by Nicole Trope
Her mother had been fine up until a few weeks ago. Well, not fine, the cancer was back. In the last two years nothing had worked completely and now it would not be stopped. It was, as Veronica’s oncologist had said, terminal. Terminal. But her mother had been determined to live out the last months of her life with the same energy she had always brought to everything she did. ‘I look at you and I look at Beth and I know that I’ve done something wonderful with my life, darling,’ she told Rachel. ‘It’s enough for me and I’m so grateful that I got to experience being a grandmother. She’s the great joy of my life.’
But Rachel did not want her mother to simply accept what was happening.
‘I think I’m going to stop treatment,’ she told Rachel six months ago when she was told that the new drug regimen was not working as expected. Rachel had winced as her mother said the words, the unimaginable, remembering how she had told Ben that her father had refused treatment for his cancer, simply stating the words without considering their true meaning. She had not imagined Veronica would ever make such a decision. But the treatment had, in fact, achieved very little beyond sapping Veronica’s energy and stealing her appetite.
‘Even the blandest food tastes too spicy and everything makes me so sick. I miss food. I miss eating.’
‘Please don’t, Mum, please – you have to keep fighting,’ she had begged her.
‘Oh, sweetheart,’ her mother had said, stroking her face. ‘Dr Lawrence said the only thing it will do is prolong things a little. I want to be able to spend the rest of my time with you and Beth, not hooked up to a drip and fighting nausea every moment of the day.’
‘But you can’t just give up, Mum. You have to try.’ And her mother had tried again. Dr Lawrence had given her stronger drugs with more side effects. She had been handling the chemotherapy up until two months ago when her body seemed to simply lose its ability to fight anymore. Rachel had been with her at her last round of chemo, had held the bowl as she weakly vomited into it, her body shuddering with the effort of it. ‘Please,’ she had begged Rachel. ‘I have to stop this. I don’t think it’s helping.’ And Rachel had felt ashamed at her own cruelty. She wanted her mother around for years to come but the treatment was causing Veronica an abundance of suffering and she was only doing it for her daughter. She had looked at her mother’s pale face, her lips dry and cracking, and she had been unable to stop the tears. Her mother leaned over and stroked her back. ‘I’m sorry I can’t fight for you anymore, my darling. I’m sorry I’ve failed you.’
‘Oh, Mum,’ she had cried, ‘you haven’t failed me, you’ve never failed me. I’m sorry I pushed. You can give up. You can stop now.’ She had rested her head on her mother’s lap and wished away her cancer, but they both knew that wishing was of no use. It was over. Veronica’s fight was done.
Dr Lawrence had agreed that a break was needed and her mother had time to lie quietly in her bed and recover, but just three weeks ago she had begun to find even short walks to the bathroom difficult. She hadn’t seemed to recognise Rachel at times and she had lost control of her bodily functions completely. Rachel had taken her for more scans even though she knew, absolutely knew, that the news could only be bad. The cancer was everywhere, just everywhere. Everywhere and growing fast, spreading its tentacles through Veronica’s body and up into her brain. Dr Lawrence had called Rachel to prepare her so that she would be able to support Veronica as she heard the devastating news.
‘I want to speak to you before you and your mother come in for the appointment tomorrow,’ she had said, her warm voice tinged with sadness. Rachel had been standing in the middle of a sea of boxes at the time, the phone pressed against her ear as she anxiously tried to pack up her flat in readiness for the move and convince herself not to worry about the results of her mother’s tests. She had sunk down onto the floor, knowing what the doctor was about to tell her.
‘You need to look into palliative care,’ Dr Lawrence told Rachel.
‘No, not that? Surely it can’t be time already.’
‘I’m afraid it is, Rachel. The cancer is simply everywhere now.’
‘Maybe I can convince her to have more chemotherapy, maybe she could get better. Maybe we shouldn’t tell her it’s spread.’
Rachel hated the way Dr Lawrence sighed, a soft, sad sigh, and she imagined how the woman’s grey eyes would shine with sympathy.
