by Tabatha Wood
I sat on the stool which I kept in the shower, letting the water fall around and over me. I didn’t bother with shampoo, my hair was cropped too short to need it. It grew back thin and patchy after I stopped the chemo, keeping it shaved made more practical sense. I had always worn it long and curled before, frequently dyed many vibrant colours. It still seemed strange to see it short and blonde, the colour that nature intended. Eric referred to it as, “hitting the reboot button”. I wished I could.
I drip dried in the shower, sitting for as long as I could without the water on, until I got cold. I dried the rest of me with a towel, dressed in leggings and a cotton T-shirt, favouring comfort over style. My old makeup bag was slumped by the sink, tainted with a thin layer of dust. A feeling of curiosity came over me. I unzipped it and explored its contents. They seemed strangely unfamiliar to me after months of being ignored. I darkened my eyebrows, added mascara and bronzer, and finished with a dash of pink lipstick. I was surprised at myself, this was probably the brightest I’d looked in months. My mother should be pleased.
I took the handful of supplements my naturopath had recommended to me with a glass of water, along with a chaser of painkillers. They hurt a little as they slid down my throat. I didn’t have much of an appetite, but I poured myself a glass of organic smoothie — my mother brought me bottles of the stuff — and sipped it slowly through a metal straw. Another gift from my mother.
“They’ll last you a lifetime,” she had told me, before realising what she’d said and turning bright red. I had just laughed and hugged her.
She sent me a text just after half-past two, telling me that she was stuck in the middle of a traffic jam. An accident on State Highway 1. She couldn’t get through the tunnel. I was half-way through replying to her when I heard my laptop chime.
I expected to see a message from Eric, maybe even one of my other friends —Amy, Kirsten or Lucinda — but instead it was Freya again. A strange wave of emotion came over me, one I couldn’t quite identify. I was still unsure how I felt about her. She unsettled me, but I didn’t know why.
“Hi Lydia,” she began. “Hope you’re okay? So, weird thing; I found this photo I took a while back of you and Chris, I think maybe at a Pride festival or something. We’ve met before without you realising it!”
She had attached the picture at the end. It was indeed of myself and Chris. I didn’t remember exactly when it was taken, but it looked like it was from over five years ago, well before either of us got sick.
Sick with the cancer anyway.
My hair was long and dyed bright turquoise, his was short and purple. We had rainbows painted on our cheeks and matching goofy smiles. He wore a pride flag draped around his shoulders, like a superhero cape. It was coloured in three vibrant stripes of pink, purple and blue. He looked content; glad to be amongst friends and allies. His arm was draped around my shoulders and I leaned into him. God, we looked happy.
I felt hot tears prick my eyes and my nose began to run. I sniffed and plucked a tissue from the box by my bed. I didn’t want to pick at the scabs of old memories, I’d done enough of that already. I should have let it be. Against my better judgement, I clicked and enlarged the photo, letting it fill the whole of my laptop screen. Chris’s face seemed so unfamiliar to me now, and the feeling hit me like punch in the gut, a hollow reminder that he was really gone. I might see his face in pictures, maybe even videos, but never again in real life.
The picture was so large, and clear. I could see the fine, white lines tracing his arms. The thicker, pink ones on his wrists. They were accompanied, in stark contrast, by a black semicolon tattoo. It signified a pause, not a full stop.
Chris had always struggled. Unlike many like him, who were often isolated or felt unable, he had at least reached out and asked for help. Many, many times. He saw counsellors and therapists, tried drug after different drug, but nothing seemed quite right.
Chris was an avid gym bunny. He loved surfing, swimming, climbing and running. He gained a clear first at university and did well in his career. His parents and sisters were wonderful and understanding, and they supported him completely. His relationships, although few, were always meaningful, and with kind and loving people. Their separations were never acrimonious.
He didn’t fit the stereotype that other people often associated with his illness, he seemed far too vibrant and accomplished in his life. He didn’t spend all day in bed. He didn’t seem sad or overwhelmed. How could someone like him be so troubled, they’d wonder, when he seemed to have so much?
No-one really thought he was at risk. Not even me. He had convinced me that he was managing it, that he had things under control. I knew the statistics; one in six individuals suffered with a common mental disorder at some point in their lives. I knew the other numbers too, particularly those amongst young males. More people than could fit inside a double decker bus each year. I wasn’t worried. I never believed that he would add himself to that list.
I knew, as I’d always known, that something inside him wouldn’t let him rest. He was never truly happy. He called it the Beast he could never tame. Not merely a black dog, as it was often referred to, but a slavering, monstrous hell-hound, bathed head-to-toe in midnight shadows. He was bound in the grip of a crippling darkness; his mind often feverish and hollow. His demons were determined to suck him in, chew him up, and swallow him whole.
Like me, Chris was sick, but in a very different way. At his worst he talked about his life as if it were something he felt forced to endure. He thought his being here was just a phase. I don’t think he was religious, he never spoke of going on to a better place or anything like that, but the best I could understand of it was he never truly believed that he belonged here. His thought his existence was a mistake, that he was here at the wrong time or in the wrong place.
