by C. A. Larmer
I frown. “Wasn’t it?”
He sighs, his tone gratingly sympathetic. “So why are you still hovering here, Maisie? Why can you still not remember?”
Chapter 28
Day turns into night again, but I barely notice the shifting light. I have closed my eyes. I am trying my best, damn you all. I am trying very hard to remember!
What cruel world is this, to make the victim of a violent accident remember their death before they’re allowed eternal peace? Why can’t we forget something so traumatic? Isn’t that our prerogative? Isn’t that for the best?
Open your eyes, Maisie, comes a gentle voice on the wind. Open your eyes and see.
It’s my voice, from years ago, from a calmer, simpler time.
So I force my eyelids open and I stare to the house below, and I think, Thanks a lot Forever, thanks for torturing me.
So it seems the young lad didn’t kill me, or at least that’s what Neal is saying. How then did I die? And am I really to keep watching my loved ones as they get on with the business of living?
The pool party is over, and my friends have finally scattered. Roco has vanished completely, so too Una, but I can see Tessa back in her own kitchen, preparing an Indian curry while her mother watches her fondly. I loved Tessa’s curries. I forgot about that. I will never eat another of her curries again, and it makes me want to weep. I don’t care whether she hooks up with Roco or ever did. I just want to hang out with my old buddy again and eat her famous butter chicken swamped in creamy Greek yogurt.
Is that it, Death? Is that what you want me to see?
I hear a scrubbing sound, and I spot Jan in my dad’s study. She is crouched on the carpet, a brush in one hand, the other wiping away the tears that are gushing down her face. There’s a steaming bucket of water by her side. I must confess, this surprises me. A woman I never had any time for is now taking the time to scrub my blood away, but she isn’t really doing it for me. She’s doing it for Mum, and she’s doing it for Dad, but mostly, she’s doing it for Paul so he doesn’t have to face this gruesome task. Yet again, she is rescuing him.
Is that what you wanted me to see?
I think of young Toby now, and I have a sudden flash of panic, but then I find him sleeping soundly in his dad’s childhood bed upstairs, his little brother coiled close beside him, his tiny fingers clinging to a ratty old teddy. I will never get to cuddle those boys again, but I’m not sure I ever cuddled them much anyway. Did my loathing for Jan trickle down to her kids?
Is that what you wanted me to see?
A one-way conversation catches my attention now, and I notice that Peter is on the phone to someone; he’s shouting but he’s not angry. I think it’s long distance. He’s discussing dates and deadlines and asking for more time. It must be his boss. I wonder if he’ll get the sack thanks to me.
And just behind him, in an armchair, Paul is dozing. He looks completely at peace.
Is that what you wanted me to see?
Dad has fallen asleep, too, on the living room sofa, his snores vibrating through the house while Mum has gone upstairs and now sits on my bed, an empty green garbage bag beside her. How can Dad sleep? How can Mum find the energy to start packing me away so quickly?
Is that what you wanted me to see?
“Mum? Can I have a word?”
That’s Peter, hands thrust into his pockets, his eyes swollen red.
She offers him a gentle smile and taps the mattress beside her. He shifts a few cushions as he sits down.
“It’s all my fault,” he says. “I let her down.”
“Honey, please, we talked about this.”
“No, Mum, I need to get this off my chest.” He inhales deeply. Exhales. “We had a plan, Maisie, Paul and me. We were supposed to leave the stuff by her bedside, with a glass of her favourite bubbly. But I didn’t.” His voice cracks. “Mum, I didn’t.”
“I know, honey, and I’m proud of you for that. I’m not sure how I would have coped if you had been involved.” Mum’s voice cracks too, but he is shaking his head and swiping at his tears.
“No, you don’t get it. I was a freakin’ coward! It’s why she went for the gun! We were going to be there for her, we were going to hold her hand through it, yeah? So she didn’t go alone…”
He cracks on that final word and buckles over and starts to cry. I don’t think I’ve ever seen my big brother cry, and Mum looks equally surprised. She goes to hug him, but he pushes her away and gathers himself again.
