The Things We Promise

by J. C. Burke

  ‘Who’s the sister looking after … ?’ Tim was waving his hand at someone.

  I turned around to see Zane. He was walking up the corridor on legs that were as thin as my mother’s sewing needles. His gown was untied and back-to-front so you could see every bit of him.

  When he saw me he broke into a smile, cracking life into his face. But as he came closer I noticed his eyes. There was no one in there.

  Dr Tim and one of the nurses were each trying to take an arm and steer him back towards his room. But Zane slapped at them like a child, freeing up his hands and waving to me.

  ‘Hi there,’ he called.

  I tried not to appear terrified at the person staggering towards me who looked like he’d just escaped from a concentration camp. So I straightened my back, ordering myself to smile.

  ‘Hi to you,’ I answered.

  ‘Where have you been, Stacey?’ he said. ‘Pa told me you were down in the chook pen.’

  ‘It’s Gemma,’ I murmured.

  ‘Come on, mate,’ Dr Tim was saying as he linked his arm through Zane’s. Now they resembled a couple walking down the aisle. ‘Let’s get you back to your room, buddy.’

  They disappeared into his single room and somehow I managed the long journey back to my brother’s room. I didn’t tell Mum and Billy what’d happened. When they kept asking why I was quiet, I simply answered that I had a headache. I snuggled into the recliner. I draped a blanket over my head to block out the fluoro ceiling lights and pretended to have a nap.

  But I couldn’t sleep. Instead, I prayed. I didn’t know what else to do. We weren’t a religious family. I’d only stepped into a church three times in my life. But I needed to tell whoever it was that it was fine if Billy had to eat vegetable mush for the rest of his life, but please, please don’t let my brother go blind or get the cat disease in his brain so that he wouldn’t even know who I was.

  The next afternoon I took the Rubik’s Cube out of my locker. It was worth a try and by now I’d realised it was impossible to get any homework done at the hospital. I wasn’t convinced by the power of the cube. At least, not like Louise was. She was like a Rubik’s Cube addict. I was addicted to nice clothes and maybe buying earrings. In Year 7 Andrea and I had definitely developed an obsession with potato scallops. We bought one every afternoon after school but that addiction was quickly over when our jeans became too tight. But a Rubik’s Cube? I certainly couldn’t see myself getting addicted to one of them. Although I had to admit, these days Billy seemed to be attacking the coloured squares more often than he was reading magazines.

  The cube was balancing on the palm of my hand. I was about to drop it into my schoolbag when someone behind me said, ‘You have to be a genius to do them.’

  It was Ralph. He was so close that if I turned around I was sure we’d bump noses.

  ‘That settles it then,’ I answered. ‘I missed out on the genius genes.’

  ‘Do you want a lift home, Gemma?’

  ‘Thanks but I’m catching the train to the hospital.’

  ‘I’ll drive you,’ Ralph said. ‘The train will take forever.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Come on, Gemma,’ he said, touching my elbow. ‘I’m parked out the back.’

  Maybe the praying was paying off. Suddenly there were a couple of reasons to yell, Hallelujah! The obvious one, the prospect of a long car ride with Ralph. Something that was helping to get me through these days was the little private memory of Ralph and me going to get Zane’s cheeseburger. The other reason to give praise, was where his car was parked; I didn’t trust what Andrea and Louise would do if they spotted Ralph and me together. A wolf-whistle would be Andrea’s style, probably followed by a hundred and one questions. Louise would be fine. She was cool. That’s something I was learning every day about her.

  Ralph put on a cassette of the Style Council. We drove down the streets with ‘Big Boss Groove’ blaring. I looked out of the window, trying to hide my smile. At this moment it was easy to forget who I was and where I was headed. It was just Ralph and me. It was too crazy to believe it was happening.

  ‘Do we need to stop off at Maccas for another cheeseburger with extra gherkins?’ Ralph shouted above the music.

  ‘No.’

  ‘How’s he doing?’

  ‘Pretty bad.’

  Ralph turned the cassette off. I told him what’d happened yesterday. I knew he was listening to every word. I could just feel it. When you know someone is really hearing you, you feel … lighter? When it was just the two of us, Ralph and I seemed to be able to talk easily. Over a week had passed since I’d said a word to him. But it didn’t feel like that.

