Descent

Adelaide

Outside it poured, engorged droplets of water pounding torrentially on the sidewalks. Wind whipped fiercely through the bustling city, tugging on coats the rushing pedestrians were huddled in and tangling their hair under their woollen hats. It was a raging tempest.

Inside Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital, a sparkling glass wall enclosing three wood-panelled ones formed a cosy little office, furnished in minimalistic crème and ebony. I sat behind an expansive teak desk, leaning back in my chair with manicured talons clutching a steaming, crimson mug – the sole burst of vibrance in my sombre chamber – Rob Thomas accompanied by Santana’s sinful guitar playing belting out of an iPod dock somewhere under the desk. I sighed, leaning back in my chair, letting one of the sexiest songs ever recorded wash over me, weighing down my exhaustion.

So tired, I thought, before Christmas is even close.

As if God wished to prove my point, at that very moment, the grinning form of a certain perky intern decided to grace my office with his presence.

‘Doctor Vaughn.’ A statement, punctuated with a dazzling grin.

‘Intern Daring.’ Delivered in an almost perfect replication of his manner.

‘New patient,’ he announced. ‘They want you down on the VIP floor ASAP. It’s...imperative, as Sloane put it.’

‘Thank you, Elli, I’ll be right down.

Smoothing down the ecru skirt terrifically accentuating my natural golden tan, I collected the necessary electronic devices: phone, pager, voice recorder, and followed him downstairs, shoving the burdening pieces of technology into my over-sized Kate Spade handbag en route.

---

‘I give you...Sergio Ramos!’

Ignoring my fiancé’s sweeping arm motion and childish antics, I pressed a quick kiss to his smiling mouth before slipping into the indicated room and shutting the door behind me, silently turning on my recorder to record reactions for later observation in the process.

It was the sole occupant who captured my immediate attention. Visage pallid under bronzed complexion; mahogany tresses fanned out in a halo against the snowy pillow; his long, lean length prone under the cerulean covers.

Tentatively, I approached the bed and whispered, ‘Sergio?’

No answer.

Gingerly, four ruby-tipped fingers traced a sinfully toned bicep. A shudder wracked the body supposedly lying in deep slumber. It made a smile lift my mood, his pretending to sleep to ignore me.

I moved from the bedside to the window, drawing the azure blinds – allowing daylight to flood through the room, extinguishing the sepulchral shadows lurking in the room’s murky corners – to look at the flower-adorned gardens below.

‘I hear you’re a Blanco,’ I offered, hoping to break the ice.

Silence persisted.

‘You know, I thought that was jus correction fluid. My nieces nearly had an aneurysm at that.’

Not receiving a response, I let conversation slide for the moment and we lapsed back into silence; the pregnant pause persisting ill a sharp rap on the door punctured it.

Striding to the door, I pulled it open to reveal a heart-breaking pair: tall, dark, handsome men; lean and long, one with twinkling eyes and a brilliant, gleaming smile accentuating his deep tan; the other with bearded, slightly smiling visage embedded with the deepest, most expressive eyes I’d ever seen.

We’re his teammates,’ explained the taller of the two, once introductions were out of the way.

‘May we please be allow to seeing him?’ added the other in broken English thickly laced with a Spanish accent.

Masking my disappointment at the lack of response from my patient under a meticulously-crafted smile, I delivered a few necessary instructions before collecting my belongings and retreating back to my office.

---

Cristiano

Once the sable and ecru-clad back of Dr. Vaughn disappeared around the corner, I turned to the captain and muttered, ‘Venga, Iker, permita que nosotros no retrasemos esto ya.’

(Come, Iker, let’s not delay this any longer.)

I understood, though, the turmoil in his eyes. To hear the woman’s words, to hear that one of his oldest teammates would never play alongside him again, it had to be killing him.

I clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Será fino, el hombre, se relaja sólo. Usted la oyó.’

(It’ll be fine, man, just relax. You heard her.)

I allowed him to go in alone, leaning against the corridor wall, her words echoing in my head.

Sergio’s constructed his entire life around football and he can never play again. No, don’t look at me with that hope in your eyes, Iker, NEVER AGAIN Of course, he’ll be able to walk by summer. There is a possibility he may even run one day...but he will never play again. His limbs won’t bear the pressures of professional football again. Accept that, boys. Now it’s up to you, his friends, and his girlfriend – I presume he has one? – to prop him back up.

But how were we supposed to do that? How could you tell a Blanco, a Galactico, a member of La Furia Roja, that he would never play again and still, be okay?! The notion itself would be laughable if it wasn’t so tragic.

Stifling a sigh, I walked into the private room Iker had entered just a few minutes ago.

He sat, head cradled in his hands, on a chair beside the bed, posture radiating defeat. I turned to the Spaniard I had gotten to know so well in such a short period of time.

