She muttered curses, burglar nervous, hurrying to shove them all back into the cabinet, each label she checked frustrating her further, and perhaps it was the noise she made, or perhaps it was simply the state she was in, but she didn’t hear the voices behind her until it was too late.
I told you, Drew. Julie doesn’t want my help.
Jules stood frozen, one hand holding a few packages of pills in place on the narrow shelf, the other on the cabinet door, about to close it.
Jules? What are you doing, sweetie?
It’s obvious what she’s doing. I can’t help someone who’s not ready.
No—wait—Dec—Jules, c’mon.
Jules turned around as much as her stiff neck would let her without forcing her to release her hand from the precariously stacked medications. Drew stood in the bathroom door, and behind him Declan was already halfway gone, his solid frame barrelling across the bedroom, one hand finishing a fed-up gesture, swiping it all behind him.
Dec! Drew’s voice boomed, all his weight in it. Declan turned at the door, grabbed the door frame to make a stand, but didn’t look at Drew, his eyes fixed instead on Jules, and said nothing, just stood there, stubborn as a teenager.
Declan, Drew said. C’mon. As a favour to me, okay?
Declan remained silent for a long time, then relented. Alright, he said. I’ll try. But—He pointed at Jules. She has to want it too. And— He tilted his finger to point at the sky. I want it on record that I’m one hell of a good guy.
Jules said nothing, even though they were both looking at her, expecting some kind of response. She pulled her hand away from the medicine cabinet, heard everything come crashing down onto the sink and floor all over again.
JULIE.
Declan said her name, his hands gentle as he took her blood pressure, her pulse, her temperature, listened to her lungs, his touch on her skin heightening her awareness of her own sour clamminess, her middle-aged flab, the vile yellow pallor that went right into her fingernails.
Alright?
He cupped Jules’s face, used his thumb to pull lightly at her bottom eyelids, then the top. He left his hand there, cool on her burning cheek, for an extra few seconds, peered into her eyes with his own, dark, dark brown.
How much have you been taking, Julie?
She hated being called Julie, always had, but somehow in Declan’s gravelly voice it was almost comforting. She could see the fine lines around his mouth from years of smoking, humour and scorn. Sadness. It came back to her, in that moment, the feeling of being drawn to him. She remembered the resonance between them, and a longing. But she remembered it only in that distant, intellectual way she also remembered that she had a job, a house, a car: just facts, with no bearing on her situation. Right now, all she could do was try to keep breath moving in and out of her body.
Forties. Forty milligrams. Maybe . . . eight a day. Or ten, she didn’t continue out loud, or sometimes twelve. She thought she saw his lips tighten a little. His eyes searched her face for cracks.
Right. So, Rod Scott’s your doctor.
It wasn’t a question, but Jules nodded.
And your un-boyfriend.
Not anymore, she said. Not since . . . But she couldn’t find a comfortable way to end that sentence. She pictured Rod as she’d last seen him, grey-suited and ashen-faced, adrift in a sea of scrubs as she walked away. It felt like another life, the man a complete stranger.
The tops of Declan’s cheeks twitched with the possibility of a smile. Since the other night?
Yeah . . . Well, no, but. Sorry about that.
Sorry? Nothing for you to be sorry about. I’m not sorry. He focused on her face for a long moment, his eyes rippling from some internal spring, she didn’t know if she was sinking or floating. Then he looked away, pulled his old-fashioned black doctor’s bag onto his lap, held it there and addressed its interior.
But now you’re my patient, right? He dug in his bag with his whole arm. I’ve met this Rod Scott before, at his pain clinic. He tell you?
He had not.
We’ve got what you might call some differences of opinion.
He pulled out a bubble pack, squeezed out a pill and shook it gently in his hand, like he was about to roll the dice.
And, well, let’s just say he’s been getting himself a rep. As in, you are not the only one. He handed Jules the pill.
The only what, Jules wondered.
Declan broke down the dosages he would use to taper her off the Oxy.
Jules looked at the pill in her hand. ON, it said, or NO upside down, instead of the usual CDN of the old Oxy tablets. She turned it over, saw the “20” engraved on it. With a sigh and some water, she swallowed it, expectations of real relief washing away to leave a bleak beach of defeat.
