by C F Dunn
We neared the corner towards the back of the house where the bins and utility area cluttered around the fire escape. A young woman, startled by our sudden appearance, hurriedly stubbed out her cigarette and went back inside, leaving a fug of tobacco smoke behind her.
“Ellen also said something about her brother – Jack.”
Matthew halted, bringing me to a stop with him. “What about him?”
“That’s what I was going to ask you. What about him?”
“He died. I tried to save him, but I couldn’t. That’s it.” By the way he glowered at the large metal bin near the back door, there was more to tell. I waited. “I don’t like losing the people I love, Emma, you know that. We were like brothers, the nearest I had to a close friend since… well, almost since Nathaniel. I was with him when he died, but if I had been there sooner I might have saved him.” He scowled at the bin and kicked it.
“What happened?”
A member of staff in an apron came out to investigate the noise. Matthew grabbed my arm and walked us briskly on, leaving the man to still the reverberating bin.
“I was operating on another soldier when they brought Jack in. I couldn’t leave the boy on the operating table – it was the height of the Italian campaign and casualties were heavy – there weren’t enough of us and we were pretty stretched. I had to make a choice. When I reached Jack, he’d already lost too much blood; there was nothing I could do.”
I skidded on a patch of ice and Matthew steadied me.
“You weren’t the only doctor there, were you? You weren’t the only person responsible.”
“You don’t understand, Emma. I was the only one who had a chance of saving him. I was his friend and I didn’t save him – I didn’t even try.”
“What do you mean, you didn’t try?”
He shook his head angrily. “Nothing. I didn’t mean anything by it. I couldn’t save him, that’s all.”
I wrenched my hand out of his. “You’re right, Matthew, I don’t understand. You’re the only one holding you responsible; isn’t it time you stopped beating yourself up over it?” I hated to see him get upset over something that had been beyond his control, and I probably sounded less sympathetic than I meant to.
“Maybe.” He hunched his shoulders and crammed his hands in his pockets without looking at me.
We had circumnavigated the building and reached the car park.
“Look, Matthew, Ellen has spent her life without getting the full picture from you, and I won’t do the same. When it comes to things that affect you so fundamentally, I need to know everything that’s happened. It’s not fair to expect me to accept the holes in your life – I need to know. No more secrets, no more lies, remember?” He continued working at a spot of loosened ice with the toe of his shoe without looking at me. “Matthew…!”
“Yes, all right, Emma, all right, I heard you,” he snapped. I all but stamped the frozen ground in frustration. “I heard you,” he said more reasonably, holding out his hand to me in reconciliation. When I didn’t take it, he didn’t let his hand drop. “You’re right, I know you are, it’s just…” I put both my hands stubbornly behind my back. He lowered his arm. “You are right, there is no room for secrets between us, but I have spent a lifetime hiding who I am, what I am – even from those I love most – and it has become a habit. I won’t – can’t – change overnight, Emma. I need your help.”
He must have known I couldn’t resist such an appeal and saw that he had persuaded me, because he reached around my back and unhooked my hands without opposition, and brought them both to his lips, holding them there while I melted inside for him.
“Jack,” I reminded, not so beguiled that I forgot my question.
He kissed my hands once more, still holding them tightly in his own. Despite the cold, the midday sun had some warmth to it. He raised his face, his eyes open, absorbing the full force without blinking. After what seemed like a long minute, he looked at me again.
“Over a number of years, I toyed with the idea that I might use what benefits I manifested to help others. Initially, I attempted using my blood, hoping it might convey some of the advantages of my longevity.” He grimaced. “It didn’t. More recently, and as my own knowledge has developed in light of scientific advances, I tried other avenues, including using my own stem cells, and gene therapy. But when it came to Jack back then, I had few options. I couldn’t bring myself to intervene – I froze.”
“You mean, you’ve tried things before – on people?”
“On animals, mostly, but on humans also, yes.” He tensed, sensing disquiet in me as it flowed through my hands and into his.
