Page 22 of Unnecessary Drama

‘Is anyone else with you?’ Mum doesn’t trust men in emergency situations.

‘No.’

‘What hospital are you at? And what did the doctors say exactly?’

I tell her as much information as I can.

‘I’m on my way.’

‘Mum, no. You’re in the middle of a weekend away that you’ve been looking forward to all year. You have a full day of massages booked tomorrow. There’s no point driving up tonight. I’ll be home and safely in bed asleep before you even get here. Everything is fine. I will give you constant text updates. The cyst has burst, it’s gone, there’s no internal bleeding, all I have to do now is rest for a few days.’

I take a moment to appreciate how calm and mature and adult I sound.

I’m trying to be brave, and my rational brain knows everything I am saying is right, but my irrational brain, the part of my brain that reverts to being five years old, the part of my brain that is lonely and scared and homesick, that part wants Mum to come. That part wants her to drive at full speed up the highway straight to the hospital, screeching through yellow lights, taking corners too tightly, parking in a spot reserved for doctors, not caring about anything but me, me, me. I want her to sit in the chair next to my bed and watch me sleep, staying awake all night, and then I want her to hold my hand and cradle my head the whole time, stroke my hair like when I was little. I thought I was homesick before this, but now I am mum-sick. I need her so badly. I want to smack away anyone who is not her.

There’s no way I can do this a second longer without her.

‘Okay, well call me as soon as they tell you anything else. Anything else, okay? My phone is on. And call Lauren. She can drive up.’

‘I don’t want Lauren here, she’ll stress me out.’ I do kind of want Lauren here, because Lauren is as much comfort as Mum in many ways, but Lauren also makes me tense. She’ll say something inappropriate. She’ll flirt with doctors and nurses. She’ll go off somewhere and not come back for ages. She’ll be loud and boisterous and disturb the other people in the room, or maybe she won’t do any of these things, but there’s the possibility, the unpredictability, the tension that comes with being around Lauren. And then she’ll need to stay at my house, I don’t want her to see…I don’t want her to see or to know, what I have here. My world is still too small and fragile.

‘Are you sure you’ll be okay?’ Mum says.

‘Yes. I’ll be fine.’

‘I’ll call you again a bit later okay?’

‘Okay.’

‘Love you, sweetheart.’

I hang up and, without warning, there are tears in my eyes. She’s not coming. I pretend I urgently need to fiddle with the remote-control thingy that operates the bed, but really I need a distraction to stop the tears. My ovary hurts and I’ve never been in a hospital before and I’m scared of the pain meds they’ve given me and I want my mum.

‘Brooke?’ Jesse is at the door.

‘Oh, hi,’ I say, pinching my arm under the blanket to push my tears back. ‘You’re here. I mean, you’re still here.’

‘I’m still here. Are you okay?’ He sounds really worried. He probably thinks I’ve been given some horrible terminal diagnosis.

‘I’m fine,’ I say, and quickly wipe my eyes, swallowing hard, clearing my throat, using my most upbeat voice. ‘It’s a…a ruptured ovarian cyst!’

That was maybe a little too upbeat. Especially because cyst is a very ugly word, when you say it out loud.

‘Oh, okay. Is that serious?’

‘Sometimes. But they think mine is fine. I can go home soon.’

‘Good, good.’ He looks awkward.

There was an ease between us when things felt urgent, but now, with me in a hospital gown and in a bed, with a diagnosis and a cyst—well, a former cyst—and him hovering there, it feels strange. We are not friends. This is way too much. We’ve leveljumped from nemeses to hospital buddies. No. I need to find a way to roll this back.

‘You waited all this time?’ I ask. It’s been hours since I left him. My heart is softening, but I’m in there, building the barriers back up as fast as they crumble.

‘Oh yeah. I went to the canteen and had a coffee, and then I, um, I went to the, um, gift shop.’ He’s holding a bag with the gift-shop logo on it, but he doesn’t offer any more information.

‘What did you buy?’ I ask, looking at the bag.

‘Just something to fill time,’ he says.