You’re really lucky, he told her, and Jules wondered why people kept insisting on that. This would’ve gotten much worse, he said.
Jules lay down on the bed by simply tilting over sideways, not bothering to lift her feet from the floor. She watched as Declan walked to the armchair by the window, put down his bag and dropped in his stethoscope. His movements were slow and deliberate and made Jules think he wanted to say something. He came back across the room and sat beside her legs.
You gotta make a choice, Julie.
Jules pulled her feet up onto the bed, rolled away from him, hid her face from the light with a pillow.
Go away. Please.
The silence that followed was so long and empty that Jules started to wonder if he had left the room. She lay perfectly still, held her breath, listened for sounds of a presence behind her, but refused to turn and look in case he was still there.
Finally, she heard a sigh, and felt the mattress reclaim its shape.
Footsteps crossed the room and it was silent again.
SHE WOKE THE next day around noon and numbly took in her surroundings. Stared out the bay window across the room. The giant head of a tree almost filled her view, a gnarled wizard taller than the house, a relic that had stubbornly survived the development around it. The Last Tree Standing. Thinning leaves smouldered, the sun backlighting them, mustard and crimson and fire. On some level she recognized that it was beautiful, this late fall cry of colour and light, with its suggestion of a day unusually warm.
Declan came in with another twenty milligrams. He took Jules’s pulse and blood pressure again, his manner cool and professional. When Jules wondered aloud, somewhat grumpily, why he didn’t have to go to work, he simply said, Workin’ now, aren’t I? Jules grunted around the thermometer he’d shoved under her tongue. She wasn’t sure how to connect with this version of Declan. The truth was, she was feeling slightly better, her withdrawal symptoms somewhat de-escalated, if temporarily. But it still felt like someone was torqueing the nerve in her neck with pliers, so when Declan took the thermometer out to read it, she pushed:
Okay, so. If I can’t have painkillers, how do I kill the pain?
Declan made a note. Jules realized with vague alarm that he’d started a file on her.
You’re not dying, Julie.
Jules responded by craning her head to the right until the latest kink cracked its whip and made her stop.
Neck fucking hurts, though.
Declan started to pack his bag.
A lot of people are on a lot of pills, Julie, but too many drugs will only make you worse. The body forgets how to fight pain, your mind forgets how to deal with stress. Sometimes we need ’em, sure. But they get prescribed way too much.
So, you’re not going to give me more Oxy.
I just did. He smiled. Twenty milligrams.
Come on, Declan. I can’t function like this. She pointed at her neck for emphasis.
Wouldn’t really call it functioning, what you’re doing.
Fuck you. Jules lay back down.
Declan laughed. I’ve heard that before, he said. He pulled a pamphlet out of his battered bag, and a pen. He clicked the pen a few times, hesitating, avoiding Jules’s eyes.
/> When my wife was dying, we tried this. She said it helped. But then—he paused, circled something on the pamphlet—she was grabbing at life.
The unspoken “not like you” slapped Jules across the face. Declan set the pamphlet on top of the dresser and left: the distant swish-click of the sturdy front door, the breath and hum of the house. She wondered if she was alone in it. A crow hailed autumn from a branch of the Last Tree.
It was all familiar, all too familiar. How many hours, even days—years—of her life had she spent like this, lying on a bed feeling sorry for herself, everybody telling her she needed their help. David, begging her to talk to someone; doctors, therapists, everyone pushing her towards antidepressants. Nan trying to help parent Chloe. And Jules insisting that she was fine. She’d never wanted help, never saw a reason to start wanting it. And where has it all got me? She hauled herself to her feet. Trying just took insurmountable effort.
BUT THE PAMPHLET got her back up like only over-yogaed, kale-in-your-smoothie positive attitudes could. The Whole Soul Healing Clinic claimed to house specialists from massage therapists, chiropractors and traditional Chinese doctors to acupuncturists, psychotherapists and naturopaths—all of which Jules had certainly heard of, and most of which she had tried at some point. But they also offered things she would never try, such as “Spiritual Counselling” and “Energy Healing,” and a few she had never even heard of. Craniosacral? Radionics? What the fuck was Rolfing? What kind of shit was Declan selling?
