One Last Love Read Free

never left him. What Carol had started, Michelle had finished. The poisoning of women in Bonnie’s mind.
    ‘Bloody bitches,’ wandered through his mind as a domestic dressed in a pink tunic set his lunch tray on his bed table.
    ‘Macaroni Cheese today,’ she proudly announced.
    ‘Thank you,’ he said with no enthusiasm at all as Michelle and Carol skirted the edges of his mind.
    ‘Coffee or tea?’
    ‘Um, coffee thanks.’
    ‘I hear you’re leaving us today.’
    ‘Good news travels fast then.’
    ‘Oh we like to keep up with all the gossip in the kitchen,’ she laughed.
    ‘So am I the topic of gossip now?’                                  
    ‘Oh I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it to sound like that.’
    ‘It didn’t. Just me being silly.’
    ‘We don’t really gossip, I mean…..,’
    ‘It’s ok. Yes, I believe I’m being moved out today. After six weeks here, I can’t say I’m disappointed. A bit like being locked up if you know what I mean.’
    ‘I understand. Hospitals are a bit like that….. Well, enjoy you’re lunch.’
    ‘Thanks,’ he said as she moved on without any fuss to serve the next bed. As she had done every other day of his stay. He had never found out her name, but she was weekdays. She was never weekends. The white walls of his small single ward felt like they were closing in as he wondered if the room had shrunk. It seemed so much bigger all those weeks ago. Now, he was ready to leave this room that had taken on the feeling of a cell, as it didn’t feel at all like a good place to die. He thought about the garden Dr. McManus had mentioned. A much better place.
    *****
    Bonnie’s mind drifted throughout the afternoon. Perhaps due to the changes in his medication. Sometimes while dozing and then at times wide awake and alert. The thought of his immanent death pushed out of his mind completely as he was far too occupied processing his past. The thought crossing his mind that he was picking his way through an old box of photos he had stumbled across in the attic while looking for something else. His youth now feeling as if it was only days ago. A year ago feeling lost in eternity. Today feeling like it had lasted forever.
    Colin raced into his mind, then left and was suddenly replaced by his own old school friends arriving and leaving in seconds. Jobs that lasted and those that didn’t sped by as lovers and sluts came and went. Old mates and bitter enemies, and those who had been both. His young wild days fuelled by booze, anger and intolerance, when picking a fight was a late Friday night ritual after closing time – with anyone who was different. His bigger and taller drinking mates getting in the first punches and then him digging in the boots to finish them off. Blacks, foreigners or queers being first in line, but if there were none of them on offer, any wanker would do. A suit and tie in his public bar was enough. How he hated arseholes in suits.
    Carol’s funeral flashed through his mind – when he couldn’t shed a single tear for her, and of the looks of hatred for him on the faces of her family that had had him hoping they would all rot in hell. Then drinking with his mates afterwards, who wished him a happy future with every new glass that arrived on the bar. How wrong they were. His weeks after the funeral lost in a mire of drunkenness, angry neighbours and police. The young smart arsed bank teller, who lived two doors up the street, knocking on his door and telling him to pull himself together. Then grabbing a hammer and smashing all the windows of the young wanker’s shiny new foreign car. When the police locked him up for two days, he didn’t care.
    ‘As this is your first offence Mr. Mayfield and taking into account the circumstances leading up to it, I have decided to impose a two thousand dollar fine. You are fortunate to have escaped a custodial sentence.’
    Paying the fine didn’t appease his neighbours, but selling his