‘I have to tell her, Rachel, I’m her doctor – but I think she knows already, if I’m honest. We always know our own bodies better than anyone else.’
At the appointment Rachel bit down on her lip, drawing blood as she watched her mother receive the news. She had expected tears from Veronica, tears and disbelief, but her mother merely nodded. ‘I thought so.’ Rachel could see she was distressed but she could also see something else – relief, she thought. Veronica was so tired and so ready for things to end. ‘Not fair, not fair, not fair,’ Rachel wanted to shout and stamp.
She looked away from the doctor and her mother, carefully concealing her anger. She needed her mother to defy the odds, to fight the cancer. Yet she seemed happy to give up. ‘But what about a trial? A new experimental drug? We’ll find the money, just tell us where to go.’
‘There’s nothing left to do, we’ve done everything we can,’ the doctor replied gently.
‘I can’t believe that.’
‘You have to believe it, Rachel,’ said her mother.
At the end of the appointment she helped her mother out of her chair and Veronica’s scarf slipped a little, revealing her head covered only in tufts of grey hair. The terrible vulnerability in her mother’s face as she lifted a small hand to straighten the scarf cracked Rachel’s heart into two. Right then she transferred her anger onto herself. Her need, her ache, for her mother was preventing Rachel from seeing Veronica as a woman suffering in the last months of her life. She didn’t want to be suffering anymore.
Since the appointment three weeks ago, her mother has grown weaker and weaker. Seven days ago, Rachel stopped fighting both her mother and Dr Lawrence, instead helping Veronica move into the Lady Grey Hospice.
‘Maybe it’s time to talk to him again,’ her mother said to her as Rachel packed up her things to take with her to the hospice.
Rachel remained silent for a few moments, not knowing what to say.
‘How can I? He will still be that person who liked to hurt.’
‘Yes, maybe or… maybe not… but it may be time. I think it’s time.’
‘If that’s what you want,’ Rachel said and then she left the room to use the bathroom as her heart thrummed and her forehead beaded with sweat in the heated apartment. She just wanted the past to stay there and yet she couldn’t deny Veronica this chance to say goodbye, even to someone they’d been running from for decades.
When she returned her mother was asleep, and when she woke, she seemed to have no memory of the conversation.
All Rachel felt was relief and then she felt guilty for not bringing it up with Veronica, for pretending that the conversation never happened. And now it is too late. She wonders if Veronica has somehow made contact, has somehow let him know that she is sick.
And in doing that, has she brought the monster back into Rachel’s life?
Or has the monster actually been watching them all along? When they stopped running, did he find them and then just decide to watch and wait, like some kind of predator? Rachel shudders with horror at the thought.
The hospice is a long low building with a slate roof and a lovely manicured garden. Even on this chilly winter’s day she can see people walking around, taking a break from sitting by the bedside of a loved one slowly disappearing. A young man is sitting on a wooden bench, in a giant puffer jacket and beanie hat, a thick blanket wrapped around his legs. He is reading in the fresh air as he does every day. Rachel squints as she gets a bit closer, seeing that he’s reading The Adventures of Tom Sawyer today. He is rereading all his childhood books, capturing, Rachel thinks, a time when he had his whole life b
efore him. His name is Luke and he refuses to be inside if he can be outside. ‘I want to feel the cold on my cheeks,’ he has told Rachel. ‘I want to feel too hot or too cold so that I know I’m still alive.’
Each day the bones on his face grow more prominent, his flesh slowly disappearing. Next to him sits his mother, who comes every day, just like Rachel does. Rachel raises her hand in greeting and Elizabeth waves back. His mother sits with a piece of cake on her lap, a thick slice of chocolate cake covered in a cream cheese frosting. She occasionally puts a sweet morsel between her son’s lips, a mother bird feeding her baby until the very end. ‘I make one every Sunday night and bring a piece for him every day,’ Elizabeth has told Rachel. Rachel knows that each afternoon, before she leaves, Elizabeth tips most of the slice of cake into the bin, admitting to herself time and time again that her son is simply no longer able to eat. But she still returns each day with another slice. Elizabeth is also still hoping for a miracle. Everyone is in this place.
