemed a bit downtrodden and more depressed than usual. He also remembered what Tamara had said, and wondered If there might be a little more to what he’d been saying than just the ramblings of someone with a fever. “Kyle, I wanted a bit of a chat with you before you go.”

 

He pulled up a chair beside the bed and put on what Ricky teasingly called his ‘sympathetic doctor face’. “Tamara was a little worried about some of the things you were saying in the ambulance on the way here. Is there anything worrying you, Kyle?”

 

Kyle didn’t look at Nate, but fixed his eyes on a stain on the wall instead. “No, I’m okay… I mean, the pain is always there but I’m dealing with it” he said sadly.

 

“Tamara seemed to think that you were maybe seeing things” said Nate, noticing the fact that Kyle was desperately trying not to look to his left.

 

“No, I… well… I don’t know…” he stammered.

 

“Don’t do it Kyle, he’s just gonna think you’re crazy” said Phoebe.

 

Looking very nervous, he took a deep breath, wincing with the pain, and said “Um… I guess… I was just wondering if people sometimes… um… well, people who are taking medication like mine… do some of them…”

 

“Kyle, just ask” said Nate, finding it hard to hide his impatience.

 

“Would it be normal for people to ‘see’ things?” he said, flushing red as he refused to look at Nate.

 

“What kind of things are you seeing, Kyle?” said Nate, alarm bells already ringing in his head. “Are you seeing people?”

 

“Oh, you’ve gone and done it now!” said Phoebe in a sing-songy voice, “He’s gonna lock you in a nuthouse!”

 

He nodded slowly, still pretending to find the stain on the wall of great interest.

 

“Who are you seeing, Kyle?” asked Nate, sounding worried. “…I’m going to need a bit more detail to be able to help you.” He could see that Kyle was closing in on himself and that this was going to be like pulling teeth. The Braxton boys had never been very forthcoming when it came to talking about feelings or anything that made them feel vulnerable. He sighed and said, “To answer your question, Kyle… Yes, some people have visual or auditory hallucinations while taking opioid medications. It wouldn’t be that uncommon… But I need to know what you’re seeing…”

 

“You tell him about me and he’ll think you’ve skipped all the way to la-la-land!” she said laughing at him.

 

“Does it really matter?! I’m seeing something that I know can’t really be there… I don’t want you to think that I’m going crazy or something… I just see stuff sometimes when the pain gets really bad” he said, glancing at Nate momentarily and looking embarrassed.

 

“How long have you been seeing these ‘things’?” asked Nate, feeling concerned for his friend but still trying to maintain some kind of professionalism. He could see from the look on Kyle’s face that he was really worried about himself and probably downplaying this whole thing. For Kyle to have opened up to him at all, had to mean that he was pretty shaken.

 

“Um… pretty much since ‘this’ happened” said Kyle, gesturing to his ribs, “More or less… A little while after maybe...”

 

“Oh here we go with the whinging again, you know, no-one wants to hear about it, Kylie”

 

Nate’s mouth fell open and he looked at Kyle in shock. “But, Kyle, that’s nearly four years!” He folded his arms across his chest and tried to regain his composure. “You’ve been seeing something that isn’t there for all this time… and you’re only telling someone now?!”

 

Kyle nodded, looking a little ashamed. “It was okay until now. I didn’t mind it at first… but things have… changed…”

 

“What’s changed, Kyle?” he said, furrowing his brow. “The visions are becoming more intrusive?” he offered.

 

Kyle glanced across at Phoebe’s smirking face and he shuddered a little. “It used to be comforting… now it’s… frightening…”

 

“Oh boo hoo. My ex-girlfriend is really scary!... They’re going to lock you up Kylie!”

 

“Can you see this person now?” asked Nate, frowning in concern. “Do you see them all the time?”

 

Kyle glanced over at the counter to the left of the room and made eye contact with Phoebe, before quickly looking away.  She was sitting there swinging her feet back and forth, and smirking at him, as she shook her head in admonishment. He knew he couldn’t tell Nate the truth. What if she was right? What if they really did just think he was crazy? What if they did lock him up in a nuthouse and he never got to see the boys or Tamara again? He couldn’t take the risk.

 

“No, not right now.” he said, looking a little guilty. “It’s not really a big deal, Nate… Just forget I said anything… I’m okay”.

 

“I think maybe we need to get someone to talk to you about this, Kyle” said Nate, looking concerned.

 

“I’m not crazy!” he said suddenly looking at Nate with fear in his eyes. “I’m not staying here and you can’t make me. I’m discharging myself today”

 

“I told you so!” she sang at him, as she sat down on the side of his bed “Nate’s off to get a straitjacket for you right now!”.

 

“Kyle, I don’t think you’re crazy. The mind can play tricks on all of us. You’ve been coping with pain at a level that most people couldn’t even imagine and you’ve been taking pain medication that would knock out a bull. If you’re hallucinating, it could just be the cocktails of meds that you’re on. We can take a look at them again and see if we can stop these hallucinations” said Nate, patting him gently on the shoulder and looking at him with sympathy. “Trust me”.

 

“Just please don’t tell Tamara!” he said in a pleading voice.

 

“Please don’t tell Tamara” she said, mimicking his voice, “You’re pathetic!”.

 

“That’s up to you, Kyle. I can’t tell her without your permission” said Nate, wishing that that wasn’t the case.

 

[Ludub]

Again, thanks everyone for the lovely comments :-) Glad you're enjoying the story so far!

 

Chapter 6

 

 

 

Kyle, can you please just eat a few more mouthfuls?” said Tamara, staring at his plate of uneaten food. She’d made stuffed chicken breasts and sweet potato wedges because she knew it was something that Kyle actually liked to eat, but he’d hardly touched it and had spent the last 15 minutes pushing it around his plate. He looked tired and worryingly pale, and she was becoming more and more concerned about him. He’d hardly eaten anything the last few days, since he came home from hospital, and he was getting agitated any time she mentioned it to him. Nate had said it was really important that he build up his strength and laboured the point to Tamara that she was to try to get him to eat a bit more. She felt under pressure, as though she wasn’t being a good wife, or didn’t love him enough, if she couldn’t get him to eat. “Please, Kyle?” she pleaded.

 

“Yeah, Kylie, just one more little bite” said Phoebe, mimicking Tamara’s voice. She sat staring at him from across the table, in the seat beside Tamara, leaning her elbows on the table and supporting her head in her hands.

 

Her fingers were coated in congealed blood and he could see the raw bloody flesh of the exposed nail beds from where she’d lost a number of nails, and the deep cuts on her fingertips. The few nails that were left intact were painted in that metallic blue that had always been her favourite colour. He could see bruises circling both wrists in vivid stripes of dark brown and purple and thought that they looked painful. He didn’t know why he’d never noticed those before.

 

She’d been staring at him throughout dinner and watching him try to eat, smirking at him cruelly every time he took a mouthful. “Want me to make the airplane noise?” she said mockingly.

 

“I can’t Tam, I’m sorry” he said, trying to ignore the voice taunting him from across the table. She’d been talking at him, teasing him, and interrupting him every time he opened his mouth. It was hard to concentrate. He was doing his best to act normal for Tamara because he knew she was watching his every move and that she was really worried about him. Tuning Phoebe out wasn’t easy, and his stomach was tied in knots trying to keep it together in front of his wife and kids.  Eating was the last thing he wanted to do and every mouthful was making him feel more and more nauseous. 

 

“Kyle, you’ve been really ill…! You need to build your strength up” she said, frowning at him. “Don’t make me call Nate” she warned him jokingly.

 

“Hoo hoo! She’s gonna call Nate on you!” she said, in a sing-songy voice and hooted with laughter. “I told you they were gonna lock you in the loony bin. They’re coming for you!”

 

He slammed his fork down and roared at Phoebe “SHUT UP!!!  Can you just shut up!? I can’t listen to you anymore!”, pushing his plate away violently across the table. He was on his feet now, breathing heavily and glaring at Phoebe’s smug face.

 

“Sorry, I was just joking” said Tamara quietly and looking hurt. She was a little startled by how loud his voice had been, and surprised that he’d had enough lungpower to raise his voice so much. The twins were startled too and had started to cry.

 

He looked at Tamara, suddenly aware that he’d been shouting loudly and realising that she’d thought he was shouting at her. He glanced at his frightened kids and wondered how he was going to explain this.

 

Hanging his head in embarrassment, his face flushed a little red, and he mumbled, “Sorry, I didn’t mean that, Tam. I’m just really tired”. He looked down at the mess he’d made on the table and started to clear the scattered pieces of uneaten food back onto his plate. He was furiously blinking back tears and trying to ignore Phoebe as she snorted at him in derision. He tried to avoid eye contact with her, as she leaned back in her seat with her arm stretched out over the back of Tamara’s chair and looked very pleased with herself.

 

“That’s right, Kylie, I want to see you clean up the mess you’ve made… We should get you a frilly pink pinny”.

 

“Kyle, I’m not trying to upset you” said Tamara, seeing him blinking back tears. “I’m just worried about you. You can’t live on air forever”

 

“…you can’t live on air forever!” Phoebe had been repeating every word that Tamara said in a high pitched mocking voice, making it very hard for Kyle to concentrate on what she was saying.

 

“I know that, Tam” he mumbled, carrying his plate over to the kitchen counter and scraping his uneaten dinner into the bin. He turned to face her, leaning his back against the kitchen counter, and said “Tam, I’m so sorry you have to deal with all this”. He looked at the floor and breathed out a big sigh, “I don’t even know why you’re with me.”

 

“Way to be needy, Kyle” said Phoebe, looking at him with a cruel smile on her face and slow clapping sarcastically, “Take a bow, Princess Kylie! Nothing like a bit of emotional blackmail, eh!?”

 

“Kyle! I love you!” said Tamara walking over to him and slipping her arms around his waist.  She looked into his sad brown eyes and said, “I love you… How many times do I need to say it!?  You are the strongest and bravest man I know… How can you not know how amazing you are?”

 

He started to cry and pulled her into a hug, closing his eyes and trying to drown out the sound of Phoebe’s laughter. 

 

“Well played, Kylie!” said Phoebe, suddenly standing right beside him and clapping her hand on his shoulder in a congratulatory way. He flinched as she leaned in and whispered in his ear, “You and I both know she’s only with you out of guilt”

 

 

 

*****

 

 

 

“So Mr Braxton, your friend Dr Cooper referred you to me because he wanted me to review your pain medication... He said that you’d been having some ‘disturbances’?” said Dr Evans, running his eyes over Kyle’s medical records. “I’ve had a read and… well… you’ve had a tough few years haven’t you?!” he said, looking at him with eyes full of kindness and compassion, “…I’m so sorry, Kyle.”

