‘Carmel,’ I said, interrupting her muscle patrol. ‘I need to go to the loo.’
‘Erm … fine. You know where it is,’ she said, looking confused.
‘But I’m a girl. And there are rules. I need another girl to go with me.’
Fionnula belched, and held up her hand. ‘Count me out – Switzerland is busy getting drunk.’
Carmel got the message, reluctantly let go of Connor and accompanied me to the bathroom.
As soon as we were alone and the door shut, I started running both taps and flushed the toilet.
‘What gives?’ she said, watching as I created waterfalls all around the room.
‘Gabriel. He has ears like Dumbo, and I don’t want him listening in. Carmel, look, I’ve got to leave. And I need you to help me.’
‘Of course,’ she replied. ‘Whatever you need. Mind if I ask why? And I take it your chat with lover boy didn’t go well?’
I felt my face slide into misery, and couldn’t stop it. I must be a heck of a shallow person. Coleen was lying almost dead in a hospital bed, and I was still playing wounded damsel about Gabriel. All together now: Gerra Grip, Girl.
‘It went as well as it could, considering he’s a lying, conniving piece of shit.’
‘Oh,’ she said, which was fair enough. Not much she could add, really.
‘Anyway, I’ve just had a call from the hospital. It’s Coleen. She’s been in an accident. And she has cancer. And she’s … well, she’s dying, Carmel. I need to get back to her. Back to Liverpool.’
‘Without the aforementioned lying, conniving piece of shit, you mean?’
I nodded.
‘Will you be safe?’ she asked, Champion instinct kicking in.
‘Yes. Fintan promised he wouldn’t send anyone after me, and so far he’s been true to his word. Just stop Gabriel from following me. Stop all of them.’
‘O-kay … but how do you propose I do that? They’re all, like, superheroes and witches and mind-readers. I don’t know how long I can hold them off.’
‘Just try, enough to give me a head start. Buy me the time to get to the airport and get out of this place. Please. I need not to have to deal with too many barrels of shite at the same time. I need to get to Coleen, and not be distracted. I owe it to her to be there.’
Carmel frowned, and I could tell she was battling her inner demons, and trying to keep her trap shut. She hated Coleen with a passion. She wouldn’t think I owed her anything. In fact, she’d probably go and do the Macarena on her grave.
‘All right. I’ll do my best. But be careful, and call me. If you don’t, I’ll dob you in.’
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘I mean it.’ I did. It felt good to have someone on my side. Someone without a bigger agenda. Someone who put me first. Gratitude spread through me like warm coffee on a cold day, and I didn’t know what else to say.
There was a pause, and she looked embarrassed, awkward. As though she’d caught me in the loo with a pregnancy test in my hands.
‘Can I give you a hug?’ she asked. ‘You look like you need one. I know Coleen’s all you’ve got. If that were my mum lying in there, I’d be in pieces.’
There was no comparison to be made between Coleen and Carmel’s adoptive mum, Mrs O’Grady. Mrs O’Grady was fat and smiley and made soda bread and called all her kids ‘feckin’ idiots’ as she whacked them round the head with a rolled-up copy of the Gazette. She was wonderful. Coleen was none of those things, but as Carmel said, she was all I had.
I drew myself up, deep breaths, white space, willpower on max … and hugged her. Briefly, and without a great deal of enthusiasm. But I did it. And nothing bad happened. A day for small triumphs to be savoured.
Carmel beamed at me.
‘Now go,’ she said. ‘Crawl out the window, whatever. I’m going to tell them all you’re so pissed off at Gabriel that you’ve gone to that male strip club in Temple Bar.’
‘They won’t believe that!’ I said.
‘OK, I’ll tell them you’ve gone to the park to sit on the swings in the rain and sulk.’
Tragically, I had to admit they were far more likely to swallow that one. God, I really needed to get a life.
‘Now scoot,’ she said, turning off the taps.
I scooted.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Hospitals have a smell all of their own. A smell nowhere else would ever want.
I’d pushed my way through the cloud of smokers at the front of the building, some of them sitting in wheelchairs or hoisting around drip stands or puffing away with oxygen tanks on their laps. It was enough to put you off cigarettes for life, and I say that as an occasional indulger. They should take pictures of people like that and stick them on the back of fag packets.