She thinks about Beth, who will be in class now, shouting out answers to the ever- patient Mrs Weiner. She cannot imagine what it would feel like to lose a child, cannot fathom how Elizabeth will find the strength to go on. She is desperately struggling with losing her mother and that is the natural way of things. How terrible it is when the natural order of the world is reversed and a parent has to bury a child.
Inside she greets the nurses – the patient, quietly moving staff who exude empathy with each gesture – and she sits down by her mother’s bed in her small, tidy room where machines hum and beep softly.
Veronica is mostly sleeping now as the pain becomes worse and worse. Rachel would love to be able to release her, to set her soul free from the pain she is experiencing, but she also wants her to remain with her, to never leave her alone. Even though they can no longer speak to each other, at least Veronica is still here, still with her.
Ben has told her she can spend every day and night here if she wants to. ‘I’ll pick Beth up from school. We’ll make it work.’ But she knows she needs some time away from this tiny room where her beautiful mother’s body is shrinking and her life is ending.
She takes her mother’s hand, stroking the soft, thin skin. There is some lotion that she keeps by the bed and she warms some up between her own hands before smoothing it over her mother’s and gently massaging the dry, papery skin. ‘I’m not ready, Mum,’ she whispers, her voice thick with tears.
It’s something she says every time she sits here, hoping her mother can hear her, waiting for the chance to see her open her eyes again. She wonders if her mother can feel her soothing her hands, can hear her whispering.
‘I’m still struggling to get the house unpacked. I know it’s driving Ben mad but he’s trying not to say anything. He understands I have to be here.’ She has a sudden memory of her and her mother packing up yet again to move and finding a box filled with things they had been looking for, for months. ‘Do you remember when we were getting ready to leave that awful flat on Julie Street and we found the box with the kettle and the toaster in it and realised that I had been using it as a side table the whole time?’ She cannot help laughing into the quiet of her mother’s room as she remembers that both she and her mother had been unable to stop giggling and had eventually found themselves lying on the ugly green carpet in the living room, laughing at nothing.
She takes a deep breath and the memory fades, and with it her laughter.
‘Beth loves her new room,’ she continues, moving aside her mother’s blankets so she can massage some cream into her feet. ‘She can’t believe she has so much space. Last night she crawled into the cupboard and told me she wasn’t coming out until she found Narnia. I bought some unicorn decorations to put up on her walls. You know how much she loves unicorns.’
Rachel stops speaking as the lump in her throat begins to feel as though it will stop her breathing. She drops her head onto her mother’s bed and allows her tears to fall. ‘I’m so sorry you never got to have a better life, Mum. I’m so sorry you had to struggle so. I love you. I hope you know how much I love you.’
Her mother doesn’t wake for the next hour.
Rachel wants to tell her about last night, about what happened, how scared she was, but somehow the words won’t come. She doesn’t need to burden her mother with them anyway. If she could hear her, she knows her mother would worry. She doesn’t need to worry anymore. She has raised Rachel and kept her safe all these years, and now it is Rachel’s turn to keep her mother safe. It’s the least she can do.
But the words need to come out. She whispers, almost too quietly to hear the words herself, ‘He’s found me, Mum. I thought he had stopped looking but he’s found me.’ She looks at her mother, who hasn’t moved, and then she tips her head back against the chair and closes her eyes.
‘Hello, Rachel,’ says Sam, an older nurse with kind blue eyes. ‘I’m just popping in to check on the drip.’
Rachel opens her eyes and gives Sam a small smile.
‘Maybe take an hour or two off? You look like you need a break,’ he says.
‘I’m so worried that I won’t be here if she, when she… and I’ll have to leave at three to get Beth anyway. I’m fine.’
