Polarity and Indecision

By Erika Kochanski

I will share a personal truth with you: darkness is not so intimidating once you’ve resided within its confines. I’m not talking evil, but a blackness that can dwell in your soul, lurking in suspicion and toying with your heart. It’s a state of mind, a place where you view the world within its context. It leaves a mark on you that is as permanent as any scar and as deep as any wound. It crawls beneath your skin, indulges in pain, and scrambles reasonable judgment into chaos. I am not shy of it. I adopt it as any other part of the human experience, and I am not ashamed to call on it for inspiration. It is, after all, a component of my character. I would not be complete without it and so it is sewn into my life with a fragile Zen-like thread.

Polarity and Indecision is a nominee in the 2015 Global Ebook Awards.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tellwell Talent
• Release date: Mar 4, 2015
• ISBN: 9781925219630

Erika Kochanski

Erika Kochanski was born and raised in Brisbane, Australia, and graduated with a Bachelor's degree majoring in writing and literature from Griffith University. Writing has been a lifelong dream, travel an ever growing passion, and when given the option to live out of a suitcase in a foreign city while writing about the world the answer is always 'Let's go!'

Book preview

The Almond Tree

I will share a personal truth with you; darkness is not so intimidating once you’ve resided within its confines. I’m not talking evil, but a blackness that can dwell in your soul, lurking in suspicion and toying with your heart. It’s a state of mind, a place where you view the world within its context. It leaves a mark on you that is as permanent as any scar and as deep as any wound. It crawls beneath your skin, indulges in pain, and scrambles reasonable judgment into chaos. I am not shy of it. I adopt it as any other part of the human experience, and I am not ashamed to call on it for inspiration. It is, after all, a component of my character. I would not be complete without it and so it is sewn into my life with a fragile Zen-like thread.

I admit, the scars on my flesh aren’t charming to anyone, but they’re emblems of my life’s narrative. You stare at them perplexed, but as I gaze at them they unveil realms of my imagination. Once excruciating and torturous, they’ve matured and become the source of much enlightenment. It was not self-deception but unrelenting honesty that cut through the nerves of my skin into the blood in my veins, setting in motion a new path.

It was far from a desire for attention. This pain was more like a hunger, not far from the label of addiction. A prison to you, but an arena to my own misunderstood contemplations and afflictions. You may not have been able to perceive it, but it was there serving as solace to me and the unrest of my mind. I had affection for this antagonism, which was like an uncompromising friend testing my mortality and strength. I am wiser now because of it and it has become the architect of my unique perspective. No, this darkness is not as sinister as it sounds.

AUSTRALIA

Chapter One:

Ana

I couldn’t love. No wait, it’s more truthful to say that I believed the words I love you were hollow syllables people said to fake their way through relationships. I had stopped saying the words to almost anyone except in jest. It was this vain attempt to mask my inability to connect that I completely lost the ability to say them with meaning.

It isn’t true to say that I was unable to love at all, as there were people in my life I had great affection for. No, the truth was I had never truly known what the words had meant to begin with. I had looked at them too objectively and they had lost their magic. I hadn’t seen anyone my age end up in an honest, healthy relationship and, detached from my family on the other side of the world, I had wrongly believed that people were constantly lying to each other to justify staying together so they didn’t have to face being alone. What I didn’t know was that there were just as many people lying to themselves for fear of letting anyone in – and I was one of them.

It is disturbing to think what you do to yourself when you lose the meaning of love. Without it, you become an autonomous soul following social prompts to make it through the day, coming and going in people’s lives as if your presence doesn’t have any bearing on them. It is a state beyond self-loathing. You become a detached entity living in a realm where it is easy to misunderstand what other people feel towards you because you can’t feel it yourself. You become numb to your own self-worth and it is not long before you miss the point of everything. Everything.

When I look back, it’s clear to me how smaller events can snowball into bigger ones. How things in your past that are not dealt with eventually bubble to the surface and scream to be recognised. It is strange to think that the biggest drama yet to come might be facing those things we wouldn’t let ourselves acknowledge. It can start with simple things and from slow beginnings and before you know it, what you had buried so deeply finally comes to the surface, raw and fresh. Sometimes you can pinpoint the day that a particular path was put into motion, and it’s not always the day you expect. It’s often very unassuming.

On January 26 the rain poured down as a prelude to one of those moody thunderstorms we all expect on balmy Queensland days. I sat upright on the maroon vinyl of the clinical bed and shifted my dangling feet from side to side above the drab grey carpet. I stared at the cream coloured paint on the wall. The rain pelted down outside on the aluminium roofing and I tried to rub away the goose bumps on my arms from the air-conditioning that was working hard to expel the humidity.