  ‘Will you be going to the hospital every afternoon after school?’ he asked.

  ‘Pretty much,’ I answered. ‘I don’t reckon Mum and Billy wanted me to come in today. They kept saying, “You’re tired, have a break, go out for coffee with the girls instead.” ’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So, they’re bullshitting,’ I told him. ‘I reckon the real reason they don’t want me coming in is because they don’t want me to see Zane.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Mum said to me last night that she’s worried I’m becoming too involved.’

  ‘Zane’s really lucky to have you, Gemma,’ Ralph said. He took his hand off the wheel and squeezed my shoulder. I almost stopped breathing. ‘Imagine being in hospital all alone,’ he continued, both hands back on the steering wheel. ‘I would be so scared.’

  ‘I get a bit freaked out even looking at him. Zane’s not the same person, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘I know exactly what you mean. My pop lost his marbles. Once he thought the kitchen was filled with quacking ducks!’

  ‘No!’

  ‘True. It was a total spin-out. But I kept telling myself that Pop was in there somewhere. He’d just got a bit lost.’

  ‘That’s a good way of putting it.’

  ‘I was with my pop when he died,’ Ralph told me. ‘I’ll never forget it. It was only me and him in the room. My dad had gone out to speak to a nurse and he died. Just like that.’

  ‘Poor you,’ I said. ‘Were you scared?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What was it like?’

  ‘The room just went quiet.’

  Ralph had pulled up to the drop-off zone of King George’s. He peered up at the building and I wondered if he was counting up to the ninth floor like I had done so many times.

  ‘Look, if you ever need a lift here after school,’ Ralph said, ‘just ask.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I murmured back, but my mind had already started sorting through all the things that might go wrong this afternoon, as though I was preparing my armour, getting ready for battle inside 9 South West.

  As I passed the nurses station, I checked the patient board. Zane’s name was still there next to Room 11. His nurse for the shift was Anna.

  I spotted her outside Zane’s room. She was taking off her gown, putting it into one of the yellow infection hazard bins that were dotted all over the ward.

  Let’s do it, I told myself and strode over there.

  ‘Hi, Gemma.’

  ‘Hi,’ I answered. ‘How’s Zane?’

  ‘Not good. He’s been unconscious since last night.’

  Out of nowhere, Mum appeared, standing in between Anna and me saying, ‘Hi, darling. You’re earlier than I expected. It’s only four o’clock.’ I could feel her fingers wrapping around the top of my arm, pulling me away from the doorway of Zane’s room. ‘We thought we might go to the cafe across the road for afternoon tea. The doctor said it was fine and your brother is desperate for some fresh air.’

  ‘Sure,’ I answered. ‘But I’m just going to see Zane.’

  ‘Let’s have—’

  ‘No, Mum. I want to say hello to Zane first.’

  Mum dropped my arm and I walked into his room.

  At first glance, Zane simply looked like he was asleep. But the more I watched him, the more I saw.
His face was merely a skull, the skin pulled tight with every bump of bone standing upright like a mountain. His lips were smeared with cream and his breath was almost silent.

  ‘Come on, darling.’ Mum was behind me. ‘That’s enough.’

  ‘I can’t leave him,’ I whispered. ‘He’s got no one else.’

  ‘Gemma, please. Anna’s here. She’ll be in and out of his room all evening.’

  ‘I don’t want him to be alone.’ I was crying now and the pain throbbed in my chest, in that same place under my ribs in the little triangle with the funny name. ‘Please, Mum? I can’t leave him.’

  I wasn’t taking no for an answer. Eventually they caved in and let me stay.

  I sat on a chair next to the bed and held Zane’s cold hand.

  His breathing had gone from inaudible to noisy. It was hard not to think of Darth Vader because that’s what Zane sounded like. Often there’d be a long break between one breath and the next. Then Zane’s lips would quiver and purse, blowing another breath into the world.

  Anna was in and out of the room. Sometimes she rubbed cream into his heels and elbows. Other times, she dipped sticks that looked like giant earbuds into a pink drink then wiped them through Zane’s mouth.

