by Amanda Dick
But a part of me recognised the strength I saw in my father now. I’d never seen that before. All through my life, he’d been weak. He’d been a bully, preying on our fear. Now he’d been clean for over two years. Deep down, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to do that myself, so I gave him reluctant praise for it. But there was something else, too. He had changed on a more fundamental level. He’d faced up to the man he was, and he’d accepted his past. That was something I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to do either.
It was a strange feeling, reluctant admiration for a man I’d spent the majority of my life hating.
Oddly, it gave me hope. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to see him again, but seeing him, talking to him, wasn’t something I was ever going to forget. I got the feeling it was going to haunt me for a long time.
He left not long after that. He didn’t even finish his drink, he just thanked me for listening, got up and left. I finished my whisky slowly, which was a first for me. Then I pulled out my phone and called Jack. I waited outside the bar in the cool night air for him to come pick me up. I could’ve walked, but I’d had enough of being alone, and my head hurt. I was relieved when his car pulled up in front of me soon after.
“Hey,” he said, as I got in. “You okay? You don’t look it.”
“I’m not drunk,” I said, running my hand down my face. “I’m just tired.”
He gave me his most discerning look, gauging me.
“Your Dad came back to the hospital about half an hour ago. He told us he found you.”
I shrugged. Words still escaped me. My head still swam.
“You sure you’re okay? Wanna talk about it?”
I reached for my seatbelt.
“Yeah. And no. Not yet. Maybe later.”
I was grateful when he didn’t push it.
“Well, we better get back, I guess. Coop was meeting with the doctors about five minutes ago.”
He pulled out onto the road.
“Is she okay?” I asked, almost afraid to.
“I don’t know. It’s hard to tell. Nothing seems to have changed.”
“Is Coop pissed off at me, for leaving?” I asked.
“No, I don’t think so. He’s not an ogre. He knows how hard it is for you. He’s offered me a bed for the night. Is that okay?”
“Yeah, of course – why wouldn’t it be?”
“I don’t know. I just thought I’d ask. I thought maybe you’d prefer I stay in a motel, so you and Coop can have some time together or something. I don’t mind – I get it.”
“What? No. For Christ’s sake, you drove all this way. You deserve a comfortable bed.”
“Okay, then. I’m not gonna argue with that.”
“I really appreciate the fact that you’re here,” I said. “I’m sorry, but I’m grateful.”
He glanced over at me as the hospital parking lot came into sight, lit up like a Christmas tree.
“No need. You’d do the same for me,” he said.
“You know I would.”
I could tell, from the moment we got out of the elevator, that something was wrong. It was a gut feeling, something I couldn’t quantify. I felt like I was walking in slow motion, as if everything around us had stilled. Approaching the waiting room I saw Coop with my Dad and two doctors, and I knew I was right. Coop was sitting with his head in his hands. It was the kind of picture that stays with you forever.
Utter and complete devastation.
My stomach fell, my heart stopped and I couldn’t breathe.
“Come on,” Jack said gently.
I wasn’t even aware that I’d stopped walking. I felt like I was stuck in a nightmare, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t wake myself up.
We walked over to the waiting room, and everyone’s attention turned to us. Steph was sobbing quietly, sounding much more like the little girl I remembered rather than the teenager she was. My father, whose strength I had only just been admiring an hour or so beforehand, looked broken. Even the doctors looked uncomfortable.
Coop glanced up, his hands falling from his face.
I looked over at Mom’s bed, at the far side of the room. The nurses that had been buzzing around her intermittently were gone.
“Callum,” Coop said, standing up.
I waited for him to continue, my heart in my mouth, but he didn’t. Dad was standing on the other side of the small room, his eyes downcast as if he wished he was somewhere else. Steph’s sobs continued, now muffled by her hands.
“What is it?”
No one said anything for what seemed like an eternity. Then finally, one of the doctors spoke up, obviously realising that no one else wanted to tell me.
“Your mother’s brain is dying,” he said gently. “We can’t stop the bleeding. We can’t do any more for her. I’m very sorry.”
I stared at him blankly, willing him to take the words back. He was wrong – they all were. They had to be.
“The doctors are suggesting we take some time to come to terms with this, then turn off the life support.”
Coop’s voice had a hollow ring to it, and I could tell he was struggling with this as much as I was.
I turned to him, and I heard Jack breathe out a ragged sigh from behind me.
“You can’t,” I said, my heart pounding. “You can’t.”
“Your mother can’t breathe on her own,” the second doctor said. “Her heart isn’t pumping on its own. Her body is shutting down. The only thing keeping her body alive right now is the machines. I’m so sorry. We’ll leave you all to take some time to think about this. We know it’s not an easy decision.”
The two doctors left us alone, but no one moved. Steph stopped sobbing long enough to look up at us. I wanted someone to come back and say that they were sorry, they’d made a mistake. No one did.
“We need to let her go,” Coop said brokenly, his eyes filling with tears. “It’s out of our hands now.”