‘Serg?’

He shook his head and turned away, anguish etched clearly upon his features.

‘Natalya,’ came the muffled reply, albeit from a different colleague than the one I’d been referring to. ‘Somebody finally decided to reply to all our mails.’

I stiffened. ‘What did that...woman want?’

Sergio’s attraction to aspiring Soviet actress Natalya Bernini had been clearly lost on us both, as was obviously indicated in our bitter tones.

Mutely, he gestured to the Blackberry lying at the foot of the bed, clearly tossed their by somebody.

I cocked an eyebrow questioningly.

‘Su amigo no escucha, Cristiano, yo lo dije que él no quiso leer,’ explained San Iker.

(Your friend doesn’t listen, Cristiano, I told him he didn’t want to read.)

Groaning, I picked up the infernal device, mentally kicking the defender for his stubbornness and his asinine girlfriend, and brought up the offending e-mail.

I’m sorry, I can’t deal with this, Iker. I just can’t. I wanted to date a hot, rich, famous footballer; a depressing cripple wasn’t part of the bargain. Tell him I’m sorry.

Fury coursed through my veins; a hatred so intense, I wanted nothing more than to strike the despicable bitch to the ground.

---

Adelaide

‘What do you think?’ I asked, slowly turning to give my considerably younger sibling a full view of the glossy champagne curls and ebony leather and lace ensemble.

‘Love the shoes!’ she confided.

I glanced down at my feet encased in iridescent leopard print Louboutins and grinned. ‘Yeah, me too.’

‘Did you remember the armoured underwear?’

‘Alessandra! Derrick’s not an animal!’

‘Could’ve fooled me,’ my sole living relation muttered.

I sighed. For unfathomable reasons, Derrick – normally a favourite with the female crowd – did not hit it off with my sister as expected. It was posing a bit of a problem, my only family member and fiancé being constantly at loggerheads.

‘Elena called, by the way.’

‘What did she want?’ I groused, turning back to my dresser to spray myself with Perry Ellis, ruffling at the mention of our sister in-law.

‘The twins want to visit for Christmas,’ relayed Miss Bearer of Bad News, grinning evilly.

‘Alé ! Have I not told that infernal woman not to send her brats on my solitary vacation every year?!’ Exasperation reigned supreme.

Unfazed, she displayed a fine, stentorian clearing of the throat, before proceeding in a squeaky little girls’ voice, ‘But Auntie Ally! Daddy always brought us to see you and Auntie Addy at Christmastime!’

‘Yeah, Daddy, not your sanctimonious cow of a matriarch,’ I muttered darkly, tossing necessities into a café au lait clutch.

Of course, the amused teenager had a reply to that too, this in a distorted mimicry of Elena’s clipped, condescending tone, ‘They’re right, Alessandra. You do realize that just because darling Ralf has passed away doesn’t stop you and Adelaide being the girls’ family, does it, sweetie?’

‘Of course not!’ I replied with mock cheer. ‘Just as long as their frigid, gold-digging bitch who had the fortune to be married to our brother gets to spend her holiday blowing his inheritance at a ridiculous spa, right?’

Alessandra dissolved into giggles, sliding down the wall in her fits of laughter.

‘Really, Ade, you’re too mean about her!’ she managed to gasp out between giggles.

I smiled down at the girl lying on my bedroom floor, laughing, in striped boxers and basic white V-neck tee and softened. ‘Have a fun night, yeah?’

She nodded. ‘Yeah, Becka’s coming over. It’s gonna be chick flicks, pizza, popcorn, manicures, gossip, the works!’

‘Just no naughties,’ I warned, wagging an index finger at her and giving her a cheeky wink just as a horn blasted outside.

---

Giggling manically, I stumbled over to the bar and placed my order to the bemused bartender.

‘Sure you should be drinking all that, love?’ he asked, eyes twinkling mirthfully under a light, arched eyebrow, as he lined up the half dozen requested shot glasses on the bar and poured tequila into them.

‘Thanks, sugar!’ I slurred as I began throwing back the amber liquid.

A thick, muscled arm slipped around my sheer-laced waist, jerking me backward roughly into a male body.

‘Yes, Sloane?’ I snapped, irritation not quite veiled under intoxication.

‘Dance with me,’ whined the drunk doctor.

I sighed, buzz killed, then decided to rile him up some more, singing, ‘I’m crazy but you like it!’

He groaned and backed away as I swung off the bar stool and climbed onto the bar, sashaying to the beat of the music as I sang along. ‘Loca, loca, loca!’

The blonde bartender was soon on the bar with me as I pinned him to a wall and grinded against him to the beat of Kevin Little’s Turn Me On, much to the annoyance of my lackadaisical escort.