  Once, Mum appeared at the doorway. It was a while before I noticed her. She didn’t walk in. She didn’t speak. She just stood there. She knew I wasn’t going to budge.

  Billy came and sat with me. We both cried. But not in a together kind of way. It was more Billy sitting in his chair and me sitting in mine, both crying. Not touching. Not speaking. He didn’t stay for long.

  A bit after 7 p.m., when it was just me in the room with him, Zane died.

  All I wanted to do was tell Ralph that I’d done it. I’d stayed with Zane and he wasn’t alone when he died. I wanted to tell him how I wasn’t scared. Ralph was right. The room had just gone really, really quiet.

  So, the next morning I waited by his locker. I didn’t care if Andrea saw me. We weren’t living in the same world anymore.

  I swear Ralph’s face broke into a grin when he spotted me. He went to wave, but he didn’t. He kind of dropped his hand and his pace slowed. Or maybe it was me and my sudden case of nerves that made it seem as though he was walking in slow motion, because it felt like forever until he was there, standing in front of me.

  Ralph looked at me.

  I nodded. ‘I was with him,’ I whispered.

  Ralph wrapped his arms around me and we hugged.

  21

  AUGUST

  11 weeks to formal

  WHEN BILLY CAME HOME FROM HOSPITAL the next week, he walked in the door carrying a giant pink stuffed bunny rabbit with long floppy ears and a plastic carrot as a nose.

  I laughed. ‘What the hell?’

  Billy handed it to me. ‘It’s all yours.’

  ‘I don’t think I’m a pink rabbit kind of girl,’ I answered, throwing it back. ‘Thanks anyway.’

  Billy passed it back to me. ‘It’s yours.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘It was Zane’s,’ Billy explained. ‘One of his flatmates brought it in to give to you. Apparently he’d told them that if anything happened to him he wanted you to have it.’

  ‘This was Zane’s?’ I looked underneath the ears and inspected the carrot nose, pushing it with my finger to see if it made a noise. ‘I can’t believe he wanted me to have it. That’s so nice. I take it all back, bunny,’ I said, looking the rabbit in the eyes. ‘I like you, even if you are pink.’

  We could hear Mum coming up the stairs. When she appeared in the doorway she tried to snatch the bunny out of my arms. ‘It needs a good wash.’

  ‘What?’

  I was hugging it to my chest now. I wasn’t giving it away.

  ‘What’s wrong with you, Mum?’ I asked.

  ‘All I said was, the toy needs a wash.’ Mum pushed past me and a second later we heard her bedroom door slam shut.

  ‘What the hell’s wrong with her?’ I asked Billy.

  ‘Personally, I reckon we all need a break from each other.’

  I followed Billy into the kitchen. He went straight to the fridge, loading up his arms with bread, eggs, bacon and a bottle of tomato sauce.

  ‘Are you back on those drugs that make you hungry?’ I asked him.

  ‘Well, have you seen how much weight I’ve lost?’ he snapped.

  ‘Sorry!’ I snapped back. ‘I don’t know what I’ve done to make you and Mum so angry.’

  Billy mumbled through a slice of bread that flopped between his teeth.

  ‘Hello? I can’t understand you.’

  ‘I said, Mum’s mad that you were with Zane,’ he answered, ‘at the end. And she’s mad that I didn’t stop you. We had a big argument about it on the way home.’

  ‘None of you could’ve stopped me,’ I announced.

  ‘That’s exactly what I said to Mum.’

  ‘And I’ve hardly burdened you all with the details of what happened in Zane’s room,’ I told him. ‘Does she think I’m not old enough to handle it?’

  Billy thumped his fist on the kitchen bench and I jumped. ‘It’s much more complicated than that.’

  ‘That’s the world’s greatest cop-out!’

  ‘Gemma,’ Billy barked. ‘You’re sixteen. You don’t know everything.’

  Billy went away for a few days, which was a big relief because he’d ended up being in a worse mood than Mum.

