by Nancy Adams
“Well, you’re not alone anymore, sister, okay?”
Claire smiled and the two embraced once more.
“I love you, Beth,” Claire let out as they held each other.
“I love you too,” the friend replied. “Just don’t go telling that to Will; he’ll get jealous!”
CHAPTER SIX
Sam sat on the edge of the bed watching the moon through the window as it shone gloomily over the cityscape. Behind him, Marya slept deeply, the doctors having given her a sedative. As for Jess, Maud, her au pair, had come to take her back to the house. Marya had begged Sam to let the girl stay and refused to read the iPad when he’d held out a message for her to see; no other way to communicate with the deaf woman. The whole episode of trying to get her to understand that Jess couldn’t remain with them any longer had been frustrating, with Marya unable to hear anything and simply pleading in a broken voice for them to let Jess stay. But Sam repeatedly tapped on the screen and pointed to the message: Marya, she’s seen too much already. You can’t make a little girl watch her mother die.
But Marya refused to look at it and had to be restrained by several nurses when Sam picked up Jess in order to carry her up to the helipad, the little girl crying in confusion the whole time, holding her tiny hand out to her sick mother as Sam carried her away. Marya had fought with all her withering strength, but in the end relented, melting into tears upon the bed.
Sam suddenly felt Marya stirring behind him. He didn’t turn to her, though, as if he were scared to look at her. Gently, she moved up behind him and took her husband in her weak arms, resting her head on his shoulder. Sam looked away from the moon to the window’s reflection of him and Marya sat upon the bed. Abruptly, Sam fell into tears at the sight of her sad, emaciated face and Marya held him tightly in her numb arms.
“Shhh,” she cooed in his ear.
Sam turned to Marya and took her in his own trembling arms, burying his weeping face into her.
“I’m so weak,” he cried, knowing full well that she couldn’t hear him, but feeling a comfort in letting out the words in her presence. “I always thought that my strength came from inside of me,” he continued into her breast, Marya not even feeling the vibration upon her skin, “but it doesn’t. It always came from you. It was always you behind me, giving me advice and directing me. I can only see the future, but you were always the one directing the present, showing what today was while my head was so fixed upon the world of tomorrow. Who do I turn to now? Without you, I’m lost. I wonder whether that’s why I chased after that poor girl. Because I’m lost and in need of finding something—I was looking and I found her. But now I’ve lost her and soon I’ll lose you for good. Then where am I?”
“You will find yourself again, Sam,” Marya suddenly said in a clear voice, as if she’d heard his question, or simply felt it upon the tip of her soul as his own soul had cried out to her.
Sam slowly looked up at her and she in turn gazed down at him, a crooked smile upon her anemic lips, the sparkle in her eyes a faint glimmer in the darkness, an ever-increasing mortal breeze flowing over it, readying itself to put the sparkle out forever.
“It may not be in a month,” Marya continued down to him, “it may not be a year, and will probably be much much longer. But one day, Sam Burgess, you’ll find yourself again and you’ll find love. You, her and Jess will be a family and I’ll simply look down upon your happiness like a sun, content that your faces hold smiles the majority of the time.”
Sam smiled up to her and his countenance brought out a beaming grin in her. Marya then lent down and kissed Sam on the lips, closing her eyes so that she could imagine how they felt upon her own dead lips, remembering back to when they used to kiss with such warm tenderness. When they were teenagers it had been all passion, but later on, their kisses had become more affectionate and a symbol of their deep devotion for one another; the kiss a product of their love, rather than their lust.
A warm glow opened inside of Marya, in the numb darkness, resonating from the memories of innumerable kisses shared with this man. In that dark abyss, their love reached down to her and lit it up in a warm, orange halo of light.
Abruptly, the light went out, though, and she was once again cast in darkness. Marya opened her eyes and saw that Sam had pulled away from her and had a terrible look upon his face, a look that she’d never seen on him before.
