Change of Heart

[CraftyLion3D]

Synopsis - Beth Hastings has a secret and it involves her sister Alex. When Alex ends in hospital in a coma with heart failure, Beth tries to hide her guilt as well as her crumbling sanity. Meanwhile, nurses Claudia and Gareth must work out how a healthy Alex ended with health failure to begin with.
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Chapter 1 - Part 1

Tap. Tap. Tap-tap-tap.

Alex winced slightly. Beth’s tapping was getting on her nerves and she had been doing it for the past half hour. They were sitting in the waiting room of the office belonging to their father’s lawyer and Alex had closed her eyes in meditation. The constant typing of a computer from the lawyer’s secretary was barely tolerable. Beth’s nervousness, on the other hand, was driving her to distraction.

‘Will you stop that? It’s driving me nuts!’

Beth clenched her fist in a forced effort to stop her own nerves and flashed her sister a small grin.

‘Cover your ears then’ she teased but Alex wasn’t amused.

‘Oh, very funny.’

Alex’s response surprised her and Beth just shook her head in bewilderment. Surely, she could see the funny side of the comment. At that moment, their father’s lawyer made an appearance, collecting some paperwork from his secretary before focusing his attention on the sisters. He looked a little worst for wear and Beth surmised he had probably had a fairly stressful day.

‘Sorry I’m late,’ he apologised, as he shook hands with the pair. ‘I was help up in court. This way please.’

The office he led them into was small and cluttered. If Beth thought his appearance was due to the stresses of the day’s work, the appearance of the office completely overturn her pervious impression of him. The in-out tray on the small wooden desk was flowing with papers and the pile of books that was resting on the edge of the table looked like it was about to topple over any moment.

Both Alex and Beth invited themselves to sit on two plastic chairs opposite the desk as the lawyer rummaged through the chaos on his desk.

‘Now, it appears your father wrote a will before he passed on,’ he informed the sisters, sifting through the multitude of papers piled up in the in-out tray.

Alex could hear the lawyer panting slightly as he desperately tried to maintain a state of outer calm in the height of increasing pressure.

‘Just bear with me,’ he blushed, as a manila folder filled with fell off the table into a nearby bin despite his best attempts to catch it. ‘It’s here somewhere.’

Beth and Alex exchanged bemused smiles but neither made any attempt to clear up after the lawyer. After what felt like an eternity, he pulled out an envelope from the bottom of the tray.

‘Ah! Here it is!’ he announced triumphantly, before clearing his throat and tearing open the envelope to produce the legal document. He gave an embarrassed smile and proceeded to read the contents of the will. ‘It says here … “I, Matthew Joseph Hasting, hereby leave my collection of 13th Century coins to my eldest daughter, Bethany Joanne Hasting. To my youngest daughter, Alexandra Charlotte Hasting, I leave the house and the amount currently residing in my combined bank accounts to the sum of $750,000.”’

Beth’s jaw just dropped in disbelief.

‘Whoa! Wait a second,’ she interrupted in protest. ‘I just get a brunch of lousy coins and Alex gets the house and all the money?’

‘Look, don’t worry about it,’ Alex spoke up, failing to see what all the fuss was about. ‘We’ll share it amongst ourselves.’

Beth had had enough. What was she going to do with a collection of rare coins? The only use they had for it was in a museum and didn’t help her in the slightest. In no mood to argue, she just stalked out, leaving the lawyer staring after her in shock. Alex cleared her throat, clearly embarrassed by her sister’s behaviour.

‘Sorry about that,’ she apologised to the lawyer and went out after Beth.

 

[CraftyLion3D]

Alex and Beth were both sitting at the dining table having their meal later that evening. Alex had a strange feeling about what she was consuming. In fact, if she was honest with herself, the tomato juice tasted a little out of the ordinary.

‘There’s something about this juice,’ she mused, taking another sip of it.

Beth just looked up at her curiously.

‘What about it?’

‘It tastes … I dunno … different. Did you buy a different brand or something?’

