The Right Treatment (13 page)

Aoife pulled on her running gear. She didn’t bother to stop for breakfast, just filled a water bottle and left. She had to pound her anger out on the pavement. When she returned an hour later, he had already left. She ate and went to the clinic.

Aoife was so pleased that Katie was there when she arrived. It somehow vindicated her decision.

“No point in shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted,” Katie greeted her cheerily.

“I couldn’t agree more,” Aoife replied. It was thankfully an uneventful morning and Aoife had time to call Dr. Smith’s receptionist who rescheduled her appointment for the following day. She was on the home stretch. Once she finished work, Aoife departed from her normal schedule. Matt could suck it up as far as she was concerned. First she went apartment hunting, and was thrilled to find a one-bed available ten minutes from her school. It was clean and neat and in her price range. She signed a six-month contract on the spot and paid over the deposit and first month’s rent in exchange for the keys. She couldn’t help but recalling Katie’s comment about locking the stable door, but in this instance it was the right thing to do. Matt obviously regretted what had happened. And Aoife felt she had outstayed her welcome.

She had one more thing to do before returning to Matt’s apartment. It was time to go and see Fiona. She owed her friend so much. As Fiona hadn’t replied to her text the day before, Aoife was well aware that she might refuse to see her, so she called over unannounced, armed with a bottle of wine and flowers. That Fiona was surprised was obvious, but she was welcoming. More welcoming than Aoife thought she deserved, inviting her in with a smile.

“Are you allowed to drink?” Fiona asked when Aoife passed her the wine.

“Depends who you’re talking to; Dr. Dread would say no, but he says no to everything. Dr. Smith says it’s fine.”

“Let’s go with Dr. Smith then. What happened to your face?”

“It came too close to a fist. But it’s fine. Honestly.”

“My God, not Matt’s, I trust?”

Aoife laughed. “Matt may be a bit of a tyrant at times, but he’d never resort to fists.” She had been going to say he’d never hit a woman, but he did, he had spanked her more times than she cared to remember. But how would she even begin to explain the difference to Fiona? She felt her face flush with confusion. Even ‘til this very minute, she hadn’t realised the difference. And certainly not when she was face down, at his mercy. At those moments, he was a total woman beater and bully in her eyes. But his intention had always been to correct her, not harm her. The subtle but immense difference was even hard for her to get her head around. She told Fiona of the incident the previous day.

“I’m surprised Matt let you out of his sight today.”

“Umm, he didn’t want to, but we had words. I think it’s time for me to move on. I have a new apartment. I’m moving out tomorrow. Anyway, I didn’t come here to dump my crap on you again. I came to apologise for doing it so much before. I was a terrible friend: a liability and a user, and I’m so sorry. I hope you can find it in you for us to be friends again. But I totally understand if you don’t want to.”

“That took a lot of courage, thank you,” Fiona replied as she hugged Aoife. “I’ve missed you, to tell the truth. It’s not the same moaning about Pete to the women at work.”

Once she had finished the glass of wine, Aoife reluctantly rose to leave. She wasn’t relishing returning to Matt’s apartment. She had turned off her phone all day in the hope of giving him some time to cool off.

She was almost disappointed when Matt wasn’t there. She had psyched herself up for a big showdown. Aoife didn’t even get the chance to tell him that she was moving out.

When she got up at six the next morning, having spent the night tossing and turning with anxiety about facing Matt, there was still no sign of him. Instead of going for her run, she used the time she had to pack up her belongings. Aoife was sad to be leaving secretively, but she equally wasn’t waiting around for days or weeks until Matt deigned to face her again. Aoife didn’t have much stuff in Matt’s apartment; most of her belongings had been boxed up by Fiona and were ready for collection whenever suited Aoife. It happened that today suited her very well. If she stayed another day with Matt, she might well just have to tell him what an uptight, sanctimonious son of a bitch he had become. Generous to a fault with his time, money, and medical care, but all generosity of spirit negated by his total unwillingness to put himself in someone else’s shoes, even for one minute. The way Aoife saw it, empathy had died in him, and it was a massive pity as it had once been his best characteristic. What she had said yesterday was only the tip of the iceberg. If he was so offended with that, he’d explode with the rest. It was time to go, while she was still grateful and before she hated him. Aoife really didn’t want to hate him, not while they had so many shared happy memories. And without him, she might not even be fit to move out on her own. She owed him everything, even if he drove her insane. It didn’t help that she had slept with him either. It complicated everything. Why the hell did she expect different? She had known how shut off he had become.