 

He looked at the doctor sitting in front of him, with his grey and unkempt beard and chunky knit jumper, and thought he seemed more like someone’s kind-hearted grandfather, than a medical consultant. He thought he looked like Robin Williams in Good Will Hunting, but a little older and with thick frame glasses. As he met the doctor’s gaze, he was surprised at how much more at ease he felt with him than any other doctor he’d ever met. There was something reassuring about this man. He gave him a half-smile and nodded his head sadly.

 

“Who’s Teddy Ruxpin?” sneered Phoebe, sitting cross-legged on the doctor’s desk facing him, “He looks like some sad ageing hippy. All he’s missing are the Jesus sandals!”

 

Kyle did his best to ignore her, refusing to react to her comments or make eye contact with her. He’d been struggling over the last few days, driven to the end of his tether by her incessant taunting and teasing, and he’d ended up snapping at the very people who didn’t deserve it. Tamara had taken the brunt of it and he felt bad for treating her that way when he knew she was only trying to help. Even Nate had been in the wrong place at the wrong time, and he’d lost it in front of him over the smallest thing. He just couldn’t cope anymore.

 

Nate had pulled in some serious favours and got him an appointment with Dr Evans, the leading pain specialist in the country, and someone who was known as something of a ‘miracle worker’. He’d read up about the doctor online, and the testimonials from other patients had given him some cause for hope, but he was scared to let himself dream too much. He knew he wouldn’t be able to cope with more disappointment. He’d had more than he could cope with already.  Phoebe had been thoroughly scathing about it, and ridiculed him for even trying, but he was grateful to Nate for his help, and in the end, he thought that anything would be better than this hell he was living. He knew he had to try.

 

“Well, Kyle… I have to tell you, I really don’t like what I’m reading in this file” said Dr Evans, closing it and waving it at him. “You should not be living with this level of pain. No-one should!” he said, shaking his head at him. “I am going to do everything within my power to give you back some quality of life.” He set the file down and patted it with his hand as he spoke, “I can’t promise miracles… but ‘this’, in here…. This just isn’t acceptable. We have to do something about it!”

 

Kyle’s eyes filled up with tears, much to his own surprise, and his whole body began to shudder. This was the first doctor that really seemed to care that his life had become a daily torture, and that actually seemed to want to help. He wiped at the tears in his eyes with the heel of his hands and said, “You really think you can help?”

 

“You could just end it, Kyle. That would be a lot simpler and save everyone a lot of trouble” said Phoebe, as she mimed popping pills in her mouth one by one. He looked away from her, and back to the doctor’s big blue eyes, with a feeling of hope for the first time in years.

 

 “I’m going to try” said Dr Evans, leaning forward and patting Kyle on the knee. He looked Kyle straight in the eye, and said, “First we need to talk about what’s been going on with you.”

 

Phoebe let out a loud snort, and made the ‘crazy’ sign beside her head with one of her hands. “If you tell him about me, he’s going to think you’re loco” she said laughing, “They all will”

 

 

 

*****

 

 

 

“You think you’re going to get rid of me that easily?!” snarled Phoebe, pressing up against him in the bathroom of the hospital. He’d had to pee in front of her, unable to get away from her, even in there. She’d watched him with cold steely eyes and a look of anger on her face that made his blood run cold. The humiliation had been overwhelming, with her eyes on him, judging him and dissecting him, but in the end he’d had to go. His face burned with embarrassment. As he went to leave, she pushed him up against a wall and put her hand on his ribs, resting it on the incision site before he could stop her. She looked him in the eye with a malevolent stare and said, “I’m here to stay Kylie! No matter what that Ewok doctor of yours says!”

 

He winced a little at the light pressure on his ribs but he looked her straight in the eye, with an air of defiance this time, and said “I’m going to get rid of you. I’m not going to let you ruin my life!” He knew she was angry about how the meeting with Dr Evans had gone and had been following him since he’d left the office with a face clouded with anger. He, on the other hand, had been filled with new-found hope. He didn’t know why he’d chosen to trust Dr Evans but he’d taken the leap and told him about his visions. He’d left out a lot of the finer details, but he’d told him that he was seeing the ghost of his dead ex-girlfriend and that the visions were frightening him. He’d ignored Phoebe’s taunting and threats as best he could, and talked over her incessant commentary. It had taken a lot of concentration to keep speaking, and to maintain his train of thought, while Phoebe was mimicking him and interrupting him at every turn. The doctor had listened to him, and reassured him, and most importantly, had said that it wasn’t unusual. He’d talked of other patients with opioid psychosis and how they’d managed to get things back on track with different medications and sometimes with surgical procedures. That it was the pain that was the real issue, not the drug-induced ‘disturbances’ as he called them. They’d talked through a treatment plan and Dr Evans had given him a prescription for some different pain medication that he wanted him to try. He’d walked out, despite being flanked by Phoebe jeering at him the whole way, with a feeling that maybe there was some light at the end of the tunnel.

 

It was this new-found optimism that had given him to courage to stand up to Phoebe in that bathroom, looking her directly in the eye for the first time in weeks…

 

She pressed hard on his ribs and he gave a cry before collapsing to the floor on his hands and knees. He looked up at her in fear as he coughed and spluttered, trying to catch his breath, and cowered as she pretended to kick him in the chest, only stopping her foot at the last moment.

 

“Me, ruin your life?!” she said growled. She crouched down in front of him and lifted his face to look at her, “You might want to have a think about who ruined whose life… You’re not the one rotting in the ground, are you Kyle? Are you?!”

 

He looked up at her in surprise. This was the first time that Phoebe had acknowledged that she was actually dead, and as she leaned in close to him, he could smell the stench of death off her flesh. She peered at him with her head cocked to one side and he noticed the dark black and purple hand shaped bruises on her throat. He could see the finger prints as clear as day.

 

“What? You thought I’d just forgive you? I’d just go peacefully to my grave and forget that it’s your fault that I’m dead?” she said, giving him a sinister smile. “I don’t think so Kyle!”

 

His heart thundered in his chest and he felt a sudden wave of nausea, like someone had kicked him in the stomach, as he thought back to the last time he’d seen Phoebe alive. Deep down he’d always known that it was his fault, and try as he might to push it away, he’d carried that guilt with him all these years. To have her say it, to call it out to him so clearly, made him feel sick to his stomach. He began to retch.

 

She grabbed him by the hair and dragged him back to his feet, smoothing down his clothing, and patted him on the cheek. “Like I said, Kyle, I’m here to stay… and we’re going to have some fun!” She pushed him out the door of the bathroom, and then gave him another violent shove so he was walking a few paces in front of her. “C’mon Kylie, let’s go find Little Miss Tammy. I’m sure she’ll be excited to hear how you got on”.

 

Kyle looked behind him as he walked down the street, unsure of what to make of this new development. Phoebe was following him, a short distance behind, with her arms crossed and an expression so full of anger it was scary. She hadn’t spoken to him since their run-in in the bathroom.  His heart was thumping loudly in his chest and he was shaking with nerves as he walked through the crowds of people on the street. He couldn’t think clearly what to do. He was meant to be meeting Tamara at a café across the street from the hospital but he was worried about what Phoebe was going to do when they got there. For a moment, he wondered whether he should head off somewhere else and pretend that he was meeting Tamara at a different café. He dithered for a moment, wondering if that would work, but then he reasoned with himself that if Phoebe was just a figment of his own imagination then she was part of him, and she’d already know where he was meant to meet her. This was all so confusing! He got to the traffic lights across from the café, and he could see Tamara sitting at one of the tables outside listening to her audio-book. He looked at her and wondered if he’d ever be able to tell her about all of this. He really wanted to. He wondered if they’d ever be able to look back at all of this and laugh…

 

Tamara looked up all of a sudden, squinting at the traffic lights across the road, and spotted Kyle. She stood up and took her earphones out, smiling from ear to ear, and put her hand up to wave. Her mouth fell open in a startled gasp when she saw Kyle step out in front of a car. It was like he’d been shoved, suddenly sprawling forward, as though someone had knocked him slightly off his feet, and he stumbled out into traffic. She froze to the spot as the noise of blaring car horns and the sounds of people screaming took over… Her heart skipped a beat when she saw that Kyle was lying on the ground…

 

[Ludub]

Thanks to KittCatt, Kristen and ~JarlieFanEver~ again for the lovely comments! Much appreciated! Hope you enjoy this chapter.

 

Chapter 7

 

Nearly four years ago…

 

Phoebe reached in her bag and pulled out her phone. It was a little chilly tonight, and she wasn’t wearing heavy enough clothing, having left her coat behind in Angelo’s.  She rubbed her hand up and down her arm in an attempt to warm herself as she unlocked her phone. Letting out a frustrated sigh, she wiped away the tears streaming down her face, and blinked repeatedly to try to see the multitude of notifications on the screen. Twelve missed calls and seven text messages! All from Ash. She scrolled through the text messages which were all variations on “I’m sorry, please just call me, I’m worried”. She was sad to see that none of them were from Kyle. She’d sat on this bench just outside the surf club to make sure she was clearly visible when he came to look for her. She glanced over her shoulder towards the few remaining lights in Angelo’s and wondered when he was going to come. She knew he was going to come looking for her. She knew Kyle. He wouldn’t let her run off like this without making sure she was okay. She was going to pretend that she didn’t want to talk to him when he got here, but he’d win her round, he always did. She wanted to smooth things over with him too but she was too stubborn to go back in there. Besides, he was the one that had said all those awful things, and she was feeling really hurt. If she was honest with herself, she was more upset because she knew that a lot of what he had said was true. Tears streamed down her face and she pulled her arms around herself, feeling a little lost and alone. Things weren’t going well with Ash. He kept lying to her and she was angry with him for putting his friends ahead of her every time. She knew he was never going to change. She did love him but she didn’t know if it was really going anywhere… She decided that she’d go away for a day or two, and catch up with friends in Melbourne… just as soon as she’d spoken to Kyle and sorted things out with him. She didn’t want to leave it this way. She took out her phone and scrolled to Kyle’s last text message, glancing back up at Angelo’s, and wrote him a message “Please come outside. I’m on the bench. want to talk to you”. She pressed send and peered up at the lights, hoping that he’d come down soon. Turning back to her phone, she typed out another message “Ash, need some time to think. Going to stay with friends in Melbourne for a few days. We’ll sort things out when I’m back.” She put her phone back in her bag and blew on her hands. It was abnormally cold for this time of year and she was shivering. She turned and glanced back up at the lights behind her and hoped that Kyle would think to bring her coat with him when he came to find her. She decided she wouldn’t play games this time. If he came to apologise she’d say she was sorry too. She wondered what was taking so long…

 

*****

 

“Tam, can you just let me sit down and give me some peace and quiet? Please?!” said Kyle, shuffling painfully through the door towards the couch.

