Chapter 27

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CARA

It was a good thing that the seatbelt had more sense than me. I was very much into the kiss and Quinn’s hands on the small of my back that I forgot I was still strapped to the chair and when he pulled me a little briskly towards him, the seatbelt pulled back and brought me back to my senses.

“Oh my God,” I moaned. “We shouldn’t have done this,” I said in haste, unbuckling the belt and opening the car.

“Hey!” Quinn called out to me as I walked to my car while looking for the keys in my bag. “Hey, Cara, please. Let’s talk.” He touched my arm and I pulled away sharply.

“We are done talking today, Quinn! Please! It was just a mistake. You have a wedding to attend to for Christ’s sake! And I don’t want to be the person to ruin it!” I said, my eyes brimming with tears.

“Cara, please,” he pleaded but I was not looking at him anymore. My head was bent down on my bag and when I found what I was looking for, I pushed my way around him. “Please, let’s forget this ever happened. I’ll tell Bridgette to handle your wedding from now on. I don’t think I can do it any longer,” I finally said before opening the door of Bridgette’s car.

Quinn did not say a word and it even made the pang in my chest worse. Did I hurt him? But I only said the truth. And he did not give a big argument. He simply kept quiet.

So much for effort, I thought as I climbed inside the car and drove away, not looking back. If that was the last I would see of him, fine. I couldn’t be friends with someone who couldn’t make up their mind. He couldn’t just ask me to talk about us when he was still to be married.

BRIDGETTE

Ever since that night she and Quinn crashed my date, Cara had been looking and acting lonely. Yes, she told me what happened. She told me how they kissed after laughing about my most embarrassing day in high school. She told me how she pushed him away and decided not to meet him again.

So yes, I was now holding two jobs because Cara was too weak to even face the man that she love. But I quite agree with her. She couldn’t just say yes to Quinn while he was still engaged. And the moron hadn’t pulled the wedding off because his gold-digging girlfriend was still meeting with me.

Quinn never showed up in any of the meetings I had set up after I resumed my task of the wedding planner. Natalie seemed not to mind that her original wedding planner couldn’t make it because of a minor accident. She was all about how she would look in her wedding and how expensive everything would be.

I was itching for the moment that Quinn would show up so I could finally tell him he was being a jackass and that he should make up his mind. But maybe he was a jackass. Maybe he had been playing with Cara all along. Maybe he was not over what we did ten year ago and he finally made his revenge. That was the only thing I had never told Cara. She would definitely take it seriously and then she would even be more hurt.

Add the problem I was having in the hospital trying to avoid the gossip of Scott dating someone in the hospital and I was one messed up, stressed lady.

I had to constantly tell Scott that he should avoid going to our unit for no medical reasons but he wouldn’t budge. He would suddenly show up with a cup of coffee and he would deliberately forget about it. Of course, I wouldn’t always be the one to get the coffee. Sometimes, I had to give it to someone in the unit just to avoid talk.

But as the days went by, I was becoming happier. Some days, I would even forget I was not in my own body. And some days, I would have the strong urge to tell Scott about everything. He had become completely different from the man I met months ago. I had learned more about him than anyone he knew in the hospital ever did and it was killing me that I couldn’t tell him a thing about my big secret.

CARA

I sometimes regretted having said yes to Bridgette dating Scott because the moment that she decided she should go for him, everything was getting normal; normal in a way that she was starting to feel happy about anything. Apart from her constant comments about my boobs being too small or my nails hard to trim, she never really mentioned about the swap.

As a matter of fact, the two of us never mentioned it for weeks. I guess because we were starting to accept it. Bridgette was having a great, normal relationship with a hot doctor. She was getting used to her job--my job.

And what about me? That’s where trouble comes in.

Having ended everything with Quinn was killing me. I never told Bridgette about this but I sensed that she knew somehow. Sometimes, if she was not talking about how she would kill Quinn, she would give a comment about me not having done anything for Quinn and I but I would brush her away with a phrase like, “I’m done with it,” or something like, “It’s for the best of everyone.”

But Quinn was making it hard for me. I would receive texts from him and this was one secret I didn’t tell Bridgette because she would only kill the guy as she had promised to do since that night I told her about what happened. I never replied to any of his messages, all of which asking me to talk. We both knew that we would hurt someone. People would make judgments. They were expecting a different woman to walk down the aisle and not the wedding planner. Why the need to talk?

But Natalie was not really the reason why I was holding back. It was me. I was not inside my own body to even suggest something as a second chance to Quinn. He had admitted he still found it weird to be talking to me while looking at Bridgette’s face. So why would I ruin his chance to have a normal love story with a normal girl who was in her own body?

It was during one of our free afternoons, one that we often had, that Bridgette came to my apartment--her apartment. She dropped her things on the couch and closed her eyes. I was busy doing some papers she asked me to do since I refused to meet Natalie or Quinn. She found a way for me to do something. That involved doing all her paper works in the office and ordering her secretary around.

“Don’t tell me you were with Scott last night,” I told her pointedly, closing the computer. I didn’t want her to see that I was looking for a more suitable job for me. I couldn’t just sit around her office and do nothing.

“Yes, we went out for dinner. God, it’s frustrating not to have sex with him,” she uttered, her eyes still closed.

I frowned but didn’t say anything. I knew she was having trouble with the “physical” part of her relationship with Scott. And I knew that she had been keeping her promise of not having sex with him.

“We almost did it last night, you know,” she admitted. I waited patiently, taking a sip from my tea. “But we stopped. I mean, I stopped him. One reason is because we were in his car and the second one is…well, you know about it.”

