by Wade, Calvin
“God bless you, Roddy, that’s a lovely thing to say.”
“Thank you.”
“That’s how I feel about my husband.”
I didn’t do much of a job hiding my surprise. “You do?”
“Don’t look so surprised, Roddy! Just because he was in a car with Kelly yesterday does not make him a bad man or a man that’s unlovable. He’s a lovely man but even lovely men make mistakes sometimes. In my eyes, he’s made a whopper but that doesn’t mean I’ll stop loving him. I’ve made a few mistakes of my own through the years, even bigger whoppers and Richie has always been close by to throw me a lifeline and stop me from drowning so I’m not abandoning him now because he’s made a mistake of his own. Bizarrely, I think once I calm down about his breach of trust, we’ll have a better marriage. We will both not want to return to a place in our relationship were things could turn out like they have in the last twenty four hours.”
I felt close to this woman. She was both beautiful and interesting which I had always found, other than with Kelly, to be mutually exclusive.
“I hope everything goes great for you, I really do. Last night, I saw the grieving family and friends of those two poor kids that died and it breaks my heart just thinking about them. At least Kelly’s still here fighting and your husband has cuts and bruises and a tail between his legs, but those two kids are just memories to their friends and family now. I know that eventually happens to us all, we die and just become a loved one’s memories, then once all our loved ones die, we just become an image on a photograph or a record in a census, but not at eighteen years old, that’s just wrong. Teenage bravado does not deserve a death sentence, does it?”
“No. The girl that died was just a victim of getting in the wrong car and sitting in the wrong seat without a belt on.”
“I know. The paramedics said that Kelly actually having her belt on is what has given her a fighting chance. If she hadn’t put that on, I’d be at the mortuary now, not sitting here talking to you and wondering how I’m going to tell Kelly’s sister later, when she comes in, that the sister that she has not seen for ten years, only has a fifty-fifty chance of survival. At least she’s got that fifty-fifty chance though, without the belt there’d be no hope to cling to.”
“Kelly will pull through, she’s spent her whole life fighting and I’m sure she won’t stop now.”
I was perplexed. How would Richie’s wife know that Kelly was a fighter? Did she literally mean a fighter? Perhaps Kelly and Mrs. Billingham had fought over Richie in the past? I briefly imagined them in a boxing ring, with the big red gloves on and me acting as a referee, running through the Queensberry rules. I didn’t have too much time to think about that though, as the kindhearted nurse from earlier returned with my sugary, milky tea and a grey haired, bearded gentleman with glasses who looked important. Turns out he was.
“Here’s your tea, Roddy! I’ll just pop it over on the side here,” the nurse said with a half-hearted, tragic smile which she had probably perfected through years of witnessing families turmoil at the bedsides of their sick relatives.
“Thanks! That’s lovely!” I replied.
“Mrs. Billingham,” the nurse continued, “I’ve brought Mr. Lapinski in to see you. He’s here to discuss the operation.”
Mrs. Billingham immediately stood up from her chair and shook Mr. Lapinski’s hand.
“Very pleased to meet you,” Mrs. Billingham said, adopting the nurse’s tragic smile.
“I wanted to discuss the options we have,” Mr. Lapinski said in a heavily accented East European voice, “as next of kin, you need to be fully aware of what choices we are faced with. Do you have a few minutes to talk this over now?”
“Yes,” Mrs.Billingham replied, “could we go somewhere private?”
“Of course we can, please come through to my office and we can talk things through there.”
“Thank you!”
Mr. Lapinski led the way followed by Mrs. Billingham. I could not work her out at all. One minute she seemed cold, then warm, then she’d say something that I just couldn’t fathom. At that point, I had her down as pleasant in an odd sort of way. I had also had a sense, throughout our conversation, that she had been hiding something and I now felt that I knew what that was. She had lied about her husband’s condition, he was obviously in far worse shape than she had let on. If the consultant was talking over options with her, this wasn’t about whether Richie needed a plaster or a bandage, it was something much more important, much more serious.
