Dr Adair changed from her surgical scrubs to her civilian clothes: it had been a long day. As she buttoned up her sensible blouse, she looked out the window and sighed at the howling wind and rain. She was supposed to be meeting her fiancé for dinner but she just wanted to go home, put on comfortable ripped jeans and a t-shirt, and watch what her fiancé referred to as ‘trash tv’, whilst eating what he also referred to as ‘trash food’ a.k.a a microwave macaroni cheese. Her fiancé wasn’t a stay at home type and she was. Unfortunately, he wanted to go out every night and ‘network his law practice’, and he thought having his doctor future wife by his side made his shameless pitches and card handing more respectable -it didn’t- but he continued his relentless sales regardless of his practice already being inundated with clients. When she would request a chilled night at home or go on a real date where they had drinks and fun, he would scoff at her ‘foolishness’ and tell her to behave like the doctor she was. He came from an upper-class background so their values and ideas didn’t always match up, but they wanted the same things in career and money. 

  She continued to watch the storm, lost in thought. She was restless and unhappy, but didn’t know why. She had everything she had ever dreamed of; she had escaped a poverty-stricken upbringing and became a doctor, a surgeon. She owned outright a stunning penthouse apartment, she had a handsome successful lawyer she was going to marry, so why didn’t she feel more satisfied? Sometimes….only sometimes, mostly on stormy nights like this one she thought of her past and thought she was happier back then with her old friends and her boy. He was the one that got away, although he didn’t so much get away as she left. She wanted more from life than living wage to wage, scraping a living and having children. She had a brain and wanted to use it to better herself, but she knew he was content if they had each other. Sometimes love just wasn’t enough; she craved luxury and security and all the things they didn’t have in that town, but he wanted them to be Tommy and Gina from Livin’ on a Prayer. He thought it was romantic. She shook herself from the “what if” game and finished getting ready; she had to stop being haunted by ghosts from her past and focus on her future which included the man now waiting for her in a restaurant. He would often joke about her background being so incompatible with his, that it was lucky she was a doctor, but that he might have considered her anyway even if she weren’t, due to her flawless beauty.  Finally she left the hospital. The rain was really coming down now as she waited to hail a taxi. Her umbrella was blowing inside out, wetting her black hair, and her boots and trousers were getting soaked as the rain drove into them. After what felt like an age in the rain, a taxi stopped. She got in and gave the driver the name of the restaurant. She looked at her watch, it was 9pm and she was already late.

Jack was stuck at the side of the road with no roadside recovery service; he’d forgotten to renew his policy a few months back and this was the upshot now, stranded in a storm trying to work on the engine in the pitch dark. Not that he knew all that much about engines, but he felt more useful trying to do something. He was soaked though and frozen to the bone, and had no blankets or provisions for being stranded with a dead engine. He blamed the whole thing on it being Friday the 13th; he was superstitious like that and knew he should have stayed home. The reason Jack was out at all tonight was to pull in some overtime for extra money; his girlfriend had a birthday coming up and he wanted to buy her a ring. He couldn’t afford anything extravagant, but he had his eye on one he’d be able to afford with the extra hours he’d been doing. It was a half carat split into four so it looked a lot bigger than it was, and you had to look closely to notice it wasn’t one big square diamond. She was a good woman and he was lucky to have her. She deserved the best money could buy, and she would be delighted with whatever he could afford. She was aware and supportive that he was sinking all his spare cash into starting up his own business, so she would be extra surprised at receiving a diamond, whatever its size. Every bit of cash he made that wasn’t for paying bills went into getting his venture off the ground. It was daunting and exhausting, and, sometimes he thought he was trying to rise above his station and that he should just be grateful to have a job at all. So many people didn’t work, including many former classmates he’d gone to school with. He still lived in his hometown and he saw first-hand people he knew having to struggle to get by. It was only last week he was passing a foodbank on his way to work and spotted an old school friend waiting in line. Jack was not the kind of person who could just walk or drive on the other side; he may not have much but he was doing well, so he stopped and gave him his last twenty pound note and promised he’d speak to his boss about the night security job at his place of work. A personal recommendation is sometimes the only way to get a job these days, so he made a point of speaking favourably with his boss. His former classmate got the job and had called Jack an ‘angel’; he laughed at this because he was no angel, but would always help people out when he could. He believed in community spirit and people helping each other. 