‘Ana, it’s not broken so stop fidgeting,’ said Declan, my boss. He was one of two doctors who ran The Clinic where I worked as a receptionist. I had worked beside him for the past five years. I conceded, refrained from jittering and pulled myself together as he stood in front of me. ‘Much better.’

Declan was taller than my five foot nine inches by two inches. He had short hair that stood upright in its own dark-rusty-red way. He swore to me he never used products but I remained suspicious. His hair was too stylish to simply be wash and dry. He was often unshaven, almost scruffy, which matched his roughly ironed shirts and well-worn boots. His voice was deep but comforting, a trait I’m certain most of his patients appreciated.

‘Holy shit. Damn Dec, that hurt!’ I winced, as he pressed his thumb against the back of my hand, curled his long fingers around mine and pushed back slightly.

‘Sorry. Just testing.’ I could have sworn that for a second I had caught him smirking.

Outside, the entire country was preparing for various Australia Day celebrations while here I sat at work on the bed in Declan’s consulting room cursing him as he shaped my hand into strange forms like a piece of children’s moulding clay. Each time the pain shot through my hand, my heels clicked together involuntarily, as if I were Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz.

‘How did you do this anyway?’ The skin around Declan’s blue-grey eyes wrinkled as he squinted and blindly fiddled around in the drawer next to the bed. I squinted myself, examining the few greys that had popped up in his hair over the past year.

‘Ana?’ He was trying to get my attention back to him. I tried to think of an answer.

An hour before, I had been sitting in my favourite coffee shop just around the corner from where I lived in Cleveland. I loved Cleveland, a superb suburb of Redland City overlooking beautiful Moreton Bay with Stradbroke Island waving to it in the distance. It had been my home for most of my life. The streets were quiet and the town felt like a seaside village hidden within suburbia. Queensland’s capital city Brisbane was a short drive to the north, and the golden sands of the Gold Coast a short drive south.

A little further north from Brisbane was the Sunshine Coast where more beaches promised more ocean and where a laidback atmosphere continued from the undulating hinterland right down to the white sands of the ocean shore. There wasn’t another place in the world quite like the Great South East. It was the one place in the world I always felt safe.

The coffee shop was small and hidden away down a residential street a short walk from the town centre. Its few tables were usually full. Oversized umbrellas and trees shielded the tables and chairs encroaching on the footpath from the hot Australian sun. Depending on the season, flowers from the trees scattered across the path and street, releasing their fragrance as passers-by stepped on them.

Inside, the lighting was warm and inviting and shone over the booths looking out onto the trees and hedges. The lush emerald, jade and olive tones of the foliage complemented the warm rusty tones and dark wood interior of Café Arabica. I loved the rich aroma of coffee and the friendly, smiling staff.

I sat in a quiet corner absent-mindedly watching the many couples and groups of gossiping friends, while outside the dark and dismal sky announced the fast-approaching deluge.

A series of distant rumbles sent the coffee shop patrons occupying the outside tables scurrying indoors. At the table beside me, an old woman told off her husband for ordering bacon and eggs when they were already spending ‘good money’ on his medication for high cholesterol. As they got up and passed my table, the woman shot me an expression of warning when she saw me staring. I diverted my gaze, took out a pen and began to draw on my napkin. I soon became so caught up in my sketch that I didn’t notice someone standing beside me watching me closely.

‘Wow. That’s quite remarkable.’

I jumped and looked up. Staring down at me was the chiselled face and striking hazel eyes of Dr Oliver Darcy. Oliver, who was one of the other GP’s at The Clinic that Declan and Lewis had hired, was enigmatic and charming. With a single smile – one of the many I knew he had packed away in his repertoire – he had me choking awkwardly as I tried taking a shaky sip of my drink.

Oliver sat down at my table and waited for my coughing fit to cease. His eyes seemed to absorb the moody darkness of the sky and reflected back to me as almost black, complementing his brown hair and olive skin. It was impossible not to respond without a smile as bright as his, once my coughing spasms calmed.

‘Do you mind if I sit?’

‘Aren’t you already?’

‘True. It’s just I get bored waiting for them to bring me my coffee.’

‘Short attention span, huh? You really are special.’

‘I find your haughty sarcasm mildly offensive. If I didn’t know better, Ana, I would think you didn’t want me to sit with you,’ he said, clearing his throat in order to hide his grin.

