Chapter Five
Penny had not regained her calm by the time she went to work the following day. Disappointment that she had to let Marc down despite the obvious attraction between them and worry over her two weird chest pains yesterday kept her permanently wired, and exhausted by her own feelings, all at the same time.
“Penny, can I talk to you for a minute?”
Jim, Penny’s boss, was one of her favorite people. Sixty-years-old last year, he was still energetic and youthful, with a body that would put most thirty-year-olds to shame. Jim still sported a six-pack of abs and muscular arms due to a strict exercise program. Luckily for Jim, he enjoyed exercising. Being the owner of a sports store, he often said, it would look bad if he was flabby and slow.
Penny followed Jim into his office, battling a rising sense of excitement. Jim had been planning to retire for years, and now that he was sixty, he had put his plans into action. The only thing he hadn’t done was choose a replacement store manager. Penny was certain she would get the promotion. After all, she’d worked there for fifteen years, knew everything there was to know about the store and its people and the stock, and she’d managed the place for Jim many times over the years when he was on holidays or away at conferences.
Sitting down across the desk from him, Penny leaned forward, her hands clasped in her lap. Jim smiled at her eagerness.
“You probably know why I’ve dragged you in here, right?”
“You’ve actually taken the plunge and bought that boat, right?” Penny replied with a smile.
Jim’s retirement plan was to take his wife, buy a boat, and just go sailing for a while. Penny thought it was the most peaceful-sounding thing in the world. Relaxing on a hammock, your boat slightly rocking in the swell, beer in one hand, book in another.
Jim didn’t seem to be able to keep the grin off his face. “Yep. All forty-five feet of her. She’s a beauty, too. You’ll have to come for a sail sometime.” Penny nodded but waited for him to continue.
“Okay, so I’m finally going to do it. I’m retiring. So, of course, I’m going to need a store manager.”
Penny leaned even further forward in anticipation.
“Any suggestions?”
She sat back, puzzled. What was this? Why was Jim asking her for suggestions?
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, can you suggest anyone I should put on as store manager?”
Perturbed, Penny frowned. What kind of a question was that? Wasn’t the job hers?
Perhaps it wasn’t as sure a thing as she thought. She felt a quick flush cross her features.
“Uh, well, I suppose Gavin, or Rachel, maybe? But Gav would be better.”
Jim nodded, his eyes hawk-like on her face. “Anyone else?”
Penny’s brain screamed at her to say “Me! Pick me!” But she was worried now, that Jim would just laugh at her. Why would he ask? He knew Penny wanted the manager job. Not that she’d ever particularly come out and said so - she would never do something like that. But she’d kept her head down, and she worked hard, and Jim had to know.
Seething at Jim for his obtuseness but keeping her face pleasant, she shook her head. “Nope. No one else would have the experience.”
Jim was quiet. He was watching her closely. Penny fidgeted in her chair. A long silent moment passed before Jim nodded slowly and said, “Alright. Thanks for that Pen.”
Leaving his office, she found herself shaking with suppressed anger. How could he! To get her in there and then let her down so completely. It wasn’t fair. Everything, and she meant everything, about her life sucked so bad right now.
She stewed over the situation for hours, outwardly the cheerful and pleasant sales assistant, but in her belly, she was a mass of snakes all writhing and slithering over each other, and in her brain she yelled over and over again - at Jim, at her family, at Marc, at her friends, at anyone who had ever caused her the slightest discomfort.
She should probably have expected the early afternoon attack.
It happened again without warning. Her chest felt as if it was collapsing in on itself and her lungs wouldn’t fill properly. She couldn’t breathe, the pain in her chest was intense. Her entire body prickled with perspiration and all she could hear in her head was the thumping of her own heart.
She reached out for a shelf beside her, gasping in panic. What if this was it? What if she was dying, right now? Marc had been right, she should have taken herself straight to the doctors. Or the hospital. Healthy people had heart attacks all the time - why didn't she pay attention to the warning signs?
She wasn’t going to get a chance to tell her family that she loved them, or how their unintentional betrayal had changed her life. She would never be able to laugh again with her friends, who had been with her since childhood and who were as dear to her as family. Her eyes filled with tears which spilled over her cheeks.
And then, just as soon as it started, it was over.
Penny was left sucking air in, inhaling big gulps, thankful that her lungs seemed to be working again. Her heart rate slowed but she could still feel the beads of sweat collected at her hairline. Jim noticed her distress as soon as he came across her.
“Jesus, Pen, what’s wrong?” he said, rushing toward her.
“Nothing,” she replied. “It’s okay.”
“Bullshit,” said Jim. “Look at you.” He took her arm and led her to the break room, where Penny gratefully sank into a chair. Jim got her a glass of water and silently watched while she sipped it, her color slowly returning.
After a few moments he said, “Okay, Pen. Spill it. What was that?”
Penny shook her head. “I think it was a heart attack,” she said, tears starting afresh. “I had a couple of little attacks yesterday, but this was by far the worst one.”
Jim was on the phone to an ambulance in a second, despite Penny’s hurried assurances that it wasn’t necessary. He shushed her, almost angry.
“Stop being an idiot. If it’s your heart, you need to be in hospital.”
Penny just didn’t want the fuss. She felt fine now. There were way sicker people in the city that needed to go to hospital - she wasn’t one of them.