Aoife put in her hours at the rehab, but her heart wasn’t in it. She spent most of the day composing a letter for Matt. Before she knew it, she was done and heading for her appointment with Dr. Smith.

“Nice shiner,” he greeted her. “Are you okay? I don’t mean your face. It must have been scary.”

It was so good to be asked that! To be treated like a normal person, with normal emotions.

“Not at the time, it happened too fast. But it’s hard to get his picture out of my head when I try to relax.” Aoife admitted. She related the incident, and how it made her feel, and her fear of taking anything to calm her. To her relief, Dr. Smith didn’t give her any platitudes. He understood her reluctance to take anything, and made it obvious he admired it, but he insisted she call him anytime, day or night if she got scared or needed help. He signed her off on her programme for returning to work.

“Matt wants you to stay with him a little longer after what happened, maybe you should consider it?”

“I really don’t think so. He’s been brilliant. But it’s time for me to do this for me.” Her words felt hollow to her. Yeah, Matt had been brilliant, but he had also hurt her terribly and she was aching inside. Staying there longer would be a disaster for her.

“I can see that. If you learn to focus on all you have achieved in your life, especially given the difficulties you’ve had, you will see you are far stronger than you think. It has been a pleasure working with you. I do hope you will keep in touch and learn to see me as a friend,” Dr. Smith said as she stood to leave.

“Thank you, Dr. Smith. You’ve made me see a lot of things very differently.”

“Stay safe and keep in touch.” Aoife felt the tears well in her eyes and almost ran out of the office. He was the father she would love to have had. A listener, a guide, and a rock. Much as she had resented their early sessions, she realised she would miss him like mad. He had treated her differently to most initially, because of Matt, but somewhere along the line, they had connected deeply and he had helped her more than he would ever know.

Now a free woman, Aoife’s first port of call was the supermarket to stock up on enough groceries to get her through the following day. Then she went to her new apartment. It felt so good to have a place to call her own again. She sat down at the small table and grabbed a notebook from her bag and started writing. It was seven p.m. when Aoife finally made it back to Matt’s to pick up her bags.

“Can you wait ten minutes?” Aoife asked the cabbie.

She paid him for the first leg of the journey plus a few pounds extra as an incentive to stay. She made her way into the apartment and her heart sank. It looked like ten minutes was all she would need. It grieved her that Matt wasn’t there so she could say goodbye properly, but it didn’t surprise her. Several times she had called his phone and he had pushed her straight through to voicemail. She left the letter she had written on his kitchen table. Aoife couldn’t hold back the tears that trailed down her cheeks. She had promised herself that no matter what, she wouldn’t cry. She had lied. This wasn’t what her departure was meant to be like—it was meant to be a triumph. An announcement that she had made it.

Chapter Eleven

Almost two months had passed since Aoife had left and Matt still couldn’t come to terms with it. He knew he had acted like a total twat in the end. He should have talked to her, begged her to stay. Told her she was right even. Why could he not just have spoken up when she flew at him? Told her he didn’t want her going to the centre because he couldn’t bear the thought of her being hurt again by his hand, because he had put her into the clinic in the first place. He had caused her pain as surely as if he had held the syringe and demanded drugs.

But no. He had done something so damn juvenile he shuddered to think of it. He refused to talk to her and went and got drunk. Drunk! As if drink ever solved anything. Then he had stayed out all night rather than face her. Even now, remembering that hangover made him feel ill again. He had never been so shitfaced in all his life. When he returned the next day, he spotted the letter and he knew it was over. He had lost.