Sometimes he was brighter and excitable. He was here for the benefit of others, he’d said. His presence brought people together. I really believed that. Chris filled the room in ways other people could not. He could put aside his own troubles and listen to everyone who needed him with quiet earnest. He made them feel truly seen. Online, the friends he made created a wide web around him. We needed Chris far more than he would realise. He kept us whole.
His older sister, Lauren, had once confided in me. She told me Chris’s whole personality had been changed when he was fifteen. The victim of an apparently accidental hit-and-run, he was riding to the local dairy when he was clipped by a car. He fell off his bike, and smashed his head on the road. He hadn’t been wearing a helmet and was knocked out cold. He suffered a serious concussion and a broken arm. Lauren said he seemed to have all his joy sucked out of him as a consequence. She always wondered if his depression was linked somehow.
I don’t believe it was his accident that made Chris how he was. It could never be as simple as that. Family and friends, they often want to find an easy answer, a reason they can pin all their hopes upon, some way to rationalise or explain the hurt. But the truth is, it’s never easy. Never just one thing.
When Lauren had helped their parents clean out Chris’s room a little while after he had gone, she had found a notebook of his. A story he hadn’t quite finished. She passed it on to me, said she thought he would have liked me to have it. I always loved his creative work.
He was a prolific writer; he’d won many awards for his short stories and poems, and had been published several times, but I don’t think Lauren realised that to Chris, his words were not always fiction. There was a dark theme which undercut all of his work. Emotions he tried to explore and process as he wrote. I’d taken the book and thanked her, and left it on a shelf for weeks until I could bear to read it. It landed open on the floor one morning when I bumped into the bookshelf accidentally. I’d read what was on the page.
There is a place between worlds. Between time. Not bound by the laws of the living and the energies therein. It is a Waiting Room. A holding cell. A place to go and visit but never stay. Where those still tethered
by the threads of their existence, push through the thin veil woven between worlds, called briefly off the path of a pitiful Life to the realm of a welcoming Death. Despite what they’ve seen and the things they now know, most do not get to stay. Pushed back through the curtain, destined only to wait until their turn, they are locked in a fragile limbo until their name is called again.
Chris had spoken of the Waiting Room, as he called it, many times. It was an experience we had both shared, yet separately and in very different circumstances.
Mine came from a ridiculous and avoidable accident while blind drunk at a party. I had slipped on a discarded wet towel in the bathroom of a student flat, and cracked my head on the toilet cistern. It was hours before anyone realised that I wasn’t merely passed out from drinking too much alcohol. I was saved by an irate flatmate who had apparently tried to veto the party in the first place. She had dragged me angrily to my feet with the sole intention of throwing me out, but then saw the bloody gash on my forehead. She got me the medical care I needed. Much before that I had drifted in and out of consciousness many times, each time going back to the Waiting Room.
I’d not thought about it in years, but I could still recall it clearly. It was not a frightening experience, in fact later I would be more unsettled at the realisation I had felt no fear at all. Knowing that had I been able to, I would have happily stayed.
I was not alone in the Waiting Room, and all those around me were calm and welcoming. I sat at a long table with many others who smiled and put their gentle hands upon me. A young woman offered me her hand, but I did not have time to take it before I was rushed back into my own body.
The peacefulness and calm feeling had given way to sheer frustration as I became conscious again. Three times I went back. Three times I was dragged away. It was as if I could only ever be an observer, never allowed to linger. I had wanted so much to stay, to embrace the tranquility and comfort. The real world had often been harsh, and loud, and difficult for me, yet it seemed I could not fully turn my back on it. Not then.
I had found myself wondering what it would be like to return. If Chris was waiting there for me. I sometimes thought that if I could see him again, even if for just one last time, I would do whatever it took. Whatever else the Waiting Room had given me, it had taken away any fear of death.
I don’t know how much time I spent thinking. It felt like I’d glitched, and time had slowed down, but I was pulled out of my reverie by the arrival of another message.
“I’m coming to Wellington for a couple of days. Do you fancy meeting up?”
My initial reaction was to decline. I couldn’t seem to place her motives, why she was suddenly so keen to engage with me. I realised she hadn’t even told me what kind of cancer she was facing, if even any at all. Maybe she was just one of those ghouls who hung around in chatrooms and forums, getting off on the pain of others.
Yet, I was drawn to her as well. In some odd way I felt like we were connected, not simply due to knowing Chris. We had spoken only very briefly online before, replying to each other’s comments, but I had never taken any time to find out who she really was. I suppose I had assumed that she was an old girlfriend or lover. In every picture I’d seen of them together, they had seemed very close, both physically and emotionally. Her always flashing a full and open smile, Chris with his usual half-smirk. She was always dressed head-to-toe in black and red, her short bob soft and shiny, her lips always painted with colour. Chris was her polar opposite, in white or blue or speckled grey, spiked hair unwashed and messy, a sprinkling of stubble on his chin.