But Jim insisted, forcing her to stay seated until they heard an ambulance come screaming down Murray Street, sirens blaring. Red-faced, Penny was strapped to a gurney, hooked up to a monitor, and lifted into the back of the vehicle. A crowd of people stood around - rubberneckers who were excited to see something outside the humdrum of their normal daily lives. Penny wished with all her heart that it wasn’t her at the center of this little bubble of excitement.
Having said that, she found when the ambulance moved, and she was on her way to hospital, a wave of relief washed over her. It would be nice to find out what was wrong with her.
“There’s nothing wrong with you.”
The doctor came into the room in the hospital’s emergency ward carrying a clipboard with what Penny assumed was her results. A frown marred his brow as he flipped through the pages. “Your heart rate is fine, blood pressure is a little elevated but nothing serious, nothing showed up on the MRI and your echo-cardiogram is clear.”
Before Penny could respond, her mother butted in. “But she’s had these attacks,” she insisted. “There has to be some reason for them.”
Penny had called her mum as soon as she arrived at hospital. And her mum had dropped everything to come rushing to her side.
The doctor nodded. “You could be having panic attacks. They’re very good at mimicking heart problems.”
“Panic attacks?”
The doctor shrugged. “Life can get pretty hard sometimes. We’ll ask your family doctor to refer you to a psychologist.”
“A psychologist?”
“Well, you do seem to be having phantom heart attacks, love,” offered her mum. Penny turned a disbelieving look on her mother.
“You think it’s all in my head?”
The doctor broke in. “That’s what the psychologist will work through with you. You don’t need to stay here any longer. I’ll get your discharge papers organized, and a letter for your doctor.” With that, he flipped back the curtain and strolled away.
Penny shook her head in disgust. “It was real pain, Mum, in my chest.” She poked herself hard in the breastbone, as if that might prove her words.
“Yes, but if there’s no physical reason…”
“They didn’t look hard enough.” The tears started in Penny’s eyes.
“Penny.”
“Well, they can’t have, can they?” she insisted.
Her mum was troubled. Penny could see it in her eyes, and she knew what she was about to say.
“You know it’s coming up on the anniversary of your…”
“It’s not that.”
“How do you know? How do you know it’s not having an underlying effect on you?”
Penny was silent. She didn’t want to think about that. She didn’t want to face the memories of that awful day that seemed to be swarming to the surface. She wanted to be able to push them back down, like she always had. Her tears spilled down her cheeks.
“What’s wrong with me?” she whispered, and her mum gathered her up into her arms.
“There’s nothing wrong with you love,” said her mum. “At least, nothing that can’t be fixed. You should go see that psychologist.”
Penny pulled away to look her mother in the face. “Why?”
“Because you’ve been shying away from facing the consequences of this since it happened.” Penny’s mum shrugged. “I cried for weeks. So did your dad. But you put on a happy face and just got on with everything. It was… well, it was unnatural.”
“So now I’m unnatural.” Penny was unimpressed.
“You know that’s not what I mean.” Her mum took a deep breath. “There was so much going on then. We were going off to France, and you were starting Year Twelve - but you never grieved, Pen.” She took Penny’s hand. “You’ve never let it out.”
Penny pulled her hand out of her mother’s grasp. “Why would I grieve?”
“Because it was your baby, Pen. Because you had an abortion.”
The silence in the car was deafening. Penny was so angry at her mother for mentioning the abortion, and her mum was angry that Penny didn’t want to talk about it. There had been no words spoken since the nurse came back to remove the indicator from Penny’s finger and to give her the discharge papers. Penny had put her clothes back on, and she and her mother had walked to the car in silence.
Penny just wanted to forget the entire thing. She had been trying to forget it for the past thirteen years and, up until just recently, she thought she had succeeded.
The pregnancy had resulted from a summer fling with Renaldo, a hot Italian guy who had been in Perth for the summer months. As soon as she had told him she was pregnant, he skipped town and, Penny assumed, went back to Italy.
At just seventeen, Penny had initially decided to abort. Her parents took over the job of organizing clinic visits and making sure she got the mandatory counseling. To Penny, it all happened in a whirl - she felt as if everyone else was making decisions about her body and her future that she didn’t necessarily agree with. And while she loved her parents for honoring her wishes and making the process as painless as possible, she also hated them because they facilitated the death of her baby.
None of her feelings made sense to Penny, so she pushed them all down until they were subdued under her Year Twelve workload, her friends, her part time job and her social life.
Her thoughts were interrupted by her mum’s cool voice. “You’ll be home for dinner?”
“Yes,” Penny replied, just as formally. “I don’t have theater tonight, so I’ll be home.”
“Maybe we can talk about it then.”
“No, Mum.” Penny turned to face her mother, whose face was hard.
“You have to talk about it sometime.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Suit yourself.” She could hear in her mum’s tight voice that she wasn’t happy. “Maybe you could talk to your friends then, instead of us.”
“They don’t even know about it.”
“What?”
Shit.
At her mother’s aghast word, Penny turned back to stare at the road. “I never told them.” She colored. Lying to her friends had not been her finest hour.
“Why not?”
“Because it was done, Mum, and over with and I just wanted to forget it. Like I want to forget it now.”
Her mum shook her head. “So, you haven’t opened up to anyone at all about this.”
“Just let it go Mum.” Penny raised her voice a little. In her mind, she begged her mum to stop, to quit talking about it, to let it go. If she went there, if she opened the box of those memories, she was sure she would be submerged by them, drowned in them. She just wanted to put the lid on, tie it down and forget about it. She’d managed it for the past thirteen years. Surely, she could continue.