I pressed my lips to hers. “Now that is out of the way, how about you go keep our friends company while I go relieve some of the pressure you have been putting on me all night? I am pretty sure they have noticed our absence by now”
Chapter Thirteen
Jemma
“I can’t take it anymore Dr. Schneider! I know we agreed on sixty days but I am not going to be able to make it another three weeks.”
I cannot believe the great Doctor just laughed at me. Were doctors supposed to laugh when their patients behaved like sex crazed teenagers?
“You have come this far Jemma, I am sure the two of you can get by another few weeks without incident. Many people in the world have gone a lot longer than sixty days without sexual relations you know.”
Well obviously those “someone else’s” did not have a Julian at their beck and call.
“How about we change the subject? How long has it been since you saw your father?”
Not since the day he was walked out of the court room after sentencing. Why did he want to know? The last thing I wanted to talk about was my father but in the end he was one of the reasons that I walked through that door every week.
“I know this is something you are not ready to discuss but your Aunt called me the other day to let me know that your father was being moved to the state penitentiary. She wanted me to tell you that he wished to see you. Apparently she has tried to call you and you haven’t returned those calls, she was worried about you.”
I had received several messages from my Aunt over the last few days but the moment she mentioned that she needed to speak to me about my father, her brother, I couldn’t bare the thought of calling her back. She had been visiting my father in the hospital once a week since the first day he was admitted. At first she had tried to speak to me about his condition but I refused. I would put my hands to my ears and storm out of the room every time she made an attempt, eventually she stopped trying altogether.
“I don’t want to see my father, she knows that!” I screamed out in frustration.
“You don’t have to but I think you should consider it. The anniversary of your mother’s death is coming up and I think it might help you to see that he isn’t the same person.”
I shook my head.
“No, I just can’t Dr Schneider.”
I paused, waiting for his response, but he continued to sit in his chair, quietly bobbing his leg up and down. There was a tiny part of me that wanted more than anything to see my father. Even though he had tried to kill me after taking my mother’s life there was still a piece of me that saw him as the loving daddy figure he was before losing Nicolai. That part of me wanted to run into his arms and tell him that I forgave him. I know that he was no longer in control of his actions that day but it didn’t make the fact that he put a bullet in my mother’s head and with fail attempted to damn me with that same fate any less true.
“Why are they moving him?”
“Well, the hospital is pretty overcrowded and the doctors seem to think that he is well enough to be let into general population. It is my understanding that he has been doing really well the last couple of years and wishes to have a job. There is a volunteer group that comes in once a week and teaches the patients cooking skills. He has taken a good liking to it and has been offered a mess hall position as a cook.”
“Hm.” That was no surprise to me. As a child my father was always whipping up something in the kitchen and he always manned the campfire roasts whenever we went camping or fishing. I admired my father’s ability to make intricate meals like fish pie, stew and brownies over a hot fire.
My mother’s idea of camp food was canned beans and burnt hot dogs. She was a wonderful mother but she never could get the hang of cooking. My father had told us that the first meal she ever made him was scrambled eggs and toast. She burned the toast and the eggs tasted like salt but because he loved her enough to spare her feelings he ate every bite as if it were the best meal he had ever eaten. It was something they had laughed about after fifteen years of marriage.
I used to love watching my parents together. They had a tendency to speak without words instead conveying their needs with a simple glance or touch. It was hard not to admire the love they had for one another and until the day my mother was murdered I held onto that particular idea of love. I was sure their love could overcome anything, which is one of the reasons why I did not burden them with the pain of my own heart. I kept hoping they would piece each other back together again like they had done so many times before. I guess losing a child consumes you to the point that you don’t even want to anymore.