by Greg Fowler
‘It was only when he’d changed so much that I was forced to admit it. The doctors had all their big words. They could categorise it. They could talk about it. They could even pretend to treat it, but for me it wasn’t real until Ben aged ten years in about one. The man who was going to live forever was dying in front of my eyes.’
Mrs Elsdon shifted back to her original position again. Today was a particularly bad day.
‘I felt so guilty that I would go on living. Isn’t that the strangest of things. I was going to see more of things that would make history and I hated myself for that. In the end it was a combination of that guilt and the love built up over three and a half decades that made me the best damned nursemaid you can imagine. I looked after that man in his worst hours. Near the end that meant close on twenty four a day, seven days a week. And I wouldn’t change a thing.’
You didn’t let him fall. You let him down gently.
‘I guess what I’m trying to say in a roundabout way, is that you can’t stop it from hurting. It’ll always hurt. There’s no magic bullet for that problem. But the greatest thing you do can do right now is hide it for her sake. Be strong for her. I know you already are, what I’m saying is keep it up. Keep it up like a running race and only when you reach the finish line can you afford to collapse.’
‘I’m t…trying. It’s just so hard.’
‘I know Eddy. I know. But you’ll see, if she makes it through this you’ll know you stuck beside her and….well, if things work out differently, you’ll know you acted with dignity, integrity and uncommon love. That’s the point. If I’d gone into my shell, had got myself stuck in a pile of pity and denial, I’d be in a much worse place right now. I’d either be in some asylum or I would’ve topped myself off I reckon. All because I couldn’t have lived with knowing I’d let my Ben down when he needed me most.’
‘Bottom line; it’ll hurt Eddy, but it won’t hurt like it could if you do the right thing now, while you still can. Be strong, be brave and let tomorrow take care of itself.’
‘Well, that’s about enough talking for an old lady on a chilly day. Just keep your chin up, okay?’
‘Okay Mrs Elsdon,’ replied Eddy, his head swimming with her advice. ‘And thank you. I really appreciate what y..you said just now.’
‘My pleasure young man. Life is full of lessons, you just need to know where to look for them.’ With that, the old lady with the Green Stone still lodged in the far corner of her backyard did a wide u-turn and headed back the way she’d come. Back, Eddy knew, to a piping hot bowl of tomato soup and two slices of well buttered toast.
Thank you Mrs Elsdon.
Eddy understood what this kind old lady had been trying to say. Pain visits twice but it was up to him how to manage it. He could wallow and miss some wonderful memories, or he could be there for her today. Tomorrow’s pain would be lonely pain and he’d have the rest of his life to come to terms with it.
Pain was a rock in the river and he just had to get around it.
Time to get back to the hospital.
85. CHASING AMBULANCES
Eddy never left the hospital through the rest of Reagan’s latest bout of treatment until she was ready to come home herself. And by then, she was more than ready. If he wasn’t too fond of the hard edges and straight faces, she had grown to abhor them. It may have been the place carrying her greatest hope of a medical cure but there was a part of her, a part that expanded a bit more every day, that surrendered to the agony and just wanted to make it go away. Sometimes even death seemed inviting.
Eddy could see that balance of willpower failing within her as well. He didn’t need Mr Tree for that, not that the tree would necessarily have helped anyway. It still refused to release its riddle. It was still letting her fall despite itself.
Just like back at the hospital, he’d read her to sleep every night. Then, climbing back across to his room after she’d drifted off to a quiet place, he’d lie in his own bed and listen. If she woke up in the night, as she often did, he wanted to be there for her. He knew exactly what pills she needed when, and she was in no fit position to get them herself. Mrs Crowe didn’t mind. She always got up too. She’d moved her bed to the spare room next to Reagan’s so she could be closer as well. Mrs Crowe was a really nice lady and Eddy couldn’t for the life of him understand why Mr Crowe had left her. If his Mum was half the Mum she was, he’d be as happy as happy can be. In fact, she and Eddy had made quite the pair these last few weeks and they had the routines down pat. She took care of the ‘womanly’ things and he took care of the pills, the bed and stuff like that. It never felt like enough though. People died every day in comfortable beds.