Beth just shrugged and took a sip of hers. She knew what Alex was trying to imply but wasn’t going to let anything incriminate her.

‘Tastes alright to me,’ she replied, hoping to sound as natural as she possibly could and that Alex wouldn’t pick up on it. ‘Maybe it’s just your tastebuds.’

‘Yeah, maybe …’ Alex sighed and continued her meal.

They ate in silence for a moment until Alex looked up at her sister and found her toying with her food in disinterest.

‘What’s wrong?

‘Uh?’ Beth blinked, then sighed. ‘Oh, nothing. The will reading just rattled me, that’s all. What was Dad thinking? What the hell am I going to do with a bunch of 13th century coins?’

‘They’re probably worth a mint though.’

‘Yeah, but who in their right mind would pay for it? It’s beyond ridiculous! I might has well just donate them to a museum.’

Alex was about to reply when her mobile phone beeped, indicating a new text message. Sheepish, she retrieved it from the depths of her pocket and activated it. Her mouth dropped in shock when she read the contents.

‘I can’t believe he even would do that!’

‘Can’t believe who did what?’ Beth blinked but she had a fair idea who her sister was referring to.

‘He called it off. Through a bloody text message,’ Alex turned to face Beth, hoping for some reassurance from her older sister.

‘Did he say why?’ was all she asked.

‘Only that he was “thinking about it”!’ Alex snorted.

‘Bet there’s someone else and he’s too gutless to tell me.

The bastard!’

Annoyed, she pocketed the phone again and attempted to resume eating. Unfortunately, the most recent turn of events had caused her to loose her appetite. She just stared absent-mindedly at the bowl in front of her. Beth looked at her in sympathy.

‘You okay?’

‘Yeah, sorry. That text just threw me. I just can’t believe he actually called it off!’

‘I don’t blame you,’ Beth responded. ‘Most people do it face-to-face.’

‘Thanks for being so understanding anyway,’ Alex smiled, sipping the juice to wash the spaghetti down.

She still thought there might have been something odd about the taste of the juice but she couldn’t be sure. However, she also speculated there was a high chance that her emotions may be playing a part in the delusion as well and so she didn’t think there was any point mentioning it further.

‘Not a problem,’ Beth smiled. ‘I probably would’ve reacted the some way. Look, I know you’re probably not up to it anymore but try and finish the spaghetti. I’d hate for the smell to permeate the room.’

‘You can talk!’ Alex snorted then paused slightly before sighing. ‘I’m okay. I’m just pissed off with him, that’s all.’

There was another stretch of silence between the sisters as Beth watched Alex eat. Surely, it would’ve have started working by now yet Alex didn’t seem to be suffering any after-effects from it. Perhaps she hadn’t added enough. All her training taught her that it took anywhere between five minutes to fifteen minutes for any symptoms to start showing.

Any moment now, she thought with baited breath. You’re not going to know what hit you.

Beth was starting to get nervous. So much so that she nearly gave herself away and Alex noticed her immediately.

Tap. Tap. Tap-tap-tap.

‘You nervous about something?’ Alex asked with a frown.

‘No, why do you ask?’ Beth blinked in surprise.

She’d been so tense in anticipation, she forgotten where she actually was.

‘You always do that when you’re nervous,’ was the shrugging reply as if the reason for Beth’s anxiety was of no real concern to her.

‘Sorry. Bad habit,’ Beth clenched her fist in a deliberately attempt to stop her nervous twitch.

‘You should do some meditation or something,’ Alex suggested casually, causing Beth to smile sarcastically back at her.

Luckily, Alex failed to notice and she proceeded to polish off her meal. Beth watched her, anxiously waiting for the effects to take hold. Ten minutes had past. The effects should have started by now. Beth watched her expectantly, holding her breath. If this didn’t have any effect on her now, it would’ve been all for nothing and she’d have to come up with another plan.

Just hurry and take affect, will ya! I better not have gone through all this trouble for you not to work! Beth half-pleaded to the foxglove extract in Alex’s juice.

