by Greg Fowler
‘Have you been eating lately?’
‘Have you been annoying me lately?’
That was the end of that particular discussion.
‘So where d…do you want to go then?’
‘I was thinking maybe the Willows. I like looking at the Willows.’ That was a good answer, certainly one that fell nicely on Eddy’s ears. There was only one reason she wanted to go there and that was to look at the little things, the small stuff. If ever there was a time she needed reminding, it was now.
‘Lead the way.’ And that she did.
For a minute or so they walked in silence, soaking in the sun, their pace nice and slow. Eddy found himself caught between watching the familiar landmarks of the neighbourhood come and go and glancing across at the way Reagan’s jeans gathered up baggy creases in places where they had no right to belong. When she got over this bug or whatever it was, she was going to have some eating to do, he’d make certain of that.
‘You know all this study you’re doing Eddy?’ asked Reagan as they wandered along opposite the McKenzie’s.
‘Yeah.’
‘What are you going to do with it?’
‘Would it sound stupid if I s..said I don’t really know?’
‘You’re kidding me. You’re putting in all those hours and you don’t even know what for.’
‘I figured I’d find the reason when the time was right.’ In all honesty Eddy hadn’t really given it much thought at all, but when the answer fell from his mouth it had a ring of truth about it. Things happened for reasons, but that didn’t mean the reason necessarily advertised itself in advance. Sometimes the action and the reason arrived some ways apart and the bits in between came down to faith.
‘Okay then,’ posited Reagan. ‘What do you think you would like to do when it’s all over?’
‘Something that helps people. I don’t know what yet…but definitely s…something that helps people.’
‘I don’t think you could do anything different Eddy.’
‘I’ll t…take that as a compliment.’ Eddy had been eyeing up Heather Cooper’s place, wondering if she’d made sense of that note he’d left her, when it occurred to him that Reagan hadn’t shot back with one of her quirky remarks. In fact, he didn’t feel her presence beside him at all.
Green to Grey, Eddy. Green to Grey.
In a heart stopping instant Eddy suddenly understood what that meant. He hadn’t felt Reagan’s presence beside him because she wasn’t there. She was ten metres behind him, lying prone on the hard, unforgiving footpath.
‘Reagan!’
Eddy sprinted back to her, his whole world caving in around him.
‘Reagan, wake up!’
If she could hear him, she gave no indication. Her eyes were closed and her breathing was awfully shallow. Eddy sensed a frightening vulnerability around her and he knew that green to grey was Mr Tree’s way of telling him what he already knew. Reagan’s life force was changing, it was declining. She was not just ill, she was very, very sick.
Seeing no-one else up or down the street, Eddy reached under her with both arms and with a back breaking effort, he levered her up and into his grasp. For a girl who was all skin and bone, her dead weight both surprised and scared him. He may have had her body but her mind, her soul was slipping between his fingers. He could almost feel it and every piece of him cried for it to be otherwise.
Come on Reagan. Please.
Running as fast as her weight and his legs would allow, Eddy only had visions for making the Crowe’s front door as quick as possible. He’d gone only a few metres before his arms screamed at him to put her down but he would entertain none of that. Not now, not his Reagan.
Don’t you dare die on me.
As he finally rounded into the Crowe’s front lawn, his great howls for help were born from a combination of his entire body cramping in solid knots of agony and his even deeper panic. A million thoughts were racing through his head. Six years seemed to melt together in a myriad history of their unparalleled friendship. Of the first day she’d waved up at him. The countless jam sandwiches. Her holding him the evening Grandma Daisy had demolished Mr Tree. All these changes he’d been blessed with these last few years, he’d give them all away again in the blink of an eye if she could just be well again. A very real notion occurred to him, could he live without her? Was she as much his saviour as Mr Tree? Did he even want to live on if she died here today? No. Short and simple…no. She was his everything.
Slamming the front door with the back of his shoulder more than knocking on it, he suddenly realised Mrs Crowe wouldn’t be there. It was a work day for her. If Hell existed, it seemed to be running the show today.
