A Nurse In Crisis

Two couples had had to pull out of a trip some friends of Marshall’s had planned, and he’d invited Aimee to join him in taking up the two spare rooms, already booked and paid for. They’d had a thoroughly wonderful time on the slopes and with Marshall’s four friends. Simmering below this, as yet unacknowledged, had been a stirring of the senses she’d forgotten about, hadn’t felt since…when? Her twenties? She already had a strong inkling about its importance.

Marshall had felt it, too. She was quite sure of that. They’d both sensed the unfurling of a physicality which had been dormant in each of them for a long time. But the six-hour journey back to Sydney after the weekend was over, in the four-wheel drive the six of them had rented, had broken the mood somewhat. Everyone had been tired, and the other two women, Penelope and Sandra, had been getting on each other’s nerves.

At her home, Marshall had helped Aimee to carry in her luggage, saying to her quickly at the door, ‘Can’t stop. Geoff’s on a short fuse.’ He’d taken her hands between his and she’d loved the warm, engulfing feel of his touch. Then he’d said something very quick and sketchy about ‘doing something together’ very soon.

His swift, tender kiss had brushed her cheek and the corner of her mouth, lasting only a moment, yet more than twenty-four hours later it still seemed to tingle on her skin.

I’m falling in love with him, Aimee realised. I’m really, truly falling in love with him.

It felt wonderful, and at the same time very, very frightening. She was fifty and he was fifty-one. They both had grown-up children, including each of them a daughter who would soon make them grandparents for the first time. Perhaps, after all, it was good that he’d cried off tonight with that brief phone call. She really had to keep her feet on the ground about this!

For the next hour and a half, Aimee did just that. She did sensible things, like ironing blouses and teatowels, and cleaning the cupboard under the sink. She made herself a mushroom omelette for dinner, and washed the dishes immediately afterwards. She rang her son Thomas, who was doing three months of field research near Cairns, and her daughter Sarah, who was having a very difficult time with her first pregnancy, which had now reached the end of the second trimester.

Sarah fretted over the phone, ‘My friend Louise says she never felt like this. And she thinks I look huge, but the ultrasound showed it’s not twins.’

‘When’s your next appointment?’ Aimee asked her daughter.

‘Next week.’

‘Write down all your concerns so you remember everything you want to ask the doctor. And if you’re really worried, give him a call tomorrow and ask if he can see you sooner.’

It was sensible advice, received with thanks from Sarah.

Then Aimee spoiled it all by pouring herself a glass of white wine—only a small one—letting down her long hair, turning off all the lights except the stained-glass lamp on the end table and dancing with her eyes closed to a compilation tape that Sarah had made for her, featuring Elvis Presley, Roy Orbison and the Rolling Stones.

How old was fifty, anyway? Not old at all! Younger than Mick Jagger. And she’d just spent the weekend skiing, for heaven’s sake!

Then the doorbell rang. It might, in fact, have been ringing for a while. There was no point at all in listening to the Rolling Stones unless you listened to them loud!

Half-empty wineglass in her hand and silver-white hair flowing down her back, she went to answer it, almost hoping that it would be grumpy Gordon Parker from across the street, complaining about the music. Her lounge-room window was open and it was possible that the sound carried that far, although there was a thick screening of trees and shrubs in the way.

Gordon was only a year or two older than she was, but he was always on about ‘young people today’, and she always felt highly defensive on behalf of Sarah and Thomas and her youngest son William, who weren’t ‘lazy and rude and undisciplined’ at all.

Here I come, Gordon Parker, and I’m going to vigorously defend my right to listen to ‘Paint It Black’ in the privacy of my own home at eight o’clock in the evening, although I may agree to turn down the volume a notch or two!

She opened the door.

‘Uh…’ Marshall Irwin began awkwardly.

Aimee gasped, and it was probably fortunate that she didn’t have any pockets in her old black cotton and Lycra leggings to stuff the wineglass into, slurp of Chardonnay included. ‘Marshall! Come in…’

He looked achingly good, incredibly masculine and a lot better than Mick Jagger. He’d obviously been jogging, though he was only slightly out of breath. A dark blue T-shirt clung closely to a sinewy and nicely muscled frame. Loose black twill-weave running shorts showed off legs that were no strangers to exercise. They were brown, knotty, strong and roughened by dark hair. It was only two weeks until Sydney’s well-known ‘City to Surf’ race, which he entered every year.