Alex sat there for a moment and wondered what had just happened. She was feeling fine a minute ago. Now, her head was swimming slightly. Maybe it had something to do with the stress she was experiencing from Murray dumping her in such a cowardly fashion. The kitchen around her started spinning slightly and she blinked, trying to clear her increasingly blurred vision.

‘What’s wrong?’ Beth wanted to know but did nothing to assist her.

By now, Alex felt like she was breathing in a vacuum. While she could breathe out, she was having trouble breathing in and, coupled with her extreme vertigo, it was getting very distressing. She began to panic.

‘I … I dunno…’ she whizzed, struggling to explain what she was experiencing but failed miserably. ‘I ... feel weird ...’

Worst yet, the world was spinning around her at a dizzying speed and giving her something of an exploding headache. Beth seemed to take it as a sudden reaction to nerves.

‘And you’re talking about me being nervous,’ she snorted teasing.

Come on! Die already!

Alex wasn’t really listening anymore. By now, she could barely think straight and her thoughts were moving faster than she could vocalise them. For some reason, the muscles of her mouth were refusing to co- operate with her mind. Then, with one last breath, she suddenly slumped into her chair and promptly collapsed onto the ground, twitching slightly.

What’s happening to me? I can’t move. Beth? You still there? Why aren’t you helping me? she called out silently, despite the fact that she knew Beth couldn’t actually hear her. I … can’t … breathe … Help!

As her heart gradually slowed down, her body began to twitch.

Can’t … think … n-need- Alex’s muddled thoughts tried to make sense of what was happening to her. Can’t … think … Cold … very … cold …

Watching her closely, Beth could now see that Alex’s breathing was starting to become compromised. In fact, it was becoming more and more irregular and forced. Beth’s training told her that Alex was going into cardiac arrest and the breathing was merely a sign of the body being starved of oxygen. Agonal breathing was the term they used in the professional circles. It was a situation that warranted immediate medical attention – something that Beth was deliberately failing to give her.

Beth sat there for a moment and gave a small smile. It had finally worked. She took a quick glance at her sister lying on the floor to make sure she was well and truly out then wished she hadn’t. Instead of seeing a perfect result from her mission, she saw a vulnerable and highly fragile younger sister whom she had adored throughout her life.

Now, she was feeling guilty for what she had actually done. Beth took a deep breath and tried in vain to convince herself she had done it for the greater good but a nagging voice inside her head taunted her mercilessly.

Now, you’ve done it, the sneering voice said. Alex is going to die and it’ll be on your head! All because you didn’t have the guts to tell it to her face. You had to go and poison her, didn’t you?

‘Shut up!’ Beth retorted. ‘You have no idea what you’re talking about!’

Are you kidding? I’m you, remember! You better hurry up and do something fast. You’ve wasted enough time arguing with me already!

She wriggled uncomfortably in her seat.

Well? What are you waiting for? Go on!

Tap. Tap. Tap-tap-tap.

‘Alex? You okay?’ she called out, hoping to get some sort of reaction from her sister but failed.

She couldn’t stand the sight of her unconscious sister any longer. In a panic, she got up from her chair and rushed towards her. All of sudden she was now hoping that Alex was just unconscious. Her original plans had now flown straight out the window. Unfortunately, upon assessment, Beth’s worst fears were realised when she discovered Alex wasn’t actually breathing. In fact, her lips had started to turn a greyish-blue.

‘Oh god, no!’ she cried in desperation, gently shaking Alex’s shoulders in an attempt to rouse her again. ‘Come on. Wake up. You can do it. ..’

 

[CraftyLion3D]

Chapter 2​

There was nothing worst than waking up from a terrifying nightmare, only to find yourself in the middle of nowhere and encased in a vehicle that wasn’t actually working. The last thing Alex Hasting remembered before being jarred out the depths of unconsciousness was the unmistakable ambiance of a hospital intensive care unit. What had stood out most hauntingly for her though wasn’t what she saw, but what she heard. In fact, she couldn’t remember seeing anything at all. It was almost as if someone had thrown a dark cloth bag over her head and forced her to rely on her hearing instead.

