by Karina Halle
When I get back I go straight for the medicine cabinet and for a brief moment I feel the guilt smash into me, threatening to drag me down again, and the Percocet calls my name, offering a rope, just as Scotch handed me a rope last night.
But it turns out the rope is no different from a noose.
I take the pills and though there isn’t much left, I empty them out and flush them down the toilet.
Then I head over to the kitchen, snatch the phone number from the fridge and before I can second guess myself, I make an appointment in a few day’s time. The receptionist is also nice enough to suggest a short-term rehab clinic I can check into on the weekend, so it won’t interfere with the games.
I have some people I need to talk to. Jessica and Donald. Alan. Amara and Thierry. I need to be honest with them, as honest as Brigs was with me. They need to know what’s going on in my life. They need to know I’m not well and I’m not doing okay and I need as much love and support from them as I can possibly get. I want to do this for myself but I can’t do it alone. I’ve been doing it alone for too long. And it’s not enough.
I know now who I want to be.
Still me.
Just better.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Kayla
It’s been three weeks.
She’s been in a coma, unreachable, for three fucking weeks.
My life has become a living hell but I can’t even imagine what she’s going through, where she possibly is in this world in such a hopeless, dead state. I can only hope that somewhere, somehow, in whatever limbo she is in, that my father has her hand. I know the stronger he holds onto her, the less likely she’ll return to us. But at the same time, I can’t bear the thought of her being alone, lost inside herself.
Because I’m lost too.
So lost.
And throughout all the pain, I keep thinking back to Lachlan, the way I treated him on the phone. I told him to leave me alone and never call me again but in truth, that was a lie. I just didn’t know it at the time. I pushed him away, punished him for caring for me, making him feel worse about himself than I’m sure he already does.
I just want to take it back. I want to hear his voice, to hold me in his strong arms and tell me everything is going to be okay, even though we both know it won’t be. But just to hear it from him – he used to make me feel like it was us against the world and that he could protect me from everything.
He just couldn’t protect me against himself.
Then again, he couldn’t protect himself against that either.
I wasn’t lying when I said I missed him. Because I do. All the time. Constantly. This dull, throbbing ache in my heart that won’t go away. It’s a different kind of pain than the one I feel for my mom and they are both so terribly unbearable.
And when he told me he loved me…I remembered for one blissful second what it was like to so freely have his love and so eagerly give him mine and it feels like another time, like we were just these young kids in love and the world was this sunny, endless place, our playground. I crave those days so badly that it makes my gut twist, hungry for something I’ll probably never have again.
It’s a Friday when Paul calls me at work and asks me to meet them all at the hospital around lunchtime. I don’t even have to ask Lucy if I can leave, I just go. I have a feeling that they’re just waiting to fire me when the time is right, they just don’t want to be total dicks and lay off a long-term employee whose mother is dying. But really, I do nothing all day because Candace has taken over everything and even when I try and am in the right frame of mind, it’s a half-hearted effort. There’s too much on my plate and I’m not going to fight for a job that I wanted to leave in the first place.
I decide to pick up Toshio on the way to the hospital, needing support to even make it through the drive. We all know what this is about, what it’s come to.
In three weeks there has been no improvement at all.
It’s time to decide how long we can do this to her.
And, let’s face it, how long we can keep doing this to us.
Though her stroke has brought us closer together, unlike ever before, all five of us are gaunt and ashen, just shadows of our former selves. This is not what our mother would have wanted for us.
“So you think this is it?” Toshio asks, and the pain is fresh on his face.
I swallow, nodding. “Yes. I think we’re going to have to make a decision. Together.”
He stares at his nails for a moment and then says, “Sean broke up with me.”
I’m flabbergasted, not expecting that at all. “He what?”