Oh, he had aced his project, of that he had no doubt. Aoife would never use drugs again. Hell, she couldn’t even take prescription ones when she needed them without a guilty conscience. She was suitably corrected and chastised. And she was strong, strong enough not to need him anymore. He was happy for her. Really, he was. He just wasn’t so happy for himself.

At first, he had been so angry with her. How dare she accuse him of lack of empathy? The cheek of her to question his methods or his consideration of his patients. He had taken a massive chance on her, bringing her home with him, trying to rehabilitate her. He had put everything on the line, possibly even his career, had the truth ever come out. All because he had a soft spot for her years ago. Her note on departure had been brief, thanking him for his help, but saying she needed to get her life back in order. That was it! Then he hadn’t heard from her for over a week.

After that, she began to telephone him, calling frequently, but he just couldn’t bring himself to accept her calls. She sent him a couple of letters, begging him to get in touch. Apologising even. He read them and then folded them neatly, storing them away out of his sight. At first it had been anger; how dare she walk out without saying goodbye? Before long though, Matt realised he had plenty to be ashamed of, and that made it even harder to contemplate talking to her.

Matt knew Paul kept in regular contact with Aoife. For some reason, he seemed to have a real interest in her. Through him, Matt knew she was back at work and they had put nothing on her employee file—her record was still clean. Officially, she had been off with work-related stress. Again he was glad. She was excellent at what she did and she deserved a break.

As far as Matt knew, she was both happy and clean. He heard that her assailant from the rehab had been given a ten-year sentence for attempted murder. That had been the third clinic he had pulled that stunt in, and he had managed to flee the others before being caught. Although he was very relieved that he wouldn’t be free to harm Aoife, he couldn’t help but feel sorry for him. He was raised in an inner city hellhole and his path was mapped out for him before he was even born.

Matt cursed himself that he had not been able to show Aoife that same understanding when she needed it most. Why had he assumed her problems were somehow less because she was born on the right side of the street? And more than anything, why had he never told her even once, that he cared for her, that he wanted her? So what if she had rejected him; he had survived that once before. He should have told her he didn’t want her to go to the clinic because he couldn’t bear to see her back in the hospital, caused by his so-called therapy. But he didn’t.

Now that he was no longer in Emergency, Matt didn’t have the regular weekend excesses to deal with. Occasionally he had the fallout of the more serious cases, those who had organ damage. There was one young woman, Louise, who he was treating while she waited for a kidney transplant. Initially, Matt was raging that Louise was on the transplant list, especially when she got a match sooner than one of his diabetic patients who had been on the list forever. It seemed a damn waste giving her a kidney when her injuries were totally self-inflicted.

“I wish they would give the kidney to someone else,” Louise said when he told her they had a possible match and he was doing a check-up to ensure she was fit for surgery, echoing his own feelings on the subject. “It would be better if I had died.” She refused to sign the consent form.

“With an attitude like that, I wish there was someone else I could give it to,” he admonished harshly. She was twenty-two years old. She had no right to talk about dying. If he expected his chastisement to hit home, he was mistaken.

“There is no one to care if I live or die. Neither of my parents have even bothered to visit me here. When they divorced, they didn’t fight for custody of me, they fought to force the other to take me. I never fitted into their busy lives.”

“That’s enough,” Matt chided. “You’re twenty-two years old. It’s not about them anymore, this is your life. Now live it.” He called Paul to talk her into signing the consent form, but he couldn’t help thinking of Aoife. She had felt the same, but Matt hadn’t appreciated it, and now it was too late. He was incredibly relieved when Paul told him Louise had signed the release form.

Over the following days and weeks, Matt became obsessed with Louise. He visited her every spare moment he had. At first to check on her physical wellbeing, fearing she might reject her kidney. Then over time, he started probing about her youth. The only child of a socialite couple, Louise had spent her childhood being passed from pillar to post, nanny to boarding school to college.