A Single Breath E-Book

Amanda Apthorpe

• Herausgeber: Next Chapter
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

When the first hate letter arrives in the aftermath of her patient Bonnie's death, obstetrician Dana Cavanagh reads it with shaking hands before placing it next to the small news article from the court's verdict: not guilty.

Hate mail continues to trickle in, but one stands out from the others: a cryptic message with a tiny marble stone, its origins in Kos, Greece, the birthplace of Hippocrates.

Dana had once proudly sworn his oath, 'I will give not deadly medicine.'

Accompanied by her sister Madeleine, Dana follows the mystery of the letter to Kos. The arrival of two more letters, and the strange and ghostly appearances of a woman, beckon Dana to continue their journey further.

Despairing for her sanity, can Dana persist in her crusade and come to terms with being implicated in the death of another?

Leseprobe

A SINGLE BREATH

AMANDA APTHORPE

CONTENTS

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Dear Reader

Acknowledgments

You may also like

About the Author

Copyright (C) 2021 Amanda Apthorpe

Layout design and Copyright (C) 2021 by Next Chapter

Published 2021 by Next Chapter

Edited by Terry Hughes

Cover art by CoverMint

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the author’s permission.

Dedicated to my parents, Sid and June Jones,

and my sister, Andrea Madeline Jones

I had become only too aware that life’s beginning and its end hinged on a single breath, as though the rest was conducted in its pause.

CHAPTERONE

MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA

The ceiling of the cabin sagged so low that I could measure its distance to my face with a wide-fingered handspan. A cold light from the bathroom cubicle ricocheted around the walls and reflected off the panels above my nose. Where they met, someone had picked at the seam like a child at a scab. With each pitch and toss of the ferry, diesel fumes seeped through its pores.

There was no sound from the bunk below. My sister, I assumed, was sleeping peacefully, but I needed the comfort of her enthusiasm. In the space left to me, I contorted my body so that my head and torso hung over the bunk’s edge.

“Madeleine. Are you awake?”

There was a low groan and the sound of the bunk springs creaking as she rolled over.

“What?” Her yawn was thick with sleep.

“What are we doing here Mads?”

No reply, just a soft snore at the back of her throat. I rolled back to stare again at the ceiling’s ragged seam. A dog barked in a cabin somewhere further along the deck.

In the darkness of what I feared would be our watery crypt, I doubted the wisdom of this journey.

CHAPTERTWO

It had begun with the arrival of the first letter. What I remember about that day is tinted with soft shades of autumn. It must have been warm because I was sitting in my courtyard reading the newspaper. I looked up, drawn by a tone in Madeleine’s voice.

The air seemed to shimmer around her strong and solid body as she moved towards me. My own depleted frame would have cut that air like a dulled blade. Her arm was raised as if she was about to slap the letter, she held on to the cast iron table and her face was pinched with familiar concern. When I took it from her, I saw that my name and address were written in Indian ink in an old-fashioned hand. She sat as I broke the seal. Inside was a sheet of parchment paper folded over. As I opened it, a small stone rattled on to the table.

“What does it say?” Madeleine nodded towards the note and shuffled closer in the protective way she had adopted in those months. She picked up the stone and rolled it in her fingers.

The letters of a foreign language were written in the centre of the page.

“It’s not in English,” I said and passed it to her. She tried to sound what looked to be three words and shrugged as she handed it back. I studied it more closely.

“It could be Greek.” The envelope was face up and I took in the postmark. “It’s been sent from Kos,” I said.

“Where?”

“A Greek island near the Turkish coast.”

My sister’s eyes shone in response. She was always eager for mystery, a trait that had led her into more daring adventures than I would ever contemplate. I picked up the stone and held it in one hand beneath the table. I returned to reading the newspaper, feigning a lack of interest in the letter but in truth I felt a small, quiet dread.

“What do you make of it, Dee?”

I looked up and met her eyes. “It’s probably another hate letter.”

She picked up the envelope and seemed to be measuring the weight of the words with a small movement of her hand.

“I don’t think so,” she said. “It’s different from the others. Why be cryptic about hating someone?”

“Well, don’t read too much into it,” I said, flicking over a page of the paper with a finality that drew on my status as her older sister. The palm of my hand throbbed around the stone.