“Yeah. Fucking dick, right?” he tries to smile but a tear slips down his cheek instead. “Sorry I’m just…I’m so fucking angry. So angry. I mean, I’ve stuck with him over so much. His last break-up, his cat dying, his STD scare. Then he lost his job and I had to support him, remember that? And then…and then he says he can’t be around me anymore, that I’ve changed too much. I’m too sad. Sad! Of course I’m fucking sad!” He hits the dashboard with his fist. “I’m sad and I’m fucking pissed off. Why couldn’t he love me through that?”
I make a little growling noise. “I can’t believe it. Who dumps someone when they’re going through a hard time? I mean, I know my work probably wants to get rid of me but they’re holding off out of courtesy.”
“Well I got no courtesy from him. Normally I wouldn’t even want that but fuck, honey, just fucking fake it until I’m better.”
I’m absolutely livid on his behalf. Toshio had been with Sean for at least a year. “I’m going to kill him.”
“I’ll kill him first,” he says, narrowing his eyes out the window. “You just help me bury the body.”
We lapse into silence. I can’t believe that asshole would break my brother’s heart like that when it’s already breaking. I can’t imagine the strain on him.
But then again, I can. I’m living it. Only it’s my own fault, not Lachlan’s. Lachlan who was reaching out for me every day, all the time, Lachlan who loved me with all his heart, even when there was no chance of loving himself. Lachlan who would never leave because I was hurting, grieving. He would only offer me his arms and kiss me until the pain was a memory.
He gave me everything he could, every part, even the dirty, cold, terrible parts. He was fucked up, entirely, a slave to demons he never asked for. And yet in the end, I was the one who couldn’t handle him. I’m the one who left him emotionally. I had the best thing and I lost it, lost myself in the process too. Even though it would never be easy and it would always be a struggle to help him be free from his shackles, to keep the dragons at bay, that didn’t mean it wasn’t a good thing. Love is always good, no matter who is giving it to you.
Once we get to the hospital, we have to wait around for Brian to show up since his work isn’t always so lenient. So we stand around, eying each other, arms hugged across our chests, stepping from foot to foot. No one wants to speak until we are complete.
Then Brian comes and Paul launches into it.
“I’ve spoken to the doctor as well as the neurologist here and…” he closes his eyes, shaking his head. “We can’t let this go on any more. She doesn’t have a hope in hell. I wish she did, we all do but…I think we have to think about what she would have wanted.”
“She wouldn’t want us to give up,” Toshio says, his heart extra soft now. “I don’t want this to be the end, not yet. I’m not ready.”
“None of us will be ready,” Nikko says. “I wasn’t ready to say goodbye to dad either. I’m still not, you know. Sometimes I see him in my dreams and I’m so relieved that he’s not dead, like it was all some bad joke. But…we can’t keep her like this. Paul, the doctors, they are right. She’s in a limbo, between us and dad. It’s selfish to keep her here for us.”
“It’s for her,” Toshio says angrily, his hands curling into fists. “What if she would have come back to us? What if she has a chance? If we end her life, we kill her.”
&nb
sp; “She’s already gone,” Brian says quietly. “She was gone the day this happened to her. We’ve just been kidding ourselves.”
“Oh, sure,” Toshio spits out. “Throw salt in the wound, make us all seem like idiots for wanting her to live. If we never gave her a chance, we’d regret it. We’d hate ourselves.”
“After a while there are no more chances,” Paul snaps. “Don’t you see that? This is the end for her, for us. We have to let her go. It’s the right thing to do, even if it hurts us.”
Toshio walks around the room, kicking the chairs. “I can’t…I can’t accept that.”
“Well you have to because we need to make this decision together. We need you to agree Toshio. You’ll resent us our whole lives if you don’t and we’re already so broken as a family, we won’t survive that.”
“Well what does Kayla think?” Toshio asks, pausing to shoot me a look. “She’s the one closest to mom. She should decide.”
The rest of my brothers’ heads swivel toward me with curious looks.
I shake my head. “No. Please don’t put this on me.”