“Yeah, Tammy! I mean… just a little consideration. The boy’s in pain!” said Phoebe in a mocking tone, following him in and skipping past him to one of the armchairs.

Tamara watched as her husband made his way across the room, dragging his bruised and battered body, and wincing in pain with every step. He’d been lucky to only have fairly superficial injuries, but he’d broken his wrist, and the left side of his body was full of bruises and deep scrapes. He was wearing a cast and needed a sling to support his wrist and keep it raised against his chest, and he was holding his arm pulled in tight to protect his newly bruised ribs. He was clearly in considerable pain and looked even more strained and exhausted than usual.  Looking at him now, he certainly didn’t look like he was in any fit state to be discharging himself from hospital.

“Kyle, we need to talk about this” said Tamara standing in the doorway looking flustered.

He lowered himself slowly onto the seat, grimacing, and let out a painful groan. “I just can’t deal with this right now. Can you just please be quiet?” he sighed, as he rested his elbow on the arm of the sofa and put his head in his hand.

“Sure Kylie, no problem” said Phoebe, smirking at him. “Anything for you, princess” she said, making a sign at him with her hand like she was zipping her mouth closed.

“This isn’t right, Kyle! Can you please let me take you back to the hospital?!” pleaded Tamara, carrying his bag through the door for him and dumping it on the floor. She stood in front of him, running her hand through her hair and pulling at it in frustration. “You know they wanted to get you a psych assessment, you can’t just discharge yourself!”

“Yeah, Kyle. They know you’re crazy now!” said Phoebe, “They’re gonna come get you and take you to the funny farm. It’s only a matter of time”

“Yes, I can, Tamara… and I just did” he snapped at her, trying to ignore Phoebe’s taunts, and shifting painfully on the couch. “I don’t need a psych assessment! I’m not crazy!” He frowned at her and said “I told you… I just tripped.” He reached into the pocket of his tracksuit bottoms and pulled out the bottle of pills that Dr Evans had prescribed for him. He looked at it and realised he wouldn’t be able to open it with one hand, so he looked up at Tamara and held it out to her expectantly. “Can you…?” he said, sounding tired and frustrated.

Tamara tutted loudly and took the bottle from him, unscrewing the top and handing it back. “Kyle, you’re not well enough to be home…” she said, throwing herself down on the couch beside him. “I’m getting really worried about you!”

“She thinks you’re nuts, Kylie” said Phoebe, laughing loudly. “I wonder is it worse to have a husband who whinges endlessly about being in pain, or a husband who’s a complete and total nutcase?”

He tried to tune Phoebe out and concentrate on Tamara’s voice. “You don’t have to worry, Tam… It’s just bumps and scrapes… I’ve been really lucky when you think about it” he said, giving her a tired smile and swallowing down his pill. “I just want to sit on my own sofa and close my eyes for a little while… Is that too much to ask?” He already knew it was. Phoebe wasn’t going to give him a moment’s peace but trying to listen to Tamara as well was proving incredibly tiring.

“Kyle, you stepped off the pavement into traffic!” said Tamara, with her voice beginning to shake a little. She was scared that he’d done it deliberately, despite his insistence that he’d tripped, and she didn’t know how she was going to cope with a suicidal husband after everything else they’d been through. She couldn’t bear to lose him. She knew how much pain he was in on a daily basis, and had watched him get more and more beaten down by it, year after year. It wasn’t getting any easier. She’d been with him through it all and sometimes wondered how much torture one person could take before they broke. Maybe Kyle had simply reached that point? Maybe it had all finally got to be too much? She was terrified.

“I didn’t step off the pavement… How many times, Tamara?!  …I didn’t!” he said angrily, “I tripped over something… It was an accident!” He was finding it hard to keep his temper with the stress of it all, and the pain in his battered body getting the better of him.

Tamara took a deep breath and closed her eyes, the way she always did when she was stressed, and put her hand on his knee as gently as she could. With tears streaming down her face and her voice trembling, she said, “Kyle, I’m really scared… I found you with all those pills the other day, and you were talking about not wanting to die… and now you throw yourself in front of a car… What am I supposed to think?!”

“Good question, Tammy! It doesn’t look good for you, does it Kyle?” sneered Phoebe. “Mind you, she’s probably just disappointed… I bet she wishes you’d done a better job of it. She must wonder if you could be any more pathetic. You can’t even make a decent go of killing yourself!”

“I didn’t!” he said, looking at Tamara, and trying to ignore Phoebe. He could see how upset Tamara was and wanted to put her mind at rest but he had no idea how to explain what had happened. How could he tell her that his dead ex-girlfriend had pushed him into traffic? He couldn’t even really make sense of it himself. He’d had to lie to everyone. The doctors hadn’t believed him about tripping either, mainly because several witnesses had spoken to the paramedics. They’d said that he’d simply launched himself into traffic like he had some kind of death wish. There was clearly concern that he was suicidal and the doctors had wanted to call for a psychiatric evaluation. Once he’d realised what was going on, he’d done a runner from the hospital, sneaking out when no-one was looking, and texting Tamara from the car park to tell her that he’d discharged himself. He wasn’t going to let himself be locked up. He’d got Tamara to get his prescription on the way home and they’d argued the whole way. Phoebe had found the whole thing hilarious and had spent the entire journey chiming in with caustic comments and dripping poison in his ear. He was physically and emotionally exhausted, from constantly trying to drown out Phoebe’s voice, and had taken his frustration out on Tamara. Looking at her now, as she cried beside him on the couch, he could see that this whole thing was taking its toll on Tamara too, and he felt profoundly guilty.

He reached across his own body, awkwardly with his right hand, and put his hand on top of hers. “I wasn’t trying to kill myself Tamara. I really wasn’t… I know how it must have looked but I just tripped… The meeting with Dr Evans went really well. I was actually feeling pretty positive about things” he said, trying to sound as calm and collected as possible.

“That was till your big bad ex-girlfriend beat you up in the men’s room, eh Kylie?” said Phoebe, grinning at him with a sadistic look on her face. “Kyle Braxton, one of the Braxton boys, cowering and snivelling like a frightened little girl, huh? ‘Oh please, Phoebe, don’t hurt me!’ Why don’t you tell her about that?”

“I want to believe you, Kyle. I do… But I’m scared to leave you alone. You’ve been behaving really strangely for a long time and I’ve been trying to ignore it… burying my head in the sand I suppose…” Her voice was shaking as she cried softly and she was speaking with her eyes closed. In some ways she found it easier to say when she didn’t have to look at him, and she was tired and finding it difficult to focus on him from all the stress. “I’m worried about the effect that the pain… and all these drugs are having on you.” Opening her eyes again to look at him, with tears streaming down her face, she sobbed “I can’t lose you, Kyle! …I need you… and the boys need you. I can’t just stand by and let you hurt yourself!”

“Oh, I told you so! She’s gonna call the nuthouse on you!” crowed Phoebe, laughing at him and leaping up onto the arm of the armchair, “She really does think that you’re loo-lah!”

“I didn’t try to hurt myself, Tamara, I promise you” he said, trying to look as sincere as he could. “I wouldn’t do that to you and the boys”. He squeezed her hand and gave her a little smile, “Dr Evans thinks these new meds might make things better for me… for all of us… Just give me a few days to see how they work out… and if you’re still worried, I’ll go and see the psychiatrists like the hospital wanted… Deal?”

She let out an exasperated sigh and nodded, “Okay, okay Kyle!”  She leaned over and traced the bruises on the side of his face gently with her fingertips, “…but I’m going to be keeping a very close eye on you… and I’m telling Andy and Ricky… no arguments.”

*****

“I’m really worried, Andy” said Tamara, furrowing her brow and chewing on her thumb nail nervously. “He’s just been acting really strangely lately. Have you not noticed anything?!”

Andy moved a little closer to her on the couch and reached for her hand. “Tam, I think maybe you’re blowing this a little out of proportion. He said he tripped… and you said yourself that it kind of looked more like he was pushed. Surely if he was going to throw himself in front of traffic he wouldn’t do it at traffic lights… and not right in front of you. That’d be pretty sick”

“Maybe” she said, her eyes filling up with tears, “but what about the pills?

“He said that he dropped the bottle, right? You know he can’t bend over to pick things up easily… I get that you’re worried, Tamara, but they seem like reasonable enough explanations to me.”

She sat back and ran her hand through her hair, yanking at it in frustration, and breathed out loudly. “I just don’t know what to think anymore… It’s like he’s not even listening to me sometimes… like he’s listening to someone else... someone who isn’t there”. She wiped at the tears rolling down her face, covering her eyes with both hands and said, “I don’t know, maybe it’s me… maybe I’m just over-tired… He doesn’t sleep, you know? ...And he won’t eat either… I don’t know what to do…”

He gave her a look of concern and said, “You need to look after yourself too, you know? I know that’s hard to do when you’re worried about someone you love, but there’s no point in both of you being wiped out… I know what it was like with Josh. I know it’s not the same thing… but… I sort of get what you’re going through.”

“He just won’t talk to me about what’s going on in that head of his… I feel so shut out” she said, regaining her composure a little. “I’m just hoping this new doctor that Nate hooked us up with can help. Kyle seems optimistic for once.”

“There you go!” he said smiling, “Maybe this guy will have some answers.”

“I just don’t want Kyle to get his hopes up too much” she said, starting to cry again. “Sorry, Andy, you don’t need to deal with all of this… I’m such a mess.”

“Hey, hey…” he said, leaning in beside her on the couch and putting his arm around her so her head was on his shoulder. “I told you to come talk to me anytime you need me… We’re family, Tam, you know that.”

She sniffled and said “Thanks Andy. I really appreciate it… I just really need someone to talk to.”

They sat for a moment in comfortable silence, and then she said “I don’t know how we’re going to manage for money. Kyle can’t work for at least a few weeks with that wrist… and the restaurant is already struggling. Kyle’s had so many medical expenses and he’s missed so much work… We’ve had to hire in more people. It’s a nightmare… but he won’t talk to me about that either. He takes it as a personal slight, like I’m criticising him…”

“God, Tam, things aren’t easy are they?!” he said, sounding a bit shocked. “If there’s anything I can do… you only have to ask. I could maybe do a few shifts after I finish up at the gym in the evening?”

