Yiayia winced as she exhaled. ‘I’m okay.’
‘You have blood poisoning.’
If she was worried, she didn’t let it show. ‘Eh, tipota.’
Lucas and I left in search of a vending machine. He thought a hot chocolate might make me feel better. It wouldn’t, but I wanted to use my phone.
We found a pair of machines down on the ground floor. I sat against the front of one while Lucas inserted coins into the other. He saw I had my mobile out.
‘Don’t google it,’ he warned.
It was too late. I had my browser open. I wanted to know everything about sepsis. What it was. What caused it. How it could be treated. Everything.
‘This says the mortality rate is between twenty and forty per cent,’ I read. ‘Wait, is that if they’ll die or survive?’
‘Mortality is if it’s lethal, and seriously, stop,’ Lucas said.
I didn’t. ‘For every hour a patient goes without the appropriate antibiotic therapy, the mortality rate rises seven per cent.’ I looked up at him. ‘If it took her the whole day to say something . . . She was with me and I didn’t notice. Again. I was with her for a couple of hours. That’s fourteen per cent. I can’t lose her, Lucas. I just can’t.’
Tears pricked at the back of my eyes. I shut them, took a deep breath and willed myself not to cry.
Lucas kicked me softly.
He was holding out the hot chocolates. I took them. He pulled himself out of his crutches, rested them against the machine and sat down beside me. It was a long, complicated process, but once it was done and he was comfortable, I passed one of the drinks back to him.
‘I understand grandparents aren’t forever,’ I said. I was making a conscious effort to speak slowly and deeply. ‘But with Papou it was slow. He was in and out of hospital for ages. I’d had years to get used to the idea . . . The sadness was stretched out and it became so diluted that by the end, I didn’t really feel it.’
Lucas didn’t say anything. He just sipped and listened.
‘Like, if he’d died in the backyard peeling fruit, cutting each slice and eating straight off the knife, if he’d died then, it would have been different. But every visit to hospital had chipped away at who he was until he was just an old man in pyjama bottoms who didn’t know my name.’ I took a deep breath. ‘But Yiayia . . . She’s the same. She’s exactly as I remember her. She hasn’t changed. And I . . . I can’t lose her when she still knows my name. I haven’t had time to get used to not having her around.’
‘She’ll be fine.’ Lucas said.
I wasn’t sure if I believed him.
‘I was talking to her today. She said you can split life into three parts.’ I swallowed hard. ‘You spend the first third getting embarrassed by your family. When they pass away, you spend the next part trying to make a family like the one you had. And when you’re old, you just embarrass whatever family you’ve made.’
‘I’m sure that’s an over-simplification.’
‘And if it’s not? When Yiayia goes, that’s it. She’s my last grandparent. I’ll be in the second third. I suck at second-third stuff. I kiss girls; they run away. I’m not ready, Lucas. Why can’t I stay here forever?’
‘It doesn’t work like that,’ he said. ‘We grow up, stuff changes.’
I took too ambitious a sip. The hot chocolate burnt the tip of my tongue.
My feelings churned. Every fear rose to the top.
‘I’m holding on to the tail-end of her life and I know, no matter how hard I hold on, she’s going to slip between my fingers and I’m going to lose her forever.’ And saying it out loud, my composure shattered. Tears were streaming down my face and I struggled to get the words out. ‘I don’t know how I’m going to live without her.’
Lucas pulled me in close. ‘It’s all right.’
And I kept going, until it felt like I was physically unable to cry anymore.
That was when Lucas said, very matter-of-factly, ‘We probably shouldn’t be sitting on a hospital floor.’
He had a point. ‘Probably not.’
Lucas had an exam the next day, so he called his dad to come and get him. I returned to the ICU alone. Peter hadn’t left his post beside Yiayia’s bed. When he noticed me approaching, he hurriedly wiped his eyes with one hand.
As thick as the wall he had built around himself had been, he had never shut Yiayia out.
There was a heaviness to the way he spoke. ‘Mum’s gone to pick Simon up from the airport.’