So after being used to broken, interrupted nights, Eddy was surprised one night to be awoken by something other than the expected rustle and groan from Reagan. There were lights circling through the room. Not streetlights either. These lights were reds and blues, coasting through one cycle after another, and he knew immediately they could only belong to one thing, the lights above an emergency service vehicle.
Yanking the sheets back and praying that it all had to do with some completely separate and innocuous event down the street somewhere, he peered out the window only to realise his greatest nightmare.
It was an ambulance and it was parked right outside the Crowe residence. As his mind caught up with his feet, he spotted movement at the rear of the vehicle. A paramedic had just closed the back doors and Eddy watched under the spell of burgeoning adrenalin as the uniformed man jogged around and jumped into the passenger seat. Things were happening fast, awfully fast, and it hit Eddy like a slap to the face.
Mrs Crowe’s in there with her. Sitting beside her, holding her hand. Reagan tried to call me, so did Mrs Crowe. Damn it! There wasn’t time. The ambulance got here too quick.
Pyjama’s or not, Eddy was out of his bedroom and down the stairs before the Ambulance driver had hardly lodged his foot on the accelerator. His heart was going ten million miles an hour and his feet seemed to be going in reverse.
‘Reagan!’
The front door didn’t even squeak this time. It didn’t have time to purchase with the floor, so hard was it ripped open.
‘Reagan! Wait.’
It was all too late. As he laid his first bare foot on the dampness of the front lawn, the ambulance moved past him, those same blue, red, blue lights now dancing right throughout the neighbourhood like aliens coming in to land.
From somewhere behind him Eddy heard the muffled sound of Grandma Daisy’s voice coming to terms with the middle of the night.
‘Reagan!’
Arcing to the left, not losing an inch of manic pace and almost tumbling head over heels as the lawn slipped beneath him, Eddy made the footpath and then the road. Fists and knees pumping, he was not going to let her down. He had promised her. He would be there…always. Always and forever.
He hardly felt the stabbing pain of stones under his feet. There wasn’t enough energy to spare for pain right now. He needed every bit of it to catch those back doors cruising further and further away from him. Past Bill Wilson’s place he went. Past Beth Melling’s place, whose husband owned the chainsaw that was going to cut down Mr Tree. And still the Ambulance refused to come any closer.
‘Reagan.’
A light went on in an upstairs window somewhere but to Eddy it meant nothing. Let them look. Let them see the freak kid running down the street at midnight in his green pyjamas. They didn’t know. They were the lucky ones.
When Eddy arrived at the intersection of Willow and Crimson his lungs were gone. They screamed and begged for air, unable to keep up with the frantic demand that even adrenalin couldn’t fix.
Looking right, in the direction the ambulance had turned, he was devastated by the sight of a flash of the brake lights as they turned the next corner up, heading for the main road and on to the hospital. It was gone. He had failed…just like he always did.
Collapsing to the asphalt, Eddy looked lost and forlorn at that spot where he’d
last seen those lights, as if by doing so he could connect with the driver and force a brief u-turn. It wasn’t to come though. He knew that. He also knew it was selfish to wish for such a thing. Reagan was in danger and she needed help fast.
Folding his face in his hands, he sat there in the middle of the intersection and sobbed hard, soulful sobs. Sobs that hurt all the more after his lung’s gut wrenching service.
How long he would have stayed there was anyone’s guess. From his perspective he was lost in a desert with no oasis for a thousand miles in any direction. There were no cars, no houses, no roads, this was a place where people went and never came back.
It was only the feeling of a warm hand on his shoulder that brought him back to Earth. Looking up through agonised eyes, Eddy saw Mr McKenzie. He was wrapped in a dressing gown, Mrs McKenzie’s by the looks of it. Under different circumstances it would have been hilarious, tonight though it barely registered.
‘Come with me Eddy,’ he said. ‘I’ll take you in.’
‘T…to the h…hospital?’
Rory McKenzie nodded.
Taking Rory’s offer of a hand up, Eddy noticed Grandma Daisy wasn’t far behind. She was doing her best grandma jog up the footpath, her hair going every which way and a look of concern strapped across her face.
‘Eddy,’ she said, finally catching up to them. ‘What’s going on?’
‘An ambulance just left,’ replied Rory McKenzie on his behalf. ‘I think they’ve just taken Reagan away.’
Grandma Daisy took one look at Eddy and knew it was true.
‘Oh Eddy.’ It wasn’t so much a pitiful response as one full of pity. Her grandson was facing an education in life, one that he would never forget, one that would leave a scar.
‘If it’s alright with you,’ continued Mr McKenzie, ‘I’m going to take him into the hospital.’
‘Are you sure, Rory? It’s so late.’
‘No problem. It’s the least I can do.’
Eddy listened to all this from afar. Their conversation might have well been on the moon because all he could think of was Reagan lying in that ambulance. Things had to be serious. An ambulance didn’t just turn up in the middle for the night for a routine check up. And he wasn’t there…that’s all he really knew for certain, he wasn’t there.
When Rory McKenzie herded him up the street and towards his little white car, Eddy went along with numb obedience. What else was there left to do?
By the time they pulled into the parking lot at the hospital, a good deal of Eddy’s senses had returned. Like a stubbed toe, the numbness was wearing off and he was starting to wish he could go back there again, to where confusion reigned and consequences didn’t.
After thanking Mr McKenzie profusely for his act of kindness, he raced into the emergency department, his heart in his mouth, his pyjamas flapping around him. He was so afraid of what he might find. Had his last goodbye been the one last night? No, that wasn’t allowed. Life couldn’t be that vicious…could it? She wasn’t ready to go. She shouldn’t be going at all.
What if she’d died in the ambulance on the way here? What if she’d called for him as she found that white light calling for her? What if Mr Tree had indeed let her fall?
Pouncing up to the after hours desk, he first said the words so fast they couldn’t understand him. Instead the man behind the bench regarded him with a mixture of annoyance and self consciousness. Here was a retarded kid about to make a bad shift even worse.
‘Are you lost or something kid?’
With a humungous effort of willpower, Eddy forced himself to take a big breath and ask again.
‘Reagan C…crowe. I’m looking for Reagan Crowe.’
The seconds seemed to cross the universe and back again while the attendant checked his register, his fingers climbing up and down a list Eddy couldn’t quite see.
Come on, come on!
‘Okay,’ he said finally. ‘She’s the one just come in. I’m sorry but you’ll have to wait until I can get someone to come and see you.’
‘No.’
‘Pardon?’ This guy obviously wasn’t used to hearing ‘no’, especially from retarded kids.
‘I’ve g…got t…to see her.’
‘Look kid…’ Considering his options, and seeing how desperate this boy was, the attendant took a new track. ‘Are you her brother or something?’
‘No.’
‘Then I’m sorry but….’ He never got the rest of the sentence out. Eddy wasn’t going to let him. Instead, with wide eyed shock, he watched as this determined Down Syndrome kid took things into his own hands and charged through the swinging doors beside the counter. ‘Hey….you can’t do that!’
Mister, I’ll go to Hell and back if I have to.
It’s funny how one’s worst nightmares can be so vivid in advance and yet, when they turn up, they end up taking a different, more macabre form altogether.
Eddy ended up finding Reagan in quick time. If anyone had a pretty good idea of how to find things in this place, he did. It was his second home after all. It wasn’t easy from one perspective though and it took some fast talking by Mrs Crowe to stop him from being manhandled out of the hospital like a common criminal.
Eddy didn’t care for security staff though. If they’d won the day he would’ve found some other way in, even if it meant climbing through a window or something.
The docs had wasted no time in whisking Reagan upstairs and Eddy’s first glimpse of her was through the window separating her room from the corridor. Her eyes were closed and she was utterly motionless as the white coated staff fussed and fancied around her like she’d pulled in for a pit stop. He’d come this far and it was so hard to stop here, where he was so close but couldn’t reach out and touch her. He so desperately wanted to go in and hold her hand. That’s all, just hold her hand and let her know that he was here, that he hadn’t failed her in the end.