‘Don’t expect me to entertain you. I’ve got nothing in my repertoire.’

Oliver looked at the napkin. I had drawn a water lily. Someone once told me about the difficult dirty struggle as they push their way through mud to finally bloom on the water’s surface and that it was symbolic of life. Considering my past, it was quite possibly also symbolic of me.

‘Don’t underestimate yourself,’ he said, throwing his bag down on the table. ‘That’s a tour de force.’

Oliver paused and frowned, dropping his hands onto the table as if even they were disappointed in his delivery. ‘That was lame.’

‘Yes. It was.’ I laughed and slipped the napkin across the table for him to keep. He took a pen out of his pocket and wrote on the back, Ana’s Tour de Force, then folded it neatly and put it in his bag.

‘So, what are you drinking?’

‘A chai latte.’

‘A chai latte? What the hell is that?’ He laughed.

‘So what did you order? A macchiato? Is that an elaborate way of saying macho?’

‘You’re funny.’ Oliver smiled. One of the waitresses, a young girl with blonde hair tied back in a preppy ponytail, came over to the table with his coffee-to-go cup and batted her eyelashes in his direction. Oliver gave her a wink and a nod as he accepted the drink from her and turned back to me. I watched as the girl blushed and bounced her way back to the counter, twirling and twisting her blonde locks between her fingers as she went.

‘Coffee-to-go? Not staying?’ I asked.

‘I’ve got an Australia Day BBQ to go to. I promised a friend I’d make an appearance. Then who knows where I’ll end up.’

‘Fair enough. Just so you know, a coffee-to-go cup is very macho.’

Oliver laughed again, this time coughing a little as some of his coffee made a break for his windpipe. He ran his hand roughly across his lips, his palm brushing over his chin, and caught a drop of coffee that was moments away from landing on his perfectly pressed blue shirt.

‘Gosh,’ he said, bravely taking one more swig of his coffee. ‘You’re quick.’

‘I have my good days. Have fun.’

‘You too.’

As Oliver left, he gave me the same wink-smile-nod combination he had given to the pretty young waitress. I gave him a mocking version in return and he walked off with a satisfied grin.

I finished the last sip of my chai latte and grabbed my bag. As I moved to get up, the bag hooked onto the bottom of the chair leg, the chair slid back, and I was sent flying. I hit the hard tiled floor with such force it caused every person in the place to stop mid-conversation and look at the clumsy girl writhing in agony. As I attempted to clamber my way up off the ground, picking up my belongings that had scattered out of my bag, the bouncy blonde waitress sprang over to help me with a look of pity in her eyes.

When the last item was back in my bag, I begrudgingly thanked her and went on my way. Walking outside with what remained of my dignity, I looked at my hand. A lump the size of a golf ball bulged on the back of my hand and I could barely move my fingers. To make sure it wasn’t broken I’d have to ask someone at work to give it a quick once-over.

‘My hand is not a piece of paper you can practise your awesome origami skills on, you jerk,’ I said to Declan, avoiding his question and causing him to force out an evil chuckle as if he really was gaining pleasure from my torment.

‘Shut up and sit still. You’re way tougher than this.’ His face went back to its serious squinting configuration.

‘Stop squinting and put your damn glasses on,’ I mumbled under my breath. He plucked his trendy thick black-framed glasses from his shirt, where they had been suspended from his top shirt button, and balanced them on his nose. He purposely did not cease his squinting.

I let my eyes wander around the room, thinking about how it had not changed one bit in the five years I had worked there. Not the walls, the carpet or even the way the pictures hung crookedly on the wall. There was so much comfort in that.

There was also much comfort in knowing that my two bosses had such a solid friendship. This was the foundation of The Clinic. The pair of them, Dr Declan Alessandro and Dr Lewis Fergusson, had met in college and were destined to become great business partners just as soon as the right piece of real estate turned up. The right piece of real estate just happened to be a block of land opposite the local public hospital. With their combined vision, they built their modest little practice from the ground up and they hadn’t looked back.

Lewis was a tall thin man with glasses and distinguished grey hair, and he had looked like this since the day I met him. Declan had once let slip that Lewis’s mother had been calling him ‘The Silver Son’ since he turned twenty-five. Now thirty-five, he had grown into the look. He was driven and always composed. It took a lot to ruffle his feathers, which I found an admirable trait and a quality I was sure had caught his wife’s attention when she first met him.