That night I woke at 2.20. My mother had once told me that it was the hour that people are most likely to die. I had believed her, but in all my years of medical practice had not seen any evidence, though my work was normally concerned with life’s fragile start.

In more recent times, I had become only too aware that life’s beginning and its end hinged on a single breath, as though the rest was conducted in its pause.

It was another dream that had woken me and the memory of it continued to resonate. For a while, I lay beneath the covers, allowing it to filter through.

There stands a man, his hand outstretched to me. Snakes writhe at his feet as they slide from a narrow pink vein embedded in a marble pedestal. I watch in fascination, then in horror, as I realise that it is not marble, but the body of a lifeless woman. The pink veins become blue. I turn at the feel of another’s breath and see a woman, her hair braided. “Who are you?” I ask. She is about to speak her name…

By 3.30, I’d poured my third cup of tea. If I were Madeleine, it would have been peanut butter eaten by the spoonful to relieve anxiety. I wanted to call her but resisted. Aside from the late hour, I couldn’t bear her analysis of the dream and suspected that I already knew some of what she would say – the snake was my kundalini energy finally releasing. We thought differently, but what kept me at the table, breathing long draughts of tea-steam through my nostrils, was that Madeleine and I would agree on the significance of the dead woman.

At 4am, a two-week-old newspaper that I had saved was spread before me. I knew what was in there but had never opened it until that moment. At page five, I saw the small article, the shards of my life collected into 100 or so words. The gist of it read: Verdict not guilty; professional integrity restored; the plaintiff, struggling to reconcile the birth of his daughter and the death of his wife; the wife… dead from unforeseen causes.

I reread the article and said the wife’s name aloud – Bonnie – like an incantation. I wished that she hadn’t had a name so that it might hurt less.

Exonerated ofall blame – did all she could… But the words didn’t provide me with any comfort.

“It wasn’t your fault!” Madeleine had said and her expression had been desperate with the fear that I could have a breakdown.

How is a person meant to come to terms with being implicated in the death of another?

Leaning on my old oak dining table, a favourite of the “glory box” I abandoned when Julian left, I got up, physically and mentally aching, and went to the bookshelf. A well-meaning friend had suggested that I record my thoughts after Bonnie’s death as a kind of therapy. I followed her advice, looking for anything that would ease the pain of it and the case brought against me by Bonnie’s husband.

I took the envelope that had arrived that day from my pocket. The stone dropped into my hand as I looked at the note. Although I couldn’t understand them, the words made me uneasy. I slipped it between the pages of the diary. From the drawer of the desk, I took out my jewellery box. Apart from a string of pearls and a jade scarab beetle, a souvenir from Madeleine’s trip to Egypt, there was little else inside. Before the stone joined them, I studied it as it lay in my palm. It was no more than two millimetres thick, but it felt cold in the warmth of my hand. It was either marble or quartz and had a thin, rust-red vein that made it blush.

At 5am and feeling soothed, whether by the tea or exhaustion, I climbed back into bed. I slept then, a dreamless sleep and longer than I’d slept for months. When I awoke, I lay beneath the covers as I had done so many mornings since Bonnie’s death.

Refreshed, I grew restless quickly and felt a return of an old eagerness to begin the day. I showered with a sense of purpose and felt a craving for a coffee and croissant in Chapel Street – I hadn’t done that in a long time. The gate’s click sounded a note of approval as it closed behind me.

At my regular café, I bypassed the pavement tables; the cooling autumn weather was beginning to creep into my toes. From a seat by the window, I looked out, regretting that I had missed the sun’s warmth and the hot, lazy days that had come and gone that summer when I’d barely left the house.

Deb came to take my order and smiled. “Haven’t seen you for a while, Dana. Been away?”

“Yes,” I lied but didn’t offer any more. She didn’t ask.

“Lucky you. I could do with a break… maybe the Greek Islands,” she whispered close to my ear before she left to seat a couple who had just walked in.

Before long, I found myself in the travel section of a local bookshop looking for a practical guide to Greece. The little I knew about Kos had come from my fruiterer, Kym, who would become misty-eyed when he’d spoken of the home he’d left 20 years earlier. From his description, it sounded beautiful, as home does when you’re far away and feeling nostalgic.