In the surgery, he usually wore glasses. Aimee liked the aura of experience and wisdom which the rectangular wire frames lent to his face. At the moment he wasn’t wearing them and she could see his eyes, and it was starting to be a distinct possibility that she liked those even better than the glasses. They were blue, like the blue of willow-pattern china, steady and twinkling and…uncertain.

‘Should I?’ he said. ‘You look as if you’re…’ He stopped.

Having a party? Oh, hell, this was embarrassing! Lonely widow, dancing her heart out in the dark. Secret women’s business, indeed!

‘I’m not,’ Aimee said. ‘At least, I was, but…’

‘Sorry?’

‘Please, come in!’ She practically dragged him through the doorway by both hands, with the wineglass pressed between her fingers and his. ‘I was…dancing, that’s all.’

‘Paint It Black’ came to an end, and ‘Pretty Woman’ came on instead. Following her down the hallway, Marshall laughed. ‘Dancing? All by yourself?’

‘I know. It’s—’

‘Delightful! It’s absolutely delightful, Aimee,’ he repeated softly, and before she knew it he’d taken the wine-glass from her hand and plonked it down on the sideboard, then whirled her to face him. He took her hands in his and began rocking along with her to the jaunty, driving beat. He was good at it, unselfconscious and naturally attuned to the rhythm. ‘Do you do it often?’

‘No!’ she denied frantically, then added, opting for greater honesty, ‘But I often feel that I should. When I do it, it’s so nice. Not really a lonely feeling, dancing alone, because it’s so exhilarating, and I usually phone Sarah or someone afterwards, and anyway William only left home at the beginning of the year…’

‘Did he join in?’

‘No, he laughed at me! But in a nice way. He thinks the Rolling Stones are dreadfully old-fashioned. He likes Radiohead and Smashing Pumpkins and Powderfinger.’

‘I’m impressed at the way you can reel off the names!’

The home-made tape came to an end, making the last few notes of the song wobble before they cut off, and the silence was too sudden. They both stood in the centre of the room like boats beached by a low tide.

‘Ah-h-h!’ Aimee said to break it, lifting her hair up onto her head to cool her neck. She was more breathless than Marshall had been after his jog.

‘I had to come,’ he said, his voice suddenly low and serious.

She looked up at him, alarmed.

‘No,’ he hastened to answer her. ‘Nothing’s happened. But when I told you I wouldn’t be good company because of feeling low over Mrs Deutschkron’s prognosis, I realised…I can already tell this isn’t going to come out right!…that that was exactly why I should want to see you, and why I did want to see you. Damn!’

‘Marshall?’

‘I was right. It hardly sounds like a compliment, does it? That I was down, so I wanted to inflict it on you and added your house to the route of my evening jog. Oh, but, Aimee, I don’t want to waste any more time on explanations! I don’t! This is what I want…’

He pulled her into his arms slowly, with grace and care, as if it was something he hadn’t done in a long time but had no doubts about the rightness of doing now.

Coming up against his chest, still breathless, Aimee had no doubts either. Her body and her heart were responding more strongly than she’d thought they had the power to do. Her heart was pounding, in fact, and her breathing was light and fluttery. They were both a little sweaty and damp, both dressed in soft clothing that clung intimately.

But before she had time to map the places their bodies touched with such electrifying effect, he was kissing her. Not the rather courteous, old-fashioned press of his lips to the corner of her mouth that he’d given her on Sunday evening, but a real, honest-to-goodness, hot, passionate smooch.

It felt…wonderful! And very quickly much more than a smooch. A…A…There wasn’t a better word in any language she knew.

Oh, stop thinking about it, Aimee!

She did, and just gave herself to the endless moment instead. Slowly, his arms came fully around her, one hand resting against her hip at first, then sliding across to lazily trace the curve of her rear, still satisfactorily taut and shapely beneath the close-fitting leggings.

Marsh’s other hand had crossed her back and kneaded her shoulder, and she had to arch and stretch her neck up to reach him with her own mouth, creating a strangely pleasant feeling that she’d topple backwards if he didn’t have her so tightly and preciously enclosed in his arms.

His face was a little rough. His body was firm, and still hot from his run. His mouth was confident, as if now that he’d jumped in at the deep end he’d remembered that he was good at this.