The Devil's Dice

by Roz Watkins

  ‘I’ve never seen this side of you.’ I felt ready to cry. ‘I always thought you stuck to the law.’

  ‘You have to use your own judgement or you can end up like the Nazis.’

  I swallowed and pictured Hannah sitting in her wheelchair, her lips tight as she told me people would think she wasn’t worth the medical costs. ‘But wouldn’t old people or disabled people feel obliged to… you know… go. To save their relatives having to care for them?’

  ‘We don’t want to make it routine, love. We’re happy that you’d have to apply for a court order. But at the moment, the judges’ hands are tied by the law. And besides, now people feel obliged to stay alive, because they don’t want their relatives to be prosecuted for murder if they help them die.’

  My mouth was dry. ‘Gran?’

  Mum went totally still. ‘If she asks.’ It was so quiet I could hear her breathing. ‘If she really wants it.’

  I took a long, slow breath. ‘So, what’s your role?’

  ‘I mainly talk to the applicants and their families. See if they meet our criteria and then if we agree to help them, I make sure they do it right. Get a video or something in writing making it crystal clear how ill they are and that they really, really want to be dead. We give it a while, check they don’t change their mind. Videos are good. We keep copies of them all as evidence.’

  I stood and walked to the window. ‘I can’t believe you’ve been doing all this. Secretly, without telling me.’

  ‘I might have told you if you hadn’t been in the police.’

  I stared at the autumn leaves swirling above the lawn, defying gravity. I thought about the times I’d felt the darkness come over me. The desperation to be done with it all, to choose oblivion over pain. ‘What about mentally ill people? Do you help them?’

  ‘No, we refer them on to people who can help them get better. Besides, we don’t help people who can easily get themselves to Beachy Head and jump off. We’re just giving people who can’t physically do it the same rights you or I have. If you want to commit suicide, you can do it.’ I turned and looked at her, feeling myself blush. Her eyes flicked to mine and I looked away again. ‘It’s not illegal. Why deny that right to someone who’s paralysed?’

  I opened my mouth, but realised I had nothing to say.

  ‘Would you watch some videos?’ Mum said.

  ‘That fence panel’s come off again. Remind me to sort it at the weekend.’

  ‘Come on, love. I’ll make some coffee.’

  I moved away from the window and trailed after Mum. She unlocked the office, ferried me in and sat me in front of her monitor. She unlocked a sturdy metal cabinet and fished out a DVD, which she stuck into the computer.

  ‘Watch that. I’ll be back in a minute.’

  A video played. A man lay in a single bed in a small, white-painted room. His head was propped on pillows and a computer screen perched on a cantilever a couple of feet in front of his face. He was so still he looked like a photograph.

  A woman sat on a small chair by the bed. Lank hair tangled around sharp cheeks and hollow eyes. She spoke softly. ‘He’s only forty-six. He had a stroke three years ago. He’s completely paralysed.’

  I couldn’t see Mum but heard her voice. ‘And your husband wants to die?’

  ‘Yes.’ The woman’s voice rasped as if she’d been shouting. ‘He wants it to be legal but we can’t afford to go to court. Besides, we’ve seen the other cases. We wouldn’t win. I just want a doctor to help us – you know – do it the best way so he doesn’t suffer.’ She wiped her face. ‘He can’t even talk. Only move his eyes.’

  ‘So, Steven, can I ask you, are you absolutely sure you want to die?’ Mum’s voice had exactly the right mix of compassion and practicality.

  The man’s eyes flicked to the screen. The camera followed them. A cursor moved between groups of letters, directed by the man’s gaze. It was slow.

  A robotic voice spoke. ‘Y… E… Yes’. The tone of the voice was smug and inappropriate, as if it was pleased with itself for getting it right. The man’s words appeared on the screen. I could see yes, plus words he must have said previously. Cant go on shit life they should try it not worth living no pressure my decision had enough.

  The camera scanned back to the man’s face. I could hardly imagine his frustration but of course there was little expression on his face – he couldn’t move his muscles. Only his eyes flicked to and fro. The shot zoomed in to his right eye. I looked deep into it and felt a terrible heaviness in my centre. I blinked back tears.