There was nothing specifically about Kos, but I thumbed through the contents of a Lonely Planet guide and found it. “…third-largest island of the Dodecanese… five kilometres from the Turkish Peninsula of Bodrum…” I scanned its history. “Hippocrates, the father of medicine, was born and lived on the island.” Hippocrates.

There was a small grip of pain in my solar plexus that I could no longer distinguish as physical or emotional. I recalled how proud and emotional I had been when I swore his famous oath, and in particular the line: “I will follow that system of regimen, which, according to my ability and judgement I consider for the benefit of my patients and abstain from whatever is deleterious and mischievous. I will give not deadly medicine…”

Bonnie’s stricken and pleading face swam in front of me, and I felt again the shock of the first hate letter that arrived in the days after her death: “EVIL. MURDERER.”

CHAPTERTHREE

Madeleine’s snore caught in the back of her throat, and I heard the springs groan as she sat up suddenly.

“Are you awake, Dee?”

“Yes.”

“Have you slept?”

“No.”

“Me neither.”

My eyes rolled to the ceiling. “Mads, I’ve been thinking…”

“Yes?” Her voice sounded guarded.

“That we’ve made a big mistake.”

There was silence from below. An expert now at contorting in small spaces, I leaned down, inverting my head towards her. “Mads?”

“Why, Dee? Because the sea’s a bit rough?”

“A bit rough! No, it’s not that, it’s just… the whole thing is… crazy. Why are we here?”

“No, it’s not crazy. We’re meant to come.”

“Really. Please don’t tell me: ‘It’s our destiny.’”

“But it is.”

I leaned further over the bunk’s rail, “Oh Mads, come off it. Based on what? A letter we don’t understand. A small piece of marble that could be a chip off a headstone – a warning!”

Silence again, then the creaking springs as she got out of bed. She staggered to the bathroom trying to maintain her balance as the boat lurched sideways. As she shut the door, I was left in the darkness. I flipped on my back, feeling guilty that I was all but blaming my sister. After all, I was the one who had organised this trip.

Outside the bookshop, I had paused to consider my next move and stepped aside to allow a mother with a baby in a pram to pass me on the narrow footpath. Tucking the Lonely Planet guide under one arm, I walked behind them, trying to prevent my thoughts from taking their familiar diversion into bleakness. Instead, the bright fluorescent lights of a travel agency drew me in and a friendly glance invited me to the counter. A young woman whose name tag read Karen finished tapping at the keyboard and swivelled to give me her attention.

“I’m thinking of going to Greece,” I said.

“Return?”

And then, surprising myself again, I answered: “One way.”

When I told Madeleine what I had done, her reaction caught me by surprise.

“You’re leaving next Friday!” she said, unable to disguise the disappointment in her voice. She had been my constant companion in the preceding months, almost my carer.

“But you’re the one who suggested I go,” I reminded her.

“Yes…” Madeleine studied her fingernails.

“Oh, and by the way…” I tapped the table and spoke to her hands. “If you can arrange the time, there’s a ticket on hold for you, too.”

“Are you kidding?”

I smiled at the memory of that moment.

“No, I’m not kidding,” I said and touched her fingers. “I just want to thank you. You’ve been really great, Mads, and I don’t know what I would have done without you.”

“You’re my sister.” Her eyes looked dangerously moist.

“So that’s a yes?” I said, as I went into the kitchen. I took a deep breath as I filled the kettle.

“Mm, let me think…” Madeleine called across the kettle’s hum. “If you insist.”

“I do.” I smiled into the two cups in my hand. “Your passport’s still valid?”

Her head appeared around the kitchen doorway. “Yes… I’ve got to go.”

“Where?” I asked.

“Home… to pack!”

In the bathroom cubicle, I could hear Madeleine cursing the paltry toilet flush. When she opened the door, the light was like the flash of a camera capturing my misery on the top bunk of a dying ferry.

She rummaged through her suitcase without speaking and returned to the bathroom, shutting off the light again in a clear statement of irritation. Blindly, I reached to the panels above my nose and gave them an equally irritated shove. My thoughts returned to the days before our departure. Although I had been putting it off, finally I made the telephone call I had been dreading.