She sat up suddenly and looked at him with a guilty and worried expression, and said, “No, Andy! Forget I said anything! Please don’t say anything to Kyle! If he knew I’d told you any of that he’d go nuts. I don’t know why I told you… I think I just needed to say it to someone.”

“Don’t worry, I won’t say anything… but if you do need help, just let me know.” said Andy, wondering if there was any way he could secretly help them out without Kyle being any the wiser. With memories of that knife stuck in Kyle’s chest, suddenly flashing through his mind, he felt that he owed him his life. If it hadn’t been for Kyle, they would probably all be dead. He thought a few shifts at the restaurant would be the least he could do for him.

“I’d better get going” said Tamara getting up to leave. “I left Kyle and the boys with my mum” she said, smiling a little nervously, “Hopefully mum hasn’t annoyed Kyle too much with all her fussing. She does love a patient to look after!”

 

[Ludub]

Thanks again for the lovely comments  This is a loooong one! Lol! Hope you enjoy it.

 

Chapter 8

 

“Drinks for table 9” said Kyle placing a glass of red wine and 2 bottles of beer on a tray on top of the bar, before starting on the next order as quickly as he could. The waitress whisked them away and a number of customers filled the space she’d left behind, jostling for position, and desperately trying to get Kyle’s attention. He glanced along the line of expectant faces at the bar and spotted Tamara standing at the far end. She was watching him with a look of concern, and he nodded to her to let her know that he’d seen her, and that he’d be over to her in a moment. The restaurant was busy today and Kyle was struggling to keep up with the orders as they arrived thick and fast. He’d been back to work for a few days now, since they’d given him a more lightweight cast, but Tamara thought it was far too soon.

The medication that Dr Evans had prescribed for him was much more effective in reducing his pain levels than anything he’d ever tried before, but it gave everything a dreamlike quality, and for at least a couple of hours after taking them he felt as though he was underwater. Everything would be numb but the world would seem distorted and distant. Phoebe was still there, but when he was numbed up for those few hours, it was as though she faded a little into the background, becoming less intrusive, and more willing to let him get on with things. It would start to wear off after a few hours, and Phoebe would come raging back, angry at being ignored, and more vicious than ever. He was so grateful for those few hours away from her and to have some respite from the pain, that he was willing to deal with all the side effects that came with it, even the weirder ones. He knew his mind was much slower when he was on the medication and that he wasn’t able to follow conversations as well as he normally would. He often had to ask people to repeat themselves because he’d forget what they were talking about halfway through. It also seemed to be having a serious effect on his memory, sometimes making him lose time. He’d found it a little frightening one day when he’d lost time completely. He’d been doing something outside in broad daylight and then suddenly realised that it was night-time and that he was inside having dinner instead. It was as though the day had been badly edited together, with large chunks of it missing, and he’d had absolutely no idea what had taken place. Tamara was getting more and more concerned about him, and it was causing heated arguments between them. He hadn’t kept his promise either. He wouldn’t go to the see the psychiatrists, no matter how much Tamara pushed.  He was just happy to have some relief from the pain, while Tamara was scared that the man that she loved was slowly disappearing before her eyes.

 

Tamara thought that the medication was doing him more damage than good, and they argued about it all the time now. She said that it was sometimes like he’d had a lobotomy, and that the Kyle everyone knew and loved would disappear for hours on end. He’d disappear and leave behind a Kyle-shaped shell, vacant and lacking of any personality.  She found it absolutely terrifying.

Phoebe wasn’t pleased either. She’d wait for him to come back to himself, leaving his stupor behind, and reawakening to the pain in his damaged body. Then she’d punish him for abandoning her. Her outbursts were getting more and more violent as time went on, and he had new injuries most days to show for it. He did his best to hide them from Tamara and for the most part they were in places that he could keep hidden under his clothes. His body was battered from head to toe, with deep bruises, layered one on top of the other. He had bruises on his arms and legs, and on his chest and stomach, but some of his injuries were more difficult to hide than others.  He did his best to explain away the more obvious ones by saying that the medication was making him clumsy. He’d ‘walked into a cupboard door’ and got himself a shiner, he’d burnt himself on the cooker accidentally, and he’d cut his hand quite badly in the kitchen on his first day back at work. His ‘clumsiness’ was only feeding into Tamara’s concerns, and again it was causing tension between them. Life had become a blur of numbness and confusion, arguments with Tamara, and violent physical attacks from Phoebe.

All he wanted was to escape for as long as possible and the medication that Dr Evans had given him was allowing him to do that for short periods of time. To not have to feel anything at all was a blessed relief. He couldn’t see any other way out. This would be his life now. He just hoped he wouldn’t lose Tamara because of it.

 

Tamara called him over and waited patiently for him to finish serving a man standing at the bar. He made his way over to her and gave her the biggest smile he could. “Hey, what’s up?” he asked, trying to sound bright and lively.

“I’m just letting you know that we’ve been invited over to Kat and Andy’s tonight... Bout 8 o’clock.  Josh and Evie are home from Perth and they want to talk to us about something.” she said, trying to figure out if he was fully ‘with it’ today or not. She thought he seemed fairly lucid right now so she hoped he would remember this conversation and they wouldn’t end up arguing about it later. “Will you be okay to go then?” she asked.

“Yeah, fine” he said, giving her a little smile. He could see Phoebe out of the corner of his eye, suddenly sitting up and paying attention to what was going on. She’d been keeping Ash company at the bar, sitting beside him as he drank himself into a slumped mess again. He nodded at Tamara and said “I’ll be home by seven, I think… so I’ll be ready to go.”

She jumped up and leaned across the bar to give him a quick peck on the lips. “Okay. Love you!” she said, before she turned and walked away towards the door. He watched her go, and then waved to her when she turned to look back at him. He thought she looked tired.

 

*****

 

“I can’t believe how well you’re both looking!” said Kat, carrying a huge pan of paella over to the table. “Uni must be going well? You both look so happy.”

 

“It’s good, yeah” said Josh, smiling from ear to ear, and nursing his tiny baby niece. It was the first time he’d been home since she was born and he’d been excited to meet her. Holding a baby while blind was still very awkward and a little frightening for him but he was trying his best, and was a little overwhelmed by the love he felt for this tiny baby in his arms. Andy’s baby… gripping his finger with a tiny little hand. He kissed her on the top of the head, and continued, “I’m really enjoying my course and I think my exams went well… so yeah, Perth is great… We’ve actually got some really good news.” he said, patting Evie on the knee.

“Josh, we’ve only just sat down! We can talk about that later!” she said, laughing at him nervously. Looking at the raised eyebrows and the knowing smiles around the table, she said “I’m not p-pregnant by the way, that’s not the news! Just so you know. D-definitely not pregnant.”

 

Andy looked decidedly disappointed and said, “Well then, spill! What’s the big news?!”

“I wanted to w-wait till we’d eaten so we could talk about it properly.” said Evie, sounding pretty nervous. She glanced at Kyle, who looked a little sullen, and had his head resting on his hand. He looked even more tired and thin than the last time she’d seen him, if that was possible, but there was something different about him tonight. He didn’t even really look like Kyle, she thought.

 

“You okay, Kyle?” she asked him, looking a bit concerned and tilting her head at him in sympathy. “How are you doing these d-days?”

He sat up, looking a little dazed, and grimaced with the sudden movement. His medication was wearing off and the pain was coming back with a vengeance. Phoebe was standing behind him, leaning on the back of his chair and breathing down his neck making him nervous. “I’m okay, Evie… I’m getting by” he said, sounding tired and rubbing his face with his good hand. “What’s the good news?” he said, trying to ignore Phoebe, and give Evie a friendly smile.

“Um, well…” she hesitated, looking around at the faces of their friends and family, and wondering how they were going to react. “We’ve… um… we’ve been asked to s-sell the film rights for ‘Episode Nine’. They want to make a m-movie.”

There was a stunned silence around the table and Evie looked from face to face, trying to gauge their reactions. Andy looked at Kat and raised his eyebrows, before he turned back to Evie, and said “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

“They’re going to change all the n-names and set it s-somewhere else so it won’t exactly be about us… but… well, it’ll be one of those ‘based on a true story’ type m-movies.” She reached for Josh’s hand and said, “We’re s-still thinking about it. We haven’t agreed to anything yet. We wanted to s-speak to all of you first”.

“They’re going to let Evie work on the screenplay with them as a sort of internship…” said Josh, smiling in her direction. “It’ll be good experience if she wants to get into that sort of writing.

 

“And we were thinking…” said Evie, squeezing Josh’s hand and giggling a little nervously, “We were thinking that we’d like to g-give some of the m-money to you. We were going to split the fee three ways… Some for you and Kat” she said, smiling at Andy. Then she turned to look at Kyle and said “… and s-some for you and Tamara… We were thinking… a th-third each.”

Josh smiled in Kyle’s direction and said, “We know that things have been really hard for you and Tamara, and we just wanted to help you out a bit... It’s your story too, guys. Especially you, Kyle… So it’s as much your money as it is ours… We said no at first but then… we thought that maybe… we thought maybe we could make something… ‘good’ …come out of this whole thing with Tank.”

“They’ve offered $150,000, so that’d be f-fifty thousand each.” said Evie, biting her lip nervously. “As I said, we ha-haven’t agreed anything y-yet. We wanted to know what you all think. We w-won’t do it if you’re not ha-happy.”

There was a resounding silence as Evie looked around the table, and she and Josh were both starting to feel quite anxious. This wasn’t the reaction they’d been expecting.

Andy looked at his brother, glowing with confidence across the table, and thought about that DVD that he and Kat should never have watched. They’d never told Josh about it, and Andy had destroyed it in the end, choosing to let sleeping dogs lie. Josh obviously couldn’t have watched it by himself and would have needed someone to describe what was on the screen. Andy knew he wouldn’t have been able to cope with having to do that, but he didn’t want anyone else to see it under any circumstances. He figured that what Josh didn’t remember couldn’t hurt him. At least that’s what he hoped… Kat glanced at Andy, with a look of guilt on her face, and he knew that she was equally conflicted about the contents of that DVD.  They’d been trying to move on and forget it… Making a movie out of the book seemed like dragging everything back up again, and reopening old wounds. The thought of people watching the horror they’d all been through, while they tucked into their popcorn at the cinema, made him feel a little bit sick. He had so many questions he wasn’t even sure where to start.

