Whiskey & Charlie

by Annabel Smith

  Juliet moved closer. She took his hand. “If it’s not too late for you and Whiskey, it’s not too late for us either. Don’t you think we could give it another go?”

  Charlie shook his head. “I’ve been walking on eggshells for two months. I can’t live like this anymore. All this wait and see, with Whiskey and now with you. I can’t do it.”

  Juliet started to cry again, pressed the tea towel into her face until she’d composed herself. “I know these last few weeks must have been unbearable for you. I’ve been so unforgiving. I said I’d give us a chance, but I wasn’t really. I’m sorry for that, Charlie, I really am. But I feel different now. I don’t want us to end. I don’t know what I’d do without you, Charlie.”

  It would be Charlie, not Juliet, who would really be lost if they ended. Beautiful Juliet. She wouldn’t need to worry. She would have suitors queuing up around the block. She would meet someone handsome and charming, infinitely easier to deal with than Charlie, someone without any comatose or long-lost siblings, someone who could really love her as she deserved to be loved.

  “You’d be better off without me, Jules. You’d meet someone else.”

  Juliet pressed his hand. “I don’t want anyone else. I want us.”

  “Do you really think it can work, after everything that’s happened?”

  She nodded.

  Charlie couldn’t believe it. He pulled Juliet into him and held her and held her and held her. He didn’t understand it, he couldn’t think of what he had done to deserve it, but somehow he had been given another chance—one last chance to make things right.

  And maybe, just maybe, he would get it right this time.

  * * *

  It is a few days before Charlie feels capable of facing Thomas again. In those days, the implications of Whiskey’s situation, which have for a long time seemed extraordinarily complicated, come to seem quite simple, for Charlie at least. The best-case scenario means Charlie has to face up to the part he has played in the breakdown of his relationship with Whiskey, and work to change it. In the worst-case scenario—the one in which Whiskey dies—Charlie still has to face up to the part he’s played, but in that scenario, there is no opportunity to make amends.

  It’s common when someone dies, Thomas tells him, for people to have misgivings about things they did or didn’t do while that person was alive. Even people who had mostly harmonious relationships with the deceased can feel guilt or regret, sometimes for things that happened years earlier, things that have long since been forgiven and forgotten. Those who are religiously inclined might share these regrets with a priest—speaking them aloud brings relief, and the priest can offer absolution.

  “What if you don’t believe in confession?” Charlie asks.

  “Those who don’t believe in confession—in the strictly religious sense—often unconsciously find someone else to confess to, usually the person they perceive as being closest to the person who has died. In your case, this would be…”

  “Rosa,” Charlie says without even needing to think about it.

  “Subconsciously, you might think Rosa can offer absolution on behalf of Whiskey. But she can’t. By confessing to Rosa, you’d be giving yourself the relief of speaking these things aloud. But at the same time, you’d be passing the burden on to Rosa.”

  “Then who should I confess to?”

  Thomas doesn’t answer this question.

  “I have to say whatever I need to now, while Whiskey’s still alive,” Charlie says eventually.

  “It would be better, don’t you think?”

  “What if he can’t hear me?”

  “As you know, there’s a lot of evidence to suggest that people in comas can hear. In Whiskey’s case, we may never know. But try thinking of it like this: What if he can hear you and you don’t say it?”

  “So if he can hear me and he wakes up…”

  “Then you’ll have a head start with sorting things out.”

  “And if he wakes up but he hasn’t heard me?”

  “Then you’ve had a practice run.”

  “The glass is always half-full with you, isn’t it?” Charlie says.

  “I don’t think miserable bastards are in high demand as counselors,” Thomas says mildly. “So when do you think you might talk to Whiskey?” he asks.

  “I suppose it doesn’t matter exactly when. As long as I do it before…before it’s too late.”

  “I’m sure you’ve considered this,” Thomas says after a pause, “but you might not get any advance warning.”

  “You mean it might happen suddenly?”

  Thomas nods.

  “I just want to wait until…I feel more ready.”

  “Do you think you’ll ever be truly ready?”

  “Probably not.”

  “I’ve got a theory,” Thomas says, “that there are some things in life we never feel ready for, that it’s only by doing them that we become ready.”

  Victor

  After Whiskey’s accident, a social worker at the hospital had told Rosa, Charlie, Mike, and their mother about Coma Support. Charlie remembered it, because it was Boxing Day, though it was not like any other Boxing Day he had known. When Whiskey had been in a coma for four weeks, the social worker had told them then, there was only a small possibility of him making a full recovery. Coma Support was a charitable organization where they could receive counseling from qualified therapists and meet the family members of other coma victims who might be facing similar challenges. At that stage, Charlie had not been interested in counseling. He had no desire whatsoever to share his feelings about Whiskey with a complete stranger or, worse still, a room full of strangers. Back then, Charlie had wanted to know what was meant by a small possibility. He had wanted to understand what constituted a full recovery, what a partial recovery entailed.