  So it was back to just Mum and me, like the old days. Except Mum was still giving me the silent treatment. When she wasn’t in the kitchen she was in her bedroom with the door closed. She didn’t even go near the sewing machine. Neuta stood there neglected, wearing only the bodice of my formal dress.

  That weekend I called Louise. Andrea was away for a netball competition, but I wouldn’t have called her even if she was home. A giant field of polite talk had wedged itself between us, turning us into friends we had never been before. We were suddenly acting like distant cousins who had to pretend to like each other because those were the rules. Or maybe we were more like best friends from primary school who’d bumped into each other after years apart and couldn’t salvage what we used to have. What I did know for sure was that I didn’t recognise us anymore.

  It was a Saturday night and I badly wanted to go out. Mum even agreed it was a good idea. So Louise and I made plans. We met at Nigel because I wasn’t sure exactly where she lived. I knew it was in one of the cul-de-sacs that all had names like Chancellor Drive and Magistrate Close. The houses were brand new, but to me they all looked the same. As we walked back to her place, I told her about being with Zane when he died.

  It amazed me that I could talk this calmly about someone who’d died. Someone I’d been with. Someone whose skin I’d actually touched after all the life had left them. Wasn’t I meant to be sobbing and wailing?

  ‘You’re so brave, Gemma!’ Louise said, giving me a hug. ‘I don’t know if I could’ve done that.’

  ‘I bet you could,’ I answered. ‘I don’t think Andrea could.’

  ‘When my nan died I didn’t want to go to the hospital and see her. Too spooky.’

  ‘But it wasn’t. That’s what I’m trying to say. It was … fine.’

  ‘Maybe it’s because you hadn’t known Zane for that long?’

  ‘Who knows?’ I shrugged. ‘As my brother said, I’m sixteen and I know nothing.’

  Perhaps Louise was right though? Because for some reason since Zane had died, I was gradually starting to feel a strange detachment from him, like the whole thing had happened to someone else. Sort of like what was happening with Andrea. But I couldn’t go there. It wasn’t a topic I wanted to overthink. It wasn’t a topic I wanted to think about, full stop. For now and for who knew until when, it was easier to make Zane into a story and Andrea into a girl I used to be best friends with.

  It turned out that Andrea was right about one thing. Louise did have great clothes. I sat on the floor of her bedroom while she pulled out skirts and jackets and tops
from her wardrobe for me to try on.

  Albatross weren’t playing at The Northern. It was another band I’d never heard of called Captain Dimples. Apparently, the lead singer was really cute and, according to Louise, the drummer had the sexiest arms she’d ever laid eyes on.

  I’d never really taken much notice of drummers. They were always stuck down the back, like Nigel no friends. Saul used to rave about the drummer from Mötley Crüe, Tommy someone-or-other. But that long black greasy hair with the bad headband didn’t do it for me.

  I really, like badly, hoped Ralph would be there tonight. I knew he hung out at The Northern so there was a fair chance. I had no interest in the drummer or lead singer. I was more concerned with finding something fantastic to wear from Louise’s wardrobe just in case my hopes and dreams came true. I hadn’t seen Ralph since our hug because he’d been on a Geography excursion for a whole week. Once I found myself standing in front of his locker, staring at the metal door. I weirded myself out so I made sure I didn’t do it again.

  By the time I’d picked my outfit, every piece of clothing that Louise owned was strewn across the floor and along the bed.

  I stood there, looking in the mirror, trying to adjust to the sight of myself in a black dress with white spots, long sleeves and a straight skirt. What had really sold me was the open back that you tied up like a bikini top.

  ‘I’m not usually a dress person,’ I said to Louise. ‘But this is cool.’

  ‘It looks hot, Gemma. You have to wear it.’ She winked at me in the mirror. ‘Ralph might be there.’

  I didn’t want to blurt out everything that had happened between Ralph and me. I wasn’t usually like that. The fact that I hadn’t broken my silence and called Andrea to tell her every single detail was verging on schizophrenia. But there was something inside of me, like a little pea stuck in my heart, that wanted to keep Ralph and me away from everyone else. Especially Andrea. It was the one good thing happening to me and I was scared that if I talked about it then I was going to jinx it. But right then I knew that I had to tell one person or I was going to burst.