“Goodbye Roddy” she said before she exited, “it was lovely to meet you! Thanks for everything you’ve done. I hope to see you again some day, in more pleasant surroundings!”
“No problem, hope to see you too!” I replied not really understanding why she was grateful to me or why she would want our paths to cross again. My lack of intellect was a frustrating handicap! Mrs. Billingham followed Mr. Lapinski out the door. The nurse checked over a few charts again at Kelly’s bedside.
“Is her husband in a bad way?” I asked the nurse.
“No, no, Mr. Billingham is absolutely fine. He is the only one to have come out of the accident with relatively minor injuries.”
“And he hasn’t taken a turn for the worse?”
“No, not as far as I’m aware,” the nurse said trying to figure out whether she had missed something, before adding, “in fact, definitely not, he only went home a couple of hours ago.”
“Then why does the consultant need to speak to her?”
“Oh right! That wasn’t about Mr. Billingham, that was about Miss Watkinson here.”
I still didn’t get it.
“I’m sorry, you’ve lost me. Why would they need to speak about Kelly?”
“As Kelly’s next of kin, Mrs. Billingham will have to give her consent for the Doctors to operate.”
I laughed in a confused, panicky manner.
“No, no, there’s been some mistake! Mrs. Billingham isn’t Kelly’s next of kin, Kelly’s sister is. She’s due in here soon. The Doctor’s will need to speak to her sister, not Mrs. Billingham!”
The nurse looked at me like I had just won the ‘Village Idiot’ award and my village was London.
“Roddy! Mrs.Billingham is Kelly’s sister!”
“No! Kelly’s sister’s name is Jemma. Jemma Watkinson.”
“Well, I’m sure that would have been her name before she got married, but she’s Jemma Billingham now.”
“Fuck! She’s Jemma! Kelly’s gonna love that!”
“I’m sure Kelly is perfectly aware who her sister is, Roddy!”
“Sorry for swearing! It just slipped out. I just didn’t know Kelly’s sister was married to Richie!”
“Yes, I guess that’s why they were in the car together, because they’re family.”
‘You guess wrong!’ I thought to myself.
The nurse finished off her duties and as she was making her way out, I felt the need to ask her something.
“Tell me something, nurse..”
“What Roddy?”
“Are the majority of blokes from Ormskirk ugly?”
She smiled at me.
“A lot of them are! Why do you ask?”
“It would just explain a few things, that’s all!”
“Saying that!” the nurse continued, “I shouldn’t really say that! My husband is from Ormskirk!”
“Do you have any sisters?” I asked.
“No. Just two brothers.”
“Probably a good thing,” I said, “probably a very good thing!”
Kelly
Following the crash, time and consciousness arrived in snippets. I remember the impact, I remember being trapped in the car and I remember passing out in a manner similar to that I experienced when I was given gas as a child to extract a rotten tooth. That horrible feeling of drifting into an unwanted, nauseous, unconscious paralysis. The next eight days passed like snapshots. Each snapshot seemed to contain Roddy. He was ubiquitous both in my dreams and in
my conscious state. I felt no pain but did feel a mixture of emotions coursing through my veins, amongst them guilt over how I had treated Roddy. He was a constant in my life but I had failed to appreciate how important he was to me. Sometimes its those we love the most that we treat with the least amount of thought, as we know their love will not die, irrespective of what we do. I would have liked to have told Roddy this, as he sat patiently by my hospital bed, but speech was frustratingly beyond me and those fleeting periods of consciousness did not provide ample time to write down a heartfelt message.
I could hear Roddy though. I couldn’t be sure how often what I heard were actual words spoken and how often the words were just created by my drugged-up, delusional state, but in all instances, Roddy was urging me to be strong, encouraging me to fight and revealing the extent of his love for me. In the past, I had always found his revelations of love to be inappropriate but now I found them humbling. I wasn’t sure if I could ever love Roddy how he loved me, but for the first time ever, I wanted to try.
