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:: chapter one ::


“We’re getting married.”

“Yep.”

“We are actually getting married.”

I glanced over at Ruby, taking in the look on her face. It wasn’t hard to tell that she was terrified. Her eyes had gone wide in what was clearly complete and total panic, and even through the darkened lenses of my sunglasses I could see that she had gone almost white. Goosebumps peppered her forearms, something I knew had to be from anxiety more than anything else – and to be honest, I wasn’t entirely sure I blamed her.

“You could have said no, you know,” I teased her, and she stuck her tongue out at me. “And hey, I’m nervous too. And not just about the fact that we’re getting hitched, either.”

“You, nervous?” Ruby scoffed quietly at this. “Perish the thought. What do you have to be nervous about?”

“Well, let’s see.” I turned around, putting the waters of Farm Cove at my back, and sat down on the low sandstone wall that ran alongside the footpath. “Starting work on the new album, for starters. That’s always a pretty big deal. I can’t wait to show you our studio – we have this whole house up at Byron Bay, you’ll love it.” I scuffed the heel of my left sneaker along the concrete. “The new place as well.”

Ruby let out a slightly startled laugh. “I still can’t believe that we actually bought a house.” This time, she was the one who looked over at me. “Are you totally sure we can afford it?”

“Ruby, I promise you – we can easily afford it. If there’s one thing that you will never need to worry about, it’s whether or not we can afford something.” I reached over and smoothed down Ruby’s flyaways. “Okay?”

“Yeah, I know – I’m just so used to having to be careful about how I spend money, that’s all.” She cracked a small smile. “It’s a tough habit to break.”

I let out a quiet laugh. “Yeah, no kidding.”

We were both quiet for a little while, with the only sounds to break the comfortable silence we’d fallen into being the leaves of the tree across the footpath rustling in the breeze, the warbling of magpies, the waters of the cove lapping against the seawall behind us, and the clacking of the spokey-dokes on the wheels of the bike a kid was riding past. As usual, it was Ruby who spoke first.

“So what happens now?” she asked. “Apart from going back to the picnic, I mean,” she added quickly, before I’d even thought about opening my mouth.

“Way too many things,” I replied, and I started counting off on my fingers. “We need to pack up the house – I was thinking of asking your brothers to give us a hand with that. Mine as well if we need any extra help. And I’m not entirely sure of when we’ll actually be able to move into the new place – I think we can move in anytime from the end of the month, but I need to get onto the estate agent and find out for sure.”

“We should have a housewarming party or something,” Ruby said. “Once we’re settled.”

“Any excuse for a party, hey?”

She shrugged. “You know me too well.”

“Yes, I do.” I slipped an arm around her shoulders and drew her closer, planting a kiss on the crown of her head. “And I’m very glad that I do. Are you sure you’d be able to handle it though?”

She squinted, and I knew she was considering her answer. “A small one, maybe.”

I let out a quiet chuckle. “A small one, then,” I agreed, and Ruby gave me a bright smile. “We’re meeting with Liberation at some point as well, so that we can hash out everything for the new album. Figure out when we want to start recording it, when we want recording to be done by, how soon to release it – that sort of thing. Have to go down to Melbourne for that.” Here I let out a small sigh. “And then there’s all the bullshit I’ve got coming up next week. Not looking forward to that in the slightest.”

“I’ll be there as much as you need me to be,” Ruby said. She covered the hand I had on her shoulder with one of hers and gave it a squeeze.

“Thanks, Rue,” I said quietly, and gave her a small half-smile before easing myself back to my feet. “Come on. We should head back.”

One reason Ruby and I got along so well, I’d decided, was that neither of us took much notice of tradition. We also both hated being the centre of attention, though I usually managed to just barely tolerate it. I didn’t really have much of a choice most of the time. So instead of an engagement party like the ones that Isaac and Nikki, Zac and Kate, and Jessica and Christian had had, Ruby and I had both insisted on something much smaller. Which had resulted in Mum and Trish putting their heads together and organising a picnic in the Royal Botanic Garden in Sydney. With Sydney being roughly halfway between Wollongong and Newcastle, it had seemed like the most obvious place for our families to get together and officially meet for the first time.