“Paul…” He clears his throat. “Paul’s kids got sick, and he chickened out and he said no, let’s put it off, let’s not do it. But Maisie wouldn’t hear of it. She said, ‘Please Peto, it’s time, please.’” He sniffs and I sniff alongside him. “Then she let me off the hook. Poor Maisie! All I had to do was put the pills by her bedside and go. She said I didn’t have to stay if I couldn’t handle it. It was as easy as that. I didn’t even need to hold her hand. That’s all she asked of me, all she wanted… and I couldn’t do it! I was a fucking coward!”
He buckles over again, his cries so wrenching Dad’s eyes flicker open down in the living room. Mum rubs Peter’s back and waits. I can’t believe she’s not aghast at this outburst. I can’t believe she’s so calm.
Eventually Peter collects himself and says, “I didn’t want her to find them. I didn’t want her to do it, so I hid the pills in the downstairs toilet and I took off. I left her all alone at her party. I needed to get away. I went straight to Central. I thought…” He gulps. “I wanted to get back to Dubbo, where everything seems so simple. So black and white, you know? I wanted to get the first train out of there, but of course there wasn’t one until morning, so I just sat there. I just sat on my hands while she…”
Again Mum goes to hug him, again he pulls away, looking more stoned than he ever has, but it’s from tears and guilt and grief. “I wasn’t there for her, Mum. That’s why she had to reach for the gun. I’m so ashamed. I let her down. I let my beautiful baby sister down.”
Finally he falls into her arms, and their cries turn into one. I am crying with them, but I am more confused than ever.
So that explains the black shadow I suppose. It explains why he couldn’t face me, even in death. He somehow feels responsible, like he forced my hand. But it doesn’t explain the rest. Why would my brothers collude to help me kill myself?
Even if I was that depressed, that gutless, addicted to antidepressants—whatever—why would my brothers agree to that? Why isn’t Mum chastising him? Why isn’t she furious that he didn’t get me help, get me some decent counselling?
After many minutes, sobbing and hugging and sobbing again, Peter swipes a tissue from my bedside table and gets up. Before he goes, Mum grabs his hand and says one final thing.
“I told you before and I’ll tell you until I’m blue in the face: your sister made her own choices, she did what she did willingly. And we have to live with that, Peter. You have to live with that because I have lost enough already.”
I know what she is saying and so does he. He nods, tears streaming down his cheeks again. Then he nods more assuredly and walks out while Mum is left sitting on my bed, alone and bereft.
She sighs like she’s ninety-five, wipes her face and looks around. Then she picks up the plastic bag and turns to my bedside table, reaching for a small white container. She scoops it up, and I hear it rattle as she drops it into the bag, then reaches for another.
There are six different bottles of pills on the table. How much medication was I taking? Are they all antidepressants? I look a little closer.
There’s aspirin there and heavy-duty ibuprofen and something called Riluzole.
Hang on, those aren’t antidepressants, and that’s not our family doctor’s name printed on the label. It’s someone else. Dr Harry Chang, from St Vincent’s Hospital.
Okay, I remember him!
I remember this!
Suddenly I recall it clearly. It was two winters ago, soon after that date with Jonas. Soon af
ter I’d broken my leg. I was now getting twitches and cramps in my other leg, and for some reason my hands weren’t working properly. I’d had enough. I needed answers.
You came with me, Mum, and for some reason so did Dad even though he hated doctors and I’d never seen him inside a hospital before.
And we sat there and we smiled, but Dr Chang wasn’t smiling.
“It’s not good,” he said simply.
And then suddenly I see.
The horror on my parents’ faces.
The reason Jonas turned and fled.
The charity fundraiser where I first met Roco; the reason I broke up with him last week.
The cups crashing on the kitchen floor, the preoccupied mind and the lost files, the sympathetic smiles and that final handshake.
