Life gets more fraught for our heroine.

Easy As Falling Off A Bike.
by Angharad & Lance Groinstrain.
part 127.

I made it out of the City before the traffic got too bad, I also made some progress on the motorway before it all clogged to a standstill. I have seen computer models where they show just volume of traffic can bring things to a complete stop. This seemed to be the case in point today. At least when you think that's the problem, you can curse everyone for being there, rather than feel the cold shiver when you pass an accident site, especially when the ambulance is still there waiting for the fire brigade to cut the victims out.

Half an hour after crawling north on the motorway, I spotted the mess on the other side of the road. Cars and vans all over the place, police and fire tenders with blue lights flashing and the ambulance, just waiting. I didn't want to look, to gawp and stare. So why did my eye keep focusing on it all?

Somebody tooted a horn, behind me somewhere and I came back to the traffic my side of the barrier. I prayed no one was badly injured but saw enough of the damaged cars to think it was very likely.

Eventually, the speed of the crawl, became a trot through canter to gallop, on the other side it was stationary for about seven miles then I noticed the police had closed the other carriageway at the next junction. I was glad I wasn't going back south today.

It was rush hour in Bristol and I went straight to the hospital to see Daddy. I did and was horrified to see how much weight he'd lost with the virus. He was skin and bone.

I spoke with the Ward Sister, "If I was to do him a series of soups and freeze them, is there anyway they could be stored here for him?"

"Not really, we have a small fridge that's it."

"What about the kitchens?"

"You could ask them, but they may refuse if they haven't cooked it." She called up the catering manager who told me on the phone it would contravene so many of his food hygiene protocols that I stopped him mid-sentence and gave up. Daddy would just have to cope with what I could get to him when I could.

I'd grabbed a fresh soup and small loaf from Tesco on the way in. After pleading with him for quarter of an hour he agreed to eat some, then grumbled all the time he did.

"Thanks Daddy, I'll make you some tomorrow, I promise," I crossed my heart more from childish practise than present belief. He nodded and grumbled some more.

"Voo woo eed or unny?" he said with great difficulty.

"Something about honey?" I guessed, wrongly apparently because he got very cross with himself, and I think with me.

He moved his good hand, flicking his thumb over his fingers, "Unny," he repeated several times.

"Money?" I guessed and he sighed as if at last the idiot had got it.

"Voo woo eed or?" he tried again.

I shook my head, "Have I got enough?" it didn't sound anything like what he'd said.

"Ess," he clenched his fist and shook it punching a success.

"I suppose I could get some more, I have shopping to get tomorrow," I said blithely, then a horrible idea came to me. "I hope you don't think I'm trying to up the ante here?" I almost snapped at him.

"Vie avv voo?" he managed to get out and there was a hard look in his eye.

"If you thought that was the case, I'd have taken the money you offered me for the bike, or do you think that was a con too?" I was getting angrier by the minute, but instead of the red hot anger I shown to Simon earlier, this was ice cold, and his eyes began to register some fear.

"You realise I am about this far from walking out of here," I said holding my thumb and finger about half an inch from each other. "And if I do I won't ever come back. I don't need your stinking money and I won't be bought. If I change my mind, then it will be to Simon or his family, they are billionaires, they make Richard Branson seem impoverished."

He slumped in his chair and began weeping silently. His only defence against my rapidly increasing fire power.

This time I was inured, detached from emotion an intellectual disgust with him. I had just bust a gut to get to him and this was all the thanks I got. Well fuck him!

"I'll call by tomorrow if I can find time." Having snapped this at him in cold hissing voice, I grabbed my coat and was storming off the ward when one of the nurses intercepted me and pointed to the office.

"Proud of ourselves are we?" she asked.

"What business of yours is it?" I said back coldly.

"He's a patient of mine whom you have just bullied. I don't like bullies."

"Good job you you didn't meet him a year or two ago then."

"Why?"

"He nearly beat me to death. I don't owe him anything, and he can't buy me either."

"He can't beat you now, so you enjoyed getting your own back did you?"

"No."

"So why did you do it?"

"Because he's playing mind games with me, like he used to when I was a kid. Then he threatened me, now it's emotional blackmail."

"He's very weak at the moment."

"I'm sorry, I don't wish him ill. I try not to even think about him."