The spot we had staked out for the picnic wasn’t far from the Garden’s eastern gates, across the road from Victoria Lodge and the pop-up café out front. A quick headcount told me that about half of our combined families were still hanging around the picnic, including our respective parents. I figured that everyone else couldn’t be too far away. “Everything okay?” Dad asked as Ruby and I returned from our walk, and I nodded.

“Yep, all good,” I replied as I sat down on one of the picnic blankets that had been spread out on the grass, in the shade of a towering fig tree, and reached for one of the sandwiches that was just in front of me. Ruby joined me a few seconds later, settling herself close to my side. “Ruby just had a tiny freak-out about how we’re getting married, that’s all.”

“It’s a huge deal,” Ruby said. I could feel her shrug when she said this.

“It’s a very big deal,” Trish said from where she sat in a camping chair just outside the patch of picnic blankets. “I’d be worried if you weren’t freaking out even just a little. Either of you.”

“Have you set a date yet?” Nikki asked from a little way behind me, and I shook my head.

“We’ve only been engaged for a month,” I replied. “I think it might be a bit too soon to be thinking about setting a wedding date.” I gently nudged Ruby with my elbow. “Besides, we have to move into our new house first.”

“We could do it on our anniversary,” Ruby suggested, and I glanced over at her. “We got engaged on our anniversary, why not get married on our anniversary as well?”

“We could,” I agreed. It seemed like a no-brainer and the most obvious date for Ruby and I to tie the knot. And being as our anniversary was three days after my birthday, neither Ruby nor I would really have much of an excuse for forgetting it. I caught one of Ruby’s hands up in mine and kissed her knuckles. “But we can talk about it after the move, yeah?”

“Fine by me,” Ruby said, about half a second before leaning in to press a kiss of her own to my right temple.  “Oh, and speaking of moving – we’re moving to Woonona,” she added. “Other side of the Northern Distributor, near the high school. Only house we looked at that ticked all our boxes.” She proceeded to tick off on her fingers. “It has a fully fenced yard for Sadie, enough bedrooms for us two, Taylor’s office and for when we have his brothers or anyone else staying over, a studio space for Taylor and his brothers to practice in, and it’s fully accessible. So if I need to use my wheelchair inside for whatever reason, or if Tay’s having a flare-up, then we can still get around the house easily.” I felt her nod her head in my direction. “Not that the practice space will probably get used all that much except for during tours, but it’ll be there for when it is needed.”

“There’s even a whole piano room,” I added.

“You mean the sunroom,” Ruby teased me.

“That I’m turning into my piano room,” I retorted, though without any heat to my words. As soon as I’d seen the sunroom in the house that Ruby and I had ended up buying, I’d immediately started planning what I was going to do with it. Turning it into my piano room was just the beginning. “I’ve always wanted a piano room at home.”

“I’ll get your brothers to help you pack the house up,” Trish said. “Just let us know when you’re ready.”

“Thanks, Trish,” I said, Ruby echoing me a second or two later.

The picnic continued well into the afternoon. By the time the sun was beginning its descent toward the western horizon, its rays painting the sky over the city pink and orange, Mum had managed to talk my brothers into pitching in with moving Ruby and I into our new house, the picnic had been packed up, and we had all said our goodbyes before heading back into the city.

“Are you worried?”

I looked over at Ruby and gave her a quizzical look. We’d sat down on a park bench near the fountain at the Macquarie Street end of Martin Place, having spent the last half an hour walking the kilometre and a half from our picnic spot. Our train home was due to leave in forty-five minutes, and we were taking the opportunity to catch our breath and eat the burgers we’d picked up for dinner from a café during our walk – Ruby’s chicken parmagiana burger, and my cheeseburger. A cardboard box of hot chips that had been doused liberally with chicken salt sat between us.

“Worried about what?” I asked, about half a second before I took another bite out of my burger.

Ruby didn’t answer for a little while. I watched her twirl the straw from her bottle of orange juice around in her fingers, one of her tells that she was thinking – and as always, I didn’t push her to talk.

“Recording the new album, getting married,” she replied at last, before letting out a sigh that I could barely hear over the Saturday evening traffic behind us and the steady hum of voices and footsteps that filled the plaza. “Next week.”

“Ah.”

“Yeah.”