Amidst the darkness of her subconsciousness, she vividly remembered hearing the concerned voice of her sister as the latter discussed the well-being of a critically ill patient with one of the nursing staff at the intensive care unit. Alex strongly speculated that the patient in question was actually herself because she discovered she couldn’t directly communicate with either of them.

‘Mum’s due back from holidays in a week,’ her sister had commented wistfully against the mechanical background sound of the ventilator and accompanying heart monitor. ‘I can’t let her see Alex like this. She’ll be guttered!’

To her credit, the female nurse she had spoken to had managed to alleviate her anxiety by suggesting she go home to get some rest. Alex couldn’t remember any more than that because that’s when she surfaced from the tides of unconsciousness, panting heavily in cold sweat.

Now, she was sitting in the driver’s seat of a ute in the middle of a deserted country road with no memory of how she got there which was something of an oddity because her memory was usually pretty good.

She looked down at the National Park and Wildlife Services uniform she was wearing and was overcome with an intense wave of curiosity. She wondered if she was suffering a form of amnesia because she couldn’t remember doing anything in her professional life that resembled the duties or responsibilities of a park ranger either. Shaking her head in dismissal, she fumbled blindly for the ute’s keys that were still embedded in the vehicle’s ignition.

Common sense should have told her that her tunnel vision would have hindered any driving skills she possessed. However, in the wake of her current disposition, her mind was pre-occupied. She hated isolation and longed to return to the vibrancy of modern civilization. Finally locating the keys, she turned on the ignition – or at least she tried. The engine erupted in a stubborn, prolonged splutter before dying out completely. This was the last straw for Alex and she blasted the horn with as much force as her frustration allowed before climbing out and slamming the door behind her.

If Alex had been expecting any sort of reprieve from her predicament outside the ute, she would’ve been sorely disappointed. The drought stricken brown paddocks of the unforgiving countryside surrounding her stretched for kilometres as the harsh summer sun glared down on Alex’s unprotected face. It instantly reminded her of an apocalyptic barren wasteland and her limited peripheral vision didn’t help at all. She stared out into the paddocks, hoping against hope that what she was experiencing was all but a dream and that she would eventually wake up in the comfort of her warm cosy bed in the city. Had she woken from one nightmare only to wake up in another?

The screeching sound of a crow flying overhead jolted her back to the present and she soon realised that she’d need to find some shade before she succumbed to heatstroke. Scanning the endless paddocks, she soon came to across a slim dirt track amidst thick shrub. Seeing as there was no other relief from the blistering sun, she made a bee-line straight towards it.

The change in temperature was pleasantly immeasurable. Alex glanced around her and found herself amidst a forest of eucalyptus trees. She was so in awe of the sudden transformation of her surroundings that she failed to notice she was in fact moving further away from the road and the ute. She soon found herself lost. Hopelessly lost.

Cursing silently, she looked around the endless rows of trees and vegetation in hope of finding anything that would help her way back towards the main road. Confused, she spun around in an attempt to gain some sort of familiarity amongst her surroundings but failed miserably.

She soon became aware of a faint rumbling of thunder in a distance. It wasn’t overly distinctive but it had an oddly familiar rhythm to it. At first, she thought a storm was brewing but, on closer examination of the clear blue sky above, she concluded that wasn’t likely to happen anytime soon.

Boom. Boom. Boom-boom-boom.

She stopped for a moment, trying to remember where she’d heard it from. Almost on cue, it stopped as well, as if challenging her sanity. Alex thought for a minute then decided on a plan of action. Maybe if she continued forward, the rumbling would re-commence, letting her to analyse its origin again. She took an anticipatory step forward, listening intently.

Nothing.

She took another step. Still nothing. Annoyance slowly raged within her and she gave up, storming ahead in defiance.

Then it came back.

Boom. Boom. Boom-boom-boom.