"That's not true." She stared me in the eye as she spoke and I couldn't hold her gaze. I looked at the floor and felt a tear drip off my nose. "I've seen you with him, I saw you watching when the physio was here, the pride you had when he walked a step or two. It was almost palpable. I've also seen the way you made food for him and fed him. His eyes sparkled with pride in you. You couldn't hurt him if you wanted too, you don't have it in you."

I stood shaking my head. The tears were now dripping to form an abstract pattern on the linoleum floor. "I mustn't let him control me again, I can't." I looked at the nurse's face and said, "He fucked me up before, I can't let him do it again. This time I will kill myself."

She held me firmly by the elbows forcing me to look into her eyes again, "No you won't, there is no need for anyone to be hurt. Come and sit down and have a drink of tea and just calm down."

She pushed me into the chair and I sat trembling wondering why I was such a bad person. Was it my destiny to be self destructive, just as I seemed to living my dream? A bit like Moses being stopped from entering the Promised Land. I liked that analogy, same bloody God who it seemed could piss all over me when he felt like it.

Give me someone with whom I am blissfully happy and get them shot, okay, they didn't die probably so they can be used against me again in the future. Then my sense of guilt? Firmly entrenched through childhood indoctrination and played like a fiddle by my dad, one of his fucking disciples! I seethed with impotence.

"Here, drink this," she placed a mug of steaming fluid in my shaking hands. "Look I know all we women have difficulties juggling jobs, careers and family, not to mention housework and stuff."

"I work in Portsmouth, my boyfriend is in hospital there, he was accidentally shot."

"Oh dear, not badly I hope."

"Not critically no, but he comes out on the weekend and I have to dash back there to nurse him."

"Oh."

"My prof has just given me a teaching assignment and I have to recruit and instruct someone to take over my field project, I also have student to tutor."

"Sounds like a busy time."

"I don't think I can do it all and come up here to make him soup."

"I see your problem. Our's is he won't eat hospital food."

"So that gives him carte blanche to blackmail me does it?"

The nurse now looked away from my face and shrugged her shoulders. "You are his daughter, he is your dad."

"Only because he stopped ignoring me. I left home because he nearly killed me. I swore I would never go back. Then what happens? My mother dies and he has a bloody stroke. If there was any justice it should have been him who died not her. I miss her so much." I put the cup down and burst into tears, the nurse moved her chair around and hugged me.

"There, there," she cooed my head on her shoulder and she rubbing my back, "let all the pain out, let it all go."

I honestly can't say how long I sobbed on her shoulder but it was minimally several minutes. The pain I felt was like a large knife twisting inside my heart as I wept for my mother. Part of me wished I had taken the shot that hit Simon, and killed me. Then I could join her, except I didn't know if I believed in any of that after life bunk. I just wished I could have spent a few more minutes with her before she died, just to be accepted as her daughter, then I could have died happy myself.

To think, I spent a year away from her with virtually no contact because of him. How I could have used that time had I known I wouldn't see her ever again. If only I had known. I must be a bad person. I must be a bad person.

"I must be a bad person." I whispered out loud.

"Why do you say that?" she whispered back to me.

"Because God hates me."

"Do you really think that?" she continued rubbing my back.

"Some days I do."

"And today is one of them?"

"Yes."

"Have you spoken to our hospital chaplain?"

"I don't want priests near me." I pulled away from her.

"Okay, okay you don't have to speak to him, except he's a nice old boy and might be able to help you through some of these issues."

"I think I might have told him to fuck off when my mother died."

"Oh, not good."

"Well he started off with his Christian claptrap. I wasn't in the mood for it."

"I see. He may not remember you."

"I should think my image is seared onto the back of his eyeballs."

"Oh, pity."

"I'll be all right." I shuddered and sat up.

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah, hell is that the time?" I pretended I could see the clock across the way but it was so blurry from my tears I couldn't read it. "I have to go."

"You sure you're okay?"

"Yeah, thanks for your help. Don't tell him, will you?"

"Nah, this was between just you and me."

I stood up and did up my coat, wiping my eyes on a tissue and suspecting that I had makeup everywhere. "Thank you," I said proffering my hand.

She took it and squeezed gently, "You're welcome. Take care now won't you?"

"Yeah," I said almost dismissively.

"I mean it."

I nodded, "Yes okay, so do I."