Inside, and on the ward, it hit me: that mix of bulk-produced cleaning products, overcooked vegetables and human misery. People wandered the corridors, phones glued to their ears, hollow-eyed and tired. It was all so fragile, so depressing. But I suppose you’re never going to see the best of life on the ICU.
The nurse was über-glam, über-Scouse, all pointy black eyebrows and midnight hair and spray tan. She probably needed something to cheer her up, doing her job. She smiled and chatted as she showed me to Coleen’s side room, her tone becoming hushed and respectful as we walked through the door.
I stopped, dead still. Coleen lay in her bed wearing a hospital gown that had been washed so many times the floral pattern had faded to a dull grey. It matched her hair, which was plastered to the sides of her thin face, trailing cobwebs over the pillowcase.
She had blankets tucked in at the top of her chest, and she lay perfectly still. There was a tube up her nose, and an oxygen supply hissed in the background. A drip flowed into one arm, the sticky tape puckering her skin, and the machines next to her beeped loud and red as they monitored her heartbeat. A swing table was pushed to one side, an untouched jug of water sitting on top of it with a dented plastic cup.
I knew all of this without even looking. I knew because I’d seen it all before. As a child at my parents’ funeral, in my vision – the one I’d never forgotten.
There was a loud crash from outside, and both the nurse and I turned to see what was going on. Staff ran round in a commotion, a male nurse waving a broom handle and running backwards and forwards. He clattered into tables and chairs, swinging the brush like a staff, and I caught a glimpse of what looked like black wings beating and swooping in the air around his head.
‘Don’t worry,’ said the nurse. ‘It’s just the crow.’
She said it like it was normal, instead of freakily surreal.
‘It’s been hanging round all day. Must have got in through an open window. We can’t seem to catch it, and the poor thing keeps flying into this door and crash-landing.’
She patted me on the arm, left, and closed the door quietly behind her. It was weird, but then again, I was getting used to that.
A doctor had met me on the way in, corralling me into his tiny, cluttered office before I was allowed to see Coleen. He’d looked young, harassed and empty, his mousey-brown hair straggling across his head, which was going prematurely bald. Maybe he should consider getting a job stacking supermarket shelves. Maybe I should, too.
‘I’m afraid the outlook isn’t good,’ he’d said, rifling through Coleen’s file as he talked, as though reminding himself which patient he was talking about. ‘Mrs McCain’s cancer is at terminal stage, and one of the broken ribs nicked her left lung as well. She’s having extreme difficulty breathing, and unless we take drastic measures, she won’t be able to breathe at all.’
‘What does that mean – drastic?’ I’d asked.
‘It means putting her on a ventilator, which can breathe for her. I realise you are next of kin, and that Mrs McCain has no living will. But she has been very insistent, throughout her illness, that she is to receive no treatment. In all honesty, the prognosis was gloomy even if she had accepted it, but she has always refused. I suppose the question we
have to ask ourselves is whether she would want us to put her on a ventilator at all, or to let nature take its course.’
I almost smiled at the way he said ‘we’. As though it were anything at all to do with him. As though he wouldn’t end his shift, go home, and have a beer in front of the women’s beach volleyball on Sky Sports. I’m not stupid – not all of the time, at least. I knew the decision was mine. That the decision I had to make was whether to keep Coleen alive, or let her die.
‘Will she ever recover?’ I’d said, already knowing the answer. I felt like he expected me to go through the motions.
‘There’s always a chance, but it’s ninety-nine per cent certain she won’t ever regain consciousness. Then it’s just a matter of waiting. We can keep her on the machines, certainly, for as long as it takes. We can keep her out of pain. But no, she won’t be able to communicate. She won’t be the grandmother you knew.’
The grandmother I knew. Funny, that. He’d said it as though I’d miss her … and against the odds, I probably would.
‘Anyway,’ he’d said, tidying up his papers and straightening his specs. ‘Maybe you should go and see her first. But before you leave, we should talk again. See what you decide.’
