Page 14 of Prognosis Temporary

‘We can’t be all things to all people, Callie. It wasn’t your fault.’

She knew that. She did know it. And there was something about the gentle understanding in his voice that told her he knew it, too.

On a deeply personal level, not just occupationally.

A familiar pain grew in her chest and the pressure build-up behind her eyes was almost unbearable. A tear trekked down her face as the urge to unburden grew to overwhelming force.

For God’s sake, she’d just shared the most intimate thing two human beings could share. She’d been as physically vulnerable as it was possible to be with a man. But to feel such an emotional connection? This compulsion to open up was a whole new level of intimacy. So much so her hands trembled.

‘Callie?’ he whispered, stroking her back again. ‘Talk to me.’

His silky tone was so inviting. So soft. So understanding. If she didn’t say something, say what was on her mind, she was going to burst. And in some strange way Callie couldn’t understand, she trusted him. It was bizarre. She barely knew him but she knew she could tell him this.

The stroke of Sebastian’s palm both soothed and encouraged and somehow it seemed easier to spill her emotional baggage to a stranger in the dark.

‘It was...my brother. Not a client. My brother committed suicide from that bridge eight years ago yesterday. I was there, talking to him, trying to talk him down, but...’

His hand stilled and Callie opened her eyes. She could only imagine the red flags her admission had raised. Could he separate out Sebastian the psychologist from Seb the lover? The mattress gave then and suddenly he was behind her, opening his legs wide and snuggling her into the V between his thighs, his powerful quads bracketing hers.

Wrapping both arms around her waist, he pulled her in, his front to her back. ‘I’m sorry.’

Callie sagged against him as if she’d just had a ten-tonne block of concrete lifted from her shoulders. ‘It was a long time ago.’

He dropped a kiss on her shoulder. ‘What was his name?’

‘An...’ Callie faltered, a thickness rising in her throat.

Nobody involved in the case back then had ever been particularly interested in his name. He had just been a system failure. A chart number. And people who knew she’d been Zack’s aunt and guardian had been too embarrassed or polite to ask. She was curiously touched by the way he’d just humanised her brother.

‘Andrew.’

He rested his chin on her shoulder. ‘Did Andrew have problems or...?’

‘He was a schizophrenic.’

‘Ah.’

Callie drew in a ragged breath. It still hurt to talk about him. But it was nice to acknowledge his existence after years of avoiding the topic.

‘He’d been in and out of psych wards from the age of sixteen. He was non-compliant with his meds and...transient... homeless for the last few years...’

She wondered if the ugly scene at the restaurant was now making more sense for Sebastian.

‘That must have been difficult.’

Callie remembered those years of trying to help, trying to save him, trying to get him to see reason. Trying to be sister, mother and health professional, and failing at all of them. Learning the hard way that you just couldn’t help someone who didn’t want to be helped.

‘The voices just got too much for him.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said again and the empathy in his voice was thick and tangible.

They were quiet for a while, sitting in what felt a strange kind of solidarity. After a while he shuffled back and she followed him, lying down with him again, turning into his side and draping an arm over his chest.

‘Is that why you became a psych nurse?’ he asked into the silence that stretched between them that already felt scarily natural.

Callie flipped over so she was lying on her stomach, her chin propped on one of his very fine pectoral muscles. ‘My mother was bipolar and Andy was diagnosed at sixteen. I didn’t seem to be able to help either of them but I wanted to be able to do something. To try and help others. To...I don’t know, understand, maybe.’

She didn’t know why she was telling him this. Any of it.

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