It was a look of supreme guilt.
“What?” she asked.
Sam got up from the bed and appeared to be backing away from her, that terrible expression still plastered upon his lily-white face.
“I cheated on you,” Sam said, unsure why he had, but feeling an instant release at the confession.
Marya had watched his lips attentively when he said the words, but she didn’t get them exactly.
“I don’t understand,” Marya said from the bed.
Sam took the iPad from the side and quickly wrote something on it. He then held it out in front of Marya and she gazed at it incredulously for a moment, her eyes tracing over the words, over and over, her confused expression growing ever larger upon her face with each new reading.
Below her were the words: I can’t deceive you anymore. Last night I cheated on you. I feel so ashamed of myself. I know it’s no excuse, but I was so lost and the next thing I knew I’d lured this girl into bed. I’m completely to blame for all of it, but I couldn’t let you die knowing that I’d deceived you like this.
Marya threw the device across the floor, sending it smashing apart into shards of plastic and metal as it hit the deck. She then threw her hands over her face and screamed out loud. Sam lurched forward and took her in his arms, repeating over and over how sorry he was as he held her.
Suddenly, Marya opened her eyes wide and a new look of terror took over her features as she screamed out, “I’M BLIND.”
She began flashing glances around at her surroundings and Sam observed that her eyes were completely blank. He leapt up from the bed and pushed the alarm, the siren immediately sounding. When he turned back to Marya, she was getting up off the bed, dragging her IV lines with her, the needle pulling at her draping hand. Suddenly, she dropped to the floor, just as the doctors were bursting into the room. Sam bounded to her and picked her up in his arms as one of the doctors reached them. Sam carried her back to the bed and the doctors and nurses did their analysis before administering a large dose of sedatives. Marya would now spend the rest of what was left of her life in a chemically induced coma, until her respiratory system failed and she went into cardiac arrest. It had been agreed at the start that she would be put under sedation the moment the last of her senses failed her.
Once they’d finished, the medical staff left the room and Sam stood at the foot of the bed watching her sleep. This latest piece of cruelty on his part was almost too much for him to bear. What had induced him to confess like that? The last thing that that woman saw—no, what that woman sensed—was the confession of her lying, cheating husband. In a callous final act, Sam had broken that poor suffering woman’s world and sent her to the grave with bitterness in her heart instead of the wonder that had always existed there thus far. Had it been that that made her lose her sight so suddenly? Sam asked himself. If it hadn’t been for the thought of Jess that still brought light to his mind, Sam would have that moment thrown himself through the window and crashing down onto the throng of reporters that existed on the street below. A beast of self-loathing was growing rapidly inside of him and he wrung his fists at his sides as he watched his love sleep her final sleep.
Sam turned sharply and marched out of the room.
Outside, he found Dr. Jones, who’d been waiting especially for him.
“Sam, may I have a word?” the doctor said.
“Of course.”
“I gather that you are leaving now. Is that true?”
“Yes. My helicopter has been alerted that I will be leaving immediately.”
“Okay,” the doctor said, “so I take it we’re
to inform you of your wife’s demise?”
“Yes,” Sam let out in a despondent tone.
The doctor then shuffled his feet slightly and looked to be weighing up whether he should say the next part or not.
“I guess,” Jones said once he’d found the courage, “that I also wanted to know if you were okay.”
“Me?”
“Yes—some of the staff have brought certain concerns to me.”
“About what?” Sam burst out, a cold shiver of static trickling down his body.
“Your wife was a very intense person,” Jones continued.
“Is,” Sam interrupted. “My wife is a very intense person.”
“Sorry, ‘is’ a very intense person, and having your daughter here must have been very hard for you. I know that you disagreed with Marya on the subject, but gave into her macabre view that a child should be dealt with using brutal honesty, treated like an adult before they even know the concept of such. Anyway, several of my staff have observed your behavior and informed me that they are worried about your state of mind. Am I being too intrusive?”