In among all these he had circled a picture of what looked like an escape pod from a galactic spaceship, captioned: Float Tank: Take a Sensory Deprivation Vacation.
Road.
Hitchhiking, I quickly learned, is excruciatingly boring. Other than the snowy peaks in the distance, we could have been anywhere, on wide-laned roads lined with strip malls, motels and car dealerships.
We walked for hours and no one stopped. We had exactly one interesting conversation.
I found a dead body once, Jansen said out of nowhere, a thin attempt to bypass the vague hostility I was having difficulty hiding. I was grouchy about Lee, and I found him both smug and smarmy. In an alley in Frankfurt, he added. Mugging victim. Had his throat cut. Jansen sliced a finger across his own neck.
Oh yeah? I kept my eyes way up the road, listened to the timbre of his voice and tried to decide if he was bullshitting. You, like, called the cops and everything?
Of course. What else?
I took a drag of my rollie and felt the satisfying singe of unfiltered smoke in my throat. Maybe it was because he was a stranger, and I had no intention of ever seeing him again, that I told him:
When my sister died, I was there.
Your sister. Was she sick or something?
No. I flashed through memory thumbnails, my perpetual search for an ultimate cause—Mo-mo crying on the phone, Lizzie crying on the porch—but slammed into the inevitable guilt and shame and shut the whole thing down.
She was a baby. I was six.
You were a child. That is totally different.
Dead is dead, I said.
Eventually, a pickup truck pulled up beside us, and a fiftyish man in a green baseball cap leaned over and said, I can get yis far as Picton, yeah?
SQUEEZED ONTO THE tiny back bench beside an enormous bag of soccer balls, I watched as Jansen, up front, scrutinized the driver, the cab of the truck, the kid photos and business cards elastic-banded to the sun visors, and the bobble-heads of soccer players on the dashboard. Hanging from the rear-view mirror was a woody carving in a swirly shape like a tribal tattoo. Jansen reached a hand out, rubbed it between his fingers.
Are you a Maori?
Something about his tone made me inhale and hold the air in my lungs, wondering where this was going to go.
The driver, dark brown and broad-featured, may have wondered the same thing, but he handled it. He glanced at Jansen, at his hand on the carving, and grunted.
Aw, yeah. Name’s Tanga. That’s my matau. He reached up and removed it from the mirror. It was on a leather string, and he spread it out on his hand, slid it over his head. Tek it off for football, he said.
Matau?
Fish hook, like. For good luck.
He told us a Maori legend of a mythical fisherman who, using only a bone hook and a woven line, hauled a great fish from the ocean and tethered it to the South Island, thus creating the North Island.
Where do you get them? Jansen asked.
Aw, well. You can buy ’em anywhere, the plastic ones. But my wife made me this one, yeah? It’s whalebone.
Whalebone, I repeated, thinking of all the beached whales, thinking of Lance and his orcas. Tanga glanced at me in the rear-view mirror.
Maori are fishermen, yeah? The ocean is everything. Matau’s about our entwined fates. Respect for its power and all.
It is beautiful, said Jansen.
Tanga nodded, rubbed it briefly. I keep hoping it’ll bring her back to me, yeah? He sort of laughed. Hasn’t worked yet, mind.
I thought of the scrap of paper in my pocket with an email address on it, my own talisman of sorts. Wondered what sort of power it might have to repair the damage I’d done.
LIGHTS OF HOUSES winked on across the hillside as we followed the road into Picton. Tanga dropped us at the hostel, where Jansen surprised him by throwing an arm around the man’s shoulders in an awkward but friendly embrace.
Thank you, my buddy. It is good to meet the local people, yes?
Alright, then, said Tanga. And he got back in his truck and pulled away.
Love that guy, Jansen said, but I’d already walked off.
The hostel was run by a couple, Nick and Chandra, and had cheerily coloured walls and bright pine bunkbeds. I noted it was much cleaner than the surf lodge in Kaikoura, and Jansen scoffed.