I took a deep breath and let it out in a sigh of my own. “Yeah, I am pretty worried. Always am, to be honest. Everything I’ve been told about what could happen to me because of all the bullshit I went through, it scares the shit out of me. I know that if I get sick again…” I scrubbed a hand down my face. “I might not survive it next time.”

“Shit,” Ruby whispered.

I nodded. “Yeah. Chemo has some seriously nasty side effects, and it just so happens that sometimes the worst ones don’t pop their heads up until much later on. Three of the drugs I was on…” I trailed off and closed my eyes for a moment, trying to figure out how to tell Ruby what she needed to know. “One can cause heart damage, and the second can increase the chance I’ll end up with leukaemia.” I put my burger down in its cardboard box, no longer hungry. “The third can cause heart damage and potentially increase my chance of developing leukaemia later on.”

Ruby covered her mouth with her hands. “Please tell me you’re kidding,” she said from behind them, her voice nearly breaking.

“Nope. I wish I was.” I let out a bitter, humourless laugh. “It’s ironic, isn’t it? Something that saved my life years ago might end up killing me later on.”

“I wish you’d told me before now,” Ruby said, and I gave her a small, apologetic smile. “But I understand why you didn’t. It’s a hard thing to talk about.”

I let out a quiet laugh. “Yeah, no kidding.” I was quiet for a minute or so. “There’s one thing that makes it a hell of a lot easier, though.”

“Oh? What’s that?”

I reached for one of Ruby’s hands and took it into mine, running my thumb over her knuckles. “You.”



A few mornings later, I wasn’t woken up by my alarm clock, the text message tone on my phone, or even the sound of traffic outside. It wasn’t even the sound of rain pattering against my bedroom window, or wind howling through the branches of the tree in the front garden that woke me.

I woke up because I couldn’t breathe.

“Easy, Tay,” I could hear Ruby saying, her voice sounding like it was coming from a great distance. I knew I must have tried to get out of bed at some point, because I could feel my bedroom carpet under my feet and the frame and mattress of the bed against my calves. A hand I distantly recognised as Ruby’s was on my back, slowly rubbing her thumb along my spine as I tried desperately to breathe. “It’s okay, just breathe…”

I shook my head without opening my eyes. “I can’t,” I just barely managed to get out.

“Yes, you can.” The mattress shifted and Ruby moved her hand off my back at around the same time that a quiet, somewhat muffled thump sounded just in front of me, and I opened my eyes to see Ruby settling herself on the floor at my feet. She was kneeling on one of the pillows off our bed, the light from the streetlight almost right in front of our bedroom window casting her in silhouette. “With me, yeah?” she said, almost sounding as if she was pleading with me, and I eyed her for a moment before I finally nodded.

After what felt like an absolute eternity, I finally managed to take a somewhat deep breath – and promptly started coughing. This seemed to be Ruby’s cue to sit back down next to me, and she immediately started rubbing my back again. “You need to tell your doctor about this,” she said as my coughing fit eased off, and I nodded. “I mean it, Jordan. I’ll even go with you to make sure you tell him.”

“I know I need to tell him,” I managed to croak out. “And I will tell him, I promise.” I scrubbed a hand over my eyes. “What time is it?”

“Too late to go back to sleep, way too early to be up,” she replied, about half a second before she checked her watch. “Five o’clock.”

I let out a quiet groan, one that was interrupted by a massive yawn. “Definitely too early,” I agreed.

“Okay, you are definitely coming down with something if this is too early to be up,” Ruby said, her tone only slightly teasing, and she went to put the back of her hand on my forehead. I batted her hand away and gave her a very half-hearted scowl. “You get up this early to go swimming or for a surf, since when is five o’clock too early?”

“Since Dr. Emerson set my appointment for eight-thirty, that’s when,” I retorted. Another yawn threatened to interrupt me, and I just barely managed to stifle it. “I’m going back to sleep.”

By some miracle, even though I would have loved to sleep through it, both Ruby and I managed to wake up again in plenty of time for my appointment with Dr. Emerson. The appointments I had with him and with Dr. Torrens had caused me a hell of a lot of anxiety ever since I’d made remission for the second time, especially once I’d transitioned to yearly follow-ups, and that morning was absolutely no exception. By the time I’d dragged myself out of bed and into the kitchen, the anxiety I was feeling had turned into full-blown panic.

