Dead Broken - Psychological Thriller / Horror

by Gerard Gray

  I hadn’t been to see my mum in two weeks, not since they had let her out of the hospital. In truth, at the back of my mind, I knew that she was in no fit state to be left alone, but she had insisted that I get back to my family, so I had put her predicament to the back of my mind, which had done my innards no end of damage. Apparently the back of your mind is the pit of your stomach. There, my worries had smouldered like a fiery coal, burning a black hole in the lining of my gut.

  “Have you spoken to the doctor?”

  She nodded tentatively. “He’s just been.”

  “And he left you like this? What did he say?”

  “He increased my morphine.”

  I shook my head on hearing this. What she needed was an anti-inflammatory, but she couldn’t take these due to the fact that she was taking warfarin for the blood clots. Why was he giving her Morphine, though? Morphine was for people with slipped discs and cancer. My mum probably had Gallstones, or a torn muscle. Why were they giving her morphine?

  “Have you taken them?”

  She nodded slowly.

  “How long do they usually take to work?”

  “I just took them. The pain should go away, a bit, soon.”

  The silence was back in the room with us. I was trying to figure out a solution to this problem, but I couldn’t think of anything to help her. She gave me a wan smile.

  “Would you like something to eat?”

  “I can’t eat, Pete.”

  “What do you mean you can’t eat? You need to eat. No wonder you’re fading away. I’ll make you something.”

  “I can’t.”

  “What about a cup of tea and a biscuit then? You need to eat something.”

  She thought about this for a second and then nodded her head. “Maybe a cup of tea.”

  “OK.”

  “What time is it?” she asked.

  “It’s almost 6.30.”

  “That late? Perhaps I can take some paracetamol. The paracetamol helps.”

  “When did you take them last?”

  She looked puzzled. “I can’t remember. It was the last time I took my pills.”

  “Which was?”

  “About 4, I think.”

  “OK. How many do you take?”

  “2 tablets. The bottle is over there.”

  “Hang on… 4 o’clock is less than four hours ago. I don’t think you’re meant to take them that often.” I looked at the pain in her eyes. “I’ll get you them.”

  I finally found the tablets amongst a box of about twenty other packets of pills.

  “Could you please fetch me my list from the mantelpiece? It tells me the pills I need to take, along with the times.”

  I handed her the paracetamol and picked up a glass of water sitting beside her bed. She slowly placed each of the pills onto her tongue. I held her head up slightly and moved the water to her lips. The pain exploded, but I tried my best to conceal my concern.

  It took me a couple of minutes to find the list. I stared at it in disbelief. The list consisted of a lot of pills.

  “Mum,” I said, walking into the room. “Do you need to take all of these?” I held the list out so that she could take a look. She reached over painfully to pick up her glasses, put them on and examined the list.

  “Warfarin, Omeprazole, iron pills, morphine…” The list was long. I listened as she justified all the reasons for having to take the pills. It was just like the old days. I could remember the drugs my dad used to line up on the table, mostly for his manic depression.

  “Hang on a minute. Are you trying to tell me that you need to take these tablets every four hours?”

  She nodded back innocently. She reminded me of a little girl.

  I shook my head in confusion. “What about the middle of the night, when you’re asleep?”

  She thought about this for a second. “I don’t know.”

  “This is a joke. Didn’t anyone tell you how to take these?” I was beginning to get angry. This was a very sick seventy four-year-old woman. Surely they had explained to her how to take her pills. You don’t hand morphine over to a granny without telling her how to use it. I looked at the timetable once more. “Mum, I don’t believe this. This is enough to confuse me, let alone an old woman.”

  She stared back at me with childlike eyes.

  “At least tell me they’ve prepared one of those boxes for you? The one that lays out all the pills for the week.”

  “They have,” she replied to my relief. “It’s over there.”

  “Thank God.”

  I walked to the other side of the room and right enough it was lying on the mantelpiece.

