by Sarah Dalton
And then I told him what I needed to tell someone but couldn’t. I told him about Dr. Gethen, and about the way he taunted me. I told him about the night in the abandoned ward when he chased me and I crawled through the vents to get out. I told him about how I made a decision, a decision to face my fears, to face the prospect of death and stop Gethen claiming more victims. Finally, I told him how Lacey sacrificed herself for me, and how she’s been with me as a ghost ever since.
“At Lacey’s funeral, her mum slapped me,” I say. “She said I was a bad influence on her little girl, and that I’d forced her into that abandoned ward as some sort of game. Lacey stood right next to me, seeming so solid and yet so invisible at the same time. She laughed and said: ‘Pay no attention to that crack-addled bint. She wants to blame you so she doesn’t have to blame herself.’”
“She’s right. You shouldn’t blame yourself. None of it is your fault.”
“Lacey had this hollow look in her eyes all the way through the funeral,” I continue. “She kept joking, pointing out girls she’d had a crush on at school, the members of her family who had been in jail. That kind of thing. But she had this hollow look…” I shake my head. “It went away for a while, but sometimes it comes back. I worry that she’s changing.”
“She died. You can’t go through death without changing at least a little bit.”
“But what if you change completely? What if my friend isn’t my friend, anymore?” There, I said it. I finally said the words that have been beneath the surface of our friendship since Lacey’s funeral. The joking around, the energy, the girl I once knew still exists, but it has also changed. There are times when her jokes are cruel and bitter.
“You have to trust your instincts,” he says. The car turns into a car park. I hadn’t even noticed the journey while we were talking. “Like you are now. There’s no way you would tell me all that if you didn’t trust me.”
The sign next to the car park says Nettleby Royal Hospital. Why would Seth bring me to a hospital?
He parks the car and pulls up the handbrake. The door clunks open. It’s drizzling, so I put on my jacket as I close the car door. An empty crisp packet blows across the tarmac.
“What are we doing here?” I say.
Before we move towards the multi-story, multi-building hospital (why are they always so big and stretched out, like a microcosm of a dystopian underground city?), he turns to me and says, “I know this is a bit weird, taking a girl I like to a hospital. But I think it might help you understand me a little better.” He jams his hands in his jeans pockets and looks away. “I mean, I hope so.”
The drizzle becomes a shower, so we hurry towards the grey building. There are fresh coats of green paint around windows and door frames; it makes me think of the way undertakers put make-up on corpses. I keep my eyes on Seth as we enter the building and are hit by the stale, hot air I’m so familiar with. I watch him instead of seeing the sterile white walls and empty stares of patients. He knows where he’s going. He nods to one or two nurses. He squirts anti-septic serum into his hands and backs through double doors without breaking a step.
We reach a ward that seems even quieter than most. As soon as we’re through the door, a short, middle-aged woman waves to Seth and then fixes him a disapproving look. She puts her hands on her hips like a mother in the playground.
“It’s not visiting hours, you know,” she says.
“Ten minutes, Fatima. We won’t stay long, I promise.”
The woman glances at me and then back at Seth. A small smile plays on her lips. “All right. Ten minutes and then you’re out of here. I’m not getting a disciplinary for you, mister.” She waggles her finger at him, but I can tell she’s not really mad.
“Thank you.”
As we carry on down the ward, Seth slows down. His confident steps are gone, and instead, his hands grip the sleeves of his jacket. He lets out a long breath when we reach the door to one of the rooms. He hesitates before opening it.
“Mary, I want you to meet my mum.”
Chapter Sixteen
Beep.
Beep.
Beep.
It’s the noise of the machines first. Then the bleach-like smell, hanging in stale air. Then you see the tubes, from her arms, from her nose, like something out of an alien autopsy. Her unmoving body is cocooned in a crocheted blanket. Bronze hair spreads out on the pillow, cushioning her head. Her eyelids are a sallow yellow, bruised looking. They are closed.