“Dana… how are you?”

My eyes smarted at the sound of Ruth’s voice. As chief of staff, she’d had a tough time during my court case. She’d never wavered in her support of me, despite the media’s attempts to blacken the hospital’s reputation. I had to compress my lips before replying.

“I’m well,” I replied then came quickly to the point. “Ruth, I need time…”

Before I could finish, her soothing voice slid between us.

“Of course… I agree. How long would you like?”

I hesitated, the generosity and the security of what she was offering was tempting.

“I need to resign.”

There was a sharp intake of air at the other end. “Dana, please reconsider. You could have six months… Take a year if you need it.”

I paused, tempted. “I think it’s the best thing, for me and for the hospital.”

“I know what’s best for this hospital, and you’re a significant part of that.”

“Thank you, Ruth. It means a lot to hear you say that. I’ll never forget what you said in my defence.”

“I’ve worked with you for 10 years. I meant every word of it.”

“I’ve… lost the energy for it, Ruth, and the confidence, no doubt.”

“That’s to be expected, Dana. Give yourself some time.”

“I am,” I said with false conviction. “I don’t know how long it will take, so it’s best this way.”

She was silent for a moment. “I’ll accept your resignation, if you insist,” she finally conceded. Her voice, always calm, was gentler still. “But there will be a place for you, if you change your mind. I’m just so sorry this ever happened to you. God bless, Dana.”

As I said my goodbye, I wondered if I had acted too hastily and felt shaky with uncertainty. I was leaving my work, I was leaving my home, and I didn’t really know why. I rang my parents. They were surprised to know that both their daughters would be away for an undetermined length of time.

“It’ll be good for you, darling,” my father said, and I felt the soothing balm of his love. He didn’t question my decision to leave the hospital and I was grateful. My mother was less impressed.

“At least you’ll be together.”

I should have known that she would bring me little comfort.

CHAPTERFOUR

As I was packing, Madeleine arrived with travel gadgets – blow-up pillows, eye masks, drink bottles, lip salves that spilled across my dining room table.

“Freebies,” she announced, “from one of my clients.”

“No problem going away?”

“James can handle the business with his eyes closed.”

Madeleine had built her landscape-design business to a level that she now employed staff.

“I’ll probably become obsolete,” she added.

“Hardly,” I said, and meant it. My sister was the creative and business genius behind Gorgeous Gardens.

“So…” She arranged the items on the table distractedly. “I didn’t ask you what you found out about Kos.”

“Not much.” I told her the little I knew.

She rifled through her handbag to produce a notebook that she waved at me.

“What’s this?” I took it from her.

“The fruits of my own research.”

I was surprised and she saw it on my face.

“Well,” she said to my crooked eyebrow, “I didn’t think you were up to it and…”

“You were.” I laughed, grateful that my sister was predictably unpredictable.

The bathroom door opened. Madeleine paused, forming a striking silhouette in the door’s frame. “Let’s get out of here,” she said, but I couldn’t see her lips moving and the statement was strangely unsettling. Obediently, I slid from the bunk and dressed.

We took our chances with the unwelcoming crew and other passengers. The engines ground down and the ferry slowed its pace. From the windows of an almost-deserted lounge on an upper deck, we could see a smattering of island lights. The voice over the loudspeaker crackled that we were arriving at Kalymnos. Peering into the dark as the ferry went astern to dock, we could see an old fort tinted by amber lights brooding above the port. Only a dozen or so people disembarked and were swallowed by the night at the end of the pier.

“Not long now,” I murmured, as much to myself as to Madeleine. She didn’t answer.

A sigh of relief had escaped me when we’d finally boarded the plane to Greece. Farewells weren’t my strong point, and I was irritated by my mother’s sudden display of affection. On the way to Singapore, Madeleine was hyped. By the time we left for Athens, she’d burnt herself out. I shared her eagerness to leave Melbourne, and in fact my life, but at the same time it felt as though I was running away. I’d always taken pride in my ability to complete whatever I began and to go an extra step.

My father, though encouraging and proud of my achievements, would, in his most diplomatic way, suggest that I take things a little easier.

“You’ve achieved so much, Dana. What more do you need to do?”