It’s why I moved back home but never quite moved in. The reason my mother cooked mushy food and my father looked so damn hopeless. And why Una threw that stupid party where I stumbled about even though I wasn’t drunk.
I wasn’t a loser.
I wasn’t depressed.
I had a disease, a dirty disease, and that’s the reason I’m dead.
Chapter 29
“I don’t know how to tell you this,” Dr Chang said. “But at least it will help explain why you fell over, Maisie, and broke your leg.”
And I thought, It’s some kind of cancer. Bone cancer probably. But I’ll fight it.
“It’s motor neurone disease. MND. I’m so sorry.”
I frowned. I shrugged. I’d never heard of it, but who cared? I’ll still fight it, I thought to myself, but the terror that was creeping into my parents’ eyes suggested otherwise.
Dr Google confirmed the rest. Google also called it Lou Gehrig’s disease or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), but no amount of titles could change the fact that there was no fighting this one. There was no cure, and it was beyond my control. Not even the world’s bossiest sister or the most efficient PA could juggle this problem away.
I had a neurodegenerative disease that causes rapidly progressive muscle weakness. In a nutshell: my life was over before it had really taken off. I would be lucky to survive two years, five if I was unlucky. By then I’d be wheelchair-bound and unable to swallow, let alone speak. I would be completely dependent on other people, well, my parents to be precise. And I hadn’t been dependent on them since I was five.
It was around that age I learned to count and decided that while I might have been a mistake—what idiots have a third baby six years after the last?—I would not be a burden. Never that.
I was fiercely independent from then on, super bossy and determined to run my own race. And now they were telling me I’d soon lose the ability to talk and walk?
Not on my watch.
I guess I’d felt symptoms and ignored them for some time. All that smashed crockery should have been a giveaway, but the real red flag came with that clumsy fall down those restaurant stairs, Jonas watching on helpless and cringing with embarrassment. He didn’t think I was that drunk.
For some reason Dad always blamed Jonas for my disease, like he was the catalyst. And Dad certainly blamed him for doing a runner as soon as the word got out. I didn’t. I understood why Jonas didn’t stick around. He barely knew me, and what he thought he knew had just been shattered, in more ways than one. Why would he want to hang around to nurse me through it? Why would I want him to?
I think I accepted it fairly quickly after that first diagnosis and learned how to manage the pain and my failing muscles, investing in supportive cushions and heated wheat packs and weekly sessions with an acupuncturist called Arabella, who fast became my friend.
The problem was no one else accepted it, my father least of all. He shunned the prognosis, could not believe that the disease was incurable, and began scrounging around for experimental treatments and miracle cures, each one pricier and more outlandish than the next.
Then Una told him about a “medical miracle” she’d heard about in Thailand and somehow convinced him to travel with her to investigate. When they realised it was a crock—just another snake oil salesman selling little more than water and wishes from a dirty street stall in Bangkok—they turned to Plan B and purchased some Nembutal, aka the “peaceful pill.” That’s a well-known euthanasia drug, a pentobarbital, illegal Down Under yet available without prescription in Thailand. They were going to sneak it back into the country and hide it away until the time was right. They were going to offer it to me as a last resort.
Dad’s heart must have splintered into a million pieces when he handed over the Thai baht.
Yet he couldn’t find the courage to go through with it. He dumped the unopened packet in a garbage bin outside Bangkok airport the morning they departed. That’s why Dad was so ashamed. As far as he’s concerned, he didn’t have the guts to help his daughter when she needed him most.
I never even knew they’d tried. I just assumed Una was holidaying solo, as she often did. I thought Dad was at Nevercloud, as he often was. I don’t know how I know all this now, but I do. They never told me a thing.
I realise now why Una was in my dad’s office last night. It had nothing to do with any love letter. She was reimbursing him for the return flight to Bangkok. My first guess was spot on; I should have trusted my gut.
Mum didn’t know anything about Bangkok either, as it turns out. At least not at first. If she had she would have gone ballistic and not because she thought it was a waste of money or a con. I don’t think she ever accepted my disease either, at least not at first. She honestly believed good old-fashioned home cooking and endless hugs would somehow pull me through.