 

Tamara cleared her throat and clasped her hands together in front of her on the table. “How much… ‘detail’… are they going to go into?” she asked, sounding very worried. “I mean, are they going to show… what he did… ‘physically’?”

"You m-mean, are they going to show s-scenes of torture?” asked Evie, flushing a little red. She looked down at the table and said, “Yes, I m-mean…. not in graphic d-detail… b-but …Yes.” She always stammered more when she was nervous.

“It won’t be on screen but… yes, it’ll be part of the story” said Josh, gesturing towards Kat to take the baby back from him. She stood up and lifted the sleeping baby from his arms. “But that’s not the type of movie they want to make. It’s more of a look at the psychology of a serial killer… not in a horror film or exploitative kind of way. I had a long talk with them about it. They don’t want it to be some cheap thriller or to glamorize murder in any way… He’ll be shown as a pathetic figure who was totally deluded.”

 

“I think we can t-trust them to m-make something in k-keeping with the tone of the book” said Evie, glancing around at everyone. She stopped on Kyle’s face, as she realised that he was glaring at Josh and gritting his teeth with anger. He hadn’t said anything yet but, judging by the expression on his face, she guessed that he wasn’t happy about it. “What are your thoughts, K-Kyle?” asked Evie, furrowing her brows at him.

He leaned forward, putting his right elbow on the table, and supporting his head with his hand. He let out an exasperated sigh and said, “Do you even care what I think? Or what any of us think?”

 

Josh looked surprised and swung his head round in Kyle’s direction. “Yeah, Kyle, we do actually… We haven’t signed anything yet.” he said, in a cautious voice. It was still hard to read people when he couldn’t see their facial expressions. People who didn’t speak much, like Kyle, were more difficult to read than others. “We didn’t mean to upset you, Kyle. We thought you could maybe use the money. Andy mentioned that you were having some money troubles…”

Andy’s face went bright red and he glanced apologetically at Tamara. He’d told Josh about the restaurant being in trouble when he’d spoken to him last week, but he hadn’t expected him to blurt it out like this in front of Kyle. Josh and Evie’s sudden urge to share the proceeds from the movie deal made sense now, but he wished that Josh had spoken to him about it first.

Kyle rubbed his face and breathed out loudly. “Is that what’s really important to you?! Money?! After everything we all went through?!” He got to his feet, wincing in pain, and holding his wrist up against his chest with his right hand. “I don’t even know who you people are!” he shouted, flushing red in the face. “I’m disgusted! I mean, Evie nearly died, I nearly died… Phoebe… Phoebe died in the worst way possible… and you want to make a movie about it so people can sit there eating their popcorn and drinking their coke… while the people we love fight for their lives?!” He was shouting loudly now and tears were streaming down his face. “You’re disgusting!”

 

“Kyle, it’s not like that” said Josh, with his face burning red. Deep down he knew that Kyle was right, and he felt ashamed of himself for being so easily bought, but his pride wouldn’t allow him to admit that.

“How is it not?!” shouted Kyle, “How is it not?! They’re going to show Evie being raped. You’re really okay with that?!” He turned to look at Evie whose eyes were filling with tears as she looked down at the table. “Evie?... Really?! You’re really okay with that?! What the hell is wrong with you?!... Who are you?!”  He was holding his ribs now, as he breathed heavily, with throbbing pains shooting through his chest wall. “Why not just go the whole hog and hand over Tank’s home movies so people can watch the real thing?!”

 

“It w-won’t be l-like th-that” stammered Evie, as her nerves got the better of her. She’d allowed Josh to railroad her into agreeing to this whole thing but if she was really honest with herself, she wasn’t okay with it. Josh had been very persuasive and he’d made her feel like she was being childish if she didn’t agree.  He’d become so fixated on his psychology course, and in particular the study of serial killers, that he couldn’t understand her need to put it away and not talk about it anymore. He wouldn’t allow her to move on. Until now, she’d been trying to convince herself that she was happy about the movie being made, but she was secretly grateful to Kyle for saying what needed to be said.

 

“Yes it will!” he said, wheezing a little and grimacing with the pain. “I’ve spent four years trying to forget what happened. Four years and it’s still in my head… every single day… I can’t get Tank out of here” he said, gesturing to his head. “And you want to stir it all up again?! Do you really want people to know what he did to us? To watch what happened? ... Are you gonna tell me that you’ll be okay with people going to the cinema and watching a movie about Tank trying to kill us all?!”

He wiped angrily at the tears running down his face and looked around the faces at the table, who were all looking decidedly shamefaced. “Talk me through this… You’re telling me that you’ll go get your box of popcorn… and you’ll skip into that cinema… and you’ll watch as Tank kidnaps you… and tortures you… and you’re saying that you’ll be okay with that?! That 50 grand in your pocket will make it all worth it… Really?!”

“…If you do this, I’ll never speak to you again… and you can keep your blood money if it means that much to you… I hope it chokes you!” growled Kyle, as he picked up his phone and walked out.

Tamara watched him leave and looked around at the other shocked faces at the table, unsure of whether she should go after him, or stay and try to build some bridges, apologising on his behalf. She couldn’t really disagree with anything that Kyle had said, and she felt a little ashamed of herself for even thinking it, but the truth was that she wanted them to take the money. Things were hard for her and Kyle right now, and fifty thousand dollars would get them back on their feet, and lift a huge weight from her shoulders overnight. “I think it’s his medication” she said, looking around at the others apologetically, “He’s been a bit all over the place lately”.

 

*****

 

Kyle sat on the bench outside Angelo’s staring out at the black glistening water under the moonlight. He was still shaking from the adrenalin rushing through his bloodstream and trying to get his breathing under control. His ribcage felt like it could burst open at the incision site, and he sat with his right hand cradling his ribs, and trying to ignore the shooting pains travelling up into his jaw. Phoebe was sitting up on the back of the bench with her feet on the seat so she was towering over him. She’d followed him from Kat and Andy’s house slow clapping his performance and taunting him the whole way. “Woo hoo, take a bow Princess Kylie!!! A stellar performance from young Miss Braxton… That was dramatic, I’ll give you that.” she laughed at him, as he stormed away from the house with his one good fist clenched.

He took his phone out of his pocket, and opened his photo gallery, scrolling to the screenshot he’d taken of the last text message he’d ever received from Phoebe. “Please come outside. I’m on the bench. want to talk to you”. He ran his thumb over the screen and his eyes filled with tears. He turned to look up at Phoebe who was reading the text over his shoulder and said, “I’m so sorry Pheebs.”

“Bit late now, Kyle.” she said, scowling at him. “Sorry won’t change the fact that I’m dead, will it?”

He looked back at his phone and opened his internet browser. He typed in ‘Phoebe Nicholson’ and a multitude of news stories flashed up on the screen. He opened one with a photo of Phoebe, looking young and happy, and posing for a publicity shot for her music tour. It was beside a headline that read “Failed Popstar Tortured For 2 Days, Then Suffocated”. It was one of the trashier tabloid papers and they really hadn’t spared any details. They’d been very explicit in their descriptions, having got hold of a leaked coroner’s report, and they’d gone into great detail about what she’d endured. He wondered why anyone would want to know these things if it wasn’t someone they cared about. Why would someone buy a newspaper to read about the unimaginable suffering of some poor girl they didn’t know? Was that really what people wanted from their newspapers? He was sad to think that it was.

The movie that Josh and Evie were going to let them make would be exactly what those type pf people wanted to watch. They’d want to see him with that knife stuck in his chest, as he struggled to breathe and slowly drowned in his own blood…  He wondered what they’d think about Tamara pulling the knife out. Maybe they’d think it was brave or maybe they’d think he was some pathetic loser whose girlfriend cared so little about him that she’d actually pulled a knife out of his chest and nearly killed him? They might even make jokes about it. The type of people who bought those newspapers would want to watch as Tank tortured Phoebe and Evie. They’d enjoy the thrill of the hunt, just as Tank had, and he’d get that recognition and fame that he’d always wanted. It was disgusting. The thought of people watching it as entertainment made him feel sick to his stomach.

He clicked back and then opened another story about her father’s public meltdown at the inquest hearing, with a photo of a thin and very haggard looking man beside a headline that read, “I’ll Never See My Beautiful Princess Again”. He looked at the image of this man with haunted eyes and a gaunt face, and thought he was barely recognisable. This was not the man he’d met all those years ago, who had been so big and burly, and imposing. The man that had threatened him and warned him off his daughter was long gone, and he’d been replaced by an old man, who looked weak and frail, and was only a shadow of his former self.

He peered at the face on the screen, and half-remembered snatches of memories flooded through his mind. He’d been in the ICU when Mr Nicholson had stormed in, looking for him, and baying for blood. He hadn’t been fully conscious but he hadn’t been completely out of it either. They’d had to intubate him because he’d gone down with pneumonia for the second time, so he’d been sedated and partially paralysed, and they’d strapped his wrists to the bed to stop him from getting overly agitated and pulling out his breathing tube. For a long time he’d thought that he’d imagined it. The inquest hearing had been more than two years after Phoebe’s death, but Kyle had been in the coroner’s court, sitting behind Mr Nicholson, when the man had suddenly turned around and lunged at him, screaming that it was all his fault. Lying on the ground, with Phoebe’s father trying to strangle him, he’d realised that the dreams he’d had while he was in the ICU that time hadn’t been dreams at all. Phoebe’s father had burst in, and tried to strangle him, while he was lying paralysed in a bed in the ICU with machines breathing for him. The red and angry face that had loomed over him, roaring that it was his fault that Phoebe was dead, had been real after all. He'd said that Phoebe had only moved to a backwater like Summer Bay to be with him, and that he’d always known that Kyle was dangerous, and would get her killed one day. He remembered that the nurses had had to call security and that Mr Nicholson had been escorted out, kicking and screaming. When he’d asked the hospital staff about it, they’d told him that people often hallucinated while in the ICU because of the strong sedation medications, and they’d denied that it had ever taken place. Whether it was real or not, he’d always known that Mr Nicholson was right. It was his fault.