  After he was given the answers to these questions, he had wished he hadn’t asked. It would have been easier to get through those weeks and months since then without the knowledge that Whiskey’s chance of a complete recovery was 15 percent, that there was, therefore, an 85 percent chance the coma would affect his physical, mental, or behavioral functioning, that he might have problems with understanding or communicating, that his social or emotional skills might be impaired, that he might suffer from depression or anxiety or have difficulty maintaining personal relationships. Hearing this, Charlie had begun to understand just how much he was asking. Because he had wanted so much more than just for Whiskey to wake up. He had wanted him to defy all the statistics, to wake up and still be Whiskey. And after only four weeks, the chance of that had already been so very, very small it had seemed almost impossible to bear.

  x x x

  Charlie’s mother was the only one who had taken advantage of the services offered at Coma Support. She had made a decision that she did not want to attend the group sessions, she told Charlie, once she understood that she would come into contact with people there whose family members had never recovered from comas or those whose loved ones had emerged as different people. Charlie did not need his mother to explain that, in the beginning, she was not yet ready to accept either of these possibilities for Whiskey. She had opted instead for weekly one-on-one counseling with a psychologist named Victor.

  Victor had recommended books for her to read, one of which she had passed on to Charlie, titled Living with Coma: The Cycle of Hope and Despair. Charlie hadn’t even opened the book. Just reading the title felt overwhelming to him. Once he had come home from work to find Juliet reading it, making notes in her pointy handwriting on a scrap of paper. Later, he had found the page down the side of the couch when he was looking for the remote control. Family members and friends may wish to make amends for perceived misdeeds and suffer because they are unable to, she had written. Charlie screwed the paper up and threw it away.

  After six months, Charlie’s mother had told him she had starte
d attending the group sessions at Coma Support. Once or twice, she had asked Charlie to go with her, but he had said he was seeing Thomas, and she had not pressed him. Now eight months had passed, and she made a special request, not only of Charlie, but of Juliet and Mike as well, that they come with her to speak to Victor. Since they all accepted that there always had to be someone with Whiskey at the hospital, even now that the chance of a change in his condition was remote, it was understood that Rosa would not come to meet Victor. But Charlie’s mother said, for all of them, Victor had something to say that they all needed to hear.

  x x x

  Charlie and Juliet picked up Mike on the way. They were all silent in the car. Charlie tried to imagine what pearls of wisdom awaited them, what sage advice of Victor’s seemed so valuable that their mother wanted them all to hear it. He was dubious that a person who had never been in their position could have anything enlightening to say about it. Juliet said if it was important to their mother, they should go.

  The address Charlie’s mother had given him was that of a grand old house in Camberwell, set back from the road, with a driveway bordered by dense rhododendron bushes. They climbed the stairs, followed the signs for Coma Support down a long, narrow hallway. His mother was already there, sitting with a man who could only be Victor, in a room with molded plastic chairs and a sign on the door saying Group Therapy. When Charlie’s mother introduced them, Victor made a point of shaking hands with each of them before ushering them into chairs. Charlie sat opposite the window, with a view of the driveway, the rhododendrons. He noticed a book on the coffee table in the center of the circle of chairs: Clutching at Straws: The Tyranny of Hope in the Face of Terminal Illness.

  Victor had the bland, unassuming manner Charlie expected of a counselor. Physically, he made no impression at all: neither tall nor short, without glasses, a beard, or any other distinguishing features. Later, Charlie would not be able to recall the color of his eyes or hair, the clothes he was wearing. There was nothing about him that made him stand out from any other middle-aged man, except for a shuffling, pigeon-toed walk Charlie noticed when Victor got up to shut the window. When he began to speak, he had, not quite a stutter, but a way of nibbling the edges off his words before he managed to spit them out that gave his speech a sense of hesitation.

  It was this apparent lack of confidence in his own words that made Victor’s point—when he finally arrived at it—all the more shocking and unexpected. He began, predictably enough, by discussing the emotional states a family member of a coma victim could expect to experience. He spoke of anger and denial, depression and guilt, the confusion that hope could bring to the equation. He quoted Emily Dickinson—Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul—a line from a poem Charlie recognized from his studies in American literature. Victor did not acknowledge the quote, Charlie noticed, probably hoping to pass it off as his own.

  Charlie thought about his hopes for Whiskey, the hopes Rosa, his mother, and Mike had shared with him. In the beginning, they had all hoped for the same thing: that Whiskey would wake from his coma in hours or days, completely unscathed save for the physical wounds from his accident. As the months passed and the likelihood of Whiskey making a perfect comeback became ever slimmer, they had hoped variously that any damage sustained might be physical rather than mental, that his fine motor skills might be impaired, but not his sense of humor, that though he might be confined to a wheelchair, he would still be able to do the work he loved. Or, they had hoped if his memory was damaged—if, for example, he could not make new memories—that he would be able to retrieve the memories he had already stored in his mind, that at the very least, Whiskey would remember who they were, what they meant to him. Charlie was the only one who did not hope for this last thing, though he never said so, not even to Juliet. Sometimes, Charlie hoped for the opposite, that Whiskey would wake with no memories of Charlie at all, not a single recollection of their messy, tangled history. He would be told Charlie was his identical twin brother, and looking at old photos, he would accept that it was true. Then Charlie would create a new history for the two of them, manufacture new memories in which, prior to Whiskey’s accident, indeed throughout their lives, they had been the best of friends.