I’d nodded, played the good little girl, and been led here. To this small room, besieged by a crow, looking down at the only parent I’ve ever really known.
She looked tiny, shrivelled. Like one of those shrunken heads I’ve seen at a museum in Oxford. Her hands had been placed on top of the blankets, in a mockery of peaceful sleep. The skin was wrinkled, furrowed, so very, very old. Her fingers were yellowed with nicotine, and her nails cut short, stubby, clean.
I sat down on the hard plastic chair next to her. I’d had my whole life to prepare for this moment, and now it was here, I had no idea what to say, or what to do.
The only sound was the beeping of the machines, and the gentle ooze of oxygen. That, and Coleen’s laboured breath, coming in slow, ragged bursts, like each one could be her last. There was a slight rattle in her chest each time, as though it was forcing its way through blocked drainpipes.
I should say something. Hold her hand. Be of some bloody use. If this was the last time I’d ever see her, it should mean something. But how do you condense a lifetime of shared history into a few moments? Especially when the shared history isn’t exactly the stuff of Enid Blyton stories.
I focused, screwed up my eyes to help me blank out the background noises, and took hold of her hand. It was cold, freezing, despite the warmth of the room and the blankets she was wrapped in. Her skin felt like crinkled paper, wrapped loosely around the fragile bones of her fingers.
There was no jolt of energy, no fizzing behind my eyes. No vision of her future. Although I could guess what her future was already – it was only a matter of how quickly it came.
I gripped her tiny hand, and felt tears spill on to my cheeks. I’d never even felt them coming, and was almost shocked at how emotional I felt.
‘Hi, Coleen,’ I said. ‘It’s me, Lily. We’re here in the hospital.’
I paused, trying to think of what else to say. In movies, they always show these moments as so perfect: the deathbed confessions of love and regret; the apologies and reunions and emotional highs. In reality, it felt odd – slightly embarrassing, even – having a one-way conversation with someone I knew probably couldn’t hear me. If this really was my last chance to tell her how I felt, I was blowing it.
‘I’m so sorry about all this, Coleen. And I can’t believe you didn’t tell me you were so ill. Why didn’t you? I would have been there for you. I would have helped; you know I would. We’ve had our ups and downs, but you’ve been my only family for … well, most of my life. And you did your best, I’m sure.’
That sounded lame, even to my ears. But a heart-rending monologue seemed beyond my imagination, and it was all I could come up with. I stopped again, wondering how to phrase my next words, how to say goodbye, how to express how much I’d miss her.
Just as I was about to launch into my next line of platitudes, she grabbed my hand back, the tight, firm grip I knew so well. I was so shocked that I almost fell off my chair. Where did that come from? She was supposed to be unconscious. Was it some kind of muscle reflex, or could she actually hear me?
The grip tightened, and her blue-veined eyelids suddenly snapped open. I may have made a sound like ‘eek’, because scarily it looked like something from a horror film. She stared up at me, the shine of her eyes glazed over with lack of oxygen.
‘S’all right, girl,’ she murmured, her voice low, gravelly, fighting to escape her chapped lips. ‘I know you would. Didn’t want to be here any more. Had enough of this bleeding world.’
She was talking in abbreviated sentences, rationing her energy. She paused, and I stared, wondering if she was going to black out again. She was taking so long between gasps of breath I started to think she was actually dead.
‘Coleen?’ I said. ‘Nan?’
‘Still here, love. Just about. Not long now. Wanted to see you first. Wanted to tell you something.’
‘What was that, Nan?’ I replied, stroking the parchment skin of her hand, trying to warm it up. Again that long pause as she rallied.
‘Love you,’ she said, dragging her other hand across the bedspread and placing it on top of mine.
I closed my eyes. The tears were pouring now, pooling in the hollow at the base of my neck. A sob started to work its way through me, so strong it jerked my whole body.
She loved me. The words I’d been desperate to hear my whole life. The words nobody had spoken to me since I was six years old. The words that had now reduced me to a mound of jelly on a plastic chair.
Why now? Why not earlier? Why not when I needed it? How different would our lives have been if she’d been able to express that when we’d first met? When I was lying alone and scared in the dark, telling myself fairy tales and imagining my daddy coming to the rescue? I’d cast Coleen as the evil witch in those, and she’s always seemed happy to play the part.