I breathed evenly, keeping my tone non-judgmental. “And did you have any success with your… experiments?” A solitary cloud drifted across the sun, and Matthew’s face fell into shadow.
“No.”
The wind on my back blew cold; I shivered. I heard the crunch of feet on the gravel behind me and turned. Dr DaCruz’s skin appeared sallow in the bright sunshine.
“Dr Lynes, if it’s convenient, can I have that word with you now, please?”
“I’m going in to see Ellen,” I told Matthew. He nodded, and I left the two men standing in the ice-bright sun.
Ellen looked perkier when I rejoined her. She had more colour in her cheeks and her eyes were clear and pin-sharp again. Eli made busy in the corner of the room with some monitors. He looked over as I came in and beamed at me.
“I trust you and my grandson had a good lunch?” Ellen asked with a glitter in her eye.
“Thank you, I did,” I said, keeping a straight face. “I trust you did too?”
She gave a short rapport of a laugh. “Whatever they feed me through these tubes, it keeps me alive, if not quite kicking. Eli, go get your lunch; Emma will look after me.”
Eli lumbered over to us. “If you need anything, Miss Emma, you just push this button and I’ll come quicker than maybe.”
“Perhaps I’ll just up and die and solve all our problems before you get back, Eli Coots,” she said, looking sideways at me. I narrowed my eyes at her.
He waggled a finger. “Now don’t you go doin’ any such thing. We still got that bet on and I aim to win it.”
Ellen addressed me. “The old fool thinks I’m going to live till next Christmas just so he can fill his pockets with his winnings, but he’s got another thing coming if he thinks I’m going to let him win. I never lose a bet.”
Eli’s normally jovial face became serious. “I won’t have you dying on my watch, not if Mr Matthew and I has anything to do with it.”
Ellen closed her eyes and the subject. “All right, all right, Eli, you go along now. I’ll still be alive when you get back.” As the door closed behind him, Ellen’s eyes flicked open. “Now what’s this you were saying about my granddaughter?”
I outlined my fears about Maggie’s instability and the animosity she demonstrated against me, taking care to emphasize my concern for Matthew’s well-being, rather than my own.
“I blame her mother,” she said, finally. “I didn’t like her when Henry brought her home like some stray wild thing. Monica was good to look at all right, and clever – too clever – but untamed, and she only thought of herself. Headstrong too – she never listened to anything anyone had to say. Neither Matthew nor I liked her much, but Henry was dead set on her, and young – not yet twenty – and she scheming. She smelled money and she wasn’t going to let it go even if it destroyed everything and everybody she was supposed to love.” The sun had migrated to the other side of the building and no longer shone through the bay window. Already lower in the sky, it cast long shadows on the lawn of snow.
“But I blame myself too. If I hadn’t been so damn angry with her for taking the girls to those doctors, if I had just shut the hell up and let her drive, perhaps we wouldn’t have crashed.” The old woman’s chin quivered and I put my hand on hers where it rested on the arm of the wheelchair. She looked down at it, slightly confused, and I remembered
that she couldn’t feel it. “Thank you for the thought, honey. Sometimes I recall that day better than yesterday, and I wish I did something different, and then, perhaps… No matter; if wishes were horses, beggars would ride. It was Maggie who started crying, you see, and Monica shouted at her. Little Ellen told her mama that she was so cruel, and Monica turned in her seat and hit her. And then we skidded and crashed. My little Ellen…” she whispered, her eyes filling with tears.
“Please, don’t talk about it if it upsets you,” I pleaded, feeling her sorrow.
She looked at me sadly. “You need to know, honey. You’re not just taking on my husband, you’re taking my family as well – the good and the bad.”
In saying so I also recognized, with a lurch, that she had accepted me as her successor and bequeathed me her husband and family.
