TaNkGiRly 的網路日誌

Endymion



Chapter 7



Disturbance had now somehow managed to break out of the recycling bin, proudly marching all over the place and have every door wide open, welcoming another annoy bloody guest: Crush. They magnified themselves three times bigger than they used to, talking to each other with extra loud volume, ignored whoever happened to be passing by and causing wave after wave of migrans which dearly driving me nuts.

Yes, I had a crush on Alex the Endymion and I admitted it was much more serious than I initially estimated.

No, I didn’t realise how serious this had become until Alex said those godknowswhathemeans things to me. Great! Now I’ve lost all my senses because of it and my mind was in a state of complete chaos. I had just managed convincing myself Carl was still the centrepiece of my heart earlier and now it seemed Carl had been squeezed to the corner by Disturbance and Crush’s extremely annoy performance. Now Alex actually stood pretty close to the centre, winking at me and smiling at the two unwelcome giant guests.

“Thanks a lot, guys!!!” He waved at them.

“No worry, mate!” They waved back, loud volume and laughing like Emperor Palpintine in Star War series.

And no, this was not good. Not good at all.

I was in a serous trouble here.

Well, first, I had just broken up….okay, officially broken up, with Carl. It was less then one semester and I actually managed to have a crush on someone else? What kind of person was I? Was having huge fallout with my parents and coming all the way from Australia with Carl means anything to me at all? Were all those heartaches after realising it was too late mean anything to me at all? Was the past few years’ life I shared with Carl, all these sweet and loving memories, laughter and cries, means nothing to me at all? Was I cold blooded? Or did I not love Carl as deep as I thought? Second, Alex actually had a girlfriend here. Well, I supposed having a crush on someone didn’t necessary means having an affair with that person, but was I not feeling guilty about it? No! I wouldn’t think so. Plus Kate was just ten times better than me. I wouldn’t think I stood any chance whatsoever at all if I seriously considering competing with her. Third….

Christ.

Third was he had no legs.

Just think about it, I had a crush on someone who had no legs.

Even I considering this was slightly amusing, I wonder what others would think about this?

I could actually heard Zoë screaming right at me: “Are you fucking out of your mind? All those young, healthy and with all bits and pieces included lads I’ve been trying my butt off to introduce them to you, you choose someone who has no leg?”

But then again, did I really care about what others might think?

Hmm, I didn’t know. I suppose I did care about it to some degree, otherwise why on earth did I risk the dark circle around my eyes by lying in the stretched bed with eyes wide open and totally stressed out?

I quietly turned around, watching Alex sounded asleep (the blooded evil cheek of him!).

Now he was back to the Endymion again.

The quiet Endymion.

The relaxed Endymion.

The timeless Endymion.

Maybe for the last couple of months he never woken up at all, maybe it was all my imagination.

What was I going to do with my new discovery?

Sensing it was decision time, Disturbance and Crush turned their heads around and looked at me anxiously: “Yeah, what are you going to do about us?”

I stared at them.

Hmm.

“Hmm…” I thought to myself: “I think I should do what I do best: putting them away and ignore them for a while.”

“What?!!” they almost hit the roof: “No! you can’t do that. Anything but that!!!!” before they could make any more comments, I had managed to grab them, shovel them into a big (bigger) rubbish bag, and lock them back to the ‘Alex’ room again, completely ignore their plea.

This crush was going to be just a secret crush.

No one would notice, no one would know a thing.

The light noise and speaking voice downstairs signalled someone had got up. The sun had shunned through the window before I noticed. I rubbed my blood vines filled eyes and wax looked face. Great! Now I had gone through one night with no sleep at all.

Alex acted as nothing had ever happened as I did all those routine measurements. ‘You bastard!’ I threw him an evil when he wasn’t looking (sorry about this, you might complaining this sounded like some quotes coming straight out of the cheap romantic novel. Chey! It almost made myself puke as well, to be really honest.): ‘causing such a stir on me and behave as usual. Why on earth would I have a crush on you?’.

“Morning!” Alex smiled like a innocent little boy as I struggled to unplug some of the tube that was attached to his arm during the night: “Did you have a good sleep?”

“Do I look like I bloody am?” I stared at him: “You snored whole night!” Okay, if you want to act normal, let’s just see who had the best Oscar performance here then.

