But the next morning, she would be fighting back the tears once again, trying to find a way to talk herself into thinking that there was a future, that the rest of their lives wouldn’t be this post-quake hell. Where they were now felt like the end of the line.
The Bubble
August 2014
Charlotte had promised her mother she would spend the afternoon studying, and she had intended to keep that promise. Truly. After school, she had gone straight home, made herself a cup of hot chocolate and some Marmite and cheese on crackers, then settled down to work on her geography assessment. She had chosen geography for the afternoon because it was the one subject she was still marginally interested in. But she couldn’t get into it and instead of forcing herself to concentrate, she did the prep for dinner. Once she had chopped vegetables and had chicken marinating in the fridge, she went for a drive.
Charlotte finally had her restricted licence, which meant she could drive by herself. Without her restricted licence, she had been stuck relying on public transport to get anywhere, which could be downright dodgy after the sun went down.
Perhaps out of guilt at neglecting their remaining child, her parents had helped her to buy a little bomb to run around in, an ancient Toyota Corolla that wasn’t flash, but did the job, got her to and from school each day, to the supermarket and the shops, to wherever she wanted to go. But never to the mall, Charlotte shuddered at the thought of becoming one of those girls who hung out at the mall doing nothing. No, she preferred to drive around the city and see if anything had changed, then up around the suburbs, up the hills, practising using her gears properly, because Augustus – her little Toyota Corolla – had a manual transmission. Her mother had said she should get an automatic, but she couldn’t afford something newer, even with their help. After all, she was supposed to ‘focus on her studies’ and an after school or weekend job was forbidden. That meant the only money she had to put towards the car was what she had earned waitressing over the summer. Her father said a manual was a good idea, that would mean Charlotte would be able to drive any car. He also said that naming the car was ridiculous, cars were meant to take people from place to place, they weren’t friends or family members and shouldn’t have names. But Augustus was her friend, a friend who helped her escape from her lonely home life.
Charlotte wasn’t doing well at school, but she kept that to herself in case her parents pinned the blame on Augustus and took him away from her. When she was at school, she was finding it hard to pay attention to what she was being taught. It wasn’t just one subject she was finding difficult, it was all of them. And this difficulty focussing was starting to worry her. It was keeping her awake at night, and even after she did manage to fall asleep, she would wake early and worry about what she had not yet managed to learn to her satisfaction.
Driving was when she felt free, like there was something new and exciting in her life, and driving around the city was always an adventure. Roadworks were everywhere, and a street she might be able to go down one day would be blocked off the next or reduced to one lane. The traffic patterns were the only thing that changed about the city, there seemed to be little in the way of demolition any more. And although 2014 was supposed to be the year the actual rebuild really took off, not much was happening. There wasn’t much in the way of buildings going up, just empty land occasionally interrupted by a stray building.
People were getting frustrated about their homes. Well, more frustrated, people had started getting seriously frustrated as far back as 2012, after the quakes had stopped and the insurers no longer had the excuse of ongoing seismic activity to prevent repairs and rebuilds from going ahead. There had been an article in The Press a few days earlier about how much trouble people were having getting their insurance claims settled. The article was talking about trouble with private insurers, and although Charlotte’s mother talked a lot about how much better their situation would be if only they could get overcap, it sounded like people who were overcap were having just as much trouble as those still stuck with EQC. Charlotte was starting to see her mother’s desire to finally get overcap as a fantasy she was clinging to, something to make her life bearable. What would happen when that bubble burst? Charlotte needed to get through the school year and go on to university next year, preferably one that was away from Christchurch, because she didn’t want to be around when her mother discovered that dealing with their private insurer was just as bad as trying to deal with EQC.
Charlotte drove into the city and parked her car in Manchester Street. She walked up New Regent Street, past all the Spanish mission-style buildings that lined the street, their alternating blue, green, yellow pastels a splash of colour in the overcast city. The street was built in the 1930s and was shut to traffic. A tram line ran the length of the street, part of a loop around the city that was intended for tourists, it wasn’t part of the city’s public transport system. Charlotte couldn’t remember ever going on the tram, it simply wasn’t something used regularly by the people of Christchurch.
New Regent Street had been reopened about a year earlier, following repairs to all the buildings. Well, almost all of them. There was a cluster at the northern end of the street that was still fenced off. The businesses that had opened were struggling to survive, there just weren’t enough people finding their way to New Regent Street. It was a few blocks away from the shipping container mall and even if tourists did venture into the Square to see the remains of the Anglican Cathedral, there was nothing to indicate the existence of New Regent Street’s set of shops just another block away.
But New Regent Street wasn’t Charlotte’s destination. She was headed for the Town Hall a couple of blocks away, on the banks of the river. There was a lot of tension between the City Council and the Government over how to use money allocated to the Performing Arts Precinct, the part of the central city set aside for a new Court Theatre, a music centre and space for the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra. It was all meant to be based around the repaired Town Hall. Gerry Brownlee, the Minister for Earthquake Recovery, favoured demolishing the old Town Hall and replacing it with a new one, but the City Council had decided to repair the old one. Something about architectural significance, whatever that meant.