He suddenly realised that Phoebe was staring at the image on his phone and he looked up to see her face. He was surprised to see her expression wasn’t the hardened sneer he had grown accustomed to, but one of profound sadness. There was something soft and vulnerable about her for the first time in a long time and he almost felt like this was the old Phoebe that he knew and loved. He wanted to scoop her up, and hug her, and tell her that everything was going to be alright. He put his hand out to touch her arm but recoiled when he realised that her skin was stone cold and had taken on that waxen texture of dead flesh. Her arms were covered in small circular marks and he suddenly remembered some of the finer details of the coroner’s report with a shudder. She took her eyes off his phone and looked up, narrowing her eyes at him with a malicious grin on her face, and said, “Thought you’d go in for a sneaky cuddle, did you, Kylie? Come here then…”

She leaned down and took his face in her hands. He flinched in revulsion as her cold dead hands came into contact with the skin on his cheeks, and he stared at her in fear as she began to lean in. He was frightened to let her touch him but he was more scared to pull away in case she lashed out and hurt him again. He was overdue his pain medication, having left it with Tamara, and his pain level was already at a 9. He couldn’t cope with any more, not tonight. Frozen in fear he wondered what she was going to do. She leaned in and kissed him on the lips, her cold clammy flesh coming into contact with his, and he felt his stomach turn as the stench of rotten flesh filled his nostrils. He began to retch as he looked into her bloodshot eyes, and wondered how this was happening. It all seemed so real.

Suddenly he landed on the flat of his back, hitting the ground hard, with a bang that knocked the wind out of him. She’d pushed him hard in the middle of the chest sending him toppling off the bench backwards. Standing up on the bench above him, she peered down at him, and laughed as he wheezed and spluttered. “You’re too pathetic for words, Kylie” she said, sniggering loudly. She climbed down off the bench and put her foot on his chest. He tried to fight her, but with his broken wrist, she was just too strong for him. She pressed hard with her foot on the incision site, as he clawed desperately at her Doc Martin boot, but the pain was soon overwhelming and as the world went dark and sparkly he knew that he was going to pass out.

[Ludub]

Thanks to Kristen, KittCatt, ~JarlieFanEver~, and Suzza101 for the lovely comments. Glad you're enjoying the story so far. Hope you like this one! 

 

Chapter 9

 

“Wake up Kyle!” said a voice, giggling in a breathless sort of way. Kyle slowly became aware of the hands gripping the front of his shirt, pulling him back and forth and shaking him roughly. Every movement was causing him excruciating pain. It was a pain so overwhelming that he couldn’t even begin to think where he was or what was happening. He recognised the voice though. “Wakey-wakey” slurred Ash, hanging over him, with his face much too close. He could feel and smell Ash’s breath on his face, and there was an unbearable stench of sour alcohol and vomit emanating from him. Kyle opened his eyes to blinding sunlight and could just make out the outline of Ash’s features on the face of the dark figure hovering over him.

 

“This’ll h-help” slurred Ash, forcing Kyle’s mouth open. Suddenly he was choking and spluttering, as his throat and lungs burned, and he violently tried to cough up the vodka that Ash had just poured down his throat.  “Get off me!” he wheezed, just about managing to get the words out, as he tried to pull himself up into a sitting position. Ash clambered off him and collapsed back onto his backside, putting one hand out behind him to stay upright. Still coughing and wheezing in pain, Kyle looked around him, in a dazed and bleary eyed way, and soon realised that he was outside the Surf Club. He looked up to see Phoebe staring down at him, regarding him with a cold and steely stare. She was perched on the back of the bench with her feet on the wooden seat just like last night, and he’d obviously spent the night on the ground, passed out at her feet. He looked at Ash who was sitting beside him, slumped over and leaning against the bench, muttering to himself with a bottle of vodka in his hands. He looked sadder and more pitiful than he’d ever seen him.

 

He peered at his watch and saw that it was 06:39. With a sudden surge of guilt, he thought about Tamara and how worried she must be, and started to drag his pain riddled body to its feet. He had to steady himself for a moment as the pain raged through him, and he saw sparkles in front of his eyes. This was the longest he’d ever gone without pain relief, and as he shivered and shook, he realised that he was probably in the early stages of withdrawal. He gave a heavy sigh as he saw that his phone was lying on the ground in front of the bench, but he knew that he wouldn’t be able to bend over to lift it. He glanced at Phoebe as she smirked at him from her elevated position on the back of the bench, and grimaced when he remembered that cold and clammy kiss from last night. The thought of it made his skin crawl. He just wanted to go home and take his pills and make her go away for a while. He thought how nice it would be to just take the whole bottle and never have to think about any of this ever again. To never have to feel anything again would be a welcome release. Phoebe smiled at him and raised one eyebrow. Realising that she probably knew what he was thinking, he hung his head, feeling truly pathetic, and as though he’d just let her win.

He turned to walk away but Phoebe suddenly overtook him, and with a vicious jab to the ribs, she stopped him in his tracks, wincing and nearly doubling over with pain. “You think you can just walk away and leave Ash like that?!” she snarled at him. “That’s your fault too!”

 

He cradled his ribs with his right hand and looked up at Phoebe in surprise. “How is Ash drinking himself to death my fault?!” he asked. “I didn’t force that bottle of vodka into his hand, did I?!”

 

“You’ve let him think that this is his fault. You’ve let him think that for all these years… when we both know whose fault it is.” She narrowed her eyes at him and drew her mouth into a cruel sneer, “You’ve watched him drink himself to death, thinking it’s his fault that I’m dead. Are you really that much of a coward that you can’t tell him the truth?!”

 

*****

 

Nearly Four Years Ago…

 

Kyle was angry. He set about turning all the chairs up onto the tables in a violent and clattering kind of way, taking his frustration out on the restaurant furniture. He saw Phoebe’s jacket, hanging off the back of one of the stools where they’d been sitting, and he rolled his eyes. This was just another one of her tactics. ‘Oh I’ll ‘accidentally’ leave my coat here so you have to run after me’. He was sick of her game playing and he wasn’t going to fall for it for once, not tonight. He finished turning the chairs over and came back over to the bar to clear away the last remaining glasses and cash up. Everyone else had gone home, and he really should have cashed up long ago, but he’d allowed Phoebe to distract him and it was getting really late now. He felt guilty. He knew Tamara wouldn’t be waiting for him this evening, because she was over at Leah’s and she hadn’t messaged him yet to let him know that she was home, but he still felt guilty for spending time with his ex, after hours, and on his own. Especially because of how it had ended.

He thought back to when Phoebe came in here this evening. She’d arrived all teary-eyed looking for Ricky, but when she’d found that Ricky wasn’t there, she’d plonked herself down at the bar and told Kyle that he was on ‘Keep Phoebe company duty’. He’d known she was upset about something from the obvious puffiness of her eyes but she wouldn’t talk to him about it… at first. Then she’d started drinking and before long she’d been badmouthing Ash and telling anyone who would listen what a rubbish boyfriend he was. She’d said that he was a liar and that he always put Billie and his friends before her. Kyle had teased her, light-heartedly, about being high maintenance and pointed out that Ash was basically a good guy, even if he and Ash hadn’t always seen eye-to-eye. “Less marriage counselling, more pouring” she’d said, jokingly. She’d ignored call after call from Ash, turning the sound off and slamming it down on the bar. He’d stopped giving her alcohol at a certain point and made her drink water instead, being the ‘responsible ex-boyfriend’ as she’d jokingly called him. When everyone started to leave and it was only the two of them left, he’d pulled up a stool to talk to her seriously about what was upsetting her but she wouldn’t tell him exactly what Ash had done.  She’d gotten upset and he’d done his best to comfort her but things had suddenly become a little strange, and she’d leaned in and tried to kiss him, saying she should never have chosen Ash over him.

 

He’d pushed her away and told her that he was with someone new now, but she’d been a little over insistent and she’d even insulted Tamara. He wasn’t proud of himself but he’d lost his temper with her and he’d said some things that he didn’t really mean. He knew she’d been hurt by what he’d said, and deep down he knew that he shouldn’t have said those things to her, not when she was so upset. He’d been the sober one. A lot of what he’d said was true though. She was manipulative, and she was one of the most selfish and self-centred people he’d ever met. She always had to be the centre of attention. ‘High maintenance’ didn’t even come close! No wonder she was angry with Ash, he’d thought. No-one could ever live up to her unrealistic expectations.  He’d told her that she had to stop playing with people’s feelings and that she couldn’t just come in here and throw herself at him after the way she’d broken his heart. He felt bad about what he’d said and how he’d said it but he couldn’t pretend he wasn’t still angry. This was all just so typical of Phoebe.

He finished cashing up, muttering to himself in anger, and was doing the final check around the kitchen when a text message beeped through. He took his phone out and saw a message from Phoebe. He gave an exasperated sigh because he knew this was probably going to be some manipulative piece of emotional blackmail, designed to make him feel even worse about their argument than he already did. He opened the message and read, “Please come outside. I’m on the bench. want to talk to you”. He rolled his eyes again. Phoebe always wanted things her own way. She couldn’t just come back in to get her coat and have a chat with him like any normal person would. It always had to be on her terms. She had to make him come to her.

Kyle walked outside onto the veranda overlooking the bench outside and saw Phoebe sitting with her back to him. He looked down at this girl who had been such a huge part of his life for so long. She was his first love, and she was probably the one person in this world that he knew better than anyone else. He’d loved her with a passion that he’d never felt for anyone else but she’d ripped his heart out… repeatedly. She’d been responsible for so much hurt in his life, and yet he knew he still loved her. He knew that some part of him would always love her, no matter what. But he couldn’t let her hurt him again. Another message came through, this time from Tamara, and he read, “Home now. Hurry up, I’m keeping the bed warm for you! ;-)”. He looked at Phoebe one last time and turned on his heel. There came a time for self-preservation and this was it. He had to stand up for himself and forge a new life without her. Tamara was his future now…

 

*****

 

He turned to look at Ash, purple in the face and slumped on the ground, and felt an overwhelming sense of guilt. He knew that Ash was slowly drinking himself to death over the loss of Phoebe but if truth be told, he didn’t really want to help him. On some level, if he was honest with himself, he felt grateful that there was someone else falling apart because of her, and that he wasn’t alone. Knowing that Ash was in pain too somehow made him feel a little better. Knowing that Ash was doing a worse job at holding things together, made things just a little more bearable for him. He was disgusted with himself sometimes, questioning his own actions as he poured Ash another drink, but he couldn’t stop himself from doing it. In an extremely perverted way, he was helping Ash to kill himself, to make his own sad existence slightly less miserable. He knew it was wrong but he couldn’t help how he felt.

Phoebe grabbed him by the hair and violently dragged him back towards Ash, who had crawled onto the bench and was lying on the seat, half on, and half off. “Look at him!” she growled, “Look at what you’ve done to him!”