Fuck. I didn’t know what to say. I was so stunned, so moved.
In the end I went with the basics.
‘I love you too, Nan,’ I said, my words now as shuddery as hers. I had so many questions, so much I wanted to know from her, and there wouldn’t be time. I knew there wouldn’t.
‘You’ll be all right, girl,’ she said. ‘You were all right when you were Maura. You coped when you were Lily. You’ll be all right now. Strong. You’re strong. Better than me.’
I shook away tears and leaned forward to get closer. Her words were quiet now, barely scraping out loud enough for me to hear.
‘But I need you, Coleen – I don’t know what’s going to happen! I don’t know what to do … what to choose.’
‘You’ll … do right. Always do. Sorry, Lily. Sorry. I was scared. Of them. The others. You. Didn’t give you a chance.’ Her grip tightened so much it actually hurt my fingers, and her eyes rolled wildly. I didn’t know where she was getting the strength, but I suspected it was her last. ‘Forgive me?’ she wheezed.
‘Yes!’ I said quickly, in case she popped off before she heard it. ‘I do. And everything’s going to be OK.’
I don’t know why I said that. It probably wasn’t, and certainly not for her. But what did I really know? She could be headed for choirs of celestial angels, or an eternity sipping nectar from tulip cups. It might be OK. It could be.
She nodded, a barely there gesture from an exhausted body.
‘Don’t let them put me on those bloody machines,’ she rasped. ‘Let me go. Time to go now.’
I nodded back, unable to speak for the sobs and tears and snot. I was a mess, and absolutely no help to the dying woman in front of me. I felt desperate, and useless, like I wanted to climb into that bed with her and keep her warm and safe and alive. To share what life I had, and keep her with me.
There was a bang on the door, and a sliding noise as though something had scraped across it. I looked u
p, through the glass panel. Saw the crow, beating its wings against the pane.
‘Let it in,’ said Coleen. ‘It’s for me.’
I frowned at that one. Why would she want to let some crazed bird inside the room with us? Oxygen deprivation?
‘Do it, Lily,’ she urged in that ragged whisper. I did it. Deathbed détente or not, I was still conditioned to do what Coleen said, and when. As I pulled open the door, the crow swooped in, spread its iridescent black wings, and perched on top of the drip stand. Once there it seemed perfectly content, and started preening itself with its beak. It looked at me once, seemed to nod, and then ignored us both.
‘I’m off now, girl,’ said Coleen. ‘Have a cuppa for me. Don’t remember me bad, love. I’m sorry.’
She tried to smile, but the expression had never come easily to her. Her facial muscles had mainly been used for shouting and smoking, and it looked strained to see her try to form a proper grin. Especially under the circumstances.
‘I won’t,’ I said. ‘I love you, Nan. I wish you weren’t leaving me.’
‘Well, life’s crap sometimes, Lil. You just need to gerra grip.’
And with that, she closed her eyes, and loosened her hold on my hand. She took one deep, rattling breath, sent it juddering through her body. The crow cawed over her, the sound magnified in the small, hushed room. The heart machine bleeped and blinked. The oxygen hissed, unneeded.
She was gone.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Afterwards, I walked. For miles. I had paperwork shoved in my backpack, and a million things to do. Next of kin meant responsibility. It meant organising a funeral, and registering the death, and speaking to utility companies. It meant clearing a house and taking clothes to the charity shop and throwing the junk that made up a human life into a skip. It meant too much.
So I walked. I stuck my iPod earphones in and walked, listening to the sad, soulful wailing of Jeff Buckley as I made my way through Liverpool town centre. It was late, or early, depending on your point of view, and the clubs were spilling their contents on to the damp city streets. It was the Saturday before Halloween, a massive party night in Scouseland: men were in Zorro masks with vampire teeth, girls were wearing flashing devil horns and not a lot else, despite the plunging temperatures. They all seemed drunk, happy, angry, spoiling for a fight or searching for sex. Alive, and hopeful, and full of energy beneath their fake blood and witch hats.
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