And when that failed, when my muscles continued to waste away and I could no longer make it up the stairs, she did the only thing she could do. She turned practical. She cleared out her old sewing room, invested in an electric bed, and moved me to the ground floor. She made it cosy enough, filling it with scented candles and fresh flowers and even dangling a new dream catcher from the light fitting, hoping that would help. But I didn’t want to be there. I didn’t want any of that.
So I approached Peter.
I wish now that I hadn’t. I wanted to end my life on my terms, in my own home, in my own damn bed. And I wanted to do it safely, with my loved ones close by. The problem is, euthanasia is illegal in most of Australia, so is assisted suicide, yet I needed assistance. I couldn’t do it alone.
So I turned to Peter. He’s so worldly; he’d have the answers, and it turns out that he did. We sourced our own Nembutal on the dark web just a few weeks ago, Paul watching on, worried, his usual hesitant self, me giggling like it was a joke and isn’t this hilarious!
I honestly thought I had the perfect plan. I thought I was so damn clever. I’d pass away with love and celebration in the air, not the whiff of morphine in a cold, clinical hospital bed. I’d do it with my friends and family around. Everyone, that is, except Mum. Oh how I would have loved her by my side, but I knew she’d never accept this and I couldn’t do it sneakily with her in the house. She hadn’t taken her eyes off me since the diagnosis. She’d catch me, she’d get my stomach pumped, she’d ruin everything.
That’s why I encouraged her to accompany Dad to Dubbo this time even though she was fretting about me, and why I agreed to the party when Una suggested it, even though the only two people who knew about my plan were my brothers. I hadn’t even let Tessa or Roco in on it. I just wanted them to be happy when I departed; I just wanted them to be their drunken, crazy selves.
The boys and I had it all arranged. Everything had been agreed.
I’d spend one final night with my dearest friends, the people I loved most before I slipped off this mortal coil. It’s such a pity Una had to go and turn it into The Hangover 4, inviting everybody and their kids, but I was still determined to do it.
The plan was simple enough. I could still pull it off. As soon as the revellers were drunk enough, my brothers would bring out the cake to corral them by the pool, and then they would secretly carr
y me upstairs. I would slip into my old bed and then slip away quietly, the tablets washed down with some Veuve Clicquot, my beloved siblings holding me tight, sending me off with love and well wishes.
Then everything went to pot.
Peter is wrong to blame himself. I decided against the Nembutal soon after Paul called in with his lame sick kid excuse and long before Peter scurried off to Central Station, tail between his legs. I already knew, even before the cake came out, that I couldn’t take those drugs. It was too risky; it would take too long.
I knew the chances of being left to die in peace were slim. Nobody cared about cake. There were too many people running up and down the stairs, there were kids sneaking about, and Una was following my parents’ orders and watching me like a hawk, their new iPhone number tucked away in her baggy linen pocket. Just in case.
But that wasn’t the main reason I abandoned the plan.
I couldn’t do it to Peter. He’d ordered the illegal drugs. They had his digital fingerprints all over them, and if a curious cop bothered to investigate, they’d be sourced straight back to his laptop, to his credit card. I’d seen enough of the news to know that assisting the dying is as good as killing them yourself. I couldn’t let him take the fall for me, and I couldn’t be sure he’d get off.
That all came to me in a sober rush as I watched my friends get increasingly intoxicated while I sipped Arabella’s nonalcoholic virgin margaritas, tears streaming down my face. Today was not the day that I was going to die.
And then I got that text.
If only I hadn’t got that text.
Chapter 30
The cranky middle-aged neighbour is called Lance, the one with the frisky dog. I remember him well now. He was a single dad, had a son called Timothy, a beautiful teenage boy who died of leukaemia about ten years back. I’m embarrassed to admit I never really got to know either of them. Tim was a few years younger. Lance just seemed so damn sad all the time.