 

He looked at Ash’s face as he lay half-conscious on the bench outside the Surf Club, that same bench where he had left Phoebe all those years ago, and he realised that his friend was dying. Not today, and maybe not tomorrow, but very soon. He had that dark purple complexion that alcoholics get, with broken veins and bloodshot eyes, and he looked so unkempt with that ridiculous long blonde hair that used to say ‘surfer’ but now said ‘homeless alcoholic’.  He was a truly pathetic sight. “I… I… didn’t…” stammered Kyle, having to bend slightly as Phoebe kept hold of his hair. “I didn’t mean for any of this to happen” he said, tears rolling down his cheeks. “I didn’t know this would happen!”

“That doesn’t change the fact that I’m dead and it’s your fault!” she jeered at him, dragging him to his knees beside the bench. He squealed with the pain. “You had a chance to save me from that psycho and you just left me here!” shouted Phoebe.

 

“Don’t you think I know that, Phoebe?!” he sobbed. “I can’t stop thinking about that night… I ask myself every day why I didn’t come out to you when you texted me. I know it’s my fault, okay?! I know that!”

 

“Well, you’re going to do something for me, Kylie… You’re going to wait till he’s sober and you’re going to tell him what you did” said Phoebe, staring with eyes full of hatred. “You’re going to tell him that you had a chance to save me, and that you chose not to. You looked at me sitting on this bench, waiting for you, and you turned your back on me.”

“I can’t!” said Kyle, sobbing loudly now, “I can’t Phoebe, I just can’t do it… Then everyone will know.”

“Exactly” said Phoebe, smirking at him. “Then everyone will know what you did. They’ll know it’s all your fault… and they’ll know what a snivelling little coward you are. Princess Kylie kept it a secret for four whole years. They’ll know what a pathetic excuse for a man you are. They’ll all know.”

He managed to pull his head away from Phoebe’s grip and he backed away on his knees, with his hands held up to protect himself. Seeing the fear in his eyes, she laughed at him cruelly and said, “You’ll do it, because I said so”.

“I can’t do it, Phoebe” he said, sweating and shaking uncontrollably. “I can’t”

“I know…” said Phoebe, “but I can be very persuasive.” She took Ash’s empty vodka bottle, smashing it off the side of the bench, and walked towards him menacingly…

 

*****

 

“Where the hell have you been?!” shouted Tamara, as Kyle limped through the door. “Do you have any idea how frightened I’ve been?! You just disappeared!”

“Tam, can you please just get me my pills?!” he said, making his way to the couch and painfully slumping into the corner of the seat. “I really need my pills” He was sweating and shaking, partly from the pain, and partly from the withdrawal. It had been over fifteen hours since he’d last taken his medication and the pain was unbearable.

She stood in front of him with her hands on her hips and shook her head at him. “We’re going to have a proper talk first, Kyle. If you take your pills, it’ll be hours before you make any sense again… I need to talk to you.”

He looked at her in shock. She’d never withheld his medication before, and this seemed particularly cruel on her part. “Tamara, please! I’m in so much pain. I can’t wait. I haven’t had anything since yesterday afternoon!”

“And whose fault is that?” said Tamara, scowling at him angrly.

“Hoo hoo!” hooted Phoebe, grinning from ear to ear, “Little Miss Tammy has bigger balls than you, Kylie!”

He winced in pain and said, “I’m sorry, Tamara. Okay? I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to scare you.”  He looked at her with his best puppy dog expression and said “Can I please have my pills?”  Having to beg Tamara for his pills was a new level of humiliation, and he’d never felt more pathetic in his life. He blushed red as he felt Phoebe’s eyes on him.

“Oh please, oh please, Tamara!” laughed Phoebe, mimicking his voice. “It just keeps getting better and better!”

“You can have your pills in a few minutes when we’ve had our chat” said Tamara, sitting down in the armchair beside him. She took a deep breath and ran her fingers through her hair. “I’m not trying to be cruel, Kyle, but we haven’t talked properly in months and if you take those pills you’ll turn into some dribbling zombie, and I won’t get any sense out of you for hours. I need to talk to you now!”

He was shaking uncontrollably now, and holding his stomach, hoping she wouldn’t notice. He wondered if all the women in his life had an intrinsic capacity for cruelty. “Okay, Tamara” he said, dejectedly, “What is it you want to talk to me about?”

“You’ve been acting really strangely for a while now, Kyle! I can’t take it anymore. Last night was the last straw. Do you have any idea how rude you were to Josh and Evie?!  Do you?! …It can’t have escaped your notice that the restaurant is in trouble, Kyle. It’s going to go under if you don’t do something! They wanted to help us out and you just threw it back in their faces!”

He looked at her in disgust and said, “You want to say ‘yes’ to the movie deal?” He sighed and shook his head at her in disappointment.

“Yes, I do Kyle… yes, I do.” said Tamara, nodding at him seriously. “We don’t have a choice, Kyle. We need the money! If you’re going to have any chance of doing that surgical trial, we have to have that money!”

“We do have a choice, Tamara!” he shouted at her, “I can’t believe you’re willing to sell your soul so easily! What kind of person are you?!”

“A frightened one, Kyle!” said Tamara, starting to cry. “I’m frightened I’m going to lose you! I’m frightened we’re going to lose everything!”

“There have to be other ways, Tam!” he said, softening a little. “I just can’t get on-board with that movie. It’s so sick… it’s not even funny.”

She shook her head sadly, and stared at the ground with tears in her eyes. “There isn’t any other way... We’ve been handed an opportunity on a plate with this movie, and we won’t get another one! …I want my husband back.” She stared at the floor and fidgeted with a hole in the knee of her jeans. “Do you know when we last slept together? …Do you?!”

He hung his head as Phoebe began to laugh and snort hysterically. She leaned over the back of the couch, breathing down his neck and said “Yeah, Kylie, how long has it been?!”

“I… I’m sorry, Tam.” he stammered, as his heart sank. Phoebe kept telling him what a pathetic excuse for a man he was, and how much of a disappointment he must be as a husband, but to have Tamara call it out to him like this was gut wrenching. He wanted the ground to swallow him up.

Tamara moved over to the couch and sat beside him. She started to kiss him, and leaned over, putting her hand on his stomach, but he pulled away flinching in pain. She took her hand away and sat back looking at him in exasperation, “I just want to be with you, Kyle... You won’t even let me touch you!” He nodded, blinking back tears, and mumbled "I'm sorry".

Phoebe, leaned over the sofa and whispered in Tamara’s ear, loud enough for Kyle to hear, “That’s because he has a boo boo and he doesn’t want you to see it.” Looking at Kyle with a sadistic grin that made his skin crawl, she said “Maybe Auntie Phoebe can kiss it better for him?”

Sighing and getting to her feet, Tamara walked out to the kitchen, and found her bag on one of the stools at the breakfast bar. She hunted out the bottle of pills and then poured him a glass of water. Returning to the living-room she took in the pitiful scene before her with great sadness. Kyle was sweating and shaking on the couch, and clutching his side with his one good hand. This man was a very poor copy of the young and exciting guy she’d met all those years ago. This wasn’t the Kyle she’d met again at Angelo’s when she’d come back to the Bay with Josh and Andy. His poor body had taken such a beating over the last few years, and he was so racked with pain, day in and day out, that his personality had taken a beating too. She missed the Kyle she used to know.

Handing the bottle of pills to him, as he took them with trembling hands, she said, “We’re agreeing to that movie, Kyle. No arguments… Josh and Evie are coming over later”.

[Ludub]

Thanks a million to Suzza101, KittCatt, Kristen, and ~JarlieFanEver~ for the lovely comments. I really appreciate you all taking the time to give feedback. It means a lot! Hope you like this next chapter! 

 

Chapter 10

 

Kyle clicked the door to the bathroom shut as quietly as he could and turned the lock. He couldn’t take the risk of Tamara walking in on him. Phoebe put the seat down on the toilet and sat on the cistern with her feet on the toilet lid. He would have given anything to be able to get away from her, but she followed him everywhere these days, and he couldn’t escape her now even to use the bathroom.  She smiled at him, raising her eyebrows, and nodded to him to show her his stomach. He didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of admiring her handiwork but he knew that the wound needed attention and that he couldn’t leave it much longer. He pulled his t-shirt up slowly and peeled the thick layers of blood-soaked material off his injured belly. There was a large cut on his stomach just above his waistband and it was seeping blood quickly. He looked at it in the mirror wondering if it needed stitches or if there was any way he could repair it himself. It was a very deep slash, that was ragged at the edges, and it was already very red and painful. He put his fingers on either side of the wound and tried to pull the edges together, gasping with the pain, and accidentally made eye contact with Phoebe who was watching him and smirking in the mirror. “The offer’s still there. I’ll kiss it better if you want me to” she said, smiling from ear to ear in a very unsettling way. He shuddered at the thought.

He opened the cabinet under the sink and bent down painfully to look for the first aid kit. He took out a large green plastic box and opened it in the hope that there would be something he could use. Rifling through the box, he sighed, realising that there wasn’t much of any use in there. Lots of large plasters, and plenty of gauze, but nothing that would actually close the wound. He looked back inside the cabinet and saw Tamara’s sewing kit. He dragged it out and placed it on the side of the sink, thinking that this had to be the most ill-advised thing he’d ever done. He grimaced as he looked up at Phoebe’s excited face. He knew that this was going to be harder than he could possibly imagine, and having Phoebe watch him do it was going to make things so much more difficult. He was more nervous than he’d ever been.

Threading the needle with shaking hands, he saw Phoebe’s eyes light up with greedy anticipation, and he knew that she was going to enjoy seeing him hurt himself. He sighed loudly, and set to work, with a large piece of gauze in his mouth to bite down on. He had a very high pain threshold these days, and wondered at himself, as he succeeded in pulling the edges of the wound together with ten clumsy stitches. He’d managed to do it without crying out and alerting Tamara, and all while Phoebe watched him, taking sadistic pleasure in his suffering. He wiped it down with some antiseptic wipes and bandaged it as best he could with the largest bandages he could find in the first aid kit.

He froze in fear as Phoebe got down off the toilet and walked over to him. She patted the bandage and pulled the t-shirt down over his wounded stomach. “There, that wasn’t so bad was it?!” she said, smiling at him and kissing him on the cheek. He flinched and closed his eyes, repulsed by her appearance and the smell of her flesh. “Well done, Kylie! I’m impressed… Little Tammy doesn’t need to know, does she? What is it they say? ‘It can just be our little secret’”

 

*****

 

Josh let his guide dog Bonnie lead him over to an armchair in Kyle and Tamara’s living-room and then got her to lie down at his side. Bonnie had been the best thing to happen to him since he’d lost his sight. She’d given him so much freedom back and he didn’t think he’d ever be able to manage now without her. When he thought back to his first experiences of being outside when he’d first lost his sight, he wondered how he’d ever plucked up the courage to go outside again. It had been truly terrifying. Bonnie had given him confidence and made him feel like he could go anywhere and do anything.  She was his guide, his protector, and his friend.