“It’s okay,” Sam let out, relieved that it wasn’t an affair that the staff had observed.
“So, basically, Sam, I want to ask you if you’re seeing anyone at the moment in a psychiatric sense.” “I’m not.”
“Mmmm,” the doctor let out, rubbing his chin. “Look, I have several colleagues that are good at dealing with people suffering loss—”
“I don’t need anyone,” Sam snapped.
Jones looked at him for a moment, before saying, “I’m sorry. I am being intrusive.”
“It’s okay, doc,” Sam said, softening his tone. “I just need to get some time away from it all before I begin considering how I’ll pick up all these broken pieces. I need to be with my daughter at the moment, see her through this, and then look into myself. I thank you for everything you’ve done for my wife and how hard you’ve worked to figure this thing out. For that, you’ll always have my continued patronage. But for now, we’re finished.”
With that, Sam offered the doctor his hand, which the latter took. Once they’d shaken, Sam turned and made his way to the roof where his helicopter was waiting. He jogged up to it, got inside and then informed his pilot to take him home. As they lifted up out of there, the night sky lit up with the innumerable flashes of the paparazzi camped out on the rooftops.
Sam simply ignored them and stared straight in front of him as they hovered out of the city and toward the reserve, a gaping hollowness stretching open inside of him.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“Claire, sweetie,” Claire’s mother, June, called through the bedroom door, “are you feeling better?”
Claire, who had been awake for several hours at that point and lay on her side staring at the wall in front of her, called back that she still felt bad.
“Okay,” her mother replied, “your father’s gone to work and I’m now gonna take Kyle to school. My shift isn’t until this evening, so I’ll be back soon and we can have a little brunch together if you’re up to it, or I’ll just sit with you and we can have a chat.”
Claire physically winced at the thought of her mother attempting to weasel things out of her.
“Okay, ma,” Claire called back, “I’ll see you in a half hour or so.”
“Love you,” her mother called out and was then on her way.
“You too,” Claire called after her.
During her college vacation, Claire had moved back home so that she could volunteer at the city hospital. Her mother was a nurse at Mary Magdalene, had been for nearly twenty-five years, so had been able to get Claire the position in the hospital while Claire lived rent-free at home. Regarding her return, Claire hadn’t liked it. There was something about home that horrified her, something dark that made her recoil from the place. But as much as she hated it there, she loved her mother, and the sound of enthusiasm in the old woman’s voice when she’d first proposed the idea to Claire of her doing a voluntary placement at the same hospital that she worked at was too much for Claire. She couldn’t bear the thought of letting her mother down, more than she couldn’t bear coming home for two months.
Luckily, work at the hospital had meant that she’d avoided much of home life since she’d been back, and it was now only a few weeks before she would be returning to medical college, so it hadn’t been the nightmare that she’d originally feared it would be when she first unpacked her things in her room nearly two months before.
As to the reasons that Claire would suspect that coming home would be so painful, it can only be written that many houses throughout the world have dark family secrets that lay hidden behind their white picket fences and ornamental curtains. And the Prior household was no different from these shadow-laden homes.
Feeling hungry and having told her mother that she was ill, Claire decided to get up and make herself some breakfast while she had the chance to do it covertly. She hadn’t eaten the night before when she’d returned from Beth’s. She’d planned to, but had been commandeered by her mother when she’d returned at one in the morning. June had been waiting up for her, sitting alone in the lounge when Claire had quietly opened the door and stepped inside. At that point, it had been two days since Claire had been home, and she knew that her mother would pounce on her the first moment she could. She hadn’t expected, however, that it would be so soon.
“I waited for you last night too,” Mrs. Prior had said from the darkness of the lounge the moment her daughter had soundlessly closed the door behind herself, scaring the heck out of Claire.
“Ma!” Claire had exclaimed, turning to her. “You frightened me.”
“Sorry, but I’ve been worried.”