For Charlotte, what the Town Hall meant was time spent with her family. When she was about seven or eight, her grandmother had taken the family to the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra every few months. The symphony had regular concerts that were fun for kids and more traditional concerts, which Charlotte found boring at the time, but now that she was older, she wondered what it would be like to go again.
Charlotte walked past the front of the Town Hall, staying close to the barriers that separated it from the road. Through the dark glass, she could see into the foyer, where the floor looked gritty, and she wondered if it was plaster dust or dirt blown in from the outside. There had been a rumour in 2011 that the basement of the Town Hall was seething with rats, one of many rumours of rat infestations that had spread about the cordoned-off city in the months after the big quake.
It was sad to see it so destitute, fenced off, with nothing happening. It was never a pretty building, just slabs of pebbled concrete reaching into the sky with the occasional stretch of unpatterned concrete to break the monotony of it, but Charlotte loved the soft red seats, having one all to herself, waiting for the lights to go down and the music to start. What she treasured the most about those concerts was the trip home, drifting off to sleep in the back seat, between Nanny and Sean, while her parents chatted away in front, talking about the bits of the concert they liked the best. They were happy then, her family in its cosy pre-quake bubble. But now, her family was as wrecked and dismal as the Town Hall.
There had been accusations from the City Council that the Government had seized control of the development of the Performing Arts Precinct in order to make the rebuild look good in an election year. Whatever the case, the relationship between the council and the Government wasn’t good. Why couldn’t people wh
o were supposedly adults pull themselves together and make decisions? Because they were just arguing about it, nothing was being done, the city was not getting a Town Hall back, leaving the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra without a true home.
Charlotte’s home was no longer a true home, thanks to EQC. There was, EQC said, about $300,000 worth of damage to their house, which, Charlotte thought, should put them overcap and with their private insurer. But apportionment didn’t work that way. Her parents had filed claims for four quakes, and EQC divided the estimated cost by four quakes, to come up with $75,000 worth of damage per quake, as though each quake had done an equal amount of damage. That kept them undercap and EQC insisted the house would be repaired as part of the Canterbury Home Repair Programme. Her parents weren’t happy about that, there were too many rumours of bad repairs.
They had photos of the house, inside and out, after each of the major quakes, and her father was putting together this information to ask EQC to reconsider how the damage was apportioned, because the photos clearly showed that it was the February and June 2011 quakes that had done the most damage. But that assumed that they would listen to reason, and Charlotte didn’t think for a moment that would be the case. It was just another bubble that would soon burst.
Breathless
September 2014
It was late on a Wednesday night and Alice was drifting off to sleep when there was a tap on her door. She drew herself up from the pull of sleep and shielded her eyes as light from the hallway fell through the doorway. It was Kevin.
‘Your grandad’s up at the hospital with Heather,’ he said. ‘She’s having trouble breathing.’
Alice sat up, wide awake. ‘Her heart?’
‘He says he doesn’t think so, but the doctors want to be sure,’ Kevin said. He swept his hand over the top of his head, pushing his hair back and forth, then rubbed his face and scratched at the side of his mouth. ‘But I think he’s worried, he wouldn’t have called otherwise.’
‘She’s at public?’ Alice said, putting her feet onto the floor. ‘Are you going to go up?’
Kevin shook his head. ‘We’re too sick.’ Lindsay had come down with a cold the previous week and Kevin had quickly followed. Both had fever and chills and were having trouble sleeping from coughing.
‘I’ll go,’ Alice said. Kevin nodded and shut the door, leaving Alice to find clothes to change into.
Jason had called and was going to the hospital as well, he said he would drop by and pick up Alice. Sonya, who had moved to Dunedin at the start of the year, texted Alice asking her to let her know what was going on. ‘Ask about her troponin levels,’ her text said. ‘It’s a marker for heart attacks.’ Alice texted back saying she would let her know as soon as she knew anything.
Jason parked by the river and the two of them walked towards the hospital. It was strange being in the city at that time of night, it was so empty, the streets bare of cars and traffic lights going through their signals, directed at no one. Red lights high up in the sky flashed from the different cranes dotted all over the city. A cold wind blew from the east and Alice zipped her jacket all the way up to her chin and tucked her hands into the pockets.
Jason talked to the receptionist, who directed them through the security doors. A nurse took them through to the ward, a big open space only loosely partitioned off for patients. Equipment beeped from all directions. Heather was in a bed on the far side of the room, propped up, wires sticking out of the top of her hospital gown. Neil sat beside her, holding her hand. She was taking in shallow breaths, almost coughing, and Alice could see that she was scared, trying to control her breathing, which seemed to just be making the coughing worse.
Jason leaned in to kiss her on the forehead, followed by Alice. Neil told them the doctor thought she might be having a panic attack but wanted to run some tests, just to be sure.