Seth moves forward and pats his mother’s hand. “I have trouble saying goodbye, too.”
“How long has she been like this?” I ask. I hesitate from stepping forward. The sheen on her skin makes her seem like a wax doll. I’m embarrassed to say that my stomach lurches. My natural instinct is to keep away from this sick creature.
“Since the car accident. My dad died and Mum was left in a coma.” He shrugs.
“So you’ve been going through all this alone?” I ask.
“My dad died in debt. I got a little bit of money back from insurance, but that went on the mortgage for the house. Since then I’ve been working two jobs to make ends meet. I don’t have time for much: girlfriends, friends, hobbies… But I do want to go to uni. When and how… that’s another story.” He lets out a hollow laugh. “I guess that dream is over, if Amy has her way.”
“Don’t say that. You haven’t given up on your mum, so don’t give up on yourself.”
“I told her I would never give up. Sometimes I think she can hear me, but I think it’s my imagination. The doctors have given me the choice, you know. They confirmed it months ago. They said that I can turn off the machines and let her go in peace. I can’t… she doesn’t know about him. What if he’s waiting for her? I can’t…” his voice cracks.
I step forward and slip my arm around his waist. “You mean your dad?”
He nods.
“You don’t know that for certain. None of us can know.”
“That’s the worst part,” he says, “the not knowing. How can I make the right decision for her, when I don’t know the outcome? I could be stopping her from finding peace, or I could be condemning her to nothingness, or I could prevent her from one day waking up and being Mum again. How do I make that choice for someone else?”
“I don’t know,” I whisper.
The silence hangs between us. I open my mouth, searching for the right words to solve Seth’s problem, or at least soothe his anguish, but there’s nothing. My heart beat quickens as I think about what it must be like for his mother, to be trapped in an empty husk of a person. Maybe the doctors are right, maybe she left long ago.
Fatima pops her head around the doorway of the cubicle. “Seth, the on-call doctor is doing his rounds. I’ll get a bollocking if you two are here.” She jabs her thumb towards the door and whistles between her teeth.
On the way out, Seth pats Fatima’s arm and smiles. She grips his fingers for the briefest of moments and then looks at me with eyes filled with pleading. Look after him, they seem to say. Help him. She must think I’m his girlfriend.
The one good thing to come from all this is that I understand Seth, now. Lacey’s continuous snipes had worn me down a little, made me begin to doubt my instincts. Seth lived with those memories alone, because he had too much to protect: a sick mother, a house, himself. I think about his story one more time. There’s no proof, no evidence. If he went to the police, there would be as much chance of implicating himself, as his father. Then who would look after his mother? I glance at Seth, seeing him as fiercely protective of his family, a man of morals who works to keep a life stuck in limbo while his mother wastes away in a hospital bed. Everything is frozen for him, right now.
We walk out of the hospital in silence, with a gaping space between us. What he showed me makes me closer to him than ever, but that closeness is so intimidating that I don’t know what to do with it. Eventually, as we step through the automatic doors leading to the car park, Seth reaches over and grasps my hand, holdi
ng it tighter than is comfortable. I let him.
When we get into the car, the question slips from my lips, “Seth, if Amy does kill you, who will look after your mother?”
Seth holds his car key in the air, frozen between the steering wheel and the ignition. He withdraws and leans back against his seat. “They turn off the machine. But I guess it wouldn’t matter, then. She wouldn’t have anyone to wake up for.”
I turn to him and take both of his hands, keys and everything. “I shouldn’t have said that. Amy isn’t going to take you. We’ve found someone to help us. Everything is going to be all right.”
The words sound hollow even to me. I’m talking to a boy who has been through more than anyone should, enough to make anyone give up.
But then he leans forward until our noses are touching. We’re so close I see the flecks of amber in his brown irises. He pauses, waiting. I can’t wait anymore. I let go of his hands and fling my arms around his neck, pressing my lips against his, in not so much a want but a need.
