Fighting a despair that is eroding her will to live, Kate flees to another city. There, she desperately seeks the answers she needs to restore her former life of sensuality and her joy in her submissiveness. She is drawn into the eye of an emotional storm when she meets an intriguing man online. Miles is everything she had searched for in a Master, but nothing that perfect could be so simple…
Kate Johnson was not a first time visitor to Hobart. Still, as always, she felt the heavy presence of Mount Wellington. Hobart was both defined and limited by the impressive mountain on its western side. As the looming mass of rock swept past, she fidgeted in her seat. She was anxious for her plane to land. She disliked planes with such a deep irrationality that it irritated her professional self. Deep in her heart, she would never trust them. Her rational mind could say what it liked…and did…but flying metal tubes, even when serviced by the safest airline in the world, were never going to fill her inner self with security.
She smiled weakly at the irony of an experienced nurse having no faith in such a commonplace, modern device. Maybe it was her Swedish genes. She laughed quietly at the outraged protests such a statement would draw from her parents. Kate was the second child and should been named Katriina Johansson. Her father, however, was, a proud new Australian and had Anglicised their surname to Johnson when he had become an Australian citizen. While her parents often called her Katriina at home, her first name was also Anglicised to Katrina by her father on her birth certificate and, of course, her friends and workmates all shortened this to Kate.
As the Captain’s bored voice advised the cabin crew to seat themselves, her thoughts slid deep inside herself. She knew this was an automatic response to her increase in tension at the imminent landing. Nervously she let her thoughts flutter down through herself. With her nerves so stretched, her nails were drawn to her teeth. The carefully applied polish was stripped from her index finger and absently swallowed. As the wheels jarred down onto the runway, she released the breath she had been holding. As the scream of the engines rose, she clutched at the arm rests and did not release them until the plane slowly turned off the runway and taxied over to the waiting stairs near the small terminal.
There would be nobody here to meet her this time, though she had many friends from previous stays in Hobart and from the medical networks she had built up in fourteen years of varied nursing positions. Indeed, she would be staying at the home of married friends, house-sitting while they travelled overseas. However, she had not flown down from Melbourne to socialise. She needed answers. She needed the time to find them. She needed to get away from her Melbourne routines and find a way to re-ignite the joy in life that she had lost. Kate had avoided facing her problem front on, yet she knew its feel. She knew she was close to abandoning all hope. The deep anxiety that flooded her, she realised, was not solely due to her fear of flying. She was losing her desire to go on living. The irony of her being invaded by this growing and deepening depression stood out for her, for she had always loved her approach to living. She had rejoiced in what she was and what she did.
She sighed as she waited for the eager tourists to disembark. Yes, but no more! I feel so damn drained. God, I am pathetic! I’d like to slap myself hard. What’s wrong with you, woman!
Although she found it impossible to look directly at the problem that was eroding her desire to live, she knew she must. And soon. Deep inside herself she could feel the darkness growing, shrouded inside the despair that welled up and filled her. Her nurse self was her harshest critic. Often she would have bitter arguments with herself and, right now, it was her professional self that wanted to shake her till her teeth rattled, bring her to her senses. Yet, she sensed that it was not a matter of mind. Her listlessness and fading desire to live had a cause. She just had to find it. Fix it. Restore her former self.
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