Speed

by D C Grant

son?”

  “Fourteen.”

  “We should really have someone over the age of eighteen.” He looks toward Gran.

  “I don’t care, I want to see her,” I say.

  “I advise against it. You should remember her the way she was.”

  “I want to see her.”

  “What do you think, Mrs Shaw? We only need one person to make a formal identification. It’s not necessary to involve the boy.”

  Gran seems dazed. Tears are running down her face and it takes her several seconds to reply.

  “He’s their only child,” she says. “She needs to see him one more time.”

  I think she’s got the grammar wrong, but maybe it’s the Irish in her. Gran has a strong belief in the afterlife.

  “I’ll let ED know you’re coming,” the doctor says as he reaches for the phone.

  As we leave the ward, Mike comes with us. He places his hand on the top of my head to comfort me as we travel down in the elevator. I notice the sorrow in his eyes. I’d forgotten that he works with Dad, that they are mates, and I know it’s hard for him too.

  There’s a man in a green lab coat waiting for us as we step out of the elevator into ED and he says, “Hi, I’m Dr Waterman, the registrar here in ED. Dr Beresford told me you wanted to see your mother. We’ve put her in a private room.”

  He leads us through the emergency department to a room with a closed door. He opens the door and hesitates. “We’ve cleaned her up but there’s some blood. She’s also got some bruising about the face. If you want to change your mind …” He doesn’t finish the sentence but looks at me.

  “I want to see her,” I say and step into the room.

  Someone is lying on the single gurney inside, covered with a sheet from top to toe so that it isn’t possible to see who it is and I can believe that this isn’t my mum, that they have it wrong. Dr Waterman walks to where the head will be and pauses, looking at Gran.

  “Are you ready?” He pauses. “Is he ready?”

  Holding my hand tightly, Gran takes a deep breath, nods and he turns back the sheet. I feel tears sting my eyes when I see my mum’s face. Her eyes are closed – she is sleeping, and all I have to do is call her and she’ll wake up.

  “Mum,” I say.

  Gran puts her hand on top of mine and says, “She’s in the arms of Jesus.”

  “She’s dead,” I declare, turning on her, suddenly angry. “She’s frigging dead!”

  Reality hits me then, hits me in the stomach and I double over, vomiting onto their clean shiny floor.

  Break-in

  Mike half-carries, half-drags me from the room and I can hardly see for the tears. Gran follows, saying something but I can’t hear what; the words are bouncing around inside my head like billiard balls. Mike lowers me into an armchair and covers me with a blanket. I’m shaking but I’m not cold, and my feet and hands start to tingle and I find I can’t breathe. I hear a male voice: “Take it easy, son, you’re hyperventilating. You have to take deep breaths, slowly now, slowly.” He keeps repeating it again and again until I start to listen to him.

  It’s hard to do as he says and I struggle to slow my labored breathing. His voice is strong but calm, and eventually my breathing returns to something like normal. The tingling fades from my hands and feet. A warm cup is pressed into my hands; it’s tea, hot and sweet. I sip cautiously, not trusting that the liquid will stay down. It does. The billiard balls of sounds stop skittering around, and now I can hear Gran and Mike and the registrar.

  “I told you it wasn’t advisable,” the registrar is saying.

  “It had to be done,” Gran says. “He wouldn’t believe it until he saw her. I know.” I like the way Gran’s taking charge. “And don’t talk to me about sudden, violent death, young man. I lived in Northern Ireland. I can tell you a few things!”

  That seems to shut him up.

  “Has a priest been called?” Gran continues.

  “Not yet. We have ministers of religion affiliated to the hospital. Would you like me to make a call?”

  “No one’s administered last rites?”

  “No, we leave the family to arrange that.”

  Gran places her hand on my arm; it’s warm on my cold skin.

  “Jason, I’m going to call Father Peter. There are people here to look after you. I’ll be back soon.”

  I nod, or think I nod. The tears have dried but I’m exhausted, as if I’ve run all the way to the hospital. The cup of tea is taken from my hand. I blink to clear the fuzziness in my eyes. I’m in another family room like the one upstairs. I’m in the corner, in an armchair while Mike stands by the door, talking to the registrar. There is a nurse beside me.