Seth hesitates for less than a second, but then his hands are in my hair, and he kisses me deeply, so deep I taste him; faint cigarette smoke, sweetness, like honey. His mouth explores mine with hunger, all the anticipation, the long looks, the electric touches, it all culminates in this moment as we cling to life in the face of death. Finally, finally, I am alive. I am alive with sensation as my body cries out for his touch. Every sensory receptor beneath my skin longs for the feel of his fingertips. I’m clamped up against him, twisted in my seat, pressing every part of me against him.
When his kisses meet the scars on my neck, I freeze up. My heartbeat quickens and I start to panic. Seth begins to pull away and it’s then that I come to my senses. I want Seth enough to make myself stop caring about the scars. They don’t matter as much as this moment matters. He kisses my jaw, and back to my lips. His hands gently pull on my hair, run firmly down my spine and grip my waist. I return the sensation, letting my fingers find the grooves of his body beneath his shirt, pressing deep into the muscles created from manual work, making him supple and firm rather than gym-tight.
I want him.
It’s unlike anything I’ve felt before. With Mo, I liked him enough that kissing felt nice. Being with him was sweet and loving. With Seth, it’s a need. I’ve never had this kind of attraction before. It’s like it turns off my brain to the rest of the world. All I know is skin and lips and warmth and kissing and kissing and kissing…
When he breaks away, the world floods back and it’s a horrible feeling, like grief forgotten for an instant. I know Seth feels it too, feels the weight of responsibility landing squarely on his shoulders. His mother, his father, Amy.
“We should go,” he says, panting as his chest heaves up and down. His lips are red and sore, and his hair is tousled from my fingers.
“Yeah,” I say, aware of how wide my eyes are. “Yeah, we should.”
*
Somehow, we didn’t need to decide where to go. I let him drive wherever he wants.
I roll down the window and stick my head out, feeling the whip of rainy-wind against my face until it begins to go numb. I turn on the CD player and the melodic sounds of The Beach Boys blasts out. I start humming along, tapping the hand rail, drumming the glove box. Before long I’m singing and Seth starts singing too. We’re singing at the tops of our voices, harmonising the ooo-ooo-ooohs, both out of tune. The rain comes down harder and Seth turns on the windscreen wipers. My legs are freezing cold and I regret putting on my shorts.
But all of it—my face cold and damp, my legs goosepimpled, my throat sore from singing, the raw scrape on my lips from kissing Seth—is like a rush of exhilaration, an emptying of weight. Manic freedom—the kind that makes you feel invincible, like you can take on the world and win.
The countryside roads change to village side streets. We’re still blaring out Pet Sounds and I sing as though the blurry faces of those going about their day don’t exist. Seth shakes his head and smiles. It’s so good to see him smile.
He pulls the car onto a drive in a quiet suburban street which is a fraction wider than the country lanes Dad drove down to get to Five Moors. There aren’t any lines on the road, and the verge is built up to dry-stone walls. When the engine goes quiet and the Beach Boys stop singing, it dawns on me that I’m alone with Seth, and that he has brought me to his house. It’s like a switch has been flipped back on. Heat spreads to my extremities, and my cheeks flush. Seth is turned in his seat with the seatbelt unclipped.
“You don’t have to come in if you don’t—”
I shut him up with my mouth on his.
*
When living in the moment, it’s not often that we know, at that very second, that we will remember it forever, but in this afternoon, I know I will think of Seth in his quaint, yet lonely, village cottage. I will remember how we talked, and kissed. Always the gentleman, we go no further than that, despite the heat burning under the surface when his fingertips touch my skin.
Of course, a part of me desires to know him more. But at the same time, I know it would ruin the magic. It would take away the tension that makes me long for him, and I’m not ready for that tension to go away. Maybe I never will be. Maybe, we are destined to know and connect with each other for this one week, and that’s all there is to it.
This is enough.