“Did I?!!!” He pretended to look astonished.

“…..No you didn’t.” I winked before I turned around to get his wheelchair: “You were so quiet, I had to get up two to three times to just to check if there were a human lying in your bed or a corp.”

Ha! Successfully had him in stiches again.

Did I mention his smile was like gentle winter sun and his laughter was like chimes in the lazy quite afternoon? Oh… you reckoned I was being romantic again?

Ahem.

My apology.

Sorry.

Let’s get back to the story, shall we?

We headed downstairs. At the breakfast, Alex’s parents told us they were going to take him to one of their friends’ vineyard at the east coast of the Waiheki Island for lunch. I thought this would be a good chance for me to stay behind and did some study. So I gave Alex’s mum some tablets and some emergency rescue procedure they could do in case something happened, told them I was going to stay behind this time.

Alex’s mum and Kate seemed to be very delighted about me not going with them. Well, let’s face it. I was only a personal carer and didn’t know any of them that well at all before I came here. It was indeed really abrupt for me to go everywhere with them, was it? Every time they bump into someone they knew, they had to gone through all the trouble of thisis…, sheisour……, arhhowyoudoing….., and nicetomeyou routine. Well, I didn’t know about you, although I was trained to be a nurse, I found I was terribly embarrassed by the whole thing. Me, being the only outsider. Every time they tried to talk about something or made some joke about someone they knew, my presence would just made them felt awkward. For example:

“Oy! Do you know that Mrs. Redwood was caught by her fiancé in bed with her personal trainer last week?”

“Are you for real? I knew it was gonna happened some when. Ever since………maybe we shouldn’t talk about this. Look! That nurse is here.”

“Oh yeah!”

You got the picture.

But others, included Alex’s dad and Alex himself, opposed to the idea.

“What if something happened to Al and we don’t know how to handle it?” Nigel and his wife asked.

“What will happen?” Kate cheerfully replied, since she’s been very kin to have a few minutes or two alone with Alex for a while: “ Besides, we can always call her on cellphone, can we?”

“Look, if you guys are really worried, I can go with you.” After all, I was assigned to Alex as a personal carer. I shouldn’t be wondered off and doing my things.

“No! Don’t be silly!” Alex’s mum and Kate chorused.

Off they went.

Now come to think of it, it was equally amazing that they left a house to a nearly complete stranger.

I found that was interesting.

But I had other things to worry about at the moment. It looked like this would be the only time I had this holiday to prepare for my final exam, I might as well used the most of it. Otherwise I might really have to stay in this hospital for another bloody year. Not if I didn’t like this hospital or anything. It just that the humiliation and embarrassment would be much scarier than anything.

So let’s just not dwell with all these rubbish and did some study first, shall we?

Humming the songs, I spread all my textbooks and borrowed lecture notes in my stretch bed, pen and pad in hands, ready to spend a good hour or two on my exam. Very quickly my brain was stuffed with all the diagrams, definitions, and analysis.

About two hours later, my cellphone rang.

No, it wasn’t Alex, or any Alex’s relatives and friends for that matter.

Surprisingly it was Daphne.

Now at this stage, I had understood Daphne enough to know that she was incredibly phone shy person and it would be almost impossible for her to make this call unless something important had happened.

“Oh hello, Daphne. How are you?”

“I am… alright I guess. How’s it? Carl said you have to look after some patient this holiday. Hope you didn’t burn the house down.” Maybe it was just me, but for some reason her voice sounded a bit anxious and excited.

“ Would I ever do that? Putting a suicide bomb is more my cup of tea.” I smiled: “ So how’s things with you, young man? You rang me today just for a social chat?”

“……………Isabella, there is something I need to tell you before I let Carl know.”

“What? Why all of the sudden you sounds all serious? You are not breaking up with him, are you? I knew it! His snore must get to your nerves by now, was it? No worries, you can tell me!!” I giggled, struggled to ease the tension. But it didn’t seem to be working.

“Bella….” All of the sudden Daphne sounded hesitated a bit.

“What’s the matter?”

“Isabella…. I just did some test...”

“What kinds of test?” Oh.

“THE TEST, Isabella.” Then Daphne dropped the bomb: “I am now 6 weeks pregnant.”

I dropped the phone.