Tamara brought a tray in with cups of coffee for everyone, and an assortment of biscuits, and set it on the table. Her hands were shaking a little but she hoped that no-one had noticed. They really needed this deal. She just hoped that Kyle wouldn’t screw it up for them. She sat down and reached for Kyle’s hand but he pulled it away.

“So, Tamara said that you’ve reconsidered?” said Josh, “I’m really glad to hear that, Kyle. I really do think this deal will be good for all of us.”

Evie sat, looking at the floor, and seemed to be avoiding eye contact with everyone else. Kyle looked at her and noticed how downtrodden she seemed. “Tamara wants us to do it” said Kyle, keeping his arms crossed and looking very defensive. “What I want doesn’t seem to matter anymore”.

Tamara glared at him and said, “Kyle, we discussed this!” She looked at Josh apologetically and then realised, feeling a little embarrassed, that he couldn’t see her. “Sorry, Josh, you’ll have to excuse Kyle. He’s just having a bit of a bad day… pain-wise”

“Oooh, that was patronising!” laughed Phoebe, hanging over the back of the couch and talking in his ear. “Tell me… does she keep your balls in her handbag along with those pills of yours?”

“You discussed it” said Kyle, the anger building in his chest. “I don’t remember me agreeing to it.” He glanced at Evie again, who was biting her lip and looking a little teary-eyed. “It doesn’t look to me like Evie is too happy about this little venture off yours, Josh.  Are you that much of a bully that you’re going to force your traumatised girlfriend into selling herself? What are you? Her pimp?!”

Josh flinched at the suggestion and turned his head in Evie’s direction. “It’s not like that, is it Evie?!”

She looked down at the ground and mumbled “No, it’s fine… We t-talked about it y-yesterday. I’m ha-happy to do it if it’s w-what y-you all w-want”

“wuh wuh wuh… Josh really has her beaten down, doesn’t he?” sneered Phoebe. “Poor, poor little Evekins… ‘No, no, it’s fine that my boyfriend exploits me for his own financial gain... I really don’t mind!’  Maybe you’re not the only pathetic loser in all of this, eh Kylie?”

“Yeah, she sounds over the moon about it, Josh!” said Kyle, sarcastically. “I bet she just can’t wait to have people watch it… and come up to her after they’ve seen it, going “Oh, are you that girl that got raped by the Sweatbox Killer?” How can you not see how wrong this whole thing is?!”

“I told you, it’s not that sort of movie! And they’re going to change our names …and it won’t even be set here…” said Josh, sounding angry and frustrated. “Evie said she’s fine with it”

“I’m sure she did…” he said in a sarcastic tone, throwing Evie a sympathetic look. Turning to Tamara with a look of disgust, he said “Just like I said I was happy to go ahead with it, I suppose?”

Tamara breathed out an exasperated sigh and shook her head at him in disappointment.

“Kyle, why don’t you read Episode Nine? I know you never wanted to, but you might understand a bit better the type of film they want to make.” said Josh, trying to sound as reasonable as possible. “It’s not about schlock horror. It’s about psychopathic behaviour…”

“I don’t care what kind of spin you try to put on it.” said Kyle, grimacing in pain as he shifted in the seat. “You’re still going to put it out there for everyone to see… And no, I don’t want to read your grubby little book... I didn’t think you should publish it back then and I think you’ll regret this movie.” He rubbed his face with his hand and breathed out loudly in defeat. “If you want to do it, go ahead… I won’t stand in your way but I think it’s the wrong decision… and down the line you’ll see that too”.

“Well, Kyle, I think you’ll thank me for it when you still have a restaurant five years from now” said Josh, sounding defensive. “Just so you know, we didn’t need your permission anyway. We just wanted to give you the courtesy of letting you know.”

“See?!” said Phoebe, snorting and laughing loudly. “Even they can see what a joke you are. Josh has been making fun of you this whole time and you couldn’t even see what was right in front of your face. They think you’re just a pathetic charity case. Poor Kylie needs a handout because he can’t even provide for his family… How useless are you?!”

“Then what was the point of today?!” asked Kyle, with anger boiling up inside him. “If you’ve already made a decision, what are you doing sitting on my armchair, drinking my coffee, and wasting my time?!”

“Kyle!” shouted Tamara, glaring at him angrily. “Do not speak to them that way! They’re just trying to help us!”

He got to his feet, and grabbed the front of Josh’s T-shirt, dragging him up out of the chair. “I think you should leave now.” snarled Kyle, “I think you should go and make that sordid little movie of yours if that’s what you want… but I don’t ever want to see you again.”

Bonnie stood up and started to growl at Kyle, trying to put her body between them. He let go of Josh’s shirt and took a step back. Josh lifted the handle of the harness on Bonnie’s back, and gave Kyle a sad smile, “Fine, Kyle. We’ll go… I’m going to assume that this is just the drugs talking… I’m still going to make sure you get your cut… for Tamara’s sake”

Kyle sighed loudly and shook his head, wondering what had become of the Josh he used to know. This cocky young man, with an ego the size of Australia, wasn’t half as likeable as the Josh he’d lived with all those years ago. He turned and looked at Evie, who was standing with her mouth hanging open in shock. This wasn’t the feisty and opinionated girl he’d once known either. They all knew that Evie had sustained significant brain damage, and it had affected her personality, but sometimes it was easy to forget that. It was only times like this that it became really apparent. She was clearly letting Josh walk all over her!  He gave her a sympathetic smile and said, “Don’t let him bully you forever, Evie. You’re worth a lot more than the price tag he’s put on you!”

 

*****

 

“Kyle, come out here now!” shouted Tamara from the living-room. “KYLE!” she shouted again, this time sounding angrier than he’d ever heard her.

“Ooh, Kylie’s in trouble now!” sang Phoebe with a vicious smile on her face. “Tamara is so gonna kick your little butt, and you’re just gonna bend over and take it like you always do, aren’t you Princess?!” She followed him laughing and clapping her hands in excitement as he made his way out of the bedroom into the living-room. “This I have to see!” she said, grinning from ear to ear.

He walked into the living-room, already boiling up inside with anger. “What?!” he said, clenching his fist on his good hand. “I don’t think we should do this right now, Tamara… I think we’ll both say things we don’t mean!”

 

“I can’t believe you did that, Kyle! I can’t believe you did that!” shouted Tamara, stamping her foot in anger. “You can’t talk to Josh and Evie that way! They’re basically family!” Her eyes filled with tears and her face went bright red. “They wanted to help us Kyle! They wanted to help us!”

“We don’t need that kind of help!” he shouted. “He might be willing to prostitute himself for money… and poor Evie… but I’m not! How hard is that for you to understand?! Okay, we need money, I get that… but there have to be other ways!”

 

“There is no other way” she said through gritted teeth. She walked over to him and looked up at him with an anger he’d never seen before and shoved him hard in the chest. “Who else is going to hand us fifty thousand dollars? Who?!”

 

He collapsed back onto one of the armchairs, gasping in pain, and clutching at his ribs. “Tamara!” he wheezed, looking up at her in fear, “Please don’t!”

“I told you Tamara was going to kick your ass!” giggled Phoebe. “Tell me, Kylie, do you let all the women in your life beat you? What would those big brothers of yours think if they could see you now?!”

 

She looked shocked, seeing the fear in his face, and stepped back. “Kyle, you just make me so angry sometimes! You just won’t listen and I get so frustrated!”

He dragged himself to his feet and started to walk away but Tamara grabbed the back of his shirt to stop him from going. “Kyle, get back here. You don’t get to just walk away from me!” she said, scowling at him as he turned around. “We’re going to talk about this.”

“Oh, she really does wear the trousers in this relationship, doesn’t she?!” sneered Phoebe. He flinched as she ran her hand lightly over the crotch of his jeans and smiled at him mockingly, “But then, I suppose someone has to!”

“Tamara, you need to leave me alone right now” he said, freeing himself from her grip and moving off towards the back door. He wanted out of this room and away from Tamara as soon as possible. He was finding it hard to keep his temper and he didn’t want to say something to Tamara that he’d regret later. He had enough regrets in his life. Phoebe was following him, matching him step for step, and breathing down the back of his neck. He needed to be alone more than anything in the world but he knew that wasn’t possible. The noise was deafening. Phoebe just wouldn’t shut up and he had no way of shutting her out…

Tamara caught up with him and grabbed his shoulder, spinning him round, and causing him immense pain. He let out an anguished cry and put his right hand up to massage his shoulder. “Stop, Tamara!” he wheezed out, as he tried to calm his breathing.

“Ooh, she got you good that time, Kylie!” laughed Phoebe. “Squealing like a little girl too?! She must wonder what she married.”

“Stop it!” he said, blocking his ears as Phoebe’s laughter echoed through his head. “Stop it! I can’t listen to you anymore! I can’t!”

“Stop it! Oh please, stop it!” she teased, mimicking his voice back at him. She stood beside Tamara, grinning at him with a malicious look in her eye, “Poor little Kylie! Teased by his ex-girlfriend! Just can’t take it anymore… Crying like some pathetic little girl!”

“Kyle, you need to stop this… you need to see someone…” said Tamara pleading with him, but he was finding it hard to hear her over Phoebe’s endless taunting. She just wouldn’t stop talking and it was drowning Tamara out.

“SHUT UP!” he yelled, suddenly punching the wall beside Tamara’s head. “SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP!” he roared, punching the wall repeatedly until his knuckles bled. He was crying now with his eyes closed and breathing heavily while he nursed his bruised and bleeding hand.  Opening his eyes, he saw Tamara staring at him in fear, breathing rapidly, and flattened up against the wall. With a sudden jolt to his stomach, he realised how frightening that must have seemed to her, and how threatening towards her. How could he explain to her that it had nothing to do with her, and that he’d been reacting to the ghost of his dead girlfriend? “I’m sorry Tam, I’m so sorry!” he said, his eyes widening with fear. “I didn’t mean to scare you”.

She walked away from him, backing across the room, as though she was frightened to turn her back on him, and said, “I’m going to take the boys to mum and dad’s for a few days. I think we both need a bit of space”.