  The camera scanned around the room, to the piles of painkillers, the rubber gloves, the drip, the label on the Nimbus advanced dynamic flotation system, and back to the woman, who was openly crying now. ‘I want to keep him alive,’ she said. ‘But it’s for my own sake, not his. How can I know what he’s going through every day? I have to respect his decision.’

  The robotic voice spoke again. ‘Please … Let … Me … Die.’

  ‘He wants me to take his tube out.’ The camera focussed on the woman’s face, her rough skin, her expression of despair. ‘But I don’t want him to die like that. I want his last thoughts, his last dreams, to be of good times he had, of loved ones, not of thirst and desperation and fear.’

  I jumped. Mum pushed the office door open, two cups in her hands. She placed them on the desk and stopped the video.

  I picked up a coffee mug and swirled the hot drink around pointlessly. ‘Did you help him die?’

  Chapter 33

  We moved to the kitchen and sat nursing our coffees.

  I sent Jai a text to say I had a family crisis and would be late. He replied immediately.

  No prob. We’ve got Felix. Search team found his glove near where Beth died. Will keep you posted.

  ‘Well, it’s good news on that,’ I said to Mum. ‘I think we’ve got the bugger.’

  ‘You should go in to work.’

  Part of me desperately wanted to go in; this was the good bit. We’d finally got Felix.

  ‘They can handle it without me,’ I said. ‘You need to tell me what’s been going on with Tithonus. Did you help that poor man die?’

  ‘No. He’s still alive.’

  ‘Oh, God.’ He was still there, now, in that bed, unable to talk, unable to move, desperate to die. He couldn’t even shout or scream.

  ‘We always wait at least a month and go back to make sure they feel the same way. He was why I went to Chester. You realised Sheila next door didn’t really borrow the sat nav. I’ll have to visit him again before we give the go-ahead.’

  ‘Mum…’ I wiped my eyes aggressively. ‘I’m not sure I can think about him still there like that. It’s too much.’

  I couldn’t explain. It was like when people shared pictures on Facebook of dogs in a lorry in Korea, all rammed together, all innocent and terrified, waiting to be tortured and killed. Or a pig in a crate so small it couldn’t turn round for its whole life, just so people could eat cheap bacon. Or little girls in countries where they were mutilated by their own mothers and grandmothers, and married at age twelve. And it was too much, and I’d get this feeling that I couldn’t bear it, the weight of all that suffering pressing down on me, and that’s when things would start spiralling into a vortex, and I had to catch myself, or I didn’t know how far I’d go. I wanted to tell Mum all this but the words wouldn’t come. So I just said, ‘What will happen if the group gets closed down?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘But it’s illegal?’

  ‘Yes, nobody can legally help him kill himself.’

  I took a sip of burning coffee. ‘Are all the videos that bad?’

  Mum looked into my eyes. ‘They’re pretty awful. Do you want to see more?’

  ‘Not right now.’ I hugged my warm mug between my hands. ‘I know it’s a weird time for one, but could I have a bath?’

  *

  I lay in the comforting water. Steam sat heavily in the warm air, fragranced with Mum’s eucalyptus bath o
il. I reached forward to turn the hot tap, then flopped back, remembering something from the book The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, dictated (astonishingly) by a man who could only blink one eyelid. He’d talked about his nostalgia for the baths of his former life, when he’d soaked for hours, manoeuvring the taps with his toes. I imagined the horror of being bathed by a nurse, unable to move or talk, recalling a previous life taken completely for granted. How did a person cope with that? The answer was they had no choice. They were imprisoned, without even the ultimate option of choosing to die. I couldn’t face watching the videos. Lucky me. I could walk away.

  And then there was Carrie. Deep down, I’d still been blaming myself – that was clear. But if she’d been asking to die, maybe it wasn’t my fault after all?

  Memories flicked in front of my eyes like photographs in an album. The early years were in colour – the BC (before cancer) years. Images of Carrie and me, Mum and Dad, happy and normal. Dad swinging me around, me laughing like a maniac, with no idea how precious it was. Then the cancer years, in sepia tones. Hospital corridors, drips, sick buckets, doctors with their sad, sympathetic faces. Mum crying, Dad withdrawn, me in the background, being quiet for Carrie. Finally, the AD years. Black and white.

