When there’s nowhere else to Run

by Murray Middleton

  ‘Do you remember the first time we went to the drive-in?’ she asked.

  ‘You might have to refresh my memory.’

  ‘Dad took us to see Breaking Away.’

  ‘Now I remember,’ I said, lowering myself gingerly to the grass. ‘You were adamant that you were going to marry the lead actor. What was his name again?’

  ‘Dennis Christopher.’

  ‘Yes, you were rather smitten, as I recall.’

  ‘Do you think I still have a chance?’

  Crimson ripples bled into the distant sun, which had begun its descent behind the dark mountains on the horizon.

  ‘Does your leg hurt?’ I asked.

  ‘I’ll live,’ said Katie. She ripped a wildflower from the soil and tucked it behind her ear. ‘Although I’m not sure how I feel about that.’

  ‘You won’t be able to poach Mister Christopher from beyond the grave,’ I said, attempting to be funny.

  ‘The main memory I have of the film is that scene at the quarry where the four boys are lying with their shirts off. I can’t remember the last time I felt so happy.’

  I still felt happiness on a daily basis: at the sight of Ursula wearing her pink pyjamas in the morning, for instance.

  ‘Do you think I’ll ever experience it again?’

  ‘It’s not for me to say.’

  ‘But if I’m not going to experience it again, what’s the point in any of this? Isn’t life supposed to be the pursuit of happiness?’

  ‘I don’t think it’s supposed to be anything.’

  ‘All I know is I’m sick of feeling ashamed all the time. I’ve endured enough shame for one lifetime. Even the small moments of happiness I can remember from the past seem worthless compared to the density of this feeling. There’s no respite, not for me.’ She exhaled sharply and shook her head. ‘I don’t even believe in a soul.’

  I considered hugging her, but I suspected that the gesture would be insufficient. We didn’t hug often enough.

  ‘When you get home I’d like you to do me a favour.’

  ‘Anything,’ I said.

  Katie inspected her right leg. Blood continued to trickle down her shin, staining her socks.

  ‘I’d like you to tell Ursula the truth.’

  ‘She won’t understand.’

  ‘That’s not important.’

  A warm northerly swept across the rye grass. Ironbarks twitched in the distance. My gