The Brilliant Light of Amber Sunrise

by Matthew Crow

  “Well, you’ve done very well, my love. You’re a good lad, Francis Wootton,” Jackie said, kissing my cheek.

  When we got home Mum had put up balloons and Welcome Home cards, most of which were from her friends and seemed more for her benefit than mine.

  “Did any have money in?” I asked.

  “It’s not Christmas, Francis; it’s a goodwill gesture. It’s nice that people care,” she said with an unusually nervous laugh, unpacking the various packets of pills. I glanced back over the cards. There were eight in total. Some of the handwriting looked remarkably similar, and they were signed by people whose names I didn’t recognize. I think Mum might have got some of the girls in the office to write out duplicates, so that I would feel as though my health concerned more people than it actually did.

  “Do you want to see anyone today?” she asked.

  By “anyone” Mum could only have meant Chris and Grandma.

  And she must have known my answer would be yes.

  “Well, I’ll cook something nice,” she said. “I bought all your favorites. I didn’t know if you’d be up to food though, so it’s all in the fridge just in case.”

  After that we didn’t say anything for a long time. There was something different about being home. It was as if it wasn’t so secure anymore, not so solid as it had once seemed. Like it had been when Dad had left for good. Suddenly it felt like a mirage—like if I concentrated too hard it might suddenly disappear and I’d find myself back on the unit. I don’t know why this was. I was pleased to be back. But for the first few moments it felt as if I was just visiting, as though I would now have to ask if I could help myself to a drink, or if anyone would mind whether or not I drank the last of the juice in the fridge. It was as if I’d outgrown my old life and returning felt like a strange exercise in nostalgia, like the times I’d look up songs on the Internet that I remembered from youth club.

  It was not a sensation I enjoyed.

  I think Mum might have been feeling something ­similar because she was more cautious around me at first too, as if we’d just had a really huge argument that had been all her fault. Even in the car on the way back she hadn’t rolled her eyes or snapped at me for being stupid when I’d talked without pausing for breath about my plans with Amber. And once we were back inside she stood at least two paces from me, whereas in the past she’d never concerned herself with the notion of personal space, no matter how often I requested that she would.

  After what seemed like an impolite stretch of silence Mum looked like she was going to get upset again, which was the last thing I needed. But then she smiled, and came stomping back over to me like she always did.

  “I am so happy you’re home,” she said, making each word very clear, like they were being chiseled into a stone tablet. “I love you so much, Francis. Really I do. And I’m so, so proud of you,” she said, hugging me harder and harder until it began to hurt a bit.

  For weeks I didn’t leave the house much. Time itself became distorted and unreliable. Without the structure of school, or hospital, and on those days when I couldn’t even be bothered watching TV, I lost all concept of minutes, hours, and days. It would have made little difference to me anyway. I did the same thing whether it was six in the morning or eleven at night: I felt lousy.

  My visits to see Amber were restricted to a minimum, if they were permitted at all. And on the odd day that I convinced Mum I was well enough to leave the house, Amber would be mostly unresponsive. She would just lie there, weakly attempting to spit out one-liners while the medication tore through her body like liquid sandpaper, leaving her raw and frail.

  I spent most of my time in bed. I’d pick up a pen but had nothing to write. I’d pick up a book but the words just became dead weights, an extra burden on a mind that already felt overcharged and spent. And so I lay and wallowed as Mum tried to perk me up.

  One day Jacob came to visit, which did more harm than good. In the months I’d been away he had been skipping through subjects along with the rest of my class, to the point where I began seriously to worry that he might be on his way to becoming my academic equal.

  “What’s the capital of Peru?” I asked, halfway through his description of Jenna Bowley’s left boob, which he’d only seen thanks to a wardrobe malfunction during double swimming.

  “What?”

  “The capital of Peru. What is it?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Anyway, so it was a bit bigger than it looks in her sweater, but whiter than her face is. She looked like an upside down pint of Guinness. . . .”

  Jacob went on but I stopped listening. I was just pleased that the natural order had been restored.

  (It’s Lima, by the way.)

  Jacob also told me that in my absence he had taken to hanging around with Nick Tilley. For a while nobody would speak to Nick because we found out his big sister was really his mum and the information blew our minds. He had conducted his campaign well, though, and ended up triumphing when, that September, he’d returned to school with a tattoo and a prescription for antibiotics after having done something heroic with his foreign exchange student.

  That said, I don’t think his and Jacob’s friendship was as solid as Jacob was making out. He talked about what they’d been up to together with a sense of urgency in his voice, like if he didn’t keep saying it, then it wouldn’t be true. Whereas I only mentioned Amber once or twice, which in itself was testament to how strong our bond had become.

  The nurse came around once a day. For a while nothing happened. If anything I got worse. All day and all night I could hear the inhuman sounds I was making, like they were coming from a stranger, as Mum held the bucket beneath my dribbling chin and whispered kind things about how well I was doing, that even she didn’t sound convinced by. Then after a while things changed. Slowly at first, like the last days of winter. There would be moments where I’d feel okay. Then the moments became hours. Until eventually there were whole days, sometimes two in a row, where everything seemed better.

  The nurse started using words that I recognized from television. At first it was that the medicine was “taking,” which made me feel like a Crazy Golf windmill with each pill being putted at my mouth. Then I was “responding well.” Which meant that I wasn’t throwing up and could mostly go about my daily business without having to take naps to recover from the previous nap, or throw up every time there was a change in temperature or someone within a five-mile radius was cooking food.

  Grandma would come and keep me company when Mum had to do urgent work tasks at the kitchen table. She’d sit by my bed and tell me about her day, and when I could take no more of such cruelty I’d ask her to start reading to me from one of my books. She seemed happy enough to do this at first; only halfway through the first chapter she’d go one of two ways. Either she’d nod off in her seat and slump face first onto my bed, so that I’d have to try and nap without kicking her in the eye, or else she’d purse her lips, and suck in each intake of breath while she cleaned up the language and skipped over the good bits of some of my favorite novels. I don’t think Grandma was ever open to the idea of experimental fiction. Her house was full of books with jacket artwork featuring pleasured-­looking women staring out from under floppy bangs. Almost all of them had lavender-colored backgrounds. I think she picked them to match her moulding. One afternoon I gave her a selection of books that I thought might open her mind and improve her, both academically and culturally. The next morning Mum came into my room looking furious as hell. It seemed Grandma had not taken too kindly to Naked Lunch.

  Otherwise I spent most of my time texting Amber to apologize for the iron fist that ruled over my first few weeks at home. I tried pleading with Mum for greater liberty, but she was immovable on the subject. I told her that they had medicine for what was wrong with me, but there was no known cure for a broken heart. This only made her hyperventilate, then kiss me between giggles, whi
le thanking me for the first proper laugh she’d had in weeks.

  Once I was feeling better Mum agreed that I could visit Amber occasionally, so long as she accompanied me in case I took a turn for the worse.

  “But there are doctors and nurses there if anything happens,” I pleaded, I thought reasonably. But Mum wouldn’t give in.

  “Those are my conditions, so like it or lump it.”

  The first time we visited, the nurses crowded around me and made a big fuss. Amber looked dead sick.

  “It’s like you get off on being the Golden Boy,” she said sourly once Mum had gifted us with a few unsupervised moments and gone to fetch some teas. I couldn’t help it, though. Often my natural charm prevailed despite myself. Also it might have had something to do with Mum. She’d paid for all the nurses to have a spa day in town as a thank-you present. When we arrived Amy and Jackie both had long, colorful nails with jewels stuck to them. I voiced my concern with regard to Health and Safety to Amber, but she just swore at me.

  “Is Paul still staging a prisoner’s dirty protest?” Amber asked as she washed down her tablets with one deep gulp of water. Paul wasn’t on the ward that day. Apparently he’d spent most of the night throwing up and worse.

  “He’s doing okay,” Marc said. “And go easy on him. Last thing he needs is your smart mouth when he gets back.”

  “I can’t help it. It’s just the way I spit my lines,” she said as Marc took her empty cup and left us to it.

  Amber said that it was boring on the unit without me. I smiled. I had come to realize that relationships were all about reading between the lines. So when she said it was boring without me, it meant that she missed me. When she told me I was being a creep, it meant that she found my behavior adorable but was frightened to render herself vulnerable by acknowledging the attraction she felt. It was probably my ability to analyze such subtle quirks that made me such an ideal boyfriend.

  “You look like you’re having a stroke,” she said, punching me in the arm as I beamed out the window. I had obviously underestimated the effect I had on her. Amber was smitten. I was her drug of choice.

  When it was time for me to leave I gave her a ten-pound phone card that I’d used some of my savings to buy and told her to text me whenever she could. She said she would, and then, out of nowhere, added, “You are coming back, though, aren’t you?”

  I told her I would, and saw a strange look on her face then, somewhere between gratitude and relief, neither of which were expressions Amber wore frequently (or well).

  “She’s not as tough as she acts, that one,” Mum said proudly, like her hypothesis had been proved, as we made our way out of the unit after saying good-bye.

  Before we made it into the car park my phone buzzed and I opened the message. It was from Amber.

  Not that I care or anything. x x

  I kept it to myself, even though showing it to Mum would have proved her to be wrong.

  CHAPTER TEN

  During my visits to the unit I would watch Amber peak and trough like a human roller coaster. Sometimes she’d be sprightly and responsive, her cheeks flushed with color, like she was crawling out of the cocoon of her own disease. Other times she’d be silent, sallow and sickly, and barely able to lift her head without every muscle in her body shuddering in pain.

  I’d try to keep her upbeat with my many interesting stories and lesser-known facts about eighties teen films and seventies rock bands. But such was the extent of her suffering that sometimes even this would make little difference to her mood.

  The one constant that seemed to keep her going—other than tormenting Kelly and making snoring sounds whenever I had been talking for too long—was the oft-postponed promise of her homecoming. The idea was that she would spend some time back at Colette’s house, in her own bed, and receive daily visits from a nurse while she took her treatment in a more familiar environment.