“It’s not out of our hands,” I snapped. “Not yet. We should wait. We don’t have to do this.”
“Yes we do,” Dad said, looking over at us. “She wouldn’t want us to keep her holding on like this. It’s selfish. We need to do the right thing, for her. We need to give her her dignity back. She deserves that.”
I fell into the nearest chair, my legs giving way to the sorrow that pushed down on me from a height so great, I thought it might crush me. Would this nightmare ever end?
“Her brain is dying,” Coop said. “You heard the doctors.”
“She might –“
“No,” he sniffed. “She won’t. They’ve already told us that. They can’t do anything. Her heart isn’t pumping, her lungs aren’t working. Her organs have shut down. She’s on life support. Machines are keeping her alive. Dan’s right, she deserves to keep her dignity. She’d hate this, I know she would.”
Steph began sobbing again and he went to her, pulling her into his arms.
“It’s okay, sweetie,” he soothed.
I looked over at them. I wanted someone to hold me like that and tell me everything was going to be okay. I wanted Sass. I wanted to bury my head in her shoulder and have her wrap her arms around me and make all of this go away.
“We need to face the truth, no matter how much it hurts,” Coop said, still holding Steph. “We need to let her go. It’s what she would want.”
“You can’t just give up on her!” I insisted.
“We’re not giving up on her,” Dad said. “We’re letting her go. It’s not the same thing. We’re doing this for her, not for us. You heard the doctors – do you think any of us want this? We love her, we all do, but this is just… she’d hate this.”
“You’re killing her!”
“No, we’re not. She’s already gone.”
“Well I don’t agree,” I snapped. “She’s not gone. She’s still there, in that bed, and as long as she is, she’s still with us.”
“It’s not a democracy,” Coop said tiredly, brushing Steph’s hair away from her face. “We don�
��t get to vote. It’s up to Dan. He’s the only one who can make this decision.”
I felt like the room had been tipped sideways.
“What? What are you talking about?”
“It’s not like that, Coop,” Dad said. “I’d never –“
“No, I know that. I’m just saying. You heard them. Yours is the only voice that counts here, legally speaking. You’re still married to her. You’re the only one legally entitled to sign the paperwork.”
“No,” I shook my head. “No, that can’t be right. I mean, you left, and she… I mean, Coop –“
“It’s the law,” Coop said, his eyes finding mine and holding them. “They’re still married in the eyes of the law.”
“That’s just bullshit!”
Something inside me snapped, and I lashed out at the thing nearest me – a chair, which I kicked halfway across the room.
Everyone jumped, and Jack tried to talk me into sitting down but I shrugged him off, pacing like a wounded animal.
“It’s bullshit,”I said again. “It has to be.”
“It’s the law, son.”
“Don’t call me son!” I yelled. “I stopped being your son a long time ago!”
“Callum, please,” Coop begged, as Steph sobbed into his shoulder. “Please don’t make it worse. We need to talk about this logically. She’s not going to wake up from this –“
His voice broke and he took a moment to compose himself before he continued.
“It’s the right thing to do. More importantly, I agree with Dan – it’s what she would want us to do.”
I wanted to argue with him, I wanted to come up with an argument that would convince them all otherwise, because it felt like I was holding her life in my hands and it was just slipping through my fingers.
But I couldn’t. I didn’t have one. I just had all this love for her, and all this pain that I didn’t know what to do with.
How could we just let her go without a fight?
How could I just let her go without telling her how much I loved her?
Chapter Fifty-Two
“Some people hide more than others, and it does intrigue me.”
– Tori Amos
Sass
The previous few days felt like an eternity. I hadn’t heard from Callum, and Leo and I were barely speaking. I wasn’t angry with him anymore, I just didn’t know what to say to him. Gemma said she didn’t want to get between us, but she also said that he was only doing what he thought was right. He was worried about me. I knew that, because he’d told me that himself, but strangely, it didn’t help.
It wasn’t just that he’d kept something so huge from me, it was that I didn’t know what to do with it now that I knew. How could I have kept something so important hidden from myself? Didn’t I trust myself? Didn’t I think I deserved to know?
As a result, shifts at the bar together were long and quiet. I was preoccupied, going about my work like a robot. One foot in front of the other, one customer at a time, one hour at a time. I knew Leo was trying to figure out how to help, but I also knew there was no quick-fix for how I was feeling. I wish there was.
Ally came in on Thursday night, right before closing time. That was weird for several reasons.
I’d never seen her come into the bar on her own before.
It was late.
And something was wrong.
I knew that as soon as I saw her face. It was tight, drawn. She was worried about something. She was using her crutches, so I walked over to meet her on the other side of the bar, leaving Leo with the register.
“Hi,” I said tentatively. “You just caught us, we were about to close up.”
“I thought so. I need to talk to you. Is it okay if we do that here?”
“Yeah, of course. What’s up?”
I nodded at the nearest table and we made our way over to it.
“I don’t actually know where to begin,” she said, easing her way carefully into a chair.