I didn’t know what to say. It was the first time she talked to me about it, really. She didn’t usually say anything about what she was really feeling. And then her shoulders started to shake. I knew it the moment the whimper came out that she was having enough of everything.

“Hey,” I said, standing up. I slowly made my way to the couch and sat down beside her.

“I hate this, Cara,” she half-groaned, half-whimpered. “I hate it that I can’t do things the way I would have,” she added.

My own tears started to roll down my cheeks. “I understand.”

“Aren’t you tired of it? I mean, tired of pretending everything is just okay?” she said, her eyes opening to look at mine. Strange, but I was getting used to looking at the face I once owned. Now, as I looked at Bridgette wearing my face, I was seeing her.

I nodded, sniffling. “Too tired,” I answered, leaning against the couch to join her. We were both looking blankly at the blank wall ahead of us, me in my pajamas and her in her dress.

“I’m afraid,” she whispered.

“Of what?”

“That I would have to let him go someday.”

I couldn’t answer. She was right. If we couldn’t go back to our own bodies or if we couldn’t decide on what to do if we couldn’t, we would have to let go of a lot of things sooner or later. And for Bridgette, it was a big one.

“You should have seen his face when he asked me to have coffee with him tomorrow. He looked like he was having a good time and that the next date was just the beginning of more. But I couldn’t think the same way. I always think, at the back of my mind, that I we’re on our last.”

“Why don’t you just tell him?”

“What? Tell him that, ‘I am not in my own body right now. Can we postpone lovemaking for a while? And oh, if we decide to go steady, can you not ask me to move in with you? Cara will be uncomfortable with the thought and I don’t want to upset her.’? Is that what I should tell him?”

Again, I couldn’t answer. How could I? I couldn’t just tell her she should just have sex with the guy because I would be lying to myself. I didn’t like the thought of her having sex with Scott using my own body.

“And then, I feel like I’m the worst liar in the world. I want to tell him, but I couldn’t. He would think I’m crazy.”

“I think most people would think we’re crazy,” I said in agreement. Bridgette was still sniffling and crying and I couldn’t help but slap her hand. “Stop it, you’re making me cry.”

“I couldn’t stop it!” she said, crying even harder.

I made the mistake of looking at her because I saw the pain she was in and I felt the same. And so I gave in and a whimper escaped my throat. We hugged each other, trying to comfort the other while coping with our own hurt. She was crying for the man she wanted to stay while I cried for the one I couldn’t even ask to stay and wait. Because there really was no point in waiting when none of us didn’t know how long it would take--or if it what we were waiting for would even arrive.

That afternoon, we dealt with the tears we had been storing inside us. We dealt with the pain, fear and loss. And we dealt with it together.

BRIDGETTE

Cara went with me to the hospital the next day. She said she missed it and that she would just stay in the café across the street to wait for me. And she still had a lot of paper works to work finish for Quinn’s wedding, she said. Really, the lady was a masochist!

I was getting hesitant about working for Quinn’s wedding. Cara was obviously being professional about it, but I knew that deep down she was hurting. I had wanted to slap her to her senses many times but I had learned that Cara had grown stubborn over the years that we were apart. She was now firmer on her decisions and it was not very easy to ask her to change her mind once she had set it on something. It was only unfortunate that she decided not to at least give it another try with Quinn. And I was not in the right place to tell her she should anyway because I knew where she was coming from. I knew her reasons and they were the same as mine with Scott.

“But I really think you should tell him,” she insisted once we talked about the crazy crying episode we had last night.

I rolled my eyes. “Cara, please. You know we cannot talk about it here. And you know we won’t work out. Not until everything is fixed, anyway.”

She looked at me with sympathy. “Are you sure? It might just make things easier for you. If he can’t accept it, then it’s over. If he can, then good for you.”

“Like he would understand,” I scoffed.

An hour later, I was back in the unit writing down on a chart while Cara was talking to me through my earphone. Scott came in our unit and everyone’s eyes were on me. I had been trying to ignore the gossip circling around that Scott was dating one of the nurses. We had been trying to hide our relationship from everyone but I guess we had been leaving behind ashes as we went on with our flame. And it was his fault! People started to talk and they could have just finally put a name to the mysterious nurse that got Scott out of the ‘no-dating zone’.

“What?” I asked Danica.

“Dr. Newman’s here.”

I frowned. “And?”

“Nothing,” she said with a laugh.

“Hey,” Scott said beside me as he reached for a chart.

“Hey,” I said, my eyes darting towards the other nurses. Their ears were almost burning up with their obvious intent to eavesdrop.

I secretly smiled as I stood there doing my job while Scott was standing beside me doing his. I felt like we were touching each other when we were not and it was weird. I could feel his strong presence but fought the urge not to make any remarks on his new cologne or his freshly washed hair. My eyes didn’t flicker when he finally left and walked out of the unit.

“Shut up,” I told everyone before I picked up my chart and walked to where the emergency cart was. I knew I should be doing my work in the station, but I couldn’t concentrate on Cara’s dictations with Danica and the others throwing me their knowing glances. I placed the chart on the cart and continued my work.

“I can’t believe they are actually doing this,” I complained to Cara.

“Calm down. Everything will die down eventually,” she said in my ear.

“Yeah, right. It might just die down when we actually swap back in our own bodies,” I uttered as I finished the charting.

“What bodies?” I heard a familiar voice behind me. I stiffened. “What did you mean by that, Cara?” asked Scott, now beside me with a frown on his face.

How the hell did he get back so fast?

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