Learning To Trust Again

Rebecca had slammed the phone down, not waiting for Jake’s goodbye. She was furious with herself and with him but she had no time to sort through that now. She had to focus on Todd. Tossing aside the covers she leapt out of bed and dragged on some tracksuit pants and a jumper. She didn’t bother with make-up or brushing her hair. Instead she just grabbed a hair tie and pulling her hair into a pony tail walked into the living room.

Stepping into her runners she tied them, her finger moving fast, but without fumbling. In her job she was used to reacting to emergencies, she knew how important it was to keep her cool. So shutting out the fact that this time it was different, that this time it was her brother, she grabbed her bag and phone off the coffee table and was out the door in under five minutes.

She jogged down the stairs to the street and then down the second set beside it that led to the underground car park below her building Rebecca unlocked her car and jumped inside. But for a minute she didn’t move. All of a sudden it struck her that nothing else was moving, nothing had changed. Looking around it seemed surreal to her that here, there was hardly a sound to be heard, everything was quiet and peaceful as it should be at this time of night. And yet not far away her brother had been beaten so badly that now he was being transported to hospital. How was it possible that such an emergency could be occurring for her and yet everything around her remained undisturbed? It didn’t seem right. It felt like there should be some acknowledgement from her surroundings that things were not as they should be. Some change to signify that something in the world besides her was affected. But there just wasn’t and it gave her a strange, hollow feeling of being alone. She shivered.

Then moving her focus back to the situation at hand she placed the key in the ignition and turned it. The car started first go, despite her not having driven it for weeks and she made a mental note to thank her father for encouraging her to spend a little extra and buy a reliable car. She pulled out of the parking space and drove the short distance to work.

Parking in the nearly deserted staff car park, Rebecca hurried into emergency. She passed two ambulances parked near the entrance on her way in and wondered if Todd had been in one of them. Jake hadn’t told her where the attack had happened so she didn’t know how long it would have taken them to arrive. But considering they had agreed to dispatch him to her hospital, they can’t have been too far out of the area and knowing they had a head start on her she thought it was more than likely her brother has been transported in one of them.