“Maggie was always a headstrong little girl, just like her mama. When she loves she loves a lot, but when she hates, there is no force on this blessed earth that will stop her, except herself. She hates her mother with a vengeance, you can be sure of that, but she also loves her granddaddy, and I don’t think you need worry yourself on that score too much. But you now, if she has taken a dislike to you, only she can change that and it’s best to keep out of her way until she does. She has a wicked temper on her. I was more of a mama to her, you see, and she won’t like you takin’ my place even if Matthew wishes it. There now, it looks like you’ve been rode hard and put away wet. You’re not to worry, honey, Maggie’s not so like her mama in all ways. She has a heart and she loves her family even if she doesn’t show it. She won’t do anything to hurt them.”
I noted wryly that Ellen didn’t say, “you”, just “them”.
“Do you know what happened to Monica?”
“I neither know nor care. She could be rotting in hell for all I know and that’d be the best place for her. I asked Matthew once, but he didn’t want to talk about it and he said that she’d “gone away”, whatever that might mean. We never did hear from her again, so she’s probably dead.” She said the final word with relish and I gained the impression that she would have liked to have pulled the plug on her daughter-in-law’s life, given half a chance.
“Emma, honey, I can see you’re not like that brazen buffalo chip and you have more about you than Jeannie ever did. I can see why Matthew likes you, and were I sixty years younger and had the use of this body, I would have fought you to the death to keep you away from him. But it seems that he has another life ahead of him and I don’t want him to spend it alone, and you don’t seem to mind him being the way he is, and he loves you, so…” She paused to catch her breath. “So you look after him, won’t you? You need never fear him wandering, and he’ll never hit you. He’s good in all the ways a husband should be, if you get my drift, ’though I was never as inclined in that way as perhaps he would have liked me to be, though he never complained.” She stopped, and suddenly looked anxious. “Has he ever said anything to you?”
I shook my head vehemently at the thought of Matthew and me discussing their sex life, considering we didn’t have one of our own.
Ellen seemed relieved. “Well, perhaps that side of things interests you more than it did me?” I heard the question attached to that statement, but declined to satiate her curiosity, that being a step too far in the honesty stakes. “Well, now, that’s none of my business any more, is it?” She chuckled throatily, a bubbling wheeze deep in her chest. “I asked about your family earlier and that was no idle chat. Matthew has been a good husband to me and a damn good father to our son, but living with him means sacrifices and sometimes they can be hard to make. Emma, my parents meant everything to me and I had to give them up if I wanted to stay with Henry and Matthew. There will come a time when you, too, might have to make that choice when you can’t hide Matthew’s differences any more.”
“Did you never see your parents again once you’d left?” I asked.
“Sure I did, honey, when I buried them. You have to think long and hard over whether that is a sacrifice you are willing to make. I don’t resent it now. Matthew had his reasons for not telling me, but you have to remember that when I married him, I didn’t know what you do. I had to choose when I already had Henry to consider. You owe him nothing and you can walk away if you so wish.”
“I owe him everything, and I have already made my choice; I won’t go back on it now.”
She nodded her head slowly, like one of those dogs you see behind the rear seats of cars. “That’s good; you have strength. I thought as much. Now, I have something to ask of you.” She took a series of shallow breaths and I waited. “I am dying, Emma. Yes, I know that I have been cheating death for so long and the good Lord knows I have begged and begged Matthew to let me go so many times over these years. And if he had, we wouldn’t be talking like this right now, and he would be a free man. Anyhow, it won’t be so very long now and you can have him to yourself…” I started to protest, but Ellen just smiled and rocked her head. “I don’t doubt the goodness of your heart, honey, but you and I both know that while I’m alive Matthew is torn between us and I don’t want that for any of us. My time is near and I have made Charles promise me that he won’t tell Matthew because I don’t want to be saved any more. I want to die and be at peace, if any is coming my way. I am content with what I have been given, and knowing now that Matthew has someone he can share his life with – someone who understands him – makes it the easier to leave.”