  “They just can’t get enough of me here,” she’d say when the plan was shelved yet again.

  “They’re like the Spice Girls and I’m Geri. Without me they’re just a joke.”

  “It’s not that bad here,” I’d say, frantically seeking out positives. “At least they’ve got satellite TV. And meat. At least it’s not all tofu and herbal tea. You never know, all the protein might shock your system into getting better.”

  “Somehow I think it’s going to take more than a Philly Steak and Cheese Hot Pocket to do the trick,” she’d say dourly, teasing the Magic 8 ball without asking it any questions (which must be bad luck, confusing the cosmos as it would).

  Sometimes I think she noticed just how sad she could make me, and to try and lessen the damage she’d pick up her mood like a weighted backpack and start making jokes again.

  What she didn’t realize was that this was worse again. The whole time I’d known Amber on the ward I had never known her to put on a front for anyone. She was like a human emoticon; she wore her mood like a T-shirt slogan, no matter how it jarred with the rest of the ward. I myself was quite adept at hiding my true feelings, and consequently people often overlooked just how burdened I felt, what with having cancer and being in love all at once. But not Amber. She was an open book.

  Except on those days. Those awful days when she’d joke for me but her eyes looked like they belonged to someone else, looked like they knew something the rest of her body wasn’t yet willing to acknowledge.

  One day I woke just after eleven and made my way downstairs, shakily.

  “You all right, darling?” Mum said, helping me onto the couch.

  “Yes. Just dizzy.”

  Mum went into a flap and dropped my medicine box twice while she was looking for the right tablets. She threw the pills down me and began pressing her hands against my throat and head.

  “Have you got a temperature? Can you see me okay? Do you feel right? Shall we get the nurse just to check you over?” she asked without pausing for breath.

  “No . . . get off,” I said, pulling her hands away from my face. “You’re just going to have to help me get ready, that’s all. I said I’d go in at one o’clock today.”

  “Oh, no,” Mum said, shaking her head and covering me with a blanket. I kicked it off but she threw it back over me and pinned the corners down, afterward kissing me on the head. “You can hate me all you like, but you’re staying here today. No discussions.”

  “You got the first bit right,” I mumbled cruelly as she went to make me breakfast. I felt bad as soon as I’d said it but she deserved to be punished for standing in the way of true love.

  “She’s certainly bringing you out of yourself, I’ll give her that,” Mum said as she screwed the cap back on to my medicine bottle.

  I spent the entire day on the sofa, Amber’s lock of hair hidden in the pocket of my pajamas, watching Titanic and other films about love against the odds.

  Fiona tried to perk me up by showing me clips of sickening films on her phone. Even the ones that I found amusing, I refused to respond to. I would turn my head away like I was on hunger strike, making it clear to all and sundry that I was lovesick; there was no cure for my ailment.

  “Give it up, Frankie. You and I both know you’ll be back there tomorrow. It’s no drama. It’s just one day,” Chris said.

  “It feels like a lifetime,” I replied, sliding further down the couch until I could only just make out the top of Kate Winslet’s nipple. “And anyway, you’d be miserable if Mum was ruining your entire life and any possibility of future happiness.”

  “Yes,” Chris said, “yes, I would. But I hope I’d have the good grace to come out with a bit of banter. My personality would shine through even the deepest caverns of despair.”

  “Well then, you obviously have never been as miserable as I am. Because even breathing hurts when I’m not with her,” I said, and he laughed. Sometimes I wonder how I ever endured such an upbringing. I was like the s
olitary flower sprouting from an endless stretch of cold, hard concrete. Perhaps my biggest problem was that I bore the burden of emotion for the whole family. Like all great poets my downfall was that I simply felt too much. “Oooooooh,” I groaned when Fiona and Chris began a conversation between themselves, paying no further heed to my plight.

  “Frankie, pull your thumb out and get up,” Fiona said eventually, slapping my legs. “I’ve shown you all my best films and relayed both my best stories and, to be honest, I’m starting to take it personally. We all know you love Amber but the whole injured dog routine’s getting you nowhere.”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” I said, sitting up grudgingly. I have never responded well to tough love. I take better to cosseting, and sometimes Grandma was the only one who could step up to that particular challenge.

  “Well, for one thing, you’re being a jerk. For another, absence makes the heart grow fonder, so she’ll be doubly pleased to see you when you do make it, and will probably show you a boob or something in gratitude.”

  “Keep talking.”

  “And every time you make the sound of a yak being branded, no one knows whether it’s the hysterics of a lovelorn teenager or the pained cries of a cancer patient . . . and you know it. So cut it out now.”

  “Some of them were real cries of pain,” I mumbled.

  “Really?”

  “Well, not pain. Mild discomfort.”

  “Remember what happened to the boy who cried wolf?” Fiona said. “He was eaten alive. Do you want to be eaten alive?”

  “I suppose not.”

  “Then stop winding everyone up.”

  I perked up a bit after that but still insisted on watching maudlin films to mirror my mood, so Chris and Fiona had to endure Romeo and Juliet and we were halfway through King Kong when Mum came in with sandwiches and refreshments.