Page 50 of The Missus
‘Great, can I go too?’ Keira asked.
‘I rather you didn’t. Just stay for an hour so we can keep an eye on you.’
‘Doc, you’re no fun.’
‘That’s what they tell me.’ She smiled dryly and swished out, leaving Keira with Alanna.
Alanna gave a large sigh. ‘That was scary.’
‘I’m sorry I scaredyou,’ Keira said in a tone she didn’t like. But she couldn’t help it. She was angry. Alanna had known this very private thing about her and said nothing. It made Keira feel odd. Uncomfortable.
What pissed Keira off further was that she was absolutely sure Alanna had taken that information with delight, glad to finally have the answer to the riddle that was Keira. She didn’t want to be explained. She didn’t want to be a sob story.
Maybe what really bothered Keira was the prospect of Alanna losing respect for her and replacing it with pity.
‘I’m not trying to make this about me,’ Alanna sighed, looking at the ground. ‘But the thing is, I know that what happened to you… You didn’t want me to know that. But you have to understand, I found out by complete accident. I never wanted to snoop. Whatever your life was when you were a child…’
‘Why are you bringing that up?’ Keira frowned.
‘Because it’s why we’re here.’
Keira stared at her. ‘What?’
Alanna was sweating now. ‘You had a stress-induced asthma attack.’
Keira was incensed. ‘I had no such thing. There’s something in your mum’s garden that set it off.’ She ripped off her nebuliser and threw it on the table beside the bed. ‘And I’m fine now. I’m going home.’ She climbed off the gurney and waltzed past Alanna. She could feel Alanna following her, but she didn’t turn around, just kept walking, not sure where she was going, looking for any way out of this rat’s maze of a hospital. ‘Jesus Christ, where the hell am I?’ she asked when she walked past the same vending machine for the third time.
‘Keira, stop!’ Alanna commanded.
Keira turned to her. ‘What?’
Alanna pointed at a sign with the word ‘EXIT’ on it. ‘It’s this way, come on.’
Keira huffed and followed her. The sign took them to an elevator, and they stepped in. Keira took out her phone and found a dating app. It didn’t load. She had no signal.
‘What are you doing?’ Alanna asked her.
‘Scraping up a date. Or at least I would be if we weren’t in this elevator. Why don’t elevators have Wi-Fi? It’sbullshit.’
Alanna looked at her. ‘You just got out of the hospital. Would you slow down?’
Keira looked at her, enraged. ‘Slow down? I’m just living my life, Alanna. If I want to sleep with every woman who’ll have me, I’ll do it. If I want to have a threesome, I’ll do it. If I want to have afoursome, I’ll do it. If I want to fill a vagina-shapedpoolwith naked women and jump off a diving board from a hundred metres up and land like Esther Williams on a collection of boobs, assuming I could round up willing participants, Iwilldo it.’ Keira stopped there, not sure where the hell she was going.
There was a long pause after that, both of them watching the floor number change.
‘If you did that last thing, you’d kill everyone, just so you know,’ Alanna eventually sighed.
‘Thanks for the logistical tip. I’ll pass that along.’
‘To whom?’
‘The people who plan vagina pools, obviously,’ Keira told her.
They passed a couple more floors. And then Alanna said something. The kind of thing that can ruin your entire life. ‘You don’t need to do this. I’m not gonna run from you because I know who you are.’
The elevator reached its destination, and the doors slid open. But Keira couldn’t step out of them because her lungs had seized up. It was happening again.
‘Keira, Jesus, are you having anotherattack?’ Alanna cried, her voice rising with panic.