  “Good, at least that’s something. I’m still not happy, though. I’ll talk to the doctor about this. I think you need someone to help you with the pills. It’s confusing.”

  “I have a hospital appointment tomorrow, to see about my kidney stones.”

  “You do? Good, good. We’ll ask the doctor about this then.”

  “I think I’ll try and get up now.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I need the loo,” she whispered.

  “Oh, OK, sure.” I smiled, but then I stopped on realising her predicament. “Do you think you’ll manage?”

  “I’m fine once I’m up. It’s the getting up that’s the hard part. The pain isn’t quite as bad now. I think the morphine is starting to work. It takes the edge off the pain.”

  “How do you want to do this?”

  My mum pointed towards a weird looking contraption sitting by her bed. “I use that.”

  “OK.” I picked it up. It looked like a long stick with a loop on the end.

  “You fit it over your foot.”

  “Right.”

  My mum took the contraption and looped it carefully over her toes.

  “This is how you do it when I’m not here?”

  She nodded, concentrating hard on the task at hand.

  “Would it not be better for me to just help you up?”

  She thought about this before answering. “Let’s just try this.” She took a firm grip of the strap. “Just help me as I do it.”

  “What do we do?”

  “I just swing my leg round with it until I’m in a sitting position.”

  “OK. Got it. Are you ready?” She nodded, apprehension in her eyes. “On the count of three then. OK?”

  “Yes, yes.”

  “OK. One… two… three.”

  My mum pulled her leg round and down, the pain exploding in her face. She was in utter agony, her entire body awash with flame. And then it was gone. She sat on the edge of the bed panting heavily.

  I stood back in horror. The room was quiet. The macabre spectacle had shocked the hell out of me.

  “Are you OK?” I finally asked.

  She looked at me askance and nodded her head through the departing pain. “I’ll be OK in a second,” she whispered, breathless.

  Something was seriously wrong here. Or was she just old? Perhaps this is what happens when you get old. It must be. More than a handful of doctors and nurses had seen this woman over the past couple of months. If they had thought that this had been anything out of the ordinary then surely they would have kept her in the hospital. Surely.

  “OK.” My mum gave me a look to tell me that she was ready for part two. “The pills are beginning to work. That wasn’t too bad. It wasn’t too bad at all.”

  It wasn’t too bad? Bloody hell, I’d hate to see her when it was bad.

  “On three again?” I asked.

  She nodded.

  Thankfully part two was nowhere near as bad as part one – just a little pain this time. On getting her to her feet she suddenly let off. She quickly darted her innocent eyes towards me and apologised. I laughed out loud. “It’s OK, mum. You’re not well. You’re allowed.”

  She laughed a little, which was a good sign. She still had her sense of humour. Humour was one of the many traits that we had in common. We both found the same things funny. My dad ha
d had a good sense of humour as well, but it wasn’t quite the same. For instance, sometimes he would burst out laughing at something in his mind, but it would be a silent photograph of a laugh, his mouth wide open, his eyes screwed shut, motionless. He would hold this picture for a couple of seconds before emitting any sound at all. Mum and I just laughed out loud, and we were always joking with one another. I know it’s corny, but my mum was my best friend, an equal in humour, whereas my dad had been someone we’d had to look after, a dependent.

  “Mum, see after you’ve been to the toilet,” I said, pausing. She looked at me expectantly. “Could you pop out to the shop and get me some chips.”

  She burst out laughing and shook her head. I could see that the laughter was painful for her but she didn’t complain.

  “Do you need a hand to go to the loo?”

  “No, I should be OK.”

  I stared at her as she made her way out of the bedroom. Who was this woman? This was not my mum. She looked like a wraith, thin and unbelievably weak. Her hair was shockingly white and unkempt, her skin almost translucent. It pained her to move, two crutches in hand. This wasn’t the woman I’d gone to my cousin’s wedding with only two months previous. She had been replaced by something else.