I had no comprehension of time, but I was becoming aware that as it passed, my periods of awareness were growing longer. I was told later that the swelling on my brain had become so severe that an operation to reduce it was discussed and agreed, but miraculously, through a combination of IV fluids, medication and oxygen therapy the swelling came down and my slow recovery began. Five days after the crash, I was able to start having brief conversations with Roddy, then longer conversations and then one afternoon, I awoke to find that Roddy was not perched in his usual seat, but he had been replaced by a ghost from my past, my sister, Jemma. At first, I was overwhelmed and unable to speak, Jemma and I had been through so much since we last saw each other and I really did not know how she would feel about me. I had been plagued by guilt ever since I had abandoned her and let her face the trial for Mum’s murder alone. I had spent years deliberately avoiding her because of how I had behaved, but this time there was nowhere to hide. Jemma had found me and I could no longer run away from my failings.
“Kelly, how are you feeling?”
I could not answer her at first and then when I did speak, it was not a response to the question. This moment was about so much more than the crash.
“I’m so sorry,” I cried, “I truly am so sorry.”
Jemma just started at me like she had been taking lessons in stoicism from Shakespeare’s Brutus.
“What’s done is done, Kelly. I’m not angry with you. I’m just grateful you’ve survived the crash.”
“Jemma, you should be angry! I let you down.”
“Kelly, it was a long time ago! You were a child. Whether you had run away or stuck around, I would have taken the blame for Vomit Breath’s death. I wish you hadn’t spent the years that followed avoiding me, but you did what you did and we can’t do anything now to bring that time back. All we can do now is move forward, move forward and just try to remember the good things from the past. We are family, Kelly. We need to forgive each other for our past failings and start afresh.”
In principle, it all sounded very easy but I was sceptical, not about how Jemma would view me, but about how I would view myself.
“Every time I see you though, Jemma, it’ll just be a reminder of how weak I’ve been. How I’ve let you down. You might say you’ve forgiven me, Jemma, but I’ll always be worried that deep down you haven’t and also that I haven’t forgiven myself. I’ve been so weak, Jemma, that’s why I’ve avoided you, because I know I’ve been so weak.”
“Kelly, you nearly died in the car crash! I only have one sister, one surviving family member from the old family of my childhood and I’ve spent the last ten years wondering whether I would ever see you again. Wondering when we would get to speak. Over the last week, as I’ve watched you battle for your very survival, I had to face the fact that the answer may be never. You’re a fighter though, Kelly, no-one can doubt that. Our childhood was one long battle and everything that happened in it, led to the moment when you came to my rescue and Vomit Breath died. OK, I wish you hadn’t run away but you did what you did to our so called ‘Mother’ out of love for me, so I still have a lot to thank you for as well as to forgive you for and as I’ve said, I have been waiting for this moment for years on end, so let’s not dwell on the past, let’s move forwards.”
I propped myself up more erectly in the bed.
“Jemma, it’s easy to say all that but it doesn’t work like that! My character and personality are derived from my memories and the fact that I treated you so badly is a stain on mine. I can’t just skip merrily along and forget Mum died, forget I killed her and pretend I didn’t run away and leave you to pick up the pieces. I’ve spent over ten years trying to forget and no matter where I was, whether it was Hong Kong or Australia or London or wherever, it has been impossible to forget what I’ve done. It is a curse that I will have to live with until the day I die.”
Jemma did not do self-pity. Throughout our childhood, she had always been about dogged resistance rather than ‘if only’s’ and my ‘woe is me’ speech, spoken from a hospital bed following a serious car accident failed to draw sympathy from her. It just riled her.