“She’s right, she’s done enough,” Nikko says. “She stepped up when no one else would. But…still, Kayla, we need to know how you feel.”
“How I feel?” I repeat. “How do you think I feel?” I press my palm into my chest. “Sometimes I’m surprised I’m alive, that I even have a heart. The last three weeks I’ve been in a fog. I can’t see clearly no matter how I try. You know…I think about how I left it with mom and…I should have known something was wrong. Her hands, her hands were shaking you see and I should have said something, done something. I should have never gone to Scotland, I should have never left her.”
“She was shaking before that,” Toshio says quickly. “Her hands, her legs when she walked. It’s been going on for a while Kayla. I figured you saw that.”
I close my eyes trying to think but all my memories are blurred now. Now I just see her lying in the hospital bed, barely hanging onto life. “I didn’t notice,” I say quietly, feeling so much shame. And I thought we were so close.
“You can’t always notice things like that when you see the person all the time,” Paul says. “This isn’t anyone’s fault. Sometimes it’s just life and it does what it wants with you.” He sighs, running his hand through his thinning hair. “But us, the five of us here, we’re in charge of what happens next. Kayla. Please. We think it’s time to cut her off from life support. We think it’s time to say goodbye, to let go. What do you think?”
My chin trembles and I have to blink back tears. Such a terrible burden on one’s soul. I’m not God and I would only want to play God if I could bring her back.
But I know, I know in the deepest part of me, I know she’s not ever coming back.
That she’s made her choice to leave us. And that she’s waiting somewhere. On boat in the middle of a river. Us on one side, the love of her life on another.
I cry softly but I don’t wipe the tears away. I just nod. “Okay,” I choke out. “Let’s say goodbye. But…twenty-four hours from now. To give us all time alone with her. And for Toshio, just in case she comes back.” He gives me a grateful smile but I can’t return it.
I walk away from the waiting room and down the corridor to the outside. There’s fine mist in the air above the parking lot and even though it chills me, it feels better than being inside there for another minute.
I sit down on the curb and put my head in my hands and try to breathe. I can’t believe what I just said. I can’t believe what’s happening. In twenty-four hours, if she doesn’t wake up, I will cease to have a mother. I’ll never see her smiling face again, just as I’ll never see my father’s.
I will be an orphan.
An orphan.
A quiet sob rips through me and I start to shake. There’s too much loss in my life for me to even stay contained.
My hands shaking now like my mother’s once were, I take out my phone, ready to call Stephanie to tell her what’s going on.
But she’s not who I want to talk to. Not right now.
I dial Lachlan’s number and while it rings, I calm my heart by trying to figure out what time it is over there. It has to be the evening. God, I hope he’s around, that he still cares for me, that he hasn’t found anyone else, though I know, I know from the intensity of his love, neither of those things seem likely.
When he answers with “Kayla?” I breathe in so sharply it makes me cough. “Kayla is that you?”
“Yes,” I manage to say. “I just…I wanted to talk to you.”
“Alright,” he says in that beautiful brogue of his, deep, warm and silky. I close my eyes, imagining it wrap around me. “I’m so glad you called me.”
“Me too,” I whisper. “I’m sorry I was so mean last time.”
“No, listen,” he says. “I more than deserved it for the horrible way I’ve been.”
“You’re not horrible.”
“Oh, love, you know I can be.”
“But that’s not you. It’s not the you that I know and I should have been more understanding. I didn’t want to end things like we did.”
“I know but you had no choice. You had to go.” He pauses. “How…how is she?”
I let out a little whimper. “We’re pulling her from life support tomorrow. I have to figure out how to say goodbye in the next twenty-four hours.”
He groans softly. “I am so sorry my love. I can’t…if there is anything I can do for you, please, just tell me. I wish I could take all your pain and carry it for you. I’d do anything to help you through this.”
