Falling Away (20 page)

“The doctors say we should go, Sam. He’s stable now. We should go home and get some sleep. It’s late,” Ben says, squeezing my shoulder. He glances across at Mum.

She nods and threads her arm through his, claiming him as her own. “We’ll be back first thing in the morning. See you at home, Sam.
Ho-me
.” She draws the words out as if I’m deaf.

Ben shoots us a tight smile and they leave. I watch them walk away.

“What is her problem?” Jack asks.

I shrug. “No idea. Just more of the same.”

***

Jack pulls into the driveway at home, his tyres crunching gravel in the dark. I’d seen Dad twice more during the day, and neither time could I elicit more than a finger wiggle or indistinct murmur. Gut-wrenching to say the least.

“You sure you want to stay here tonight?”

I look at him. “Not really, but I think I should.”

Jack just nods, leans in and brushes his lips across mine. “I gotta work tomorrow, but I’ll call you. See how things are,” he almost whispers.

“Thanks,” I say. He holds me close to his chest so I feel the energy transfer. The one that satiates my soul with warmth. I’ve not felt that before Jack. He stills the pain.

I push out of the car and watch as he drives away. The lights from the house are cold and uninviting. Not like home should be. I take the stairs slowly, like a lamb to slaughter. I know she’s waiting. It’s what she does.

The lounge room is barely lit with a small table lamp in the corner. She’s silhouetted through the almost-dark, her physical outline rippling with an aura of annoyance. Without speaking, I move slowly through the hall, hoping to go unnoticed. I realise it’s a long shot.

“Decided to grace us with your presence? Shame you couldn’t have done that a few days ago.” Her remark bites at my ever-thickening skin.

I stop. Turn and face her. A wine glass rests within arm’s reach on the coffee table, along with a bottle of red wine. The glass glints in the subdued light, highlighting the fact she’s drinking alone.

“You knew he wasn’t well, yet you chose to stay away,” she says coldly, her face expressionless in the dark.

I don’t know what to say. She renders me speechless and her words stab at my guilt. With Dad lying in ICU it levels out right at the surface, seeping into the room.

“Leave it, Mum,” barks Ben from the doorway. His tall frame blocks the light from behind. I’m thankful in that moment for his allegiance.

“I’m going to bed,” I say, hastening to my room.

“Sweet dreams,” she calls insincerely.

Ben follows me into my room and shuts the door. “She blames you, you know? I’ve tried talking her round, but she’s not having a bar of it. I can’t reason with her.”

“No shit. She’s always needed someone to blame. Just never thought it’d be for something like this.” I exhale sharply, exhausted. So tired I can barely drag air into my depleted lungs.

He sits on the bed. “I don’t know what to do.”

I level my stare at him, frowning. “You don’t have to fix this, you know? This isn’t your doing. And it isn’t your battle. It’s mine.”

He breathes out like he’s been hanging onto the air for too long.

“Just forget it, Ben. Don’t engage in hostilities with her on my account.”

“But I need to. I can’t sit back and watch. She’s spiralling, Sam. I can feel it. She’s drinking again, and her mood is black. She’s dark and critical …”

I snigger. “What? More than usual?”

“Yes, more than usual. At this rate she’ll take us all down with her. I can’t watch Dad lie unconscious in ICU and Mum spiral into despair. She’s been there before, and you know it.”

“Of course I know it. I’ve been there.
We’ve
been there.
All
of us. Watching the misery take hold, the melancholy covering her like a wet blanket. Do you think I don’t remember?”

“No,” he says sheepishly, glancing away.

“Good.”

“I didn’t come in here to fight with you. I came in here to fix this. Or at least try.”

“Don’t you know by now that you can’t?” I ask, willing him to realise.

“I won’t believe that my efforts are futile.” Strong words, but they lack conviction.

***

Morning sunlight streams through the portholes in yellow shafts from the post-dawn sky. Like a coarse reminder, painfully real. I close my eyes to try and stop the flow of irrepressible tears.

I heave myself from under the sheets and stumble to the door. An odd silence hangs over the house. No clatter from the kitchen; no morning chatter hums from the rear, and no breakfast-scent saturates the air. I’m hollow in their absence.

