by Brothers
‘Anyway. I’m here now.’ Michael feigned composure as he wiped his eyes and blew his nose. ‘Is she in any pain?’
‘The doctors say no. Her coma is induced so she shouldn’t feel anything through it.’
‘At least that much.’ Michael’s heart was heavy. ‘So Lizzie knows about me?’
‘She does.’ He couldn’t begin to understand what the man must have been feeling since he found out last night, nor what was going through Lizzie’s head for that matter. ‘I think we should go up.’ Tim was eager to get back to Rose. ‘We can talk about everything else later, if that’s okay?’
‘Of course.’ Michael followed Tim’s lead. ‘Tim, there is just one quick thing.’ Michael was unsure of how to ask. The question had been hovering around in his head unable to land since his mother’s revelation came in his letter yesterday and there was no one else who would know.
‘Yes, Michael.’
‘Do you know, who my father is, or was?’
‘I don’t, Michael,’ Tim cleared his throat and looked ahead. He was afraid that Michael might see his eyes. ‘Rose never told me.’ It was a secret that Rose wanted to keep and Tim had vowed to keep it for her; Michael would never hear it from him.
‘Okay.’ Michael accepted Tim’s words.
*
Lizzie stood up from her seat and nervously watched as Michael opened the hospital room door. Adrenaline galloped around her body, rendering her muscles jellylike and weak. Her heartbeat sprinted and a wave of tears exploded from her eyes.
‘Michael.’ She shook her head, opened her arms and met his strong grip.
‘Lizzie, I’m so sorry for Rose, for all of this,’ he spoke, conscious of the medical staff in the room.
‘You’re here. She’d be glad you are here.’ She held him close and couldn’t let go, he was like a connection, a frayed link to her mother, another piece of her alive.
‘I am,’ he whispered as he dried his face with his sleeve.
‘Come in closer, tell her you are here.’ Lizzie pulled him by the hand and stood by Rose, Michael frozen by her side. ‘Mum, it’s me,’ Lizzie whispered. Gently, she rubbed her mother’s cheek with the back of her hand. ‘Michael is here too, Mum. I found Michael like you asked me to in your letter.’ She glanced at Michael, ‘Although it was him who found us.’ A deep sob escaped from Lizzie as she uttered the words. Michael exhaled heavily and stepped closer to Rose. ‘I have your letter here too.’ She reached inside her bag and handed it to him.
‘Rose.’ Michael walked to the opposite side of the bed. He reached tentatively towards her hand. ‘It’s me, Michael here.’ Awkwardly, he spoke. He looked across the bed at Lizzie who was sobbing into her hands. ‘I’ve just spoken to Tim.’ He smoothed down the plastic apron in front of him to keep it out of his way. He tried to catch the rogue tears as they escaped down his face. ‘The funny thing is, my mother, Mary, left a letter for me too and thanks to the instructions she gave my wife, I only got it last night.’ His voice cracked as he tried to hold his resolve. He lifted his head and offered Lizzie his saddest smile, ‘I always wanted a sister.’ He wiped the drips from his nose and sniffled. ‘Said no man, ever,’ he added under his breath, making Lizzie smile in return. He swallowed the lump of sorrow back down to his gut, reached for Rose’s frail hand and took it in his. ‘I know she can look out for herself, but I suppose I may look after Lizzie now, seeing as I’m the big brother.’ Lizzie smiled through her tears. He stifled his sobs as he turned from the bed. ‘Rose,’ he paused, ‘we are all rooting for you.’
‘It really is too much stimulation for the patients to have so much going on. Can I ask you all to leave for a moment?’ She turned to her folders and began to record her data from the monitors.
‘You didn’t get long with her,’ Tim remarked as Lizzie and Michael returned to the corridor outside.
‘They are doing something with her,’ Lizzie explained. Lizzie nodded to Lucas and smiled at Marie. ‘I see you have all found each other.’ It felt right that Lucas was there and as she looked at him, the words that he had used earlier registered with her for the first time, did he really just say because I am in love with his sister?
The table in the family room was strewn with empty cups and spoons and Marie busied herself gathering empties for the trash. Papers had collected unfolded and scattered and she smoothed them over and piled them neatly on the table. They didn’t have to wait long for the consultant to enter.
‘Your mother, as you know, has had a traumatic brain injury. It’s quite severe,’ she warned. A vacuum of air formed as Rose’s family drew a collective breath. Tim cleared his throat. ‘We are concerned by the lack of brain activity on the tests and as of this morning we have her on a hundred per cent oxygen. Without the ventilator, she would not be able to breathe.’ She waited till the family processed the information. ‘All the signs are discouraging at the moment, I’m afraid.’ The consultant paused as she surveyed the room. Tim sat stoically without averting his eyes. ‘We must prepare you for the worst.’ Michael could feel Lizzie’s body shake beside him. He grabbed her hand under the table. ‘We don’t expect that Mrs O’ Reilly, your mother…’ The doctor directed her gaze at Lizzie. ‘will last the night, although it is very hard to put a time on it, in our experience, it is very close.’ She hadn’t used the words the end but they all knew it was implied. ‘You will need to make a decision in relation to resuscitation’ The room was silent. ‘Did you know your mother’s wishes?’ The family shook their heads. ‘We do need to know, as a matter of urgency, to what extent you want us to intervene.’ Lizzie stared down at her lap, she couldn’t meet the consultant’s gaze. ‘She is comfortable, not in any pain,’ she assured.
Time stood still in the room. Michael held Lizzie’s hand tightly, she sat, trancelike, absorbing the words.
‘I’m so sorry’. The consultant added. Lizzie nodded her thanks.
‘And she’s not in any pain?’ Lizzie asked again.
‘No, I can assure you we are keeping her comfortable, she is not in any pain’. The consultant waited for any more questions they might have had. ‘You should go, be with her, is there anyone else to come?’ She asked.
‘No’, Tim answered. ‘This is the entire family.’ He looked at Lizzie and then at Michael, All of them silently acknowledging the significance of his words.
‘Well, if you need anything, we’ll be right inside.’ She rubbed Lizzie’s shoulder as she left.
‘I’m going back in to her,’ Lizzie said and Tim and Michael followed.
They watched as Rose lay motionless in the bed. Her fragility portrayed in her waiflike frame that barely created a shape in the bed. Tim noted it all, the beating of her heart as the lines scrawled across the screen, the rhythm of her breaths as the tubes forced air into her lungs. Her numbers looked worse now than they did before. Her blood pressure leapfrogged from high to low and back to high again. It was staying at low just now. Tim could see that her body was giving up. It made sense to him now as he re-ran the doctor’s comments in his head. He had been blinded by hope before.
‘I’m here, Rose. It’s okay.’ He rubbed her arm lovingly, he felt helpless. Wishing for the umpteenth time that there was something he could do. Noiselessly he moved closer to her side. ‘I have everything under control here, you know,’ Tim spoke softly to her. Michael and Lizzie listened. ‘If you need to go, it’s okay.’ He lifted his head and looked directly at Lizzie and Michael. ‘I’m sure Matt is waiting for you. We’ll all be fine.’ His whispers betrayed the shakiness in his voice. His eyes glistened with tears as he spoke. ‘You know, Rosie, you have been the light of my life,’ He shook his head; her smile would have lit a million hearts. ‘You are the bravest person I know.’ He put his head in his hands and his body shook as he cried. ‘I’ll miss you, but…’ Tim knew she was listening, he could feel her in the room. ‘But it’s time for you to go. I love you, Rosie.’ Tim held his breath in an attempt to hold his tears from falling. He wiped his face
in the side of her sheet. Pulling himself to her side, he reached in and kissed her cheek. ‘You don’t need to fight any more, Rosie, you made it.’ He was sure he saw her smile.
‘Let’s get you more comfortable, Rose.’ The nurse was brief as she busied by the bedside. Quickly she adjusted the dials and restarted some pumps. There were eight medicine pumps in motion at the same time. ‘I’m just going to check your pupils, Rose,’ she announced as she forced open her eyelids, one by one, and shone her pencil torch at them. Her pupils were uneven.
Tim stepped away as the nurse began to work. ‘Do you need us to go?’ he asked.
‘No.’ The nurse looked at him knowingly. ‘You should stay with her.’ The tone in her voice was understood. ‘The chaplain is outside, would you like him to say a few prayers with you for Rose?’
Tim looked to Lizzie and Lizzie shrugged. Rose had long since turned her back on the Church but she believed in God and they both thought it would have been something she would have liked.