‘There are signs when it’s getting closer, love. We’ll call you. I promise we will call you immediately but I think we’ve a few days to go.’
Rachel trusts Sam. He’s been working in hospice care for over forty years. Sometimes she wonders if he ever gets to laugh. She hopes so. ‘Maybe I’ll just get a coffee,’ she says quietly.
There is a room set up with coffee and tea and biscuits for visitors. Rachel sits silently in a chair overlooking the garden as she takes small bites of a chocolate biscuit, letting it melt in her mouth. She is not hungry but knows it’s better to eat a little. Her mother loves dark chocolate covered roasted almonds. In her bedside drawer she has two unopened packets that Rachel brought her, hoping that against all odds Veronica would open her eyes and ask for a last taste of her favourite treat.
Rachel studies the white stone paths that lead people from one side of the hospice to the other, keeping them off the grass and out of the colourful flower beds. She watches a couple with a teenager walk slowly towards the front door. They stop before they pull open the heavy glass doors and Rachel knows they are composing themselves, mentally preparing themselves to see the person they have come to visit. Patients change overnight, shrinking and growing frailer with each passing day, every passing moment. It’s why Rachel has made the decision to keep Beth away. She wants her to remember her grandmother smiling, helping her with a puzzle, rolling out dough for cookies, laughing at the jokes Beth likes to make up, vibrant and alive. She does not want Beth to remember the emaciated woman in the bed who seems to be barely breathing.
She is aware of other people coming in and out of the visitors’ room but this is a place where conversations have to be invited. Everyone here is grieving for someone. A mother, a father, a son, a daughter, a brother, a sister. This is a place that levels everyone. Rachel can spot the more well-to-do families by how they dress and the cars they drive, but grief looks the same on their faces as it does on hers. They all wear the same misery, the same disbelief. It seems that here, right at the end, who you are means very little. Everyone here feels for others going through the same tragic loss, and the compassion that the world most needs is readily on display.
On her way back to her mother’s room she finds herself feeling jumpy and looking around as though it were possible that he could turn up here today as well. When she was little, she knew he was all-powerful and that nothing could stop him. She knew that the only way to get away from him was to run and keep running. Right now, she feels she is a child again, a frightened child, losing her mother and afraid of the monster.
At three she kisses her mother goodbye. She has barely moved in the hours she has been by her bedside. ‘I’ll pop back later tonight, Mum,’ Rachel says, hoping that Ben will be home early enough for her to do so
, and that she won’t fall asleep on the couch as she has done so often in the last few days.
As she pulls out of the parking lot, letting her tears fall freely, she tries to distract herself with her list of things to do. The first and most important thing is to check all the doors that lead into the house again. She needs to know how he got in so she can prevent him from ever getting in again.
She could have told the police the truth, could have shown them the small token left by a man she thought had disappeared from her life completely, by a man she has told everyone she knows is dead, but she hadn’t been able to find the words. How could she have explained it all, and how could she have explained it in front of Ben, who has an entirely different version of her past?
I’ll never tell, I promise.
She had been a child with secrets, a child who knew how to hide things. Even now, as an adult, it feels impossible to suddenly start telling the truth. She feels safer when things are not discussed, when she can pretend that what happened never happened. It is how she has managed to survive.
It had to be him. Only he would have left the small plastic doll for her. Only he knew how much the doll meant to her. It was definitely one of hers. She had known every single one of them, had loved every single one.
For a moment, when she found it last night, she thought that it could have belonged to Beth, that it was simply dropped in the hallway between their rooms. But she knew it wasn’t. Beth didn’t have a toy like it, and it had not been in the passage when she had darted into Beth’s room and locked the door. It wasn’t lying in the hallway either. It was standing up straight on the carpet, balanced carefully there by someone who was sending her a message.
It’s been so many years. She assumed he had stopped looking, had stopped caring about where they were. She has even, if she has ever thought about it, imagined him moving on and creating a whole new family to torture. So why is he here now and what does he want?