  “There are tissues here,” she says, pointing to a box on the table next to me. “I’ll look in on you from time to time. Try to rest. You’ve had an awful shock.”

  Shock is right but rest is impossible. The emergency department is busy, even in the closing hours of the night, and Gran is gone for ages. The nurses come in regularly and check on me and ask me if I want anything. The one thing I want is what they can’t give me: Mum, alive and well.

  Gran comes back just as the sun is rising and a dull light comes in through the window, making her grey hair look even greyer. Her eyes are bloodshot and her face pale.

  “Let’s go home,” she says.

  “Did Father Peter come?” I ask.

  “Yes, he’ll see me tomorrow about the arrangements for the funeral.”

  “And Dad? How is he?” I ask. My voice is a croak. I’m afraid of the answer.

  “Still the same. He’s holding his own. We’ll have to wait and see.”

  Mike offers to take us home. The city is awake and on the move. It takes us some time to make our way home through the early morning traffic, and when we pull into the driveway of my house I know there’s something wrong: the front door’s ajar. We closed it behind us when we left earlier. Mike notices it too.

  “Stay in the car,” he says. He talks into his radio before he gets out, asking for assistance, and we stay in the back seat of his car while he approaches the open door, taking his gun from its holster as he approaches.

  He pushes it open, standing to one side as it swings inward, and then disappears inside, his gun leading the way. Mike was in the army before he joined the police, and I know he can handle whatever or whoever is inside. He’s gone for only few minutes before a marked police car pulls into our driveway. Gran and I climb out of Mike’s car as he comes out of the house, the gun now holstered.

  He walks toward the uniformed officers and says, “It’s a mess,” as he shakes his head. He looks over to us and sighs. “It looks like a break-in. You’d better have a look, tell us what’s missing. Just don’t touch anything.”

  Gran goes in first, but stops in the hallway as she can’t go further without tripping over something. Her face, already strained, goes white. I step around her and see for the first time the mess that our house is in.

  It looks like a tornado has gone through and flung everything to the floor: plants, mirrors, frames, books, the ornaments over the fireplace; cushions torn and covers ripped. The kitchen is worse. I know Mum will freak when she sees it and then I sob when I realize she never will. Every cupboard in the kitchen has been emptied; there’s crockery and glasses all over the floor. Mum liked everything neat and tidy and now everything is out of its place, like me, thrown suddenly into chaos. I leave the kitchen with Mike shadowing me, and I go slowly up the stairs, while trying to keep my tears in check, fearful of what I will find at the top.

  They have desecrated my parents’ room. Everything from the cupboard is on the floor, the drawers emptied, my mother’s jewelry scattered. Even the spare room, where Gran sleeps when she stays over, has been wrecked.

  I don’t want to go into my room. Mike stands behind me with his hand on my shoulder as I push open the door with my fingertips. It’s trashed; CDs on the floor with their cases smashed, my cupboard emptied, old toys on the floor, s
choolbooks emptied from my schoolbag. A T-shirt is ripped and lying on the bed. It’s one Mum brought back from Las Vegas when she and Dad went for a wedding anniversary weekend. I feel sick again and tears are blurring my vision. My heart is ripped in two and now our house is ripped apart too.

  “The bastards,” Mike says. “As if you guys don’t have enough to deal with already.”

  “Who would have done this?”

  “Who knows? Did you lock the door when you left?”

  “Gran was last out – I think she did.”

  “Don’t you worry, Jason, I’ll get the bastards who did this. Come on, let’s go back downstairs.”

  My legs hardly seem able to support the weight of my body as we make our way down the stairs. At the bottom is my father’s study, and this appears to be the worst-affected room. Like the other rooms, everything’s taken from the cupboard and bookshelves but here the destruction is total – they even took a hammer to the computer and bashed it into pieces. My photos and music were in there, along with all my email contacts, and my homework – a big assignment due in at the end of term. Not that I really care about homework right now but even that has gone, destroyed, like my life. I turn and walk along the passage and out through the front door into the weak winter morning sunshine, where I join Gran beside the car.

  “Anything missing?” Mike asks.

  I try to picture what the place looked like just a few hours ago, but I can’t think of anything – even with the mess, our TV, sound system, PlayStation, jewelry are all still there. The computer