I go to the nurses’ station. There is only one nurse I recognise and she’s the one who growled at Albert and I for sharing a bed. She looks up at me when I cough nervously.
“Hi Steph,” I say, smiling. “Do you know where Albert has been moved to?”
She studies my face for a moment.
“Maddy, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Come with me.”
I follow her down the corridor and through a few doors. We turn left, then right, then right again. She stops outside a set of doors and pushes an intercom. It beeps and a voice echoes through it.
“Yes?”
“It’s Steph. I have Albert’s girlfriend with me.”
There is a buzzing sound and the door clicks unlocked. She pushes it open and gestures me through. I have no idea where we are. She leads me down a set of stairs and then points to an open door.
“There,” she says.
“Thanks.” I say, revising my earlier opinion of her. It was nice of her to show me the way in person instead of leaving me to get lost on own. I’m almost through the door when she calls my name.
“Maddy.”
I turn. “Yes?”
“You have my condolences.” Then she turns and walks away.
I frown, not understanding. Then I hear a sob from within the room and I look inside. Albert’s mum is sitting on a black faux leather couch. She has her head in her hands and the sobs are coming from her. Colin is standing in front of the window, his preferred position. His hands are laced together behind his back, his body stiff like he is at attention. Louis is leaning back in another chair, his feet crossed in front of him. He is kind of staring at the wall and doesn’t seem to notice when I walk into the room. The atmosphere is cold. I feel my blood run cold too. Something isn’t right.
“Wendy?”
She looks up, and I reel. Her face is puffy and red, her eyes glassy with tears.
“Oh Maddy,” she wails. “Where have you been?”
“At home. Where is Albert?”
At the mention of his name she starts sobbing. Proper, deep sobs, from the depths of her belly. I start to panic. What the hell has happened in the last twenty four hours? Where is he? Has he had a setback?
I whirl to Louis, demanding answers. “Where is he?”
He focuses on my face and I see the moment he recognises me.
“Now you decide to show up,” he says bitterly.
I run from the room and grab the first blue uniformed arm I see. “Where is Albert?” I demand.
The arm belongs to a doctor. He gently prises my fingers from his arm. “I’m sorry, are you family?”
“Yes. Kind of. I’m his girlfriend.”
He reads the panic in my face and sighs. “I’m sorry but Albert passed away last night.”
I stagger away from him, my hands flying to my mouth. What is he talking about? “No he didn’t. He was fine. You guys said he was fine.”
“They fucken lied.” Louis has followed me out and is standing in the doorway, glaring at the doctor. He looks furious, like he wants to hit something.
“What are you talking about?” I look madly from Louis to the doctor and back again. “No one is making any sense.”
The doctor gestures to the room. “Please. I will try and answer your questions.”
“I’m not moving until you tell me what the hell is going on and where Albert is.”
He nods. “I’m afraid that it’s all guesswork at this stage. We won’t know anything for sure until we have the autopsy results.”
Autopsy?
“We think Albert suffered an infection in the brain, which last night developed into sepsis. As soon as we realised we started to treat him but he went downhill fast. The infection travelled very quickly into his major organs and he went into septic shock. It caused him to have a stroke, from which, I’m sad to say, he did not recover.”
I can hear the words coming out of his mouth but they just don’t make any sense.
“You’re wrong,” I tell him, shaking my head fervently. “You’ve got him confused with someone else. Albert is doing great. You guys said so yourself.”
“I know. Once again, I’m very sorry for your loss. I can’t really comment any further until the autopsy and a standard internal investigation has taken place.”
“You mean while you scramble to try and cover your butts,” Louis growls.
The doctor grimaces. “Excuse me, I need to be somewhere else, but if you need anything please let one of the nurses know.”
He walks off quickly, clearly keen to be somewhere that is anywhere but here. Louis turns and disappears back into the room. I feel like I’m in a different dimension. Nothing seems real, from the dark blue carpet to the bright, fluorescent lighting.
Where am I?
I feel like I am floating above my body, replaying the words over and over on repeat.
It caused him to have a stroke
he did not recover.
I hear wailing again, and I think its Wendy. Then I realise it’s me.
Maddy
Albert’s funeral takes place on a Tuesday, a week after his death.
The funeral, like the week preceding it, is a blur.
A sea of black.
A sea of sorrow.
I sit beside his open casket in his lounge room while his friends and family, people I have never met, arrive to pay their respects.
Children peer ghoulishly into the coffin, their eyes wide.
I’ve heard people say that when someone dies and they are embalmed they look the same, just as if they are sleeping.
It’s not true.
He looks like my Albert, yes. But a horrible version of himself. His skin looks like it’s sliding off his face, like silly putty. They have left the bandage on his head to cover the wound and the fact that his beautiful hair had been shaven.
A girl my age comes and cries so much she leaves a wet circle of tears on his shirt sleeve. She strokes his hand and tells him she is sorry she hurt him. An ex-girlfriend, I decide. I can see that she loved him once, too. We regard each other, quietly acknowledging our common ground.