Mrs Crowe stood stoically beside him, watching, waiting, praying. Her baby was in a bad way and if Reagan ever left her, then everyone had left her and she would truly come to know the meaning of alone.
A forever and a half later, one of the older doctors came out and pulled Mrs Crowe aside. Eddy didn’t care for the body language one bit. This man wasn’t supposed to have that look in his eye, the one that said ‘this just doesn’t get any easier’. He wasn’t supposed to hold his clipboard between himself and Mrs Crowe like it was some form of emotional defence that would bounce back all the suffering and pain he was about to deliver. And, most of all, he wasn’t supposed to make Mrs Crowe cry.
86. TWO TALKS
‘Eddy?’
‘Yes?’ Eddy didn’t want to have this conversation. It was like driving past a car accident, you didn’t want to look but you had to. Night had turned to day somewhere out in the real world, but time didn’t really matter anymore. Not when Reagan was just lying there as though she were in a queue for Heaven.
He was on one side of the bed, holding that hand he’d been so frantic for earlier on, and Mrs Crowe was planted on the other side. It made sense really, to have the two people who loved her the most be here like this.
‘The doctors say she’ll wake up soon. They kept her in a coma for a while so they could stabilise her, but soon she’ll wake up by herself.’
‘Okay.’
Okay, but what….
‘Eddy?’
‘Yes?’
‘The doctor said they can’t do much for her now.’ Eddy followed the tear tracking down Mrs Crowe’s tired face as she looked back at him across her beautiful daughter’s sleeping body. The daughter who should never have to die before she herself did. Seventeen was no fair age to die, it was a fair age to live, to dream and to hope.
‘Okay.’ It wasn’t the right word for the occasion, that was obvious, but it had to be because Eddy’s throat couldn’t fit anything else through. It was locked tight with emotion and this was a tough enough fight as it was.
‘They asked if I thought she should stay here or w
hether she should come home and be with us there.’ It was both a statement and a question, and Eddy sincerely appreciated that. They’d been through this together and, by God, they’d see it through together.
‘Can she c…come home?’ Now he couldn’t hold it back any longer and as Mrs Crowe’s tears found a hard landing on the cold linoleum floor, so did his.
‘We’ll make her comfortable, won’t we?’ said Mrs Crowe through her pain.
Eddy nodded. What he wanted to say most of all however was ‘I will not let her fall. I refuse to let her fall.’
By two o’clock that afternoon Reagan was awake, if awake was what you could call it. It was like there was a dimmer dial turning this way and that inside her, one moment making her reasonably lucid, the next semi conscious.
When she was up to speaking it was so hard to know what to say. If ever there was a time to say something profound, something to make an impossible situation seem better, this was it; except he seemed to be incapable of anything other than limp chatter. ‘How are you feeling?’ That was a classic. ‘Are you sure you’re comfortable?’ It just kept getting better. Anything to avoid the excruciatingly obvious.
It was only when Mrs Crowe had to leave for a while to process the discharge papers that they had some time to themselves…and Eddy was determined not to let this go to waste. Nothing could go to waste now. Every opportunity was precious.
Reagan must’ve known that too.
‘Eddy?’
‘I’m here,’ he said, leaning in and squeezing her hand ever so gently.
‘It doesn’t hurt so bad now.’ She tried to smile and almost got there too. Whether she knew it was because the doctors had pumped her with pain killers, Eddy didn’t quite know, but at least she wasn’t suffering.
‘That’s good. We’re going to bring you home soon. Back to your place.’
‘I’d like that.’ That was it and there it was. She understood what was going on just as much as he did. She was coming home to die. The knowledge was there in her eyes. It was an acceptance of her fate that Eddy hadn’t witnessed up until now. She had fought hard but her enemy had been great. It wasn’t fair but then again, what was? ‘You won’t leave me Eddy?’ This time she squeezed his hand back.