Evelyn, Lewis’s wife, also worked at The Clinic. She was three years his senior. Had medicine not worked out for her she could have become a Meg Ryan stunt double in the City of Angels with her impeccable blonde curls and sky-blue eyes. She and Lewis had met at a business conference before The Clinic had opened and, after just three months of dating, she had asked him to marry her. He had said yes.

The Clinic had seen a number of other doctors come and go over the years. Oliver was the most recent, having only been part of our small family for four months or so. His presence filled the fourth of the five rooms available in the cosy family practice. The last had stood empty for well over a year.

Oliver had blended into our little family flawlessly. We had accepted him without question, and that was usually a good indication that someone would stay on with us longer than perhaps they had ever even planned to do themselves.

‘I feel so stupi–ouch!’ I shot Declan an annoyed glance as he bent my fingers back again and pain shot through my hand.

He grinned, ‘Hurts, huh?’

‘I get the feeling you’re enjoying this a little too much.’ I scowled at him but the combination of his childish grin and the dull ache in my hand forced me to relax. His expression was more serious as he looked at the long-healed scars on my forearms, before releasing his grip.

‘Is there anything else you want to talk about?’ Declan handed me an ice pack. This was a standard question of his. No one could blame him given past events, but right now I wasn’t in the mood. My I don’t want to fucking talk about it body language must have been clear as Declan quickly changed the subject.

‘I’ve got those DVDs I borrowed from you.’

Declan fiddled again in the drawer beside us, yanked out a bandage and took the ice pack out of my hands. He quickly strapped up my swollen limb then turned around to his desk and pulled out several DVDs from his backpack, which was sitting beneath it. When he turned around again, I saw from the way he observed me that I must have looked as exhausted as I felt.

‘You’ll be fine, Ana. Go home. Take a shower, have a cup of hot tea and get some sleep. Have a chai, I know how much you like your chai.’ He smiled and handed me my bag, placing in it the borrowed DVDs. Then he walked me out of his room and down the hallway with his hand on my shoulder. We parted ways once we reached the reception desk, where Lara, another receptionist, with her flawlessly painted porcelain face and black hair slicked-back-into-the-perfect-ponytail, was perched on an office chair with a phone glued to her ear. She had drawn the short straw for working the public holiday. Fortunately for her, the combination of Australia Day events and bad weather had kept most people away, leaving her with the opportunity to make personal phone calls using the work phone.

I smiled as Lara crossed her eyes and poked her tongue to the side, gesturing with her hands that she was hanging from an invisible noose. Only Lara could remain pretty pulling such an awkward face. I assumed from her position that she was talking to Cleo, another friend and colleague of ours, who was known for blabbering on about things such as her latest short-term flavour-of-the-month romance.

While Cleo was a horror to work alongside – rarely lifting a well-manicured finger – she came with a certain amount of drama that kept her friendship interesting. She was overly dramatic and regularly flew off the handle at the smallest of things, but she had taken Lara under her wing. Cleo’s tanned skin, brown eyes and blonde hair contrasted with Lara’s dark hair, green eyes and pale complexion, yet their styling was often identical in every other way. This wasn’t unusual considering the time they spent together. While it seemed as though Lara followed Cleo’s every move, I felt that Cleo needed Lara’s friendship just as much in return.

During Lara’s attempt to jokingly mime out her death scene, she had accidentally let out a snort of laughter. Cleo’s familiar shrill, angry, voice burst out from the tiny phone speaker and set Lara’s face straight again. Lara quickly pulled herself together and turned her full attention back to Cleo to defuse the misunderstanding. She waved goodbye and turned away from me. I walked out of the front door and looked around the parking lot. The thunderstorm had hit full force and in typical form, I had no umbrella.

Oh well, here goes nothing.

Chapter Two:

Ana

I got drenched sprinting from The Clinic to my car, seemingly the target of every drop travelling down from the sky, each hitting me with a slight sting as it fell. I drove home with the heater on in the hope of drying off, but all that did was increase the humidity and fog up the windows.

I sat in my parked car, an old jeep I lovingly nicknamed The Tomb Raider thanks to a sticker of Lara Croft that Lara had once attached to my rear window, and waited for the last clouds to release their cargo onto the world and move on. When the first rays of sunlight broke through, and the rumbling of colliding atmospheric forces became a faint and hazy reminder of the downpour, I pulled my key from the ignition and walked across the sticky, steamy concrete to let myself in the front door of my apartment.

My apartment was in a nineteenth century heritage building that had been divided up into residential apartments. Mine had its own entrance from the street, which led up a flight of narrow wooden stairs. Underneath my small one-bedroom apartment was a shop that had been empty the whole time I had