He hadn’t looked away from Yiayia.
She stirred.
She blinked her eyes open, looked to me, and then to Peter. Without saying anything, she meshed her fingers together.
Hint received.
‘Did you want me to get you a hot chocolate?’ I asked. I realised it probably wasn’t allowed by his diet, so I added, ‘Or a water?’
‘A hot chocolate would be great.’
There was no vibrancy in the Simon that visited the ICU. By the time he and Mum arrived, Yiayia’s energy was mostly spent. He didn’t say much and his forehead creased the way Papou’s used to. When Peter started falling asleep, he offered to take us home and come back to wait overnight with Mum.
She told him to get some rest. He said he was fine. She insisted and he didn’t fight her.
Driving home, his eyes were wet, the lights of the street reflected off them, but he didn’t cry.
We each went straight to our bedrooms, but I doubt any of us slept very much.
We met Mum in the hospital cafeteria for breakfast. It was the first time we’d eaten together as a family since Easter. That was the sort of thing Mum usually pointed out. She didn’t.
She lowered her toast a fraction and yawned into the back of her hand.
‘So, what do we know?’ Simon asked.
‘Her blood pressure is low, but the doctors say that’s common for sepsis patients.’
‘It’s because of the bacteraemia,’ Peter said. It looked like I hadn’t been the only one googling. ‘The problem is, her heart rate can get very, very fast to compensate for that.’
Mum didn’t have anything to add.
Peter prompted her. ‘Are they monitoring her for cardiac arrest?’
‘I’m sure they are, Peter,’ she said. ‘It’s the ICU.’
‘Is she getting better?’ I asked.
Mum turned to me. She was reluctant to answer. I got the impression that things hadn’t gone well overnight.
Peter got it too. ‘Is she getting worse?’
‘I don’t know, Peter.’
‘So what do we do? Wait?’ Simon asked.
I understood his frustrations. All we could do was stand on the sidelines, hoping for some miracle and dreading something terrible.
Papou had been a phone call in the night, a notification from a nursing home on the other side of Sydney. He had passed in his sleep. There had been no excruciating tension, just a quiet exit from stage right when nobody was looking.
It had been a relief.
‘She’s going to be fine,’ I said.
Mum forced a smile and put down her half-eaten piece of toast. None of us felt very hungry. We were just moving the food around on our plates.
‘Let’s go up,’ Mum said.
Walking slowly back to the ICU, she put her arm around Peter. He didn’t fight it. He let her because she needed it, and he did too.
In the elevator, she said, ‘I love you boys, you know that, right?’
‘I know.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Mm.’
When we arrived at the ICU, the curtains had been drawn around Yiayia’s bed. A doctor stepped out from inside. And it was all in his eyes.
Mum’s knees buckled.
I had only just gotten my tie right when Peter appeared at my door. He had one hand against the opposite wall for support as he jammed his feet into a pair of worn-out sneakers. He was dressed for a run.
‘I’m off.’ He didn’t say where.
The door slammed sh
ut. I looked out into the hall. Mum was standing in her bedroom doorway at the end of it, trying to separate the bracelets on her wrist. She was wearing a grey pencil dress and heels.
‘Grab a change of clothes for him, will you?’ She stepped out of view.
In the Greek tradition, the wake was immediate. I had barely understood that Yiayia was gone and I was picking a mourning outfit out of Peter’s wardrobe, riding in the car with it folded over my lap, laying it out on one of Yiayia’s guest beds, standing in her living room, staring at myself in the mirrored back of the china cabinet. Shattered.
Between the crystal glassware, Mum’s reflection was making final preparations in the kitchen. Whatever she was feeling had been channelled into baking.
It was her mother’s wake. It was going to be catered.
I turned around just as she laid a plate of loukoumathes on the dining table. She caught me watching and smiled softly. I had never seen so much sadness in a smile.
Simon was lurking by the table. He had been waiting for Mum to finish with the honey-puffs. He took two in one hand and reached into the pocket of his oversized jacket with the other.