  “Do you need help with the toilet?”

  “I’ll be OK,” she sniggered. “The supports they put in for your dad help me. I’ll manage.”

  “Good,” I said. She entered the toilet. “Would you like me to do anything for you while you’re in there? Oh that’s right; you wanted a cup of tea and a biscuit. I’ll just close the door.”

  She nodded.

  I reached out for the handle to pull the door shut.

  “Would you like some Italian music while you’re on the pan?” I had said this in a mockingly sympathetic tone. Again she burst out laughing. This was an old joke. My mum and Dad had had a hard marriage what with my dad’s illnesses, but they shared a good sense of humour and a love of good music. My dad loved opera, as did my mum, but not quite as much as my dad. Whenever my dad went to the toilet, he would ask my mum to put on some Italian music to help him with the task at hand. He said it relaxed him; he suffered from constipation. Off he would hobble to the toilet with his zimmer frame, close the door, sit on the pan, and prepare himself for the sweet, sweet music. He loved the three Tenors, most of all Pavarotti. Once he was on the toilet he would prepare himself for the forthcoming performance.

  Sometimes my mum would be busy, so my dad would begin to chant loud and melodic in a deep tenor voice: “Italian music… Italian music… Italian music…” He would chant this until my mum finally put it on.

  On one occasion I think my dad had been watching something to do with France, so on sitting on the toilet, instead of chanting “Italian music” he decided to chant “French music… French music.” My mum was confused; she approached the door.

  “Joseph. We don’t have any French music.”

  My dad wasn’t having any of it. He continued to chant all the harder “French music… French music… French music…”

  “Oh boil your head,” my mum expelled, laughing. But then she had an idea. At the top of her voice she started to sing:

  “Frera Jacques, frera Jacques, Dormez-Vous…” Within seconds the two of them were laughing hysterically.

  We both missed him dearly.

  “Mum,” I said, “just let me know if you need anything.”

  I walked through into the kitchen to survey the lay of the land. The place was immaculate, due to the kindness of the next-door neighbour, Liz. She was my mum’s friend and an angel sent by God – an angel sent to help an angel. Liz helped my mum mostly with her shopping, but she also walked the dog three times a day.

  I smiled on looking at all the CDs piled high on the far bench. They didn’t half love their music. I wondered if my dad could still listen to Italian music from wherever he was. Perhaps he didn’t need CDs anymore. Perhaps he could appear in Italy in the blink of a mortal’s eye and watch the opera first hand, hovering above the front of the stage, the best seat in the house.

  “What are we going to do, dad? I don’t think mum’s very well.”

  No, she isn’t, I heard him reply, or was it just my subconscious?

  “Do you remember the Italian Music?” I said, smiling sadly.

  I do.

  I nodded and headed for the living room. Lying on the rug in front of the fire was Lucy, my parents’ dog. She raised her eyes to greet me, but didn’t get up. The poor dog was a shell of the animal she used to be. My mum’s illness had seriously mucked her about. I leaned down and clapped her ears.

  “It’s not fair, Lucy, aye. Life isn’t fair.”

  My phone beeped. It was a text from Karen. God, I had forgotten to call her, to tell her that I’d arrived safely. She was worried. Better call her now.

  I cast my eyes around at all the ornaments my mum had lovingly collected, at the world she had built for herself through the years. Lucy yawned, turned herself around a couple of times and then resumed her doleful position in the middle of the floor.

  “What are we going to do, Lucy? What are we going to do?”

  *

  Just before setting off for my mum’s, I had surreptitiously bungled my XBOX 360 into a bag. Karen would have killed me if she’d known I’d done this, but I knew my mum wouldn’t mind. I was now sitting across from my mum playing Fifa.

  Karen had always given me a hard time for playing the XBOX. It didn’t matter that the only alternative was to sit in the living room watching whatever it was that she wanted to watch, probably some reality TV show. Compromise was something that the man did for the good of the relationship, not the woman. But I was having none of it anymore. I had compromised enough.