  As I watched the memory images, I gently experimented with the possibility that it wasn’t my fault. Tried lifting the guilt, to see what life would be like. For a few seconds, I was infused with a strange lightness, but then the guilt came flooding back over me. I didn’t even know who I was without it. I sank into the hot water and closed my eyes.

  *

  I padded downstairs, warm from my bath, and found Mum in the living room. She’d taken one of the chairs and moved it so she could stare at the off-white wall as if it was a cinema screen.

  I sat on the sofa – the same one we’d had when I was a child, with worn arms and a musty smell that reminded me of evenings in front of the TV.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I said.

  ‘I find it calms my mind.’ She swallowed. ‘The nothingness of the wall.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘But then you notice it’s not really nothingness at all. You think it’s just white but there’s colours and contours in it if you look deeply enough.’

  The soft light passed through the bay window from the garden and shimmered on Mum’s wall, giving it a pink glow.

  ‘Are you alright, Mum?’

  ‘White’s a funny colour. All colours and none.’

  ‘How did it all start? You getting involved with this Tithonus group?’

  She took a breath that went right into her stomach. ‘After your sister died, you know, I kept blaming myself. If we’d only listened to her, she—’

  ‘But you weren’t to know, Mum. I blamed myself too. I never told you.’

  She snapped her head round. ‘Why on earth should you blame yourself?’

  I stared down at my fingers. Long, piano player’s fingers, but I’d never learnt to play the piano. ‘I said something terrible.’

  Mum rose from her wall-viewing chair and sat next to me on the sofa. She tucked her feet under her so she was facing half towards me. ‘Come on, Meg, nothing you said would have made any difference. You were only ten.’

  ‘I know.’ The dull thunk of the dishwasher churned away in the kitchen. ‘It doesn’t matter, Mum. Tell me about Tithonus.’

  ‘What were you going to say? Why did you feel guilty?’

  Oh lord, why had I said that? A prickly sickness came over me. Could I really tell her? I rubbed my fingers on the worn cloth of the sofa, back and forward, forward and back.

  ‘Go on, Meg. Tell me. And I’ll tell you all about Tithonus.’

  I felt a weird exhilaration. The sickness subsided. I spoke quickly before the feeling deserted me, looking at the wall again. ‘Sometimes I hated her.’ My voice sounded calm and unnatural, as if it was coming from somewhere far away. ‘I was so jealous. I wished I was ill instead of her.’

  Mum clutched the sofa as if afraid she’d blow away. She reached forward and touched my arm with her fingertips. ‘Oh, Meg, I’m sorry.’

  ‘She got all the attention. I had to be quiet, be good, I was invisible after she got ill.’

  ‘It was impossible for us to get it right,’ Mum whispered. ‘I know. I know. I told her…’

  ‘Go on, Meg, it doesn’t matter. It won’t have made any difference.’

  ‘I told her…’

  It was like standing on the edge of a cliff, watching the waves crashing on the rocks below. I was ready to jump. I took a deep, gasping breath. ‘I said I wished she’d just hurry up and die.’

  Mum moved up the sofa and gently touched my arm. She pulled me to her and held me tight.

  ‘I couldn’t stop thinking about it all day at school.’ I spoke into Mum’s shoulder. ‘I rushed home to tell her I didn’t mean it. And that was the day…’

  ‘Oh no.’ Mum moved away slightly and held me at arm’s length. The air between us felt brittle, like it could smash. ‘Oh, no, Meg, no.’

  ‘That was the day.’ I pressed my hands to my face. ‘She did it because of me.’

  Mum held me again, briefly, then sat back and looked at me. She took a tissue from her pocket and blew her nose loudly. ‘No, she didn’t. It wasn’t because of you. She’d been talking about it for a while. We should have taken her seriously. She was sick of being ill, it was only getting worse. There was nothing more the doctors could do. She’d had enough, Meg.’

  ‘Have you got another tissue?’