I followed her lead, sitting across from her, the bad feeling in the pit of my stomach growing stronger. She didn’t even bother trying to make polite chit-chat.
“It’s Callum,” she said, leaning her crutches against the table and turning her full attention on me. “His Mom’s had an aneurysm, and she’s in the hospital.”
My heart squeezed.
“Oh no. I’m so sorry to hear that.”
“Unfortunately, it gets worse,” she said, blowing out a breath. “His Dad’s there, at the hospital.”
“Oh… God. Really?”
“So he told you, about his Dad, their relationship?”
“Yeah, a little. I know they’re not close.”
“No,” she said, glancing down at her hands, clasped on the table in front of her. “They’re not close.”
She looked up at me again.
“The thing is, he called Jack from jail the other night.”
“Callum did?”
“Yeah. He was drunk and he got into a fight… I don’t really know the details, just what Jack’s told me, but he had to drive over there to go bail him out. Jack said he’s taking it really hard. He’s kinda out of control, to be honest. Jack’s really scared for him. We both are.”
And here was I, so self-absorbed, I thought it was all about me. I had no idea. The world continued to turn, whether I hid from it or not. My heart went out to him. I could only imagine the kind of pain and confusion he might be feeling.
“I’m really sorry,” I said, embarrassed. “I mean, we had kind of a… fight I guess, the other night, and I haven’t heard from him since. I just thought that he was keeping his distance. I was pretty hard on him.”
God, how I wished I could take all that back now.
“I don’t think any of that is gonna make any difference now,” she said gently. “His mother’s on life support. The doctors have recommended they switch it off.”
“What?”
“She’s not expected to make it through the night.”
“Oh… oh my God.”
She reached over to take my hand.
“He needs you. Jack asked me to come and talk to you, to ask you to go over there. I know it’s a long drive, and it’s a lot to ask, but I really think he’s right. He does need you.”
I stared at her, swallowing the lump in my throat.
“But I –“
“I’ll come with you. I was going to go anyway. Can you get away?”
“Tonight?”
“Yeah, tonight. We’ll get there late, but it won’t matter. Jack’s with him now, they’re at the hospital. I really think we need to get over there as soon as we can.”
“But, he… I… “
She squeezed my hand, her eyes burning into mine.
“None of that matters now,” she said. “What matters is that he needs you. Will you come? Please? For him?”
“But I don’t know what to say to him,” I murmured. “What do I say?”
She smiled thinly.
“You don’t have to say anything. Just be there. I promise you that’ll be enough. The rest will work itself out, you’ll see.”
Then she paused.
“I’ve never seen him fall for anyone the way he’s fallen for you, and I’ve known him a really long time. He may be stubborn, and reckless, and he drinks far too much, but trust me, his shortcomings – and he has a few – are incidental. He’s as loyal as the day is long, and I see the way he looks at you. He loves you. I don’t know if he’s said that to you yet, and it doesn’t really matter either way because it’s so damn obvious. That’s why I’m here. I know that if there’s anyone he really wants by his side right now, it’s you.”
I stared at her through tears that had appeared from nowhere. Suddenly, there was nothing I wanted more than to be wrapped up in his arms.
Chapter Fifty-Three
“Children show scars like medals. Lovers use them
as secrets to reveal. A scar is what happens
when the word is made flesh.
”
– Leonard Cohen
Callum
I was with her when they turned the life support off. We all were. We took turns holding her hands and talking to her. I don’t think any of us were really ready to let her go. I know I wasn’t.
I thought it would happen immediately, that her heart would stop and then it would be over. Like pulling off a band-aid, I guess. Flip the switch and the body stops working. But it wasn’t like that. She lingered. I like to think she was saying goodbye to us all in some way. I like to think that maybe, on some plane, some alternative platform that was just beyond our comprehension, she was hovering nearby, watching us as we grieved for the hole she would leave in our lives.
I didn’t do much talking over that time, that in-between period. I just sat and held her hand, thinking about how much I loved her and how many opportunities I’d had over the years to tell her that. I missed a lot of them. I was angry for many of them, too. Strangely, now, that anger had withered. The vacuum was filled with the pain of knowing that I’d never see her name pop up on my phone again. That I’d never receive another birthday card from her, or Christmas card. It was the little things I’d miss the most. I wanted to believe that over time, the grief and the guilt at the lost opportunities would pass, but I didn’t really know if that was true. It was just something I told myself, to make it hurt a little less.
The hospital had moved her into another room, not far from the ICU, to afford us some privacy while we sat with her and waited, silently hoping for a miracle that never came. When her heart finally stopped beating and the nurses confirmed the inevitable, my heart felt so heavy, I thought it might fall from my chest.
We all escaped into ourselves. Coop and Steph comforted each other. Dad and I kept our distance. No one wanted to talk. It felt like we’d already done enough of that. Now was the time to be still, to allow the numbness to wash over us and wait for the grief to sink in. Jack was there, watching from afar, sitting on the edge of our circle of sorrow.
He hugged me, for the first time in I don’t know how long.