Because it’s not a surf lodge. Those guys live like pigs.
Funny, that’s what they say about tourists.
Jansen shuddered. Sand on my mattress.
I couldn’t even look at him after that, just took my stuff to the girls’ dorm. I arranged with Chandra to leave my big duffle at the hostel and packed what I needed into my day pack. The following morning, I caught the shuttle bus to the trailhead.
Hike.
Finally being out on the trail buoyed me. I worked my way up the first big hill, following the skinny trail through the forest, and emerged onto a clifftop, teetering high above a brilliant pure bay. Elation filled my chest like oxygen flushing out smoke.
It wasn’t long before I understood that an “easy” New Zealand tramp was equivalent to a “killer” Ontario hike. Straight up, straight down, climb over huge boulders, scramble down rocky and root-torn muddy hillside, repeat. I felt blisters starting on my feet within a couple hours, and my bare shoulders were chafed raw from the canvas straps of my pack.
I sat on a log at a lookout to eat some trail mix. I propped my shredded feet on my pack, my damp back cooling in the breeze, my head tilted back. Branches of oversized leaves filtered my view of in-crawling clouds.
When I heard the buzzing, I tried to react with calm and turned my head slowly towards the sound. Two metres away, a rotted stump teemed with airborne insects, faintly yellow. I swore and jumped up. I had one EpiPen; multiple bee stings would be bad, very bad.
I’ve been terrified of bees since getting stung when I was little, but I didn’t know I’d become allergic to them until my grade eight camping trip, and if the teacher hadn’t thought quickly and used her own EpiPen on me, I would have ended up in the hospital, or worse. My hands had swelled, my throat closed over, air refused to respond to my faint sucking, until Mrs. Sudecki, who smelled like mint and onions, jabbed me hard with the needle. I’d never seen an adult look so scared. The next week David took me to the doctor and I got my own emergency injection kit for preventing anaphylactic shock.
My current EpiPen was in my pack, which lay between me and the infested stump and had attracted the attention of a few outliers from the hive. I wal
ked back along the trail and then into the edge of the forest until I found a sturdy long stick. Creeping back towards my spot, I extended the stick as far out as I could and managed to hook it under a strap and coax my pack away from the hive. The curious bees soon lost interest and returned to their circuit around the tree stump. I took a few deep breaths, grateful that I could, then shouldered my pack and gave the stump a wide berth as I carried on down the trail.
THE STORM CAME off the ocean in a hurry, like it had somewhere to get to and I was in its way. Within seconds, a few fat grape-sized drops became an opaque, roaring wall of water.
Instantly drenched and rain-blind, I stood off the path and took cover under some trees. I cursed when I heard thunder, my words lost under its roar. Lightning came next. I felt like a deer in a minefield.
Lacking any other brilliant plans, I crossed my fingers and waited.
A loud snap of thunder was followed by a splintering crack and a long and rustling fall. It sounded too close. I wondered if the fried tree’s roots might run as far as the ground under my feet. I started to shiver from seeping cold and terror.
Regretting once again having tossed my phone, I consoled myself that there probably wasn’t service out here anyway. And who would I call? And what could they even do.
The back edge of the storm left a wake of dripping trees and flattened ferns. And mud. The trail was now a sucking, slippery thing, sometimes trying to pull the boots off my feet, sometimes rejecting them altogether, sending me sliding down rocks on my butt, my pack underneath me.
At about 6 p.m., on the shore of a wide, shallow bay, I reached the tramp hut, one of the basic cabins New Zealand places along its long-distance trails. It was mid-week, and not quite high season; so far, I had the place to myself. I made a fire in the wood stove, stripped down and hung my sopping clothes over a bench in front of it. My pack was mud-caked and sodden, the canvas heavy and stiff even after I emptied it. Only the things packed in the very middle were dryish, which meant I had one pair of underwear and a T-shirt. My food bag was wet, only a few things salvageable. My sleeping bag was rolled, the outer layer dripping wet and the inside barely damp. Cursing myself for not valuing waterproofing earlier, I hung what I could by the fire and boiled some water for my ramen noodles, hoping no one else showed up while I was still half-dressed.
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