‘Maybe, just a blessing,’ Tim offered and moved to the other side of the bed to allow the Chaplain some room.
Lizzie moved towards her mother and rubbed her arm as the chaplain anointed her forehead with oil. ‘She’s cold,’ she said, pulling the sheet around her closer as soon as the chaplain left. ‘She would have hated all this fuss.’ She looked at Michael, sorry for all the insights to Rose’s life that he wouldn’t have known. ‘She was always giving out about drama, there was no need for it, she’d say.’
‘Didn’t do the whole crocodile tears thing at all,’ Tim offered. ‘Stoic, strong, I’ve yet to meet anyone with her strength.’ He waited for the nurse who gathered her tray and went to the back of the room. ‘She would have loved to have known you, Michael.’ Tim swallowed hard. ‘I didn’t get a chance to talk to her properly after the funeral, but the smile on her face after we came away from your house said everything I needed to know. It made her day, meeting you, Marie, the kids.’
‘I’m so glad now that I got to speak to her.’ Michael sighed.
‘And I am so glad I came home from London, Tim, thank God, you made me come,’ Lizzie added. She brushed her fingers through her mother’s hair. ‘She looks different.’ Lizzie moved to her side. ‘More relaxed.’
Michael stood behind her, he had been in the room when his mother had passed away and he could tell that Rose’s end was very close. The nurse walked around the bed and silenced the alarms that had begun to sound more frequently. Tim watched her. He knew her body was giving up.
‘I’m just going to make her more comfortable,’ the nurse said.
Michael placed his arm around Lizzie’s shoulders.
Lizzie bent towards Rose in the bed. ‘Love you Mum,’ she said and laid her head on her mother’s shoulder.
Tim moved towards his niece and held her hand. He watched, as her children, Lizzie and Michael, finally united, cried inconsolably by their mother’s side. He studied Rose’s chest as it rose up and down briefly gasping for air and then stalling, then he scanned the monitors for tell-tale signs.
‘It’s okay, Rosie,’ Tim said, the sadness in his heart dripping out through his eyes. ‘We are here.’ He glanced around the room, ‘Lizzie’s here, Michael’s here, I’m here.’ Robert slid behind the curtain followed closely by the nurse. ‘And Robert’s here,’ Tim said contentedly. Collectively they held their breath waiting for her to gasp once more, but she never did. ‘I think that’s it.’ He spoke solemnly. ‘I think she’s gone.’
Michael and Lizzie stood motionless, unable to move, holding each other for balance, the light in Lizzie’s life as she knew it, extinguished.
Chapter 39
Monday Morning – 2016
‘Detective Kelly.’ Robert recognised him as he strode into the family room, Detective Kennedy walked behind him. ‘True to your word, I see.’ Robert’s tone was far from welcoming. He had seen through the glass panels detectives Kelly and Kennedy arrive and discreetly left Rose’s bedside to intercept them.
‘Have we met?’ Kelly asked.
‘No, but we spoke yesterday.’
‘Ah, Robert.’
‘Yes,’ Robert answered. ‘This really isn’t a very good time.’ Robert shook his head in disdain. ‘Rose has just passed away. Tim needs to be with his sister.’ He swallowed hard as he choked back his own emotion.
‘I see.’ Louise stood closer to him. Her reluctance to even come to the hospital had caused her to question why she was in the force in the first place. ‘We are sorry to hear that.’ She placed her foot slightly in front of Kelly’s, her body language enough to tell him to retreat. ‘Really we are.’
‘Can I get you guys coffee or anything?’ Marie stepped forward from the kitchenette; she had busied herself as much as possible since she arrived. ‘I’ve just made a pot.’
Both of the detectives declined. Kelly was curious as to her presence there.
‘So Timothy is inside with Rose?’ Kelly asked.
‘He’s with Mum.’
The detectives turned to see Lizzie entering, her eyes puffy and red. It had been nearly too much to bear to see her uncle break down after her mother had finally passed, it was then that she remembered the whistle, she had decided to nip across to the family room to remind Robert to give it to him.
‘This is Detective Kelly, Lizzie, and this is Detective Kennedy,’ Robert introduced them.
‘Oh,’ she answered and walked past them to the table where her bag was. She rummaged in her bag and pulled her mother’s whistle out for Tim. She showed Robert what was in her hand and smiled. ‘I thought I’d get Tim this, I forgot to give it to you earlier.’