“I think I’m going to be sick,” I mumbled without lifting my head off my crossed arms. I didn’t even look up when I heard the familiar sound of a coffee mug being set down on the bench next to me, or at the sound of one of the bar stools that lived beneath the kitchen island being dragged out.

“I can call and ask for your appointment to be changed to another day,” Ruby said, sounding entirely reasonable, and I finally looked up at her. She gave me a small smile. “I’m sure your doctor will understand.”

“It’s just nerves,” I replied. “I always feel like this before I see him this time of year.” I could tell that Ruby wasn’t quite convinced by this, though. “Rue, seriously – it really is just nerves. It’s just a lot worse this year than it usually is, that’s all.”

“Okay, as long as you’re sure,” Ruby said, and I nodded. This seemed to satisfy her, and she slid the coffee mug closer to me. I cracked a smile of my own when I saw that it was the mug Ruby had bought me for my birthday the month before, and that had quickly become one of my favourites – it was white, with the silhouettes of two crows sitting on a tree branch and the words Attempted murder. in black on both sides. My smile got bigger when I saw what was in the mug.

“I knew I was marrying you for a reason,” I said. Ruby had made my tea just the way I liked it, with two teabags of Bushells Australian Breakfast tea – the only things missing were milk and sugar. Almost as if she knew what I was thinking, she got up from her seat and fetched the milk out of the fridge, the box of peppermint tea she’d bought from T2 in Sydney a few weeks earlier and the jar of raw sugar out of the pantry, and a teaspoon and my tea infuser out of the cutlery drawer.

“What, because I know how you like your tea?” she asked as I opened the box of tea and uncapped my tea infuser – it was shaped like a shark’s fin. I spooned some of the tea into the infuser and snapped the lid back on.

“Mmm-hmm.” It didn’t take me long to finish making my tea, and I took a cautious sip to make sure it didn’t need anything else. “Well, no, that’s not the only reason I proposed,” I added. “But it’s a pretty major one.”

“You’re lucky I love you,” Ruby said, and I lowered my mug just in time for her to lean in and kiss me.

The waiting room at the medical centre in Corrimal was, to my relief, almost deserted when Ruby and I walked in just before a quarter past eight. I wasn’t sure I could have handled being around a lot of people right at that moment – I was wound so tightly, and my nerves were frayed enough, that the smallest thing could have triggered a panic attack. I kept the hood of my jumper up until after Dr. Emerson had called my name, not wanting anyone but Ruby or the front desk receptionist to know I was there. Only once Ruby and I were inside Dr. Emerson’s office with the door closed behind us did I feel safe enough to lower my hood, Ruby immediately reaching over to run her fingers through my hair to tidy it up a little.

“How are you travelling this morning?” Dr. Emerson asked as he settled himself at his desk.

“Not great,” I admitted. I picked at the hem of my hoodie to give myself something to focus on as I tried to figure out how to tell Dr. Emerson how I had been feeling. To his credit, Dr. Emerson didn’t prompt me to talk. “I woke up just before five o’clock this morning, and I couldn’t breathe,” I said finally. Just saying those words increased the anxiety I was feeling to the point that I started to feel cold all over, as if I was about to start having a panic attack. At the same time, a heavy ball of unease was beginning to form deep in the pit of my stomach. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to take a deep breath. “It scared the shit outta me.”

“I’m not surprised – that would scare anyone,” Dr. Emerson said. He sounded sympathetic, something that immediately set my teeth on edge. “Was that the first time it’s happened?”

“It’s happened a couple of other times,” Ruby replied, at about the same time that I’d shaken my head. She’d slipped an arm around my back, her hand on my left shoulder, and had started rubbing slow, lazy circles around my tattoo with her thumb. “Usually he’s woken up coughing really hard, though. This was the first time in probably a few weeks where he’d woken up not able to breathe at all.”

“Is there anything else worrying you?”