She didn’t hear it at first because she was too pre- occupied with her premature defeat. Her attention was diverted when she realised the rumbling had gotten louder. Without any logical explanation whatsoever, her annoyance subsided and was replaced with intense curiosity.

‘That sounds very familiar,’ she muttered aloud as she looked around, trying to find its source. ‘Where’s it coming from?’

Unfortunately, the next step she took killed off any opportunity to investigate the sound further. Apart from the natural ambiance of the Australian bush, the silence was deafening. The longer she waited for the sound to return, the longer the silence stretched. Alex eventually moved ahead when she realised the sound wasn’t going to return and, in the process, unwittingly stepped on a twig …


The transformation of her surroundings was instant to say the least. In fact, it was starting to become a bit of a habit. With a blink of an eye, she suddenly found herself amongst thick vegetation and there was a black jacket on the ground. Who did the jacket belong to? She made her way to the base of the tree and picked up the garment in examination. The sheer size of the jacket told her that it wouldn’t have fitted the children anyway. The jacket reminded her of someone she didn’t expect to be in this area of isolation. On hindsight, he probably would’ve captured the magic of the country scenery with his digital single lens reflex camera.

A professional photographer, Murray Parkes wasn’t one to let the beauty of a certain landscape escape his watchful eye. It was one of the things Alex loved so much about him. They had met during one of his photo shoots and it was love at first sight. Alex smiled at the memory and brought the jacket up to her nose, savouring the smell of his aftershave.

‘I wondered where I'd dropped it,’ a very familiar voice greeted her. ‘Thanks.’

Alex looked up and saw the man himself. Where had he materialised from? A tall man, Murray posed a striking figure. On this occasion, he wore military style clothing and sturdy hiking boots which – if Alex had been paying any attention to, she’d have realise that it wasn’t his style of clothing at all. Granted, he certainly had the compact and muscular physique for it but he was a pacifist through and through. She flashed him a dazzling smile and greeted him with a passionate kiss on the lips before handing him back the jacket.

‘I know how much it means to you,’ she told him. ‘I remember you wore it when I first met you.’

‘Yes and I remember how unimpressed you were at the time,’ Murray reminded her, thoughtfully.

It was at this point of the conversation that the dialogue started to go slightly awry – not that either of them were paying much attention to it.

‘Well, what do you expect?’ Alex retaliated. ‘You were tearing across a protected area in that bloody Harley- Davidson of yours.’

Murray gave a lopsided grin.

‘At least you didn't throw it over the cliff. Speaking of which, there's something I want to show you.’

He put on his jacket and began leading her away. Now, she was curious.

‘Really? What?’

‘Words just can't describe it,’ Murray replied cheekily.

‘Sounds ominous.’

‘Come on then ...’

The climb over the ravine was steeper than Alex imagined. She wondered how Murray could be so energetic at this time of the day because she could no longer see him. That wasn’t to say he was no longer there. She could still hear his footsteps and panting ahead of her. She, on the other hand, was beginning to feel as if she had just run a four kilometre marathon and the muscles in her legs and arms were burning with exhaustion. Was she really that unfit? She looked up and wondered where Murray had disappeared to.

‘Murray! Slow down!’ she called in desperation.

He didn’t respond at first, rising Alex’s anxiety levels up a notch. A few seconds later, he re-appeared in front of her, shaking his head with laughter.

‘God, you're really out of shape! And you call yourself a park ranger!’

Without any attempt to help Alex or even register her need for assistance, he continued on his way as if nothing happened. Alex cursed under her breath. Typical men! Always wanting to show they were the greater sex. What exactly was he trying to prove anyway? She shook her head in disbelief and continued to struggle up the ravine. She had only climbed a few meters further when she heard a blood curling scream up ahead. That almost sounded like … No, it couldn’t be, could it?

Suddenly with renewed energy, she scrambled to the top of the ravine and found herself at the cliff edge. She wasn’t even sure how she managed to get there so fast. Without even thinking, she looked down and wished she hadn’t. Murray lay there broken and limp at the bottom on a ledge.