Page 20 of Rough Stock

She fidgeted with her fingers and her toes, but still her mind would not slow down, zipping from jobs she’d done in the past, to jobs to do at home, jobs she could do. Who came up with the word job? How many ways can you say job in other languages?

‘I don’t have a treadmill, but Dustfire has fifteen hundred acres for us to walk across. The physio said I needed to walk, so we should do that. Only if someone can give me my shoes back.’ He playfully nudged her side. ‘Would you rather use a treadmill or get out in the fresh air of the farm?’

She smiled at him, she didn’t mean to, but it just happened, along with her whole body simply relaxing and her mind slowing down. Craig was right. And he was being nice.

Why was Craig being nice? When he was going to hate her as soon as he realised what she’d done, putting them both in danger. Ugh, she was so selfish.

‘Oi.’ He grabbed her hand. ‘What’s wrong? Where did you go just then?’

‘I—’ Oh crap. ‘I…’ She swallowed hard, and kept on swallowing, desperate to stop the words clawing their way up her throat.

Thankfully, she was saved by the doctor bustling through the door, holding an open file. ‘Sorry I kept you waiting. Let’s take a look at you, Craig…’

As Craig got his examination, Izzy focused on the doctor’s words by watching how his lips formed the letters. This way, she’d be able to pull up the entire conversation, syllable by syllable, if needed. It was a skill that came in handy for cross-examinations in court.

According to the doctor, Craig’s ribs were almost healed. However, his damaged calf muscle and ankle were going to take a bit longer to come good. The doctor gave him a prescription of sunshine and exercise, plus adequate rest, then told him to come back in two weeks for another check-up.

She could do another two weeks, right? Play nice. Pretend that everything in the hive was sweet like honey and forget there was a meteorite coming to destroy all of mankind—in her mind, that is.

Izzy fingered her phone. She hadn’t looked at it, not with Craig watching her. But he was busy with the doctor, talking sports or something, so she took her shot. ‘Excuse me, I’ve got to make a quick call. I’ll meet you by the ute.’

She left the room, leaving Craig to explain her odd behaviour. Although he never did. Craig always said it was nobody’s business but theirs and theirs alone.

But in the corporate world, her work colleagues were always making excuses for her odd behaviour. The only reason they put up with her was because she won their cases because she saw the patterns, the details, and the loopholes. She’d remember snippets from the news, or overheard conversations in coffee shops, sentences in books or quotes in articles she’d read, and somehow her brain would churn it over to connect the dots in ways she never understood herself. But it got results.

Lots of people had ADD, or ADHD. A lot of them didn’t even realise it, especially women, many of whom were diagnosed later in life, like she had been. When she had assumed, like the rest of the world, that she was weird.

The relief that had come with her first diagnosis had been enormous.

Her list of oddities had an actual clinical explanation. It helped her understand her struggles, to know why she’d get so laser focused on something insignificant, while forgetting the important stuff. Why she’d get so bored or irritated, interrupting people who were speaking, because she already knew what they were going to say, and why she completed tasks more quickly than others. Why she’d surf through a hundred channels on cable and still find nothing to watch, except some random gardening show on exotic mushrooms, when she didn’t even like mushrooms.

Discovering that she wasn’t the only one out there with this condition had been soothing. And then she’d met a specialist who’d actually helped her, not only giving her tools to cope, introducing her to the mantra—Exhaust the body, to tame the mind—but he’d also told her to see her disorder as agiftand not a curse.

That mind shift unlocked a lot of doors for her, accepting her condition’s strengths helped her score a great job in one of the most prestigious firms in the country. It didn’t matter to her that the other lawyers in her firm tried to take the credit for her work, not when she got to use her badly misbehaving mind for good. It truly became a gift.

Right now, she needed to push past the constant chatter in her brain, while pushing through the small bush hospital’s front doors to the car park.

She winced at the sunshine, as she stepped out into the brisk morning breeze under a soft summery blue sky. Craig’s was the first outpatient appointment of the day, just the way they both liked to run their appointments, otherwise she’d be obsessing over it all day and get nothing done.

Making sure she was alone, she dialled the only number stored on her new phone.

‘Detective Mancini.’ The male voice on the other end of the phone line sounded tired and harassed, as normal.

‘Hello, Alistair.’

‘Hey, doll face.’ Alistair slurped on something, probably coffee in a takeaway cup, because she’d never seen him drink water. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘I’m checking in, like you told me to.’ It was as if Alistair had become her parole officer, when she’d done nothing wrong. ‘Have you made any progress?’

‘Nah. Sorry. Are you still in the outback near that town, Elsie Creek?’

‘Yes. I need to stay another two weeks. Is it safe for me to stay?’ She didn’t want to put poor Craig at risk by just being near him.

‘As long as you don’t draw attention to yourself.’

‘How would I? There’s nothing here.’ From the raised car park, the town of Elsie Creek lay on the right. Directly below her was the police station, then the fire station, which backed onto the tiniest airport. Then over the road stood the long train line with its mass of stockyards, bigger than the town itself. Beyond that, there was a whole load of lonely outback that stretched further than the eye could see. A person could get lost out there, or so she hoped.

‘Listen, doll, I’m doing my best, ‘k?’

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