‘Good girl,’ Robert said.
She blinked as she recognised the name on the last envelope in her bag. ‘Detective Kelly, did you say?’ It wouldn’t have occurred to her to give it to him had she not just heard his name.
‘Yes.’
‘Well, this is for you then.’ She pulled the envelope from her bag with Detective Kelly’s name on it. ‘I found it this morning, when I was looking for something, in mum’s stuff.’ She handed him the envelope.
‘Okay,’ Detective Kelly answered, holding out his hand. ‘Thank you.’
‘I’m going back into Mum, okay?’ She looked at Robert as she spoke. ‘Will you come back in with us, Robert, Tim needs you.’
Robert followed, much happier to walk away from the detectives than he was to stay. ‘Is there not too many of us in there?’
‘It doesn’t really matter at this stage,’ Lizzie answered. ‘The nurse has said for us to take a few moments until the doctors come to do their final observations and then they’ll ask us to leave and then we’ve to go back in, when they have taken away all her tubes and everything.’
‘I see.’ Robert’s sad eyes glossed over. ‘What do you think is in the letter?’ He motioned his head in the direction of the family room that they had just left.
‘I don’t know,’ Lizzie answered as she pulled back the door to the room where her mother lay. ‘But she was never one to do things by halves,’ Lizzie answered, she couldn’t help but be proud of her. She wished she had known her mother’s secret sooner, it must have been a heavy burden for her to bear on her own. She was the strongest, most loyal person she knew and for that she loved her. ‘Here.’ She unclenched her hand and showed Robert her mum’s whistle inside. ‘You give it to him. It was your idea.’
Robert rubbed her back, he was so lucky to have her.
Back in her mother’s room, she stood behind her brother and placed her hand on his strong shoulders. ‘Michael, I meant to give this to you earlier, I just wasn’t thinking straight.’ She placed her mother’s letter in his hand. ‘It’s the letter Mum wrote for you.’
Michael opened his envelope and began to read.
Dearest Michael,
You do not know me and sadly I do not know you. You are my first-born child. I became pregnant with you when I was fourteen years of age. When you were born, I named you Mic
hael and I left you with a guardian angel, the woman you called your mother. I could never have looked after you and your mother, Mary McGrath, saved us both, the night you were born. You were so strong for someone so small. You insisted on coming before your time, but I had to leave you, for both our sakes. There was no one better for you than Mary. You were born on her bed, as her other son, George, was. She loved you as her own. She loved me, she loved us.
All my life I have thought of you. Especially on your birthday. That is the day that I feel closest to you. I close my eyes and imagine your life. I have missed you. There is a massive hole in my heart where you should be. The pain and loss that I feel will always be there. It is bearable only because I know that you do not feel it. It wasn’t the goodbye that hurt the most, it was the knowing that there will never be a hello.
I have no doubt that you are a wonderful person as your mother would have raised you to be. I wonder sometimes would she have tried to tell you the truth. We both promised that we would never speak of it again and although I wished for nothing more than to telephone or write or even call to your mother’s house, I didn’t, it wouldn’t have been fair. I remember your piercing eyes and tiny body and find it hard to imagine you as a man, the compassionate and strong man that I know you would have grown to be. I wish nothing but the best for you and I have always had a place in my heart for you, Michael. Know that I have always loved you. What I did, I did for the love of you. Your precious innocence deserved it. You have a beautiful younger sister, Lizzie. Please find her and hopefully you will both fill the void that I have left in your lives with each other.
My love always,
Rose x
Michael couldn’t speak. He bowed his head and cried, holding Rose’s hand.
‘Tim,’ Lizzie had seen Robert, from the corner of her eye, hand Tim her mother’s whistle. She watched as Robert dried her uncle’s tears. ‘Detective Kelly is outside looking for you, is there anything we can do?’ she asked.
‘Leave it to me.’ Tim stood and placed the whistle in his pocket. He bent close to Rose and kissed her cheek. ‘There’ll never be anyone like her, that’s for sure.’ He placed both hands on Lizzie and Michael’s heads as he passed them by. ‘She’ll be delighted she has you both together.’ He left them with a smile. He smoothed down his shirt and stretched out his neck and left.