I’d seen similarities too, though. Their features were quite similar, and if I hadn’t known otherwise I might have thought she was a relative, a cousin perhaps. Their eyes were almost identical. I’d never been introduced to her at family parties; weddings, funerals or otherwise, and I had spent a great deal of time with Chris’s family. Almost more than with my own. Maybe this would be an interesting way of finding out more about her. What else did I have to do with my time?
I tapped out a reply.
“Sounds good. Wednesday maybe? There’s a lovely little place on the waterfront, not far from the beach. An old tugboat. The coffee is nice, and we can sit inside or out.”
“Great! I know it. I’ll see you there at eleven?”
It would require me being up and dressed and in the city relatively early for me, but I typed an affirmative and added a smiley face.
“My mum is coming round,” I added, not wanting to get into another online conversation. “So I’ll see you on Wednesday. Have a great day.”
She answered with a smiley face of her own and I closed the chat window. The picture of Chris and I still filled my screen. I saved it to my hard drive before closing the laptop again. It was a lovely picture.
When my mother arrived later we performed our usual awkward dance; she tried hard not to say anything that might upset me, but equally it was obvious she was still keen for me to go back to the doctors and the specialists, to try and buy myself more time. I knew when I passed she would be on her own. Dad had been gone for four years already, and she had still not fully adjusted. Losing me might be the end of her too.
While some might call me selfish for adding to her pain, the truth is, we had never been close. It took my illness to bring us even slightly close together. My dad was the one I had always talked to, who I had always shared my secrets with. I felt the loss of him just as much as she did, if not more, but we had never been able to share that. It was complicated.
I spent the next day mostly napping, sometimes watching trashy daytime television programmes. I doodled a little bit in a drawing pad, something I’d not done in quite a while. I’d always loved painting and sketching, finding peace through productivity. Before my illness, I’d spent countless hours outside in the bush or by the beach, immersing myself in the beauty of nature. I let my creativity flow over me and through me. Rocks and mountains and ocean waves appeared upon the paper.
I was surprised, I thought I might have lost my talent, but the shapes came as easily as if I were sitting there amongst them, breathing in the coastal air. I fell asleep with my pencil in my hand. I dreamed of swimming in the sea. A bright, hot sun beat down on my pale skin, a kaleidoscope of shimmering colours reflected on the water.
I awoke on Wednesday morning with an unusual amount of energy. I realised with surprise I was quite excited about meeting Freya, my mood very different to the previous days. I pulled on a comfortable sundress, wrapped a scarf around my close-cropped hair and added the makeup I had used the other day. Slip-on shoes with a daisy print completed the look. I regarded myself in the bathroom mirror. I looked so normal. Healthy even. It wasn’t just because of a pretty dress and cosmetics. My face looked pink not ashy, and less drawn than usual, the shadows underneath my eyes not so dark. Was this reflection even mine? I hardly recognised myself.
At 10:40 a.m. my Uber driver messaged me to let me know he was waiting outside. I grabbed my handbag and went to the front door. A weird feeling of anxiety came over me. Not nerves, no, more an odd feeling of anticipation. As if I were about to make a very big decision. Embark on a journey or a path I’d not travelled on before, despite making it many times. I shrugged it off, told myself I was being stupid. I was just feeling wobbly at the thought of meeting a new person. I closed and locked the door.
Freya was early and I was late, she had already found a table inside the café, looking out towards the waterfront. She stood up and greeted me with an awkward hug. I felt her hands on my shoulder blades and I winced. There was not much of me left to hold.
“Hi! It’s so good to meet you at last,” she gushed. “I’ve ordered myself a coffee, but I didn’t know what you’d like.”
I waved my hand saying, “That’s fine. I don’t really drink coffee any more as it makes me feel a bit sick, but they do great smoothies here.”
I walked to the counter, ordered myself a strawberry and mango drink, and the waitress gave me a number
to take back to the table.
I went back, sat down opposite Freya, and looked out across the harbour water. The bright sun sparkled on the blue of the water, dotted with tiny diamonds of light.
“It’s pretty beautiful here,” Freya said, following my gaze.
“Yeah. I really love it. Can’t imagine being anywhere else now.”
“Will you ever want to leave?”
I thought at first I must have misheard her. I floundered slightly.
“Huh? No. Maybe. I thought about moving to Auckland for a while. But I guess I don’t have much choice now. And anyway, ‘you can’t beat Welly on a good day’ and all that, eh?”
Her question had struck me as slightly odd, but I smiled at her as the waitress brought us our orders. I sipped my smoothie slowly, felt the cold, mushed fruit hit my empty stomach and made it cramp. I should have tried to eat something before I left the house. I felt nauseated despite avoiding caffeine.
Freya mixed a spoonful of sugar into her cup and watched me intently. I felt a little unsettled.
“So, how come you’re in Wellington?” I asked her, eager to break her gaze.
“I’m here on business,” she said, but didn’t elaborate.
“Okay. Great.” I sipped my drink again, feeling a little awkward. My excitement about our meeting seemed to have waned.