I appreciated his concern, but I didn’t feel that I could ever push myself too far. I thrived on the challenge of learning more, especially about my profession, and I thrived on success. Leaving felt like admitting defeat, and I wondered if I should have stayed to face my critics and resume my work. Somewhere along the way, though, I’d lost the inclination to do so.

On that long flight, my thoughts drifted to the day that changed my life, as they had for nearly every minute of every day for months. While Madeleine slept, I tried to steer them away, but the energy required was draining. Over and over, I had replayed the events of that day looking for something I might have missed – a sure sign of my guilt or, and I hated to admit it, someone else’s – but there was nothing I could pinpoint, and the events had become distorted with time.

Everything about that day seemed to be wrong, even ominous, though it was a feeling born in retrospect. I’d had my own consultations and a delivery; I’d assisted two others, one a difficult birth and the other a seriously premature baby. After 14 hours without a break, I was tired. Just as I was getting ready to go home, Bonnie, one of my own patients, was rushed into Emergency with a profuse haemorrhage. Even though I was well used to the sight of blood, this time it shocked me and, for weeks afterwards, it ran as a stream of plasma with dark, malevolent clots that tinted my dreams.

I remember throwing aside my bag, raging with frustration when the rubber gloves curled in my palm as I hurriedly pulled them on, and I remember Bonnie’s husband, grey with panic. Bonnie needed an emergency caesarean, but the anaesthetists were tied up with equally urgent cases. I had no choice but to administer the anaesthetic myself, but I couldn’t place the tube in her throat. Bonnie’s strangled gasps for air haunted my days afterwards.

From that point, my memory became blurred with time and shock. In the dreams that followed, I forced the tube deeper and deeper into her throat. In those dreams, Bonnie’s eyes watched mine with unnerving attention, in others they pleaded with me to save her life. By all accounts, I acted swiftly and competently – that was the verdict, based on the testaments of those who had been present – but I wasn’t convinced. Bonnie died from asphyxiation and her daughter was born soon after.

I leaned back into the seat, feeling the familiar despair rising in my chest. Deep-breathing techniques only pushed it further into my viscera. I fumbled for the bag I’d stowed beneath the seat and took out some of the material Madeleine had collected for research – two slim texts and some pages of notes she had jotted down from heavier volumes in the local library.

I opened one of the books, a treatise on a selection of the writings of Hippocrates and thumbed through its pages. The introductory section was academic and tedious, but the pages that followed were a collection of letters and speeches attributed to him.

On the left-hand-side of each double page, the text was written in Greek – Ancient Greek, I reasoned, and the English translation was written on the right. The early part, I read, was a plea from the people of Abdera to Hippocrates to heal their revered Democritus because they were afraid that he was going mad. But Hippocrates suspected that Democritus was showing the signs of attaining greater wisdom, the outward signs were being interpreted as madness. I wondered if my own outward signs over the past few months were consistent with some form of mental derangement.

I read on as Hippocrates recounted a dream: “I seemed to see Asklepios himself… snakes accompanied him. I turned and saw a large, beautiful woman with her hair braided simply… ‘I beg you excellent one, who are you and what shall we call you?’”

I was stunned. Though a particular style of language was used, the woman in Hippocrates’s dream resembled the one in my own. I reread the passage to convince myself that I was being fanciful, that I had latched on to one or two elements – the snake and the woman that could be represented in a million people’s dreams.

The more I read it, the more profoundly it affected me. From the bag, I took out the letter from Kos and laid it on the tray in front of me. I ran my finger slowly down the Greek translation of Hippocrates’ dream carefully comparing the Greek letters with those on the page of the note. In Letter 15, I identified them.

Madeleine stirred and opened her eyes, becoming alert at the sight of the letter and open book.

“Find something?”

“Mmm…” I steadied my breath. “Have a look at this.”

I told her about my dream and what I’d found in the book. She sat up, excited, but not surprised. Nothing was a coincidence to my sister.

“Which parts of the dream do the Greek letters parallel?” she said, shifting in the seat.

I read aloud the preceding translation: “And what shall I call you?”

And there were the three words of the note: “‘Truth,’ she said.”

My hand trembled and Madeleine placed hers over it as she had when the first of the hate mail had arrived before my exoneration.