A scrawled note lies on the white stone surface of the kitchen counter.
See you at the hospital
it says
,
in
her
handwriting. And that’s it. That’s all it says. And the words sicken me, because this is
not
just another day. She’s done this. This dark-dwelling albatross has left without me. And for some reason Bastille’s
Weight of Living
beats steadily through my head.

***

The road curls snake-like into Newcastle and it’s fifty minutes before I reach the hospital. I pull into the parking space and take the stairs to the ICU waiting room. There’s no joy in here, just pale faces all harbouring a grim sense of foreboding. Waiting for our own slice of distress, finely slivered like glass. We’re parked with our flaws exposed, each one clamouring for influence. Fear, hurt, pain, sorrow, and deep-seated regret. I am possessed by all five.

But fear is my weakness. It grabs for my heart and twists till it hurts.
Hold it together, Sam.
One moment at a time. On my own. Because no-one else should have to endure this. I think of Jack and what he’s suffered. Too much. He’s lost too much. Seen too much pain, far too young. When I look in his eyes it’s visible. Resting there, lingering like a lost soul.

Mum and Ben are nowhere. I make my way past the nurse’s station toward Dad’s room. No-one stops me. And when I reach his room I hover in the doorway. To stand and look. And he’s the same as last night, only paler. Even with the oxygen he’s breathless.

“Sam?”

I turn around, hearing distress laced through Ben’s voice. When I speak I’m sure the same hollow tone occupies mine. “How is he? Have you seen him?” I ask.

Ben nods, shrugging his shoulders. “Not too good. He’s on a ventilator now, unfortunately. His heart rate dropped to forty, and his blood pressure couldn’t be maintained.”

I exhale. Not the news I was hoping for.

“Come down to the café. The nurses have kicked us out for a while.”

I look into his strained face. “Okay.”

My phone buzzes with a message from Jack.

Hey beautiful, how’s your Dad? Sorry I can’t be there. I want to be. Am there with you in spirit. Call you after my shift.

I text back a quick reply and flip my phone closed. The last thing Jack needs is me, completely consumed with death and dying. He’s had his fair share of all that, and more.

Ben leads me to the café where mum sits sipping from a takeaway cup. She rises, clutching desperately for her belongings. “I see you made it. Half the morning’s gone, Sam.” She brushes past. “I’m going back to the ward. See you in half an hour.”

“We’ve been doing shifts,” Ben explains. “Just one visitor at a time, today. Otherwise it’s too much.”

I signal an agreement. There are no words. I mean, what do you say?

***

The day drags like torture. Ben receives endless texts and mum effectively avoids me, on separate shifts with Dad. I need to believe he knows we’re here. That he’s in there somewhere. Because this is what I cling to. Every moment, since it happened. He has to know. He has to come back. Because without him, I’m left with …
her
.

I push the thought swiftly away as Ben rises from the table. He looks down at me, kind of strangely. “So, um … Lily’s here. I’m going outside to meet her.”

“What?” I say, confused. He’s taken me completely by surprise. “She’s here? At the hospital?”

He looks at me with a smile that fills him completely. “Yeah. I called her when it happened. I don’t know why. I just wanted her to know. She
was
part of the family, you know.” He says it like he needs to justify it to himself more than me, his actions.

I just nod and say, “Okay, sure. Be good to see her.”

When Ben leaves my phone buzzes. I pick it up and notice another text from Jack, offering to drive to the hospital after his shift. He wants to see me. Be here for me.

Hey babe, do you need me? I can come to the hospital when I finish. Let me know.

My heart squeezes. I text back a short message, letting him know it’s late and I’ll be leaving soon. Even as I text I imagine his arms around me, my face buried into his hard chest, inhaling the salt from his skin. Craving him, desperately. His connection and warmth. Wanting
my
Jack. But I can’t put him through this, because once is most definitely enough.