At night I go home and sleep on and off, tortured by nightmares and the knowledge that I let him down.
I wasn’t there when he needed me the most.
We file into church at one thirty pm on that Tuesday afternoon and I sit in the back seat with mum and Bee, so that we can make a quick escape if she starts to get loud or try to grab people. Half way through the service she starts to sing ‘If you’re happy and you know it’. People turn to look at us, so mum takes her outside with an apologetic smile.
“We’ll be outside when you’re ready,” she whispers to me.
It all feels like it’s happening to someone else.
None of it feels like Albert. I look at the sea of black, and the dark mahogany coffin with its arrangement of white lilies on top, and none of it feels like him. The hymns, while solemn and suited to the occasion, do not suit him.
He wouldn’t want any of this, I think.
I hold it together until the end, when the coffin starts to be lowered into the floor. I didn’t know that was going to happen, and it catches me out. Until now, I have still had him with me, in my sights. Even after the coffin was sealed two days ago because he had started to attract flies and his face was beginning to decompose. He was physically still here. But now the coffin is disappearing in front of my eyes, and I’m not ready for it. I’m not ready for that final goodbye. He is going somewhere without me, somewhere I’ll never see him again.
He’s already gone, I know that.
But while his body was still here I could pretend he was here with me.
I lose it. I watch it disappear into the floor and be swallowed up, and I lose it.
Wendy grabs my arm on her way out the door.
“You’ll come to the house? For the wake?” she says, and it’s more of a statement than a question.
“I wasn’t plannin
g on it.”
“Of course you will. You have to. I won’t take no for an answer.”
“Ok.” I nod. She is clogging up the aisle and Colin is frowning at me.
Mum and Bee drop me off, promising to pick me up again whenever I am ready, even if it’s in five minutes. “Just call when you’re ready.”
Sitting at the table, hemmed in by elderly relatives who fill their plates with mini quiches and triangle sandwiches with the crusts cut off, I listen as they lament the fact they only see each other at ‘weddings and funerals’.
I feel eyes on me, and look up to see Louis glowering. He is in the kitchen, nursing a glass of what looks like neat whiskey. I’m not sure what I’ve done to deserve his anger, so I simply stare back, my expression neutral. It appears to piss him off.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he says angrily.
People stop talking and many eyes swivel to see who it is that he is talking to.
“Stop it Louis,” Wendy says tiredly. “This isn’t the time or the place.”
“Well she shouldn’t,” he snaps. “Crying and pretending like she cared about him.”
“I loved him,” I say. “Not that I have to justify that to you.”
“Louis, please,” his mum begs.
“If you loved him why weren’t you at the hospital? He wanted you, before he stroked and lost consciousness, he kept asking for you. Why weren’t you there?”
“I didn’t know.” I say, my voice breaking. He has just broken my heart all over again. I’d been hoping Albert hadn’t known something was wrong, that he’d simply slipped away.
“Dad tried to call you. He left you messages. And you just waltz in the next day and pretend you had no idea?”
“What are you talking about? I never got any messages.”
Wendy, a shadow of the woman she was a week ago, studies my face. She can see I am genuinely confused and she looks confused along with me. I see comprehension dawn. She turns to her husband.
“Did you call Maddy?” she asks levelly.
“What?” He looks shifty.
“In the hospital. That night. Did you call Maddy when I asked you to.”
“I don’t know,” he brushes her off. “I don’t remember. There was a lot going on. My son was dying.”
“Oh no, Colin.” Her whole body sags. “You didn’t, did you.”
For a moment it looks like he’s thinking about lying, then he stands up straight and his face turns defiant.
“No, I didn’t call her. At a time like that he needed his family around him, not his latest crush.”
How easily he dismisses what Albert and I felt for each other.
Wendy puts her drink down on the counter and shakes her head at him.
“That was not your call to make,” she says, and walks out of the room.
Maddy
“Are you sure about this?” Mum asks quietly.
I nod. “More sure than I’ve ever been about anything in my life.”
“Then that’s sure enough for me. What’s the plan?”
I study Albert’s house. Happily, Colin’s car isn’t in the drive. Wendy’s is.
“Shop,” Bee demands. She is in the backseat because we had nowhere to leave her and no one to leave her with. I’m glad she’s here though; it feels right that she is. She is excited because she thinks we’re going to the shop and that usually means her favourite biscuits. Mum passes her over her colouring book and pencils.
“No plan. I’m just going to wing it.” I reach for the door handle.
“Ok.” Mum sighs. “I’d be happier if we had a plan, but I trust you.”
“Shop,” says Bee.
I pause. “Thanks mum. You didn’t have to help, but I’m glad you’re here.”
She smiles sadly and reaches out a hand to cup my cheek. “Oh darling. If I could take the hurt away I would, a thousand times over. We’re here for you, me and Bee. We’re the three Baxter girls, remember?”
“Shop,” says Bee.