“Look Kelly, you need to stop making everything you’ve been through such a burden on you. Our past is not meant to be a burden that weighs heavily on us. Didn’t someone famous not say that ‘if something does not destroy me, it makes me strong’? Well, you need to start adopting that attitude! Look at everything you’ve come through, an unpleasant upbringing, Vomit Breath’s death, this car crash and whatever else you’ve had to put up with over the last ten years, but you’re still, just about, in one piece. You are a fighter, Kelly! Count your blessings!”
“I try to Jemma, but sometimes it’s hard.”
“Kelly, when you were a little girl, probably about six or seven, you noticed you weren’t enjoying the same happy upbringing as some of your little friends who had Mummy’s and Daddy’s who walked them to school, hand in hand, kissed them goodbye and turned back up at half past three to collect them. You had no Daddy and a Mummy who, most mornings, was still nursing a hangover in bed and was usually back on the booze by half past three, plotting the next one. Do you remember, you used to get all worked up about it and, as a result, your body stopped working as it should? Remember, when you used to get constipated? You would go days and days on end without having a poo. I wouldn’t let you flush the toilet because sometimes you would tell me you’d been, even when you hadn’t, so I demanded to see the evidence! Seven or eight days would pass and nothing would come out, you’d just hold it in and hold it in and then eventually, when you could keep it in no longer, it used to sting like mad. It was a vicious circle. You became so scared of having a poo because it hurt so badly, that you would clog up inside again and we went on and on with this for months.
One day, Vomit Breath was getting ready to go out and she was waiting to get into the bathroom, but couldn’t because you were locked in there. You’d locked the door and Vomit Breath was banging on the outside, cursing like a sailor, screaming at you to hurry up and get out! You were in there crying with the pain of moving your bowels with all your insides clogged up, so I turned up outside the door, told Mum to leave you alone, explained that you had been constipated for a week and tried to make her understand that this was a painful process for you. I was wasting my time, it was like trying to persuade Hitler not to move his troops into Czechoslovakia! Vomit Breath just kept banging on that door, yelling at you to get out.
I remember saying,
“Leave her alone! Kelly tries to avoid going to the loo, so when she does go, it hurts her like mad!”
Vomit Breath, not even realising that she was being profound, just scowled and said,
‘Kelly needs to realise that in life you have to be able to deal with all the shit that happens to come your way!’
In Vomit Breath’s sorry existence, that was probably the only sensible thing that she ever said! Twenty years later, she’s still right! Nothing has changed!
Kelly, I’m not asking you to forget everything, but just don’t let it impact on your future. You’re a gorgeous looking woman with a warm heart and I’m sure men are drawn to you like ships to rocks, so go out and find someone who will love you and adore you and make you happy.”
It was only at this point that I noticed Jemma’s engagement and wedding rings resting proudly around her finger.
“Like you have, Jemma?”
“Pardon?”
“Like you have? I’ve just noticed your wedding ring. Is that what defines happiness, do you think? Having a man that adores you? Maybe it does. Maybe that’s why I don’t feel happy. I have a good job. I have a reasonable amount of money, but I’m not happy. Has having a man that adores you made you happy?”
“Not just a man, Kelly, a family. I have a daughter now called Melissa, who has inherited her Auntie’s good looks! She’s five years old, loves baking cakes, dressing up and sharing hugs. Then there’s Jamie who’s three. Jamie’s just one big bundle of energy. He never stops. He’s into everything and I mean everything! He’s still only a toddler but he’s taken more blows than a heavyweight boxer, if there’s a wing mirror or a door handle, or a corner cupboard that he can crack his head on, somehow he’ll find it! He’s just too busy to look! Too busy to sleep too!”
“I’d love to see them, Jemma! Will you bring them in here?”
“Once you’re a little better, I will. I don’t think you are quite ready for Jamie just yet!”
“Of course I am! Bring him in!”
“I will Kelly, in a few days.”
“I’m excited already! How long have you been married, Jemma?”
“Seven years.”
“What’s your husband’s name?”
Jemma could have lied, she could have just altered one word in that conversation to preserve the status quo, but she chose not to. She just came right out with it.