I’ve seen this on the televisions, movies and variety of occasions for a long time. I always thought this act was a little too dramatic to exist in the real life and whoever to do this was either over reacting or was basically a drama king/queen. I personally only dropped the phone when I as extremely tired and the person on the other line (usually Zoë) couldn’t stop talking. Never in my wildest dream I would actually dropped the phone myself under this novel-only circumstances.

But this time I actually really dropped the phone.

The wound I once thought was healed had once again being ripped open. The blood once again started to bleed and it was hurt ten times than it was initially caused. My whole body suddenly went numb for a……….hum..about a couple of minutes or so perhaps. Like someone suddenly used a giant hammer smacked the hell out of me. All thoughts that I had prior to this point had gone out of the window, with only echoes bouncing around my head ‘Daphne is pregnant’. By the time I regained my consciousness and pick up the phone, I found my hand was actually shaking.

“Are you there, Bella?” Daphne sounded all worry: “Are you alright?”

“Er.. I am fine.” I cleared my throat, managed to stay calm and acted normal: “Yes, okay, are you sure?”

“I did the test twice, Isabella. What do you think?”

I was speechless.

I really didn’t know what to say.

My heart had gone through an awful lot for the last 24 hours. First I met Alex’s girlfriend Kate for the first time, realising she was awfully pretty; then I found out I was having a crush on Alex and nearly pulled my hairs out wondering what did his words “I think he’s blind” means; now Daphne was telling me she was having a baba. This was too much, I could actually see my mind tight into nuts, bits by bits.

Lord, why didn’t you just kill me.

I knew whatever happened between Carl and Daphne now had nothing to do with me, and I shouldn’t felt anything about this. But they were actually having something that I didn’t have when I was with him, and no, baby was never on the agenda when we were together. I didn’t know, I thought I felt slightly…jealous.

Alright, maybe more than slightly jealous.

The thing was, I didn’t even know what was I jealous about.

Well, how could you jealous of the things that were never yours?

Or, perhaps you were jealous because they were never yours in the first place?

My mind now had suffered some kinds of information overload. Too many emotion issues had shovelled in for the last couple of hours, all of the sudden it became a bit confused indeed.

Now why on earth did Daphne wanted to talk to me before she told Carl? You might ask.

Beats me, I didn’t have a clue about that, either.

“Isabella.”

“Yes, Daphne?”

“Bella, can I keep it?”

“WHAT? Why do you ask me? It’s you guys’ baby.” Astonished, I asked with disbelieve.

“But Carl used to be yours….it’s really hard to explain………after all, I caused you guys broke up… Now I am carrying his child, you might…..I thought you might………” Daphne’s voice went lower and lower, at the end it almost sounded like she was whispering.

Well I had to say women’s instinct sometime were right. She was spotted on this time. People should be amazing how accurate our instinct could lead us sometimes.

She knew I would feel hurt.

She knew I would feel jealous.

Now this was scary, she was actually not much older than I was, how could she be so thoughtful?

Carl actually picked the right woman; she was indeed a wonderful person.

Or shall we forget about the mind reading power of hers for a moment. How was I going to answer? This unborn child’s future was now lying in my hands now.

Of course I wasn’t dumb enough to tell her everything I feel.

“Daphne.”

“Yes?”

“Listen to me, Daphne. I don’t know what makes you have this idea, but you weren’t the one that caused us breaking up. Our chemistry had long gone before you came into the scene, alright?” Okay, so far so good. This part was true anyway, so it wasn’t that difficult: “The relationship would eventually end anyway, do you hear me?” now this was jolly funny. I, the poor ex, was actually ensuring this new girlfriend she wasn’t the one who blamed.

“But Carl seemed so distraught when you just moved out…”

“He did?” He did? “Well, I believe that wasn’t because of what you thought it was. Any couple who’s been together for a long time would have the same difficulties when the relationship ended and one of them move out. Carl and I are now more like friends than lovers. Really, you don’t need to worry, okay?”

“Okay……….”

“So go ahead and keep the bloody baby! Don’t worry your scone out over this silly issue, alright?”

“So you are not jealous or anything?”

“No.” Fingers crossed.

“Isabella.”

“Yeah?”

“Thank you. You are very kind.”

“What? Don’t you tell me you had just realising now, are you?” I made a few sincerely laughing sound before I hang up the phone.