‘I’m so embarrassed,’ Heather muttered, looking away from them. She was pale and tiny, as though the giant hospital bed was swallowing her.
‘Better safe than sorry, love,’ Neil said.
Jason pulled up two chairs and lined them up alongside Neil’s chair so they could all sit with Heather.
‘These things happen, Mum,’ Jason said. ‘And it’s happened more since the quakes.’
Alice wasn’t sure whether he meant panic attacks – which was what she thought this was – or heart attacks. Both had been on the increase since the quakes started. There was something called broken heart syndrome, where stress caused part of the heart to freeze up. Before the earthquakes started, Christchurch Hospital saw only a couple of cases a year, but after the quakes there were so many instances of it that a research group was formed. They had about fifty patients, mostly women.
Heather’s problem, it turned out, was not a panic attack, nor was it broken heart syndrome. It was a heart attack, plain and simple. It was about four in the morning when the doctor came and told them that Heather’s blood tests were showing the biochemical markers they expected to see in a heart attack, and she would be admitted to the hospital. Neil wanted to stay, but was looking pale and strained, so Heather, Jason and Alice insisted he go home and get some sleep. Jason wanted to get home to Carla and the baby and said he would drop Neil off and leave Alice with the keys to Neil’s car so she could go home if she needed to.
Alice stayed with her grandmother, worn out but unable to sleep while waiting for Heather to be taken up to the ward. Alice stayed until Heather had been settled, then went home.
It was six o’clock, and both Lindsay and Kevin were already up, looking like they had hardly slept.
At eight, Alice called Gerald to say she wouldn’t be in to work that day, then went to pick up Neil. He said he had managed to get some sleep, but he didn’t look like it, his thin hair was standing up at the back and he was still wearing the clothes he had been wearing when he left the hospital.
The doctor had already been by the time they arrived on the ward, and Heather was being prepped for an angiogram to see how blocked her arteries were. There were quick hellos and then Neil went with Heather for her test. Alice sat down on a chair beside the empty bed and stared out onto the busy ward, watching people go past. Nurses and doctors walked rapidly, efficiently, while patients meandered, their slippered feet making soft scuffing noises on the linoleum.
Before long, Neil and Heather were back, looking grim. Heather had blocked arteries and needed a bypass, probably a double. She would stay in hospital until the surgery, which would be in a week or two.
The morning of Heather’s surgery, Alice, Neil and Kevin went to pick up Grandma Bennett so she could see Heather before the surgery. Since Heather’s admission, only Kevin had recovered from his cold, while Jason and Carla had come down with it. Alice was still free of it, but she was tired, sleeping at the drop of a hat, and she suspected all the nights at the hospital after long days at work were going to catch up with her before too long.
The sick members of the family could only call Heather to have awkward pre-surgery conversations. Alice listened to Heather’s side of a couple of these conversations, but it annoyed her. Heather always said that what would be would be, trying to keep her voice cheery and light. Her grandmother could die, this might be the last time Alice saw her, what was she supposed to say? And how could she say it without Heather saying, ‘What will be will be’?
At the end of another phone call, Alice felt the right words falling together in her head, but they abandoned her as soon as she opened her mouth and all she said was ‘I love you’ and ‘I’ll see you later’. It didn’t seem like enough, especially after Heather held on to her so tightly when she said goodbye. Outside the room, Alice burst into tears that she tried to cover up as Neil, Kevin and Grandma Bennett came out.
‘Right,’ Neil said, his voice strained. ‘What do we do to get through the rest of this day?’ It was a pointless question as they had already agreed it would be a movie day around at Neil and Heather’s, with a family dinner at the end of the day.
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The family was having dinner, the adults at the dining table and Olivia and Jack in the lounge. Baby Eddie was sleeping in his carry cot in Neil and Heather’s bedroom. The only conversation was coming from the coffee table, the kids chattering away. The adults were too anxious from the afternoon’s wait to talk and were just pushing their food around their plates, taking the occasional uninterested bite. The phone rang and Neil leapt up from the table to answer it.
It was the surgeon. Heather was fine, the surgery had gone well, her heart was strong and there was no reason she shouldn’t recover completely. One or two family members could visit her in recovery in a couple of hours.
It was easier to finish dinner after the phone call, and it was decided that Neil and Alice would go up to see Heather, while Kevin would take Grandma Bennett home.
Alice waited outside the ward while Neil went through. She was unable to focus her thoughts and paced mindlessly until Neil came out and she went in.
It was a large, open room with beds and monitoring equipment in a semi-circle, like something from a sci-fi movie. There was a lot of space between each bed and no curtains. Obviously being able to get to patients quickly was more important than privacy.
Heather seemed to be unconscious, so Alice hesitated to approach. She was awake, a nurse reassured her, but still feeling the effects of the sedative. Heather had tubes up her nose and down her throat, taped to her face to keep them in place. Alice reached out and stroked her hand, which caused Heather to crack open her eyes.
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