“I know you would. I guess that’s why it hurts even more. Because I could have had you here. I mean, if rugby wasn’t a factor. How…how have your games been?” I ask, trying to switch the topic.
“Good,” he says slowly. “Lost a few, won some more. Kayla…just tell me what you need me to do.”
I need him to be here. But I know he can’t be.
“Do you…do you still love me?” I ask rather bravely.
He sounds breathless at that. “I’ve never stopped loving you. Please. Please believe that. You’re the only way I see the sun.”
My heart swells, the feeling so strange and unaccustomed as of late.
“Then, please keep loving me. I need it. And if I can’t have you here, then I need your love. As cheesy as that sounds, I need it. I need the strength in it.”
“You have it. All of it. All of me.” He pauses. “What hospital are you at? Are the doctors being nice, has she been taken care of well?”
“I’m at UCSF,” I tell him. “And yeah. They’re some of the best. They’ve been doing what they can and they’re very patient. They want what’s best for her just as we all do.”
“That’s good…good,” he says softly. “That means that she’s had the best people looking after her. It’s all you can do Kayla. You’ve done all you can do.”
“And now I have to say goodbye.”
“I’m so sorry.”
I can barely exhale. I get to my feet and stare up at the building, knowing I’m going to be spending the weekend here. I’m not leaving until the very end.
“Thank you,” I tell him.
“For what?”
“For picking up the phone.”
“I’ll always pick up the phone when you call. You know this.”
How wonderful it is that it’s the truth.
“I better go,” I say softly.
“I love you.”
“I love you too.” I hang up the phone. It feels like all my bravery goes with it.
But even so, through all of this, his words have bought me a little bit of strength.
I slip the phone back in my pocket and head back into the hospital.
***
I don’t know how I get through the night, sleeping on the chairs in the waiting room for maybe an hour at a time. We all spend our time with her throughout the night, though Nikko is the first to really say goodbye and leave, heading back to
his family. We hug and cry and it’s so unbelievably horrible that we all have to go through the same thing.
For the moments I’ve gotten with her, I just talk. I’m saving the best for last, letting her know how I feel at the very end. I don’t want to pretend she’s dead until she’s gone. So I talk with her as I have been these last few weeks. About everything I can.
Finally, when the birds start chirping somewhere in the sky and you can feel dawn about to break, I feel the end is near. For us. For a mother and her daughter.
I take her hand, squeezing it, rubbing my thumb on her skin and thinking that she’s nothing more than a husk. That the real her, with the way she used to do a little dance when she was eating a good piece of chocolate, the way my father used to make her laugh so hard she’d almost fall out of her chair, is somewhere else. I remember the look of concentration in her eyes, while these same hands pruned her roses. She took so much joy in them. She took so much joy in everything. She loved life so much, I just think she loved my dad that much more.
I cry, my head on her arm, holding onto her like a baby. I’m still her baby. I don’t know how I’m going to get through the rest of my life without her. She’s just always been here, always been watching me, loving me. Even when I do something to upset her, she could never hold a grudge. Her heart and arms were always open.
“I hope I’ve learned so much from you,” I cry out, the sobs shaking me. “I hope you’ll be proud of me. I love you so much mom, I don’t think I ever said it enough, but I hope you know now. You’re my best friend. I don’t know how I’m supposed to live the rest of my life without you.”
I’m crying so hard now that the bed is shaking, her arm is soaked. I’m dying for her to wake up, dying for anything other than the beep of the machines. But she doesn’t. She’s gone to me and I’m left all alone without the one person in my life who loved me unconditionally.
It’s losing my father all over again, but so much worse, because I know the absence of both of them together is something that will sever me for the rest of my life.
I don’t know how long I cry onto her for. I know at some point someone opens the door and looks in, one of my brothers, maybe a doctor, but they leave me alone in my violent grief. This is pure agony and it consumes me. The tears just never seem to abate, my face hurts sharply from the pressure behind my nose and eyes, my lungs are burning, raw.