Mum didn’t even need to see the carton. ‘Again?’ she asked as he crossed the room and stepped out the back.
Through the security grilles of the living-room window, I could see Simon setting himself up by the door to Yiayia’s sewing sweatshop. He lit a cigarette.
He smoked. It was news to us.
While I watched, one hand slid into my pants pocket. My palm closed around the sliver of paper.
‘Bill?’ Mum was eyeing the dining table critically. She had conjured up every Greek dessert she could. ‘Is this enough?’ she asked.
I didn’t have an answer. I couldn’t measure Yiayia’s life in delicacies.
Mum exhaled and wiped her hands down her front. ‘It’ll do,’ she assured herself. ‘And where’s your brother? People are going to be here soon.’
Her guess was as good as mine.
‘Have you told Lucas yet?’ she asked.
I hadn’t. I didn’t want to tell anyone. That would make it real.
‘Let him know,’ she said. ‘His mother will want to come.’
That was Mum’s way of saying she wanted Mrs P to come.
I didn’t make the call in front of her. I locked myself in the guest room I had claimed as my own over the years. I leaned back against the cupboard and pressed Lucas’s number. He would have only just finished his exam.
‘Hey, Lucas.’
‘Hey,’ he said, ‘how is she?’
Even her pronoun made my chest tighten.
‘She’s gone, Lucas.’ The words hurt to say.
He gasped. ‘No!’
‘She went into cardiac arrest this morning.’ My left calf muscle twitched. I steadied it. ‘They couldn’t save her.’
I could hear Lucas breathing. He sounded like he was about to start crying. I had to talk over him or else I’d start too.
‘We’re having a wake,’ I said, before pausing to clear my throat, ‘at Yiayia’s place later this afternoon, if you want to come. Don’t feel like you have to.’
‘I’m coming.’
‘And everyone’s invited, your mum, dad, brother, Joel. There’ll be food and . . .’ I trailed off. I had noticed the bag on the bed. It had the fabric store’s logo emblazoned on the side. She hadn’t even unpacked yesterday’s purchases.
‘I’m so, so sorry,’ Lucas said.
My heart went tribal against my chest. It had only been a day since she’d been standing there in the fabric store, lecturing me about the tria komatia, and now she was gone and the first third of my life was over.
The second part had begun.
I thought of Hayley. I thought of Yiayia entangling her in my adventure. I thought of the kiss and what had come after.
And I thought it couldn’t end like that. Not after all Yiayia’s work.
‘You there?’ Lucas asked.
I told Mum I was going home to fetch my phone charger. She wanted me to ask Simon for a lift. I said the walk would be good for me. She was adamant that I was getting driven. Yiayia’s landline rang and I ducked out before I could lose the argument.
Hayley’s house seemed even smaller in the daytime. It had been a fast cab ride, barely ten minutes. That wasn’t long enough to think all of my thoughts, let alone arrange them into a form that would make sense to someone who hadn’t thought them.
Ideally, I would have built and reordered and refined something over weeks, but I didn’t have time. I just had to wing it and hope that when I was finished, I liked the spot I’d arrived at.
‘Right, Bill,’ I told myself, ‘don’t screw this up.’
I took an uncertain step towards the house and brushed past the letterbox. My bodyweight had made it rock. I stopped, looked back, placed my hand on it and shook. The screws fixing it to its post had come loose.
I couldn’t help but smile. It reminded me of the time Lucas and I . . .
And in an instant, I’d found a way to arrange what I’d been thinking.
I walked to the door and rang the bell.
Hayley and I sat on her front step. We didn’t look at each other. Instead, we stared out at the street. The odd car drove past. There wasn’t much room, but she kept her knee from bouncing against mine.
I finally spoke. ‘I want to tell you something, and I want you to let me finish before you make a decision.’
She was cautious. ‘Okay.’
‘I want to give you this.’ I reached into my pocket and handed over the sliver of paper.
She unrolled it. ‘I don’t understand.’