Home. Gotta get to Grandma.
Sucking in the very last reserves of energy, Eddy scuttled down the front steps of the Crowe’s place and back across the lawn. If there’d been a boundary fence between the two properties he would’ve been in real trouble, but as it was he was able to literally let his momentum take him the rest of the way.
‘Grandma. Grandma, quick!’
Grandma! Now…please!
Which one of his two screams worked didn’t really matter. What counted was the fact that Grandma Daisy arrived at the front door just before Eddy, and the expression on her face only reinforced the fear flying through her grandson.
‘Eddy. What happened!’
‘Call an ambulance Grandma. She’s gonna die!’
The both of them swapped a terrified glance before Grandma Daisy turned and moved faster than she had in years. Since the day she had seen her own husband collapse before her very eyes, in fact.
Sinking to his knees under Reagan’s weight, Eddy cradled her limp body to his chest, watching, searching her precious face for signs of life and receiving no consolation. She looked so calm and peaceful, so at odds with his own world right now.
‘It’s going to be okay,’ he said quietly as he stroked her cheek. ‘I promise you it’s going to be okay.’
In reality, he didn’t know if this was going to be the first real lie of his entire life.
76. HOLDING ONE’S BREATH
The next couple of days were a blur for Eddy. Every conceivable emotion seemed to be riding high in his throat, just waiting for a call to action with a hair trigger.
Since riding in the ambulance all the way to the hospital (and in the process ignoring the subtle expressions of the paramedics regarding this ‘Down Syndrome’ kid wanting to hitch along), Eddy hadn’t once been back home. And pity anyone who tried to change that. Grandma Daisy had been surprisingly understanding. When Eddy had made it abundantly clear he wasn’t budging from the hospital ward, she’d put up a muted protest but in the end she’d gone home and packed a bag for him. Eddy thought he knew why too. With Grandpa Nevil it had been a very different story. His passing had been sudden. So quick in fact he’d probably been holding hands with the angels before he’d even hit the floor. If it hadn’t been that way though, if he’d put up a fight and lingered, she would have stayed too, until the big man upstairs had had His say, one way or the other.
Inside half an hour of Reagan being whisked down the corridor on the gurney, Mrs Crowe had stormed into the hospital. Eddy had been there in the waiting room at the time but such was her emotional wreckage she hadn’t noticed him huddled in a corner as she interrogated the nurse. He figured it was probably best to leave it that way. She was a mother who desperately needed to be with her child…he could understand that. He’d watched closely as her whole body tensed on the tightrope of sanity, having to stand there and wait while the hospital staff worked out where Reagan had been taken. He’d seen how she’d ground her hands together so hard that her wedding ring was going to leave a red mark on the neighbouring fingers for a week. And he’d wondered to himself. Would his mother have agonized like this for him? He hoped so.
He’d waited in that cold, hard room for four hours. Grandma Daisy had ended up being there for most of it. She’d even offered to buy him a chocolate
bar but he just wasn’t hungry. He’d lost all memory of what it felt like to be hungry. Every thought, every memory had been eclipsed by the recollection of Reagan lying helpless on that pavement. One moment chatting about the future (his future) and the next….nothing.
Green to Grey.
He probably waited there even longer than he had to. Ignorance was hope. No news was good news. He was afraid that if he asked somebody how she was, that somebody, that doctor, that nurse would suddenly own a new expression, one that had become time worn in their profession but never easy to mask. And then they’d tell him something he never wanted to hear. They’d chew the inside of their cheek and wish they’d taken that other shift instead, the one without poor Down Syndrome boys who’d just lost the best friend you could ever imagine.
It’d been Grandma Daisy who’d lost patience and checked at the information desk. Seeing her talk to that lady, watching their lips move but having no idea what they were saying made him want to scream. For a moment there he’d wished he’d never met Reagan so none of this would matter, but then he scolded himself. Of course it mattered. It had to.
The news was indeed bad but not his worst nightmare. Reagan was doing rough, she was going to be in hospital for a while too by the sounds of it….but she was alive. Thank God Almighty…she was alive.