I give a little smile. “Always.” I take a deep breath and get out of the car.
When Wendy opens the door to my knock I try not to show how startled I am at her appearance. She has changed so much in such a short period. Her clothes are loose and her face gaunt. She blinks at the afternoon sun behind me before recognition dawns.
“Maddy,” she says. “How lovely to see you.”
“Can I come in?”
“Of course.” She stands to the side and opens the door.
As soon as I’m inside I start looking, but there’s no sign of it in the kitchen. Wendy goes to the bench and fills up the jug with water.
“Coffee?” she asks. “Or tea?”
“Coffee, thanks.”
“How do you take it?”
“Milk but no sugar.”
“Biscuit?”
“No thanks.”
She flicks the switch and the low rumble of the water boiling fills the silence. Neither of us speaks while she pours the water and stirs the cups. Then she passes me mine and gestures towards the arch that leads to the lounge.
“Shall we?”
“After you.”
I see it as soon as I walk in. It is just sitting there in the centre of the coffee table. The sight of it takes my breath away.
“Is that -?”
She follows the direction of my eyes. “Yes.”
“May I?”
She nods.
I put my coffee down and sit on the couch. Hesitantly, I put out a hand and run it over the small grey container. It is cool to the touch, the opposite of the man whose ashes it contains. His name is inscribed on the end of it.
“Still so hard to believe isn’t it?” she says, sitting down beside me.
“Yes.”
“I keep expecting him to walk through that door covered in horse muck.”
“I know what you mean. Every time my phone beeps there is a moment where I forget what’s happened and I get excited, thinking it’s a message from him, but then I remember. And every time it nearly kills me.”
She takes a deep breath and exhales it slowly. “I guess it will get easier with time. At least that’s what people keep telling me. I don’t know how losing a child could ever stop hurting though.”
She puts her coffee down and holds out a hand. I take it.
“I’m so sorry about what my husband did,” she says. “It was unforgivable.”
I look at my knees. I’ve been trying not to think about it, but this might be the only chance I get to have some answers.
“Did he know? That he was dying?”
She shakes her head. “No, I don’t think so.” She picks up her coffee again and blows on the top to cool it down. “It all happened so fast. One minute we were chatting and then he said he was feeling dizzy. He started to say some weird things, things that didn’t make any sense. I called the nurse and she said she’d get a doctor to look at him but you know what hospitals are like. Their resources are thinly stretched and I don’t think she thought he was a priority. By the time the doctor came I thought he was asleep, but he was unconscious.”
She looks me in the eye and shrugs helplessly. “He just never woke up.”
“Louis said he was asking for me.”
“No, not in the literal sense. We were talking about you, before it happened. He loved you so much you know.”
“I loved him too. I still do. I always will.”
“I know. I’m very grateful he had those last few months with you. You made him so happy.” She fusses with a cushion. “I hadn’t seen him that happy in a long time.”
I hear a clock chime in the hallway and it reminds me that Colin might be home at any moment. I need to act fast if I’m to have any hope of changing Wendy’s mind.
“The reason I’m here,” I say, “is that I’ve heard rumours that you and Colin are planning to bury Albert’s ashes?”
“That’s right, on his grandmother’s grave down in the Wairarapa.”
I take a deep
breath, summoning all the diplomacy I can. “Are you sure that’s what Albert would want?”
She looks at me in surprise. “Well, no. I’m not sure. It’s not something we ever got around to discussing. Why?”
“I know I didn’t know him as long as you did. But I’m sure that being buried in the cold, dark ground is not something he would have chosen for himself.”
She frowns. “I don’t understand.”
“I have a better idea.”
“How dare you.”
Both Wendy and I jump, startled by Colin’s low, angry voice. Neither of us had heard him come in. He crosses the lounge quickly to stand beside his wife, placing a hand on her shoulder protectively.
“What makes you think you can come in here and upset my wife. Can’t you see she’s grieving? She’s just lost her son for god’s sakes.”
I stand up and face him. I will not be bullied by this man. “I’m well aware of that.”
“You’ve got some nerve thinking you should have a say in what happens to my son’s remains.”
“I am trying to do what I think is right by Albert.”
“And how would you know? You only knew him for a brief time.”
“I knew him long enough to know that being buried in the ground, far from the sea that he loved, is not what he would have wanted.”
He scoffs. “The sea that he loved? This isn’t some bloody soppy movie, this is my son you’re talking about. I will decide what’s best for him, not you.”
Wendy stands up and pushes his hand off her shoulder.
“Excuse us please, Maddy. Colin I need a word with you in private.”
“This is my house. You want privacy, you tell her to leave.”
“Colin.” Wendy’s voice is low, warning. “The hallway, now please.”
“When we get back I’d like you gone,” he snarls at me before following her.
“Your wish is my command,” I mutter when they are out of sight. I scoop up the box of ashes and walk as fast but as quiet as I can. Once out of the house I run up the garden path to where mum is parked on the street.
Differently Normal Page 18