“I told you on the phone; I was staying at Beth’s.”
“Is that where you’ve just come from?”
“Yeah—we had a talk. Will’s been giving her a hard time lately, so she needed a shoulder to cry on.”
“Well,” Mrs. Prior began in a serious tone, “she would go against her parents and move in with him, wouldn’t she. They’re just kids, they need time to know what the world is about before declaring themselves independent.”
“Ma, I don’t want an argument over the suitabilities of my best friend’s relationship. I get this every time her mum comes over for dinner.”
“Agnus is an old friend,” Claire’s mother let out. “If I didn’t look out for her interests, I wouldn’t be a good friend now, would I? Anyway, that wasn’t what I wanted to speak to you about. Come sit next to me.”
“Oh! Ma!” Claire let out. “I had a really shitty day at the hospital today.”
“Was it that Burgess woman? Did something happen to her? I was watching from one of the windows at all the commotion outside with the reporters today. They’ve no shame to be hanging outside a hospital like that, waiting impatiently for the death of a poor woman.”
“Yeah—it’s terrible,” Claire admitted in a shivering voice.
“Does she still have that poor little girl up there with her?”
“No—I heard they sent her home tonight.”
“Good,” June let out.
“Anyway, ma, I feel awful. Plus, I’m coming down with something. I was gonna give the hospital a call in the morning and tell them that I couldn’t come in. Unless it clears up during the night.”
Mrs. Prior abruptly switched a lamp on that stood on the small table next to her chair. Claire could see that she’d been crying.
“Step into the light, sweetie,” Mrs. Prior commanded her daughter.
Claire let out a despondent groan and walked forward into the center of the lounge so that the lamplight lit up her gloomy countenance.
“You’ve been crying,” Claire’s mother pronounced.
“And so have you,” Claire retorted.
“Yes,” Mrs. Prior let out softly, a withered smile appearing on her lips as she did, before feeling her wet face with her hands. “I guess I wasn’t aware of it,” she admitted, h
aving felt the tears.
“Oh, ma,” Claire let out and swooped forward onto her knees to take her mother in her arms. Once the two women were embracing, Claire whispered, “What did he do now?”
“Oh, nothing,” Mrs. Prior let out in a sigh. “I just sometimes wonder who he is. I used to know, but he’s not who he used to be. I just can’t get my head around this family anymore. I thought I knew who we were, but there’s something not quite right about everything. There’s something that everyone’s not saying, and I just can’t understand anything anymore…”
“It’s okay, ma,” Claire cooed into her mother’s ear. “You and him have been together for more than twenty years, people change. He’s just changed is all, and you too.”
“Yeah,” Mrs. Prior smiled into her daughter’s shoulder.
Claire then let go of her mother and stayed kneeling in front of her.
“So,” she began, “what was it you wanted to ask?”
Mrs. Prior smiled even more.
“Nothing really,” the mother let out. “I just wanted to spend some time with you was all, but you look really tired so I’ll let you go up to bed. You should forgive me, sweetie, I’m just a silly old woman.”
“It’s okay, ma. I love you.”
Mrs. Prior had smiled even more before shuddering as she tried her hardest to contain her tears.
After that, Claire had gone to bed and now, as she prepared a little breakfast, she was dreading today’s talk. That morning, she’d called the hospital and spoken to the duty nurse on the terminal ward. The two knew each other and, after Claire had informed her that she was sick, the woman had asked Claire if she was alright mentally, if it wasn’t the ward that was making her ill. But Claire had simply replied that although the harrowing lifestyle of the ward could explain her drop in immunity, she was still sure that it was nothing but a simple bug that she’d caught.
Once she’d made some toast and coffee, Claire sat at the kitchen island watching the morning news on the television. Only a few seconds in, the image of Sam Burgess came flashing up on the screen and the toast in her mouth suddenly dried to ash, sticking to her throat. She immediately grabbed her cup of coffee and washed it down.