The man’s going to sleep tonight. He’s going to dream.
The day that had started so warm and so promising ended in a room with hard corners and even harder questions. By the time Eddy was allowed into Reagan’s room the only light outside was from the security lamps down in the car park. It had already been the longest day of his life but seeing her lying there, barely a ruffle in the sheets, he’d known that sleep would have to stay away. The fancy doctors and nurses had even fancier words and gadgets but they didn’t have what he had. They didn’t love her like he did and they never would. She was going to need that right now. Every bit of it.
77. WHY!
By Sunday afternoon everything outside the straight line from Eddy’s line of sight to Reagan’s hospital bed was numb. There were faces and names (Mrs Crowe was always there, you could take that for granted at least), there were sounds with meaning and sounds without, there were even conversations, but none of it got any deeper than it had to.
None of it got anywhere near to making it all go away.
Reagan was stable, was all they were prepared to say. They were doing ‘tests’ like she was some weird experiment or something. Every now and then they’d pull Mrs Crowe aside and have a doctor to frightened mum chat. Eddy didn’t get any insight to those. Mrs Crowe’s face told him all he needed to know, and if she wasn’t prepared to share the rest then she was probably only looking after his wellbeing in the process.
The important thing was that Reagan was still here.
‘Eddy?’
Eddy hadn’t even realised he’d drifted off until Mrs Crowe gently shook him awake. He looked up at her face and was struck by how haggard she’d become and how fast it had happened. Rubbing his eyes, he sat up.
‘The doctor says she seems to be settling. He also thinks now’s a good time for us to go and get freshened up a bit. You feel like a shower? I know I do.’
‘You mean go home?’
‘Yeah. Reagan needs her rest right now. She’ll be ready to talk to us a bit later if she’s feeling up to it.’
‘Actually talk to us?’
Mrs Crowe nodded her head. ‘That’s what they say.’
If there was better news than that going around, Eddy certainly wanted to hear it.
Leaving Reagan behind in the hospital had felt like a betrayal of their friendship but Mrs Crowe had made it bearable. If she thought it was okay to head off for a little while then that had to be a good sign. No mother would leave her child if she so much as had a sniff of something going wrong. And a shower would be good. It would be mighty good. Enough to set him up for another couple of days at least.
Eddy was sitting in the passenger seat of the Crowe’s car, Mrs Crowe concentrating on the road ahead of her and him worrying about everything else.
‘W…will Reagan be okay Mrs Crowe?’
The mother of his best friend said nothing for a while and Eddy had about figured she hadn’t heard him when she finally registered his question. It was a short answer, but even short blades can sting.
‘The Doctor thinks she’s got cancer. A special type. Some kind of Leukaemia.’ And that was it. She didn’t look at Eddy, instead choosing to grip the steering wheel like it was a miracle cure that couldn’t get away.
But will she be alright? You didn’t answer that question.
The city blocks gave way to suburbs and malls, to places where people lived and loved in little subsets of society. Where other people’s pain was nothing more than fiction. Eddy observed the pedestrians in all their blissful ignorance, going about their daily chores as though they were the centre of the universe.
Did he envy them that? He didn’t rightly know.
When Mrs Crowe piped up again, with only a few minutes to go before they pulled into Willow Avenue, Eddy almost jumped. He’d assumed they were destined to stew silently in their own sense of pity all the way home.
‘I don’t think the doctor’s are all that hopeful. They’re not ready to come right out and say it that way, but you can tell. You can see it in their eyes.’ Mrs Crowe looked pale and she still wasn’t prepared to face him. She was playing statue there behind the wheel. Statues were cold, hard and unfeeling and that’s just how she needed to be. Anything less than that would see her world come tumbling down around her.
‘C…can they help her?’
‘They’re going to do their best is all I keep getting from them. They said it’s pretty advanced.’
‘Oh.’
Ignorance was indeed bliss. Why couldn’t she have said something else? Something like ‘they’ll give her a pill and she’ll be fine in a week’. Something that would make this just a bad dream from which they could wake up and laugh at over a jam sandwich or two.
