Kylie & Jack 1: Humble Beginnings

19. Home Sweet Home Pt. 3

Wednesday, 10:22 PM

Her phone was overrun with emails and messages, Facebook alerts and other notifications from her other apps. But all Kylie wanted to do was sleep. Actually, she wanted someone to massage her lower back while she slept, because trying to get comfortable with a heap of pillows wedged close to her body in the middle of February was far from pleasant.

The sweat rolled down her body - and she was wondering if something other than the weather and her menstrual pain was causing the sweat, because her breathing felt shaky, she could feel her body shivering and despite having taken painkillers two hours earlier, was still in pain.

Kylie decided she likely needed to go to the doctor's and went to message Amy, except she was at work - in the middle of a huge workplace drama, where one of the staff quit without notice, leaving a shitload of paperwork for Amy to catch up on alone; Ali was wrangling the staff at the centre, having apparently lost her temper with the director following the shift swap mishap and had wasted no time laying down the law; Loz had been called in to do a casual day with a Kindergarten class and Sophie was out of town. Her parents were over eighty kilometres away and Mike was in another state altogether. Kylie felt like crying, knowing she didn't have anyone to help her.

Struggling to stand, hissing through gritted teeth, Kylie got changed, slipped on her thongs and grabbed her car keys, shuffling towards her car and driving herself to hospital. It was a twenty minute drive and she felt like her consciousness was waning, coming and going in waves; beads of sweat danced across her brow and there wasn't a part of her body that didn't feel battered.

She pulled up at the ER front entrance, amazed she had gotten this far without passing out or causing an accident. But as she winced, turning the key in the ignition to cut the engine, Kylie had to lean back into the seat to catch her breath. Then when she finally braved opening the door, she almost fell out of the car.

Stumbling towards the automated, glass double front doors, Kylie fell into a concrete pillar. A passing nurse stopped to ask if she was alright, but all Kylie could do was vomit over the ground, clutching her stomach.

"C'mon love, let's get you seen to. Can you walk for me, love?" the nurse asked, easing her upright and looping one arm around Kylie's waist and the other around her hand, guided her into the admission desk of the ER.

She eased Kylie into a plastic seat and handed her a sick bag, darting across the floor to grab a form from the desk and coming back to sit next to Kylie.

"Ok love let's get you sorted. Can you tell me your name?"

"K ... Kylie ... Foley ..."

"Very good, Kylie. Ok now can you tell me your date of birth, love?"

"First ... N ... November ... nine ... nineteen eighty-seven ..."

"Excellent - alright, can you tell me your symptoms?"

By this point, despite her pain, Kylie rolled her head to glare scathingly at the nurse. With short, pained breaths, Kylie did her best to explain her symptoms to the nurse, stopping only when she lurched forwards into the sick bag. The nurse sat patiently beside her, laying a hand between her shoulder blades.

"Take your time, love. Ok, so ... abdominal pain, vomiting ... anything else?"

"Urgh ... it's like ... period ... pain but ... worse ..."

"Mm, ok. Alright Kylie, we're going to get you admitted as soon as possible, ok? Kylie? Kylie - can you hear me, love?"

Kylie's eyes closed, her body slumped across the chair, the sick bag plopped to the floor.

"Mahalia! I need some help out here!" the nurse cried. Kylie's unconscious body attracting the concerned attention of the other people nervously waiting to be seen. With Mahalia's help, the two nurses loaded Kylie onto a gurney and rushed her into the ER.

Meanwhile in Murruma, Jack sat down at the picnic bench with his morning tea and felt the subtle buzz of his phone in his back pocket. Retrieving his phone, he unlocked it to find a message from an old uni friend he barely ever spoke to nowadays, Sophie Kovac.