  Charlie understood what Victor meant when he spoke of hope being tied to unrealistic expectations and unfounded beliefs. But he began to feel uncomfortable when Victor said that while they probably thought of it as what was sustaining them, it was actually holding them back, preventing them from apprehending and accepting the reality of Whiskey’s situation. And then he said the words that snatched the air out of Charlie’s lungs.

  “The best thing you can do for William now, and indeed for yourselves, is to let go of your hope, to grant William his freedom. That’s why your mother wanted you to come here today. So we can begin to talk about the possibility of turning off William’s life support.”

  Charlie looked at his mother in disbelief, waiting for her to cry out against Victor’s words. But she did not. She sat perfectly still, her eyes on Victor’s face, avoiding Charlie’s eyes.

  “I realize this may come as a surprise to you at first,” Victor said, each of the words getting caught in his teeth before being dislodged. “But I think once you get over the shock, you’ll see, as Elaine has come to see, that this would be an act of mercy and the best possible decision you could make, both for your own sakes, and for William’s.”

  “What about Rosa?” Juliet asked. “Surely this would be Rosa’s decision, if it was anyone’s?”

  “In a legal sense, you’re absolutely right. But this is a decision too great for one person to take responsibility for, a burden that can be lightened by being shared. If you can be united about this as a family, you can work together to help Rosa make the decision that’s best for William.”

  “But Rosa’s a Catholic,” Juliet persisted. “She would never agree to this—it wouldn’t matter what we said.”

  “Juliet’s right,” Mike said. “Rosa believes this is in God’s hands.”

  “Let’s not worry about Rosa right now,” Victor said. “It would be more helpful to work through your own emotions at this stage. Once you’ve reached some clarity in your own feelings, you’ll be in a better position to think about how to approach Rosa.”

  There was a stunned silence. Victor took the opportunity to suggest that they might start by thinking about how they wanted to say good-bye, what, if anything, they wanted to say before they let William go. He said it might help to start talking about his funeral, about what sort of ceremony might be a fitting way to honor his life and death, about what he might have wanted; that they might even start thinking about what they would say at the funeral—if they wanted to speak—how best to describe the person they had known and loved.

  Charlie looked at Mike, who seemed to be bracing himself against Victor’s words, pushing against the floor, against the back of his chair, his face red with the exertion. Charlie did not need to look at Juliet to know she was crying. He wanted to reach out for her, to touch her, to hold on to something he could trust in, but he found he could not move, that his blood had turned to lead.

  It was Juliet who broke the spell. “I don’t think we should even be talking about this. I’m sure it’s not what Rosa would want.”

  “It’s very thoughtful of you to say that, Juliet,” Victor said obsequiously. “And I know you mean well. But Rosa is in no position, emotionally speaking, to make this decision.”

  “With all due respect,” Mike said, “you’ve never even met Rosa. What do you think gives you the right to make a judgment about her emotional state, her ability to make a decision like this?”

  In the eight months Charlie had known Mike, he had never heard him raise his voice. Seeing him on the verge of losing his temper, defending the wife of a brother he had never met, Charlie felt a rush of love for him that roused him from his stupor.

  “I can’t be
lieve you brought us here to listen to this,” he said to his mother.

  “I know it’s a shock,” she said. “When Victor first suggested it to me, I felt exactly the same as you do now.”

  “You can’t have felt the way I do,” Charlie flared, “or you wouldn’t have come back. You certainly wouldn’t have invited the rest of us here to rope us into your sick plans.”

  “Let’s all try to calm down,” Victor said. “It’s natural that you feel upset right now, Charlie, but it won’t help to get angry. Your mother’s told me a great deal about your relationship with William. I can understand that you feel you’ve got a lot to lose by turning off William’s life support—the chance to make amends, to heal the rift. Try to think beyond what’s best for you to what’s best for William. Turning off the machines is the most wonderful gift you can give your brother now, the kindest act—a way of forgiving and being forgiven that will bring peace to you as much as to him.”

  Charlie rose abruptly from his chair and turned on Victor. “How dare you!” he bellowed. “How dare you presume to tell us what we should feel, what we should do, what’s best for us!” He kicked at the legs of the chair, sent it dancing back against the wall. “You don’t know us, you don’t know Rosa, and you certainly don’t know Whiskey. You call this support, do you? Persuading your clients to kill off the people they love? What’s in it for you? Some kind of kickback for saving insurance companies’ money? A commission for every machine you switch off? What you’re saying is bullshit. It’s total fucking bullshit.”

  Juliet stood up, put her hand on Charlie’s shoulder. She looked at Mike. He stood up.

  “It’s too much,” Mike said. “I’m sorry, Elaine.” He didn’t call her Mum because, as he had told Charlie, he still thought of the woman he had buried in Canada as his mother. Charlie could not even bring himself to look at her as he left the room.