I acted like she hadn’t spoken. ‘My best friend Lucas and I, we have this tradition where whenever we go on any kind of adventure, or something monumental happens, we make sure we steal something. He keeps everything in his room.’
Hayley’s phone started ringing. She swore and fished it out of her pocket. She silenced the ringtone and apologised.
‘There was this letterbox.’ I was talking through a smile. ‘He was drunk and he said he wanted it. It was the first time we’d ever gone out to a party, the first time we’d ever been drunk even. We stole it. And that letterbox started something. Now, you can’t move around in his room without tripping over a reminder of where we’ve been.’
Hayley turned the piece of paper over in her hands, as if to check if it had changed since she’d last seen it. It hadn’t.
‘So, I was standing outside your house, wondering what you and I had that was close to that. What was our letterbox? And then I realised I was carrying it in my pocket.’
‘The bucket list,’ Hayley said.
‘Yiayia made you write it; it’s why we met,’ I said. ‘Now, I know you don’t want us to hook up because you think I’ll grow to resent you for holding me back, I get that and that’s fine. But I still want you in my life. I want to be friends. I want to build a room of random junk around our letterbox equivalent. I want to be there if Rory needs someone to teach him to ride a bike. That’s what I want.’
I didn’t turn to her, but I was silent long enough to let her know that I was done. The wait for her response was excruciating.
‘Okay.’
I blinked hard. ‘Good,’ I said. ‘I’m glad.’
Another car drove past.
‘Because Yiayia wouldn’t just pick anyone to write out her bucket list.’
‘I’m pretty sure I got the gig because I was the only other person in the room who was awake,’ she said.
‘Or you could be cynical, I guess.’
Hayley laughed. Her knee bounced against mine.
‘And your grandmother’s out of hospital,’ she said, ‘what are you even doing still carrying this around?’
By the time we got to the house, guests had begun to arrive. I recognised distant relatives, Yiayia’s meat-raffle friends and the women I had only ever met at church. I caught sight of Peter wearing the clothes I’d picked out of his wardrob
e for him. He was standing with the second cousins.
It was like navigating a minefield of sympathy. I kept Hayley and Rory close. When people knew I was already with someone, they kept their condolences to one-liners.
I led them out the back. Nobody had claimed the patio furniture yet, and with a box of baklava someone had brought over to sustain us, we wouldn’t have to move for a while.
As the official scribe to Yiayia’s bucket list, it felt right that Hayley was there, mourning and overeating with the rest of us.
It was what Yiayia would have wanted.
Well, she probably would have wanted us making out, but it was close enough.
‘I still can’t believe it,’ Hayley said.
‘Me neither. I think about it and I just . . .’
‘You’ll get dizzy,’ she called out.
‘What?’
‘Not you.’ She smirked and pointed at Rory, who was running around in a tight circle on the lawn.
That made more sense. ‘Oh.’
‘You’re out of it.’
‘Little bit.’ It was like there was a woollen veil between me and the world.
Hayley nudged the box closer. ‘Eat.’
I took a piece. I had barely bitten into it when I realised it tasted nothing like Yiayia’s.
‘Nice, huh?’ she asked.
‘Mm.’ My mouth was full.
Something bounced against the pavers. Hayley looked away. I quickly spat the pastry into my cupped hand and dropped it on the floor.
‘Honey, where did you find that?’ Hayley asked.
Rory was chasing a plastic ball.
She turned back to me. ‘Can he –?’
‘The neighbours’ kids probably kicked it over the fence,’ I said.
‘Okay.’
Hayley helped herself to another piece of baklava. ‘Your brother’s a bit antisocial, isn’t he?’
Simon was standing by himself next to the garage, poring over his mobile.
‘The opposite actually. You should read his feed,’ I said. ‘He’s the life of the party up in Brisbane.’
Hayley tilted her head to one side and examined him. ‘I don’t see it.’
I figured it was the oversized jacket. It made him look like a turtle. Simon had been . . . heavier before he moved away. In his mad dash to come down, he hadn’t packed formal wear.
The First Third Page 18