“I haven’t been able to go for a run in about a month or so,” I replied, and Dr. Emerson started typing on his computer. “I’d start getting out of breath about halfway through a run, but now I can’t even run a couple hundred metres without needing to stop. It’s not even remotely normal for me. Usually I can run nearly a kilometre and a half before I get out of breath.” I looked down at my lap, resisting the urge to start picking at the hole that was starting to wear through the right knee of my jeans. “I’ve been feeling dizzy a lot as well, and I generally just don’t feel great.”

“I see.” Dr. Emerson was frowning as he said this, and I could immediately tell that he didn’t like what Ruby and I had told him. And truth be told, he wasn’t the only one. “Well, it’s a good thing you’ve come in to see me today – I definitely want to see if we can find out just what’s going on.”

“Hopefully all these tests he’s got this week will sort things out,” Ruby said, and she gave my shoulder a squeeze.

“That’s what I’m hoping as well,” Dr. Emerson agreed. He picked his stethoscope up off his desk and motioned for me to stand up. “I know you don’t like being poked and prodded,” he said as I unzipped my hoodie and slipped it back off my shoulders, leaving it to fall onto my chair. It was followed in short order by my T-shirt. “So I’ll try to be quick.”

“Appreciate it,” I said as I hopped up onto the examination table that was on the other side of the room.

The first thing Dr. Emerson did was listen to my heartbeat and my breathing. “Your heart is beating faster than I’d like,” he said, before moving the stethoscope to my back. I couldn’t help but notice that he sounded concerned by this. “Certainly a lot faster than it has in the past.”

“I don’t like the sound of that,” I said. For the first time that morning, I was more worried than I was anxious.

“Nor do I. Deep breath for me?”

Mercifully, Dr. Emerson was done poking and prodding me relatively quickly. “I’m going to refer you for your usual tests,” he said as I pulled my T-shirt and hoodie back on, the sound of typing filling his office once more. “I’m also going to write you a referral to see a Dr. Wenham – she’s a cardiologist at Wollongong Hospital. This isn’t to say that there is definitely something wrong with your heart,” he added when he saw the look of panic I knew I had on my face. “The symptoms you’ve described to me today may be due to something else entirely. But I am concerned that you may have developed an arrhythmia and something called a myxoma, and it would be remiss of me to dismiss either possibility. All right?”

“All right,” I echoed quietly, trying my hardest to keep the panic I felt out of my voice. Dr. Emerson may have been familiar with the ins and outs of my anxiety disorder, but I still didn’t want to have a panic attack right in front of him. “What if it’s not that, though?”

“If it’s something else, I’d like you to make another appointment to see me so that we can start to explore other possibilities.”

I nodded and took the large white envelope he handed to me. “Okay. Thanks, Dr. Emerson.”

I managed to hold things together until after Ruby and I had left the medical centre. Almost as soon as the automatic doors had slid shut behind us, I dropped to my knees on the asphalt of the medical centre’s carpark and squeezed my eyes shut, doing my best to hold back the tears that were threatening to fall. I barely flinched when I felt Ruby settling herself down next to me, one of her arms snaking across my back. “Hey,” she said softly, her voice barely audible over the sound of traffic on the nearby highway. “Hey, it’s okay…”

I shook my head. “No it’s not,” I said, my voice nearly breaking. “I might have something wrong with my heart Ruby, so I’m as far from okay as it’s possible to be right now.”

“Whatever it is, we will get through it,” she said, and I looked at her. She looked so sure of herself that I had to believe her. “And we’ll get through it together.” She brushed my hair back off my face, tucking it behind my ears. “If you think something like your health getting even more dodgy is going to scare me off, then you really don’t know me very well.”

“I never thought it would scare you off,” I said quietly. “I just…” I trailed off and let out a sigh, and scrubbed the sleeve of my hoodie over my eyes. “I just didn’t think it would get worse this soon, that’s all. It hasn’t even been ten years yet.”

“It’s nine years in a couple of weeks, yeah?” Ruby asked as she helped me back to my feet. I handed her the envelope that Dr. Emerson had given me, and she tucked it into her bag so that neither of us lost it.

“Yeah.” I pulled the sleeves of my hoodie down over my hands and wrapped my arms around myself, suddenly feeling cold all over. “I’m scared,” I said, finally voicing what I’d been feeling ever since my appointment had finished. “Absolutely fucking terrified.”

“Yeah, me too Tay,” Ruby said. “Me too.”

>>

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