  Seeing things like his old school pal’s life struggles took his mind back in time to a simpler place when youth gave a sense of invincibility, confidence, and the strength to realise your romantic convictions. They had been so young and full of dreams. He had been a fool in his thinking; he should have studied harder instead of believing they would stay young forever and have the time to achieve their dream together. The ridiculous thing was that he had no dreams other than that they should love each other for a lifetime. Looking back now he couldn’t believe how naive he’d been. Now he was a realist, and saw the world and his choices in it for exactly what they were: full of mistakes and bad decisions. But reproaching himself about the past wasn’t going to get him rescued tonight: stranded in the middle of nowhere with no traffic passing to stop and give help. And the rain kept falling. As he contemplated starting to walk the 10 miles to town a car appeared out of the torrential rain; it was a taxi which came seemed to arrive from nowhere, out of thin air.  It stopped and the door opened…

Dr Adair was staring out the window, lost in her thoughts, trying to figure out why she wasn’t happy. She had everything she’d ever dreamed of in her teenage years. Then she’d been so serious about her future, and had such single-minded focus on what she wanted from life. Her gran used to tease her that she ‘d been born a middle age woman and yet, here she was 18 years later living her dream. She’d fought for so long and sacrificed so much, and yet she’d never managed to find true happiness. Her thoughts returned to the present and she looked at her watch. The taxi was beginning to slow down but her watch said it was still 9pm. She turned around and looked out of the rear window and immediately recognised the familiar sight of her childhood home. But this couldn’t be: she lived in a city hundreds of miles away, and she hadn’t been in the taxi anywhere near long enough to have reached here. She hadn’t even been in the taxi long enough to have reached the restaurant for which she had given the taxi driver directions. Her heart began to race. She’d been working 70-hour weeks and was by now sleep deprived; the rational part of her brain was scrambling to grasp a logical explanation, desperate for a medical diagnosis like hallucination, dreaming, even an accident where she was lying on the side of the road somewhere and her brain was being starved of oxygen. With a sinking feeling in her stomach she knew that none of these could be true; even through the fog and rain, she could see clearly the park she used to play in with her friends, the familiar landscape having remained unchanged over the years. She knew she had to get out, but then the taxi came to a halt. She took out her purse to pay the driver and as she looked at him she saw that he had no face. She looked at him more closely: perhaps his face was obscured 

by his dark hoodie. A business card suddenly appeared in her hand that read:                

13 cabs

Not where you want to go,

Where you need to go.

She was trying to contain her panic as the door swung open and the faceless driver indicated to her to vacate the vehicle. She stepped out into the rain, her umbrella forgotten in this bizarre series of events. She walked into the park, overwhelmed by the familiarity of it all: how it looked, smelled, and made her reminisce. A feeling of peace washed over her: she suddenly felt calm and a sense of security overtook her. She could see a figure sitting on the familiar swings: she felt dizzy as she tried to make out who it was through the fog and the rain. The words from the business card came to her: why did she need to be here? Suddenly, she heard a voice so familiar and wonderful: it was as if the years had melted away. ‘Hi Kathy.’ Her soul knew immediately why she needed to be here. ’Jack,’ she whispered, and then all the pieces fell into place. Standing in front of her was the reason she’d not been able to  find true happiness in spite of her many achievements, and the relationship she’d always assumed was the right one for her. She now knew where she needed to be; all thoughts of becoming a doctor, desires for financial security and living in a wealthy area, seemed small and insignificant as she looked into his face. She was dissatisfied with her present life, the long working hours, and the tedium of going out all the time. More importantly, she was tired of wasting her life and happiness on partners  she believed she should be with. She wanted to be with the person she was always meant to be with: Jack. She’d made a mistake, too many years ago, of not trying to make a life with him: studying and then running away to find this supposed better life when all she truly needed had been here all along. Jack’s piercing green eyes gazed at her:  he’d always been able to read her like a book. They’d always had a connection so strong, and now something supernatural had brought them back together. He never thought he would ever see her again when she’d left without so much as a goodbye in what felt like a lifetime ago. He’d spent so much time over the intervening years reproaching himself up for frightening her away with his childish notions of poverty and love. His foolishness and immaturity had cost him his one true love. He reached out his hand and touched her beautiful face. She whispered to him, ‘Tommy and Gina, you were right to want that.’ He smiled and replied. ‘I was wrong Kathy, and I should have left with you. I knew how you felt about escaping poverty’. ‘No Jack, don’t you see we were both right and both wrong. We were just too young and stupid to figure out a compromise.  I love you Jack and always have. I just wish I’d admitted it to myself years ago and come back.’ He drew her into his arms and kissed her in the rain. The business cards they both held, given by the faceless driver, now disappeared as the rain stopped, the fog lifted, and the sun came out.