I might have been forgiven for rejoicing, but I no longer considered Ellen as a collection of disembodied labels: wife, mother, quadriplegic – barrier to my own fulfilment and happiness – but a vibrant personality who, for all the slow erosion of her life, remained little changed from when Matthew married her.
“What is it that you want me to do?”
“I want…” Ellen began, slowly at first, “… I want you to stop Matthew from resuscitating me.”
“How can I do that?” I asked, horrified.
“Do whatever you have to, but keep him away until it’s too late, until I’m dead and you are sure of it. Lie to him, sabotage his car – anything but anything to stop him from reaching me in time.”
“I can’t do that, it’s against everything he believes. He would never forgive himself.”
“Honey, I’ve got to die sometime.” For all her infirmity I perceived granite in her blood. “He’s got to let me go and you’re the only person who understands what this means to me; I know it, I can see it in your eyes. I can’t ask anyone else to do this, my family is too closely tied up in it and they won’t act against Matthew’s will. And Eli – God bless him – he would cross the Red Sea if he could to save me. We’ve been friends far too long to ask this of him. But you understand, Emma. You see things differently to most folks, don’t you?”
I found I had been concentrating on the second hand of my watch. Now I looked up. “Yes,” I murmured.
“Then you will do this one thing for me?” she asked, but too eagerly. She didn’t say it, but she must have realized that she might as well have asked me to switch off her life-support machine there and then. It wasn’t as simple as she made it sound. Not only did I have Matthew to consider – and Heaven only knows what would happen if he discovered I had been complicit in her death, because that is how he would see it – but I would also have to square it with my own conscience. She had correctly deduced that I would not wish her to be tied to a life of suffering, that I viewed death as the next step in life, not an end to life itself. Yet I remembered how devastated I felt when Matthew told me that Nanna neared death, and how only time and reflection had allowed me to see it from her point of view. Could he not tell how close Ellen was to the end of her days, and would it not help him if he did? The delicate chime of the nearby clock beat out the hour, reminding me of the lateness of it. Ellen hadn’t told Matthew because she feared he would try to save her, as he had always done before. She asked me knowing that, aside from everything, I had a vested interest in her death.
Which was why I couldn’t do it.
“Well, honey?” Uncertainty quavered in the old woman’s voice for the first time.
“No – I’m sorry, Ellen, I can’t.”
Her face fell. A look of panic, followed in quick succession by disbelief, disappointment, anger, then panic again. She had been relying on me. It explained why she wanted to meet me in the first place. She planned to ask all along.
“Ellen, I can’t do as you ask because of what it might do to Matthew, and I won’t do it because it is tantamount to euthanasia. But I can do this: I will relay your wishes as you have described them to me. If the opportunity arises, I will tell Matthew that this is what you want. I won’t try to hide anything from him though; I won’t do anything that might give him cause for regret.”
The slight tremble that had set up in her lower lip had ceased as I spoke and now she viewed me sharply. “You might find yourself in a similar situation one day, Emma, when your successor sits in front of you and you are in no position to rule yourself. Then what would you do if you were faced with this living death? What would you do in my stead?”
I didn’t rush to answer and only did so after a degree of thought. “I would probably do what you have done, Ellen, and hope that the girl makes a different decision and that she can live with the consequences of it because I wouldn’t have to.”
Only the soft rasp of her breath breached the silence that followed. Finally, she spoke. “Well, well, there’s more gut and gumption to you than I would have thought. Fancy denying an old woman her last wish.” And to my surprise, Ellen laughed softly, phlegm rattling in her throat. “I will bide my time till death defeats us both, and I go my way and Matthew goes his.”
“I’m sorry, Ellen,” I said, and meant it. Her eyes shut. Her deeply folded face had paled and become drawn with all the effort she had poured into the conversation, and I felt an overwhelming urge to comfort her.
“I know you are, honey, but I had to try; you were my last hope.” Her eyes fluttered open again. “There now, call my husband for me, will you? I’m feeling a little tired.”