His bedroom is an explosion of Seth, whereas the rest of the house is plain, yet neat. Unframed paintings hang crookedly along the walls. Most are mixed media, incorporating pencil, acrylics and strange canvases like abandoned chunks of wood or torn cardboard.
One painting catches my eye. It’s unmistakably his mother, even though it bears little resemblance. It’s a half-sketch, half-painting filled with pinks and whites and browns, and it’s like he’s trying to piece her together, trying to fix something that can never be mended. Those pinks and browns, they won’t be restored, because you can’t just patch up a person. I see Lacey in that painting. I see Amy, too. In some ways, I see Seth.
“Are you hungry?” Seth asks.
We’ve been on his sofa for the last hour, with some daytime television programme on in the background. I’ve not seen a single second of it.
I turn back to him, which is a mistake, because it makes me want to kiss him again. Instead I stroke his cheek, rubbing my palm against his long stubble. “Actually, I am.”
He plants a big, wet kiss on my forehead before he goes, and I grin like a mad woman because it makes me feel like someone who matters.
“Don’t boil any bunnies yet, Mary,” I mutter to myself.
“Did you say something?” Seth turns back, naked to the waist and tattooed from shoulder to navel. Birds, feathers, poems and songs decorate his chest. There isn’t a single one I haven’t kissed.
“No,” I reply. “Nothing at all.”
As he leaves, I wonder whether Seth could paint me a little picture of himself before I leave Nettleby. Then it dawns on me. In a few days, I’ll be gone.
I sit up straight and curl my legs underneath me.
I always knew this was a fling.
Yet the thought of us parting twists my stomach.
I shake it away and instead take in the rest of Seth’s room. His paintings aren’t the only artistic traces. The décor is neutral yet manly and creative at the same time. He has a battered leather chair in one corner, a guitar in the other. Books are stacked in piles on shelves next to half-burnt church candles. His ornaments are heavy glass ashtrays mixed with photographs in wooden frames and tacky seaside snow globes. He has a desk covered in sketchbooks, journals and pots filled with paint brushes. Charcoal dust stains the cushions on the sofa. His bedside table is stacked with books. One looks like a diary. I resist the urge to flip it open. The others are high-brow literary novels—Nabakov, Fitzgerald, Hemingway. I think of this man, this talented, intellectual, working at a carnival to pay the bills. My heart aches.
And then I see the sketch.
I recognise her in an instan
t.
Dark hair hangs down her face. Her virgin-white dress is stained with red. The moor grass is underneath her feet. Behind her lurks a tall shadow.
Amy.
“Do you like toast? I hope so, because it’s pretty much all I have.” Seth places the tray on top of a precarious pile of books, filled with warm toast, butter, different jams, a pot of tea and a carton of orange juice. His concerned eyes meet mine. “Are you all right?”
I stroke his cheek one more time, taking in every part of his face, memorising it forever. “I’m good. I’m better than good, I’m starving.”
Chapter Seventeen
Where does the story end? That’s what it’s all about. It’s what we all want to know.
Some of us think we already know the answer. They are the people who close a book and never think about it again. To them, the story ends at the words ‘The End’ and that’s that.
Then there are the optimists. The story continues, but it stays the same. The princess lives happily ever after with her prince, probably pops out a few kids and carries on the bloodline. Marriages survive, families continue, and good prevails over evil. These are the people who cannot bear deviations from the rule. Everything fits into neat little boxes. When bad things happen, they ignore it, or use some quote about everything happening for a reason, or what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger. They carry on without even talking about their bad experiences, pretending everything is all right.
Others wonder about the possibilities. Maybe the princess cheated on her prince with a dashing knight, ran away with him to live in the wilds, cheated on him with a neighbouring farmer and ended up working the fields for the rest of her life. These are the people who lie awake at night, frightened by the stars above them, intimidated by how the world keeps turning and it doesn’t matter if they live or die. These are the people who attempt to stop those thoughts by painting, or writing, or reading… anything to plug up that hole in the brain that gushes out a constant stream of consciousness.