‘They’re going to try chemo as soon as she regains enough strength. Chemo and a whole bunch of drugs.’ Finally Mrs Crowe was prepared to risk a glance over at him and he wished straight away she hadn’t. She was a haunted woman. It wasn’t just in her hallowed expression. It emanated from everything about her. She was haunted and alone. ‘It’s not going to be good, Eddy. It’s going to hurt her.’ And with that, the statue cracked and the tears flowed down both cheeks.
Grandma Daisy was waiting for him at the front door when they pulled up. Eddy felt real bad about getting out of the car but he didn’t know what else to do.
‘Please let m…me know when you’re going back in.’ He asked, leaning in to grab his bag.
‘I will.’ Eddy was just about to close the car door when she had one more thing to say. ‘Thank you, Eddy. Reagan needs all the help she can get right now.’
Eddy felt the weight of that statement like a twelve tonne boulder lodged right between his shoulder blades. Mrs Crowe wasn’t like Reagan in some ways, and this was one of those ways. If it had been Reagan making the comment, it would have been much more along the lines of ‘I know that Mr Tree of yours is special Eddy. Is there any chance of calling in a favour?’ It wasn’t Mrs Crowe’s fault. She had to ask that question, even if it was in her own, subdued way. She had to grasp at every chance she had and Eddy had to respect her for that. What ate at him was the fact she was right. Mr Tree was undeniably special. Mr Tree was incredible. And right now, when it mattered most of all, Mr Tree was nothing but overactive kindling.
Forcing a guilt ridden smile, Eddy closed the car door and walked up to where Grandma Daisy stood. He heard the car move off and felt it pull into the driveway next door. It was half a peripheral vision thing and half recognition of his absolute failure to help Reagan. How long had he seen her going downhill? Weeks? Months? And yet he did nothing. What sort of a friend was that? Abandoning her when she most needed him, that made him
worse than his own mother.
‘How is she, Eddy?’ asked Grandma delicately as he stepped through the doorway past her.
‘She’s g…got cancer. Bad cancer.’ That was rough. He shouldn’t have said it that way, after all, none of this was Grandma Daisy’s fault. That lay fair and square on a different set of shoulders. But he couldn’t help it.
So he left her alone in stunned silence before he could make it even worse. Climbing the stairs he stomped into his room, threw his bag on the floor and just stood there in the middle of nowhere. In fifteen long years Eddy Sullivan couldn’t remember once being this angry. Okay, he’d been frustrated, annoyed, exasperated at times, but that was canned stuff, the sort that stayed below the surface. This thing boiling inside him was completely different. He was the bottle and someone had shaken him badly. From deep within he felt it rise and while somewhere in the back of his mind he was loathe to release it, there was another part of him that called it forth, that craved the explosion that was sure to come.
‘Why?’
As much as he had to fight the urge, it wasn’t an angry ‘why’. It was soft and subtle; the same way one desperate and confused lover would ask another once the infidelity had surfaced.
‘I just n..need to know why.’
Eddy looked all about him, at this marvellous tree, the one that had started as a fledgling little twig poking in through the window. Now it was strong and proud, soaring through his room so that it all but touched back at the side window again. Another foot or so and it’d be there, the full circle, the whole embrace. It was a mighty thing to behold, all robed up in its luscious coat of green leaves.
Together with Reagan, it had changed his life. It had turned it on its tail, and all for the better…up until now. Looking back across those years it occurred to Eddy that Mr Tree and Reagan had actually worked in symphony with each other. They’d been a partnership, driving him forward in ways that he simply couldn’t have imagined six years ago. But that only made all this so much harder to understand. There was an intelligence behind those striking branches, he just knew it. It was an intelligence that had connected with him in so many different ways. The colours, the visions, the voices and, of course, those wondrous snippets of knowledge. That hadn’t all simply spurned from within, no, Mr Tree had been feeding him these all along, through those extraordinary vibrations.