Ben and Lily walk into the café as if no time has passed. Except of course it has. Things have moved on. Life has shifted, and so much has happened since I last saw her. She looks slimmer, taller somehow, and still gazes at Ben in that same adoring way. Her dark hair falls over her shoulders in loose waves. She’s dyed it darker, almost to black, and the blunt-cut fringe offsets her vivid blue eyes. She walks over and hugs me to her. And I realise I’ve missed her. And so has Ben obviously, because when she pulls away she stands close at his side, and he curls an arm tentatively around her waist. A light smile touches his lips at the bittersweet memories. She left him, after all. And now it appears she’s back.

I smile because having her here makes him happy. And I want Ben to be happy. It’s as if her mere presence erases the pain he’s shoved away, locked up tight in a small, dark recess of his heart. And seconds later they’ve gone, upstairs to see Dad, and relieve mum.

Thirty minutes later they all leave the hospital together and I’m overcome with loneliness. Sadness. Bracing for the pain. Because I know it’s coming. I can feel it in my bones. This is
not
going to end well. I make my way slowly to the ward, every step lagging. The shiny hallway is cloaked in grey shadow and when I reach his room the consistent beeping of machines fills my ears entirely. I move to his bed and my heartbeat tightens because this man does
not
look like my father. Shadows are cast across his brow which feels ominously arctic, like life is already oozing from his soul.
Don’t go, Dad. Not yet. It’s not your time. You are NOT to leave. Not now.

I feel for his hand through the waffle-weave blanket covering only half of him. I peel it away, desperate to rip the tubes and wires attached to his body from his almost translucent skin. Instead I thread my fingers into his cold palm, willing it to move.

“Dad,” I choke out, the tears welling. Streaming over my face in tiny rivulets. I let them fall, coursing over my cheeks, because they fall in torrents for him. For this stupid, stupid place he’s in. Hell, the stupid place we’re all in. We’re all on this course, and it’s moving in one direction only. There are no deviations here.

There is no response. When only yesterday he wiggled a finger, today there is nothing. And it shatters my heart into a million pieces, because more than anything in this world I want to see a sign. Something.
Anything
.

“You can’t go, Dad. Not yet. You
have
to stay. Because I love you and I’ll miss you. Stay, Dad. Please ...” My voice is raspy in the cold silence.

A tiny movement softly brushes against my finger. It’s infinitesimal but so significant. A smile breaks the tears because he’s heard. He knows I’m here. I squeeze his hand harder, feeling his large hand underneath mine, and sit in silence with my devastating fear. I rub my thumb across the top of his hand.

The ICU nurses appear silently and the Intensivists too, tending to other lifeless forms. They fiddle with machines and replace IV bags, re-setting machines. A guy my age lies across from Dad in a coma, bare-chested and pale. Car accident. Two young nurses suction his chest noisily, glancing across every now and again with pity filling their eyes. But I don’t need it, their pity. Because this is not happening. Dad is
not
going to die.

Dad’s Intensivist Dr Floriet, a tall greying man with woolly sideburns arrives at my side, giving me a sympathetic smile.

“How’re you doing?” he asks with a ridiculous polka-dot bowtie constricting his starched white collar.

I glance upwards to his face. “Okay, I guess.”

Dr Floriet nods knowingly. “I understand this is difficult for you, but we’d like the family to come in for a meeting. We need to discuss end of life issues.”

His words smack me in the face. Once, twice, three times. End. Of. Life.
End of life? No, that can’t be right.

I must look at him blankly, because he continues unfazed by my silence. “We’d like you all to be here tomorrow afternoon. We can talk about what you’d like to do.”

“But he’s only been here two days,” I argue, wondering about the rush. I mean, the man’s unconscious. He’s no trouble, is he?

“The team needs to discuss his condition with all of you. The family needs to be fully aware of the current state of play so that decisions can be made. On your father’s behalf.”

I blink at him. “What decisions are you talking about?” I ask, shocked at my composure. I want to scream and run from the words, yell at this man standing before me, crushing my world beneath his feet.

“We’ll go through all of that tomorrow.”

And all I can do is signal a silent agreement, before backing into the corridor and almost running to the concrete stairwell, desperate to feel fresh air burning upon my face. Only when I find my car and slam the door against its frame does my breathing begin to slow, hitching every now and then in furious gulps.