  My mum on the other hand had never moaned about me wanting to spend time on my own. I would turn up at my mum’s and disappear into the spare bedroom. From time to time she would bring me something to eat, but for the most part she would just let me relax, something Karen was incapable of doing without giving me a hard time.

  I sat on the settee playing my football game while my mum quietly dozed in her chair.

  “Are you in any pain now?” I asked.

  “It only hurts when I try to move.”

  I smiled remembering my joke from earlier, but I didn’t repeat it.

  “Oh, Karen sends her love.”

  “Sorry, dear?”

  “I spoke to her when you were in the toilet. She’s worried about you.”

  I returned my attention to the game. My online team was Motherwell. I had taken it from the bottom of the Scottish Premier to the top of the European tables. If only my real mother was doing as well as Motherwell.

  “How are things with you and Karen?”

  “Not good, mum,” I said, concentrating on the screen. “We don’t talk anymore, not since the incident.”

  “The incident?”

  “You know – the stabbing.”

  “Oh.”

  “It was them, mum. I’m not being delusional this time. It was all three of them, together, that’s why I know it was them. I didn’t tell Karen, though.”

  “Why don’t you try to talk to her about it?”

  “I can’t. I can’t talk to her the way I talk to you, not anymore.”

  “She’s been good for you, Pete. Don’t forget what she’s done for you.”

  “Done for me?”

  “Do you remember the state you were in, before you met her?”

  I thought about this for a second. “Yes… Yes, I do. Perhaps it’s me, then. I’ve changed since the attack. I know that. But we don’t laugh anymore.”

  “You used to.”

  “We don’t anymore. I know things were never brilliant between you and dad, but at least you always managed to have a laugh.”

  My mum started to giggle. “We certainly did.” And then she laughed out loud obviously remembering some far off, distant memory.

  “What are you laughing at?”

>   “I remember him once when Alan popped by to give him his communion. He used to come by every Sunday. It was always a laugh. There he would sit in his wheelchair. You could tell that Alan was trying to stop himself laughing even before asking him if he had any special prayers to offer up. I remember once your dad thinking long and hard about the question, as he always did. “Yes,” he finally answered. “I would like to pray for my dutiful wife and for your kind self for bringing me communion so reverently today. I would also like to pray for my lout of a son, Pete. That he may one day settle down and get married to his lovely girlfriend, Karen. I would also like to Pray for my wheelchair. May it carry me swiftly to my destination, always. Last, but not least, I would like to pray for the inspiration to paint Alan’s son a picture to hang in his toilet shop, thereby increasing his sales tenfold.”

  I laughed along with my mum.

  “Mum, do you remember just after he came out of his coma, after the stroke? I thought we’d lost him that time. Do you remember we were all asking him questions just to make sure that he hadn’t lost his memory? I think I was beginning to bug him, because when I asked him if he knew the name of his dog he nodded his head slowly,” I laughed, looking down at Lucy, the dog in question. “Do you remember what he said?”

  “I don’t think I was there.”

  “He said… Fido!”

  The both of us burst out laughing.

  My mum’s phone started to ring so I picked it up.

  “Hello, Mary Murphy’s phone.” I was still laughing.

  “Are you OK?” It was my sister.

  “Yes, yes. Me and mum are just talking about some of the funny things dad used to do. How are things with you?”

  “I’m OK. I’m at work in the hospital. Look… I need you to get mum in to see the doctor. There’s something seriously wrong with her.”

  I wiped the tears of laughter from my eyes.

  “Marie, I know she isn’t too well right now, but it’s just a kidney stone or something.”

  “No, it worse than that.”

  “No it isn’t. Until we see a doctor about it, your guess is as good as mine. We don’t know what’s wrong with her.”

  “Just get her to see a doctor, today.”