Hand me your despair
Let me blunt the sharp, cruel edges
Let me smooth the rough sides
That hurt you
Let me pummel it with all the strength in my hands
Shape it, mould it
And hand back
Hope
Oh
How I long for your happiness
-Jill
That afternoon after lunch they all helped to pack up the clinic in the church for the last time. The next day was their last day in Lesotho, and they planned to take a mobile version of the clinic to a village not far away. After that – Tuesday was the last evening of the feeding scheme, and then the long drive home the next day. Alex felt quite nostalgic as he packed boxes with the supplies that were left over, putting the coat and stethoscope he had worn onto the pile to go into a trailer. The four mornings at the clinic had been a whirl of hard work, new experiences and new emotions. He was immensely grateful for the experience.
He still felt restless and down after what had happened that morning. He decided that what he wanted most was to run, and convinced JP to come with him. JP turned out to be very fit, and by the time the two returned after running about ten kilometres down the road towards Maseru and back, Alex was feeling tired in his body but better in his soul. Endorphins again, he thought. He had a tub bath afterwards and by the time he joined in the preparation for the meal that evening he felt lighter and more cheerful. He was so glad that he had spoken to his dad and apologised for his selfishness. He just wished he had done it sooner.
Jill was still acting differently, he thought. He sat on the floor against the wall of the church with his plastic plate of food, watching her sitting at a table eating with the children, laughing with them and making them giggle at her attempts to speak to them in Sesotho. He let his mind go back to that morning. I shouldn’t have held her hand, he thought suddenly. She had been very gracious about it, but he thought now that it wasn’t okay to be doing things like that. She hadn’t pulled away – probably because she felt bad for him. It had just helped so much to have her right there, so close, while he made that call to his dad. He remembered the previous day when he had put his arm around her in the car. That wasn’t great either, he thought. As he watched her and thought about how things had been between them for the past few days he started thinking that he had been behaving rather badly. As he had said to Mark, he knew where he stood. She wanted only friendship from him, and lately he had been skirting very close to the border of a different kind of relationship. He sighed to himself, realising that here was something else he needed to apologise for. He wasn’t going to act like seventeen-year-old Alex and assume anything again. Sure, girls changed their minds sometimes but he had no hopes that that was the case for Jill. He had wondered for a while, after she had waited up for him after the pony trek. She had seemed so distressed, and so relieved that he was safe. But he had brushed away those thoughts. He remembered what else he had said to Mark – that he was even more unworthy of her than he had ever been before.
Jill got up from the table to fetch something from the kitchen. She caught his eye and smiled. He smiled back, and as she carried on her way he noticed Mark, who was sitting at a table near the kitchen with James and must have been watching her too. Poor guy, he thought again, as Mark noticed Alex looking at him, dropped his eyes and carried on eating. He wondered what Jill had said to him. But he had sensed from the start that Mark wasn’t the right kind of guy for Jill. What kind of guy that was, he didn’t know. I can’t hope that it’s someone like me, he thought. Not anymore.
Besides – in two days’ time he was going back to Cape Town, and perhaps he wouldn’t see her again for another five years. It wasn’t a happy thought for him. He pictured going back to his family, sorting out the mess after the missed exam and going back to lectures, hospital rounds, ordinary life. All of it without her by his side as she had been for the last little while. Suddenly he felt struck by a strong sense of loss and sadness, and this time it had nothing to do with Huntington’s. He was about to lose Jill all over again. However bad he had felt the first time he had lost her, he knew this time would be harder. This time it wasn’t a crush; he wasn’t an arrogant teenager any more. He kept his eyes on her, trying to imprint in his mind the way her hair escaped from the clip she wore and fell over the side of her face as she bent over the child in her lap, the way her silver necklace with its delicate cross hung over the collar of her jacket, the way her slim hands, red with cold, held out a blue plastic plate full of the food she had made to the child across the table. He was going to miss her so much. But this time he would make sure it ended well. He would apologise, and let her know how much he appreciated her friendship. Then he would go back to Cape Town, strengthened by these weeks he had had with her and by the beginnings of his new faith, and face the future.