Before I knew what was going on, I was swinging upside down from something high and navy and moving towards the exit. With an indignant huff, I landed in the backseat of a car, not even having enough time to process whose, before the door slammed shut and a familiar body climbed on top of me, crushing my lungs within my thoracic cavity. The mouth trailing a wet, heated path down to the neckline of my top and the long fingers inching up the pygmous bulge of my backside to dip inside the waistband of my sable shorts left little to the imagination.

---

Alessandra

The front door crashed shut, effectively snapping us out of Jennifer Lopez and Richard Gere’s intense dance to the Go Tan Project’s Santa Maria.

‘Better get to bed, Bee,’ I muttered through the corner of my mouth as my sister slumped in, leaving a trail of shoes, keys, jacket and bag behind her.

She collapsed on the crème and gold sofa as Becka ran out of the den and into my bedroom.

‘Coffee, Alé, croaked Her Plastered-ness. ‘Strong and lots of it.’

‘Rough night?’ I queried, pulling her favourite mug out of a cabinet in the adjoining open kitchen.

‘You were right about the armoured underwear,’ she grumbled.

Grinning, I handed her the mug, placing the half-full coffee pot on the coffee table and taking a seat on the thick, crimson carpet before the fireplace. Minutes ticked by in companionable silence as she sipped the strong brew to settle her alcohol-crammed system and I leaned against a recliner, staring at the flickering frame.

Suddenly, out of the blue, Adelaide piped up, ‘I miss Ralf.’

A fond smile ghosted across my countenance. ‘Me too, Ade.’

‘I mean, why did he have to die? I drive everyday; I’ve never been in an accident!’

‘Maybe he wanted to get away from Elena that bad,’ I joked.

‘Huh. At least the twins were less annoying when he was around.’

I frowned. ‘To be fair, though, he did love her, Ade,’ I pointed out. ‘You weren’t there when he brought her home for the first time, he was so completely in love.’

‘Guess they fell out of it then,’ she mused.

I said nothing, just lay my head back against the armchair, thinking of our childhood with our paternal grandparents and older brother in Munich. When Ralf moved to Madrid with his newly-wed, pregnant wife and the doting surrogate parents passed away, I’d moved to London to live with Adelaide who was on the brink of breaking into a career in therapy there.

---

Adelaide

I gazed at Alessandra’s silhouette, the minimal illumination of the flame making her profile glow in the semi-darkness. So like Ralf. Though Alessandra was the one who got the name from our half-Brazilian mother, I was the one who got the Br-utch looks (from a Dutch grandfather and Brazilian grandmother). Ralf and Alé took to the German side of our family and everyday, her unbelievable resemblance to our deceased sibling took my breath away.

Of course, there was Elena to endure – Elena who had been such a sweet, happy girl when she’d first married into the family; Elena who had embraced promiscuity and vileness with a vengeance with her husband’s demise. And the twins. The two adorable little darlings who had been utterly spoilt by their father rand were now slowly morphing more and more into their mother everyday in his absence, even aged seven.

I still remember when I was younger and Gran would talk to me about love. She said sometimes it happened slowly, an investment of work and time over months and years. She said that kind of love was like the stock market – that, little by little, you put all of yourself into it and hoped for a decent return. She said there were other kinds too – the quick-fix binge love – when a person bounced from person to person without taking a bit of time out to examine what went wrong with the last one.

‘And there’s the Ralf-Elena love,’ she said once, sitting across from me on the back porch, twisting her wedding ring around her finger the way she always did when she was thinking. ‘When a person thinks they know somebody inside and out and then boom – one day, they realize there’s no spark left. Thing is, knowing and loving are different.’

‘Do you think they ever loved each other, Gran?’

Her eyes grew dark then, serious. ‘Once. Maybe. A long time ago. They were so excited, they jumped right in. And then they were lost.’ She shrugged. ‘And then they had Rosa and Vera – and each was all the other knew – so they just hold on.’

‘To what?’

She shrugged again. ‘To whatever.’

Then we were silent for a while. I sat against the fireplace imagining my brother and his wife in the middle of the ocean, stuck out there, but each keeping the other afloat.

‘And sometimes,’ Gran said softly, ‘there’s just plain love, Addy. No reason for it, no need to explain.’

Then she leaned back in her chair, crossed her ankle over her knee, and grinned. ‘Perfect love,’ she said.

‘What’s that like?’

‘When you find it, baby, you’ll know.’

Some mornings, there is only this in the world – Derrick’s words of endearment echoing in my head. And I lie awake and wonder if he’s The One and if we’ll wind up like Ralf and Elena did; loveless and shattered. There isn’t Ralf’s warning about time making changes we can’t ever anticipate. Only Derrick’s promising words in my head and a voice much louder than Ralf’s – my own – saying, Take this moment and run, Addy.

Take this moment and run.

---

Illusion never changed into something real. I'm wide awake and I can see the perfect sky is torn.