  She foraged in her pocket and passed me a scrap of toilet paper. I took a deep breath and blew my nose.

  ‘We should have listened to her,’ Mum said. ‘If she’d known we’d help her… when she was ready. She wouldn’t have had to do it herself.’

  ‘Could you really… you know, have done that?’

  ‘Maybe not. But we should have at least considered it.’

  ‘She didn’t say goodbye.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I’ve always hated goodbyes. I prefer to just sneak away.’

  ‘Well, that’s what she did I suppose. She sneaked away.’

  I rose and walked to the bay window. Stared at the velvet autumn lawn. I felt that peculiar lightness again.

  ‘Can we get a coffee, Mum?’

  ‘Yes of course.’ She jumped up and we moved to the kitchen.

  I sat at the table. ‘You’d better tell me how you got involved with Tithonus.’ It was easier to talk in here with the noise of the dishwasher dulling our words.

  Mum made instant coffees and placed them gently on the table. No mats again. ‘Please don’t blame yourself, Meg. Is this what it’s been about? Why you’ve been so… down?’

  I sighed. The weight inside me had already lightened. ‘I think so.’

  ‘She was dying anyway, Meg. I know that sounds brutal, but it’s the truth. You’re alive, and I love you, and I don’t want you to feel bad.’

  ‘But Mum…’

  ‘What she did – it was horrific. But think about the alternative. For her. And then decide if it was such a terrible thing. Or if maybe it was a blessing.’

  My mind swirled and churned, trying to make sense of everything. Could it be a blessing to die? ‘Tell me about Tithonus. Please?’

  ‘Afterwards,’ she said, ‘I needed something to focus on. I started thinking about it and looking into it. Whether it’s right to help someone die. If that’s what they really want. I wrote an article for a magazine, about our experiences with Carrie.’

  ‘Really? And you never told me or Dad?’

  ‘No. And then I suppose I just forgot about it and got on with life. Then when I moved here, I heard rumours that the doctors at that surgery had a reputation for, you know, helping people, when they were ready.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Anyway, I mentioned it to Kate Webster but of course she wouldn’t tell me anything. Pretended she didn’t know what I was talking about. So I told her about Carrie and showed her the
article I’d written years earlier. Said I supported her. Said if there was anything I could do to help, to let me know. I wasn’t expecting it to come to anything, I just wanted her to know she had… Oh I don’t know, that I was behind what she was doing.’

  ‘And, what, she asked you to be part of her group?’

  ‘No. Not at first. We kept in touch. The group sort of evolved. We all have to be very careful.’

  ‘How many people have you helped to die?’

  Mum tapped her fingers on the pine table. ‘Not that many. Quite a few have the drugs but haven’t taken them.’

  ‘But what’ll happen to you if you get found out?’

  ‘It’s okay, Meg. I know you have to report this.’

  ‘You won’t go to prison, will you? You’ve only helped people who were dying anyway. I know it’s illegal but judges are lenient, aren’t they?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. You can’t risk your career. You have to tell your boss about this.’

  ‘Just tell me what you think will happen.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know for sure.’ She looked at the table. ‘It’s not… It’s not that clear cut. We’ve helped some people who weren’t terminally ill. A young man paralysed in a rugby game, a deaf man who was going blind.’

  ‘But how did you know they wouldn’t change their minds in the future?’

  ‘We didn’t. Not with absolute certainty. Mark’s vet says to pet owners, Better a month too early than a day too late. It’s better to prevent suffering than to prolong life for the sake of it. And I agree.’

  ‘With animals, yes. But, for people… Oh, I don’t know, Mum. Not everyone’s going to agree with you there.’

  ‘I know. And, well, there’s another thing that complicates it.’

  ‘What, Mum, tell me?’

  A red flush crept up her neck to her face. ‘A few people have left money in their wills. To Kate.’

  ‘Money? Why just Kate? Why not all of you?’

  ‘I don’t really know. I guess she befriended them more. She says she’s going to give it away. But it looks bad. It looks bad for the whole group. If you did this for personal gain, a judge would take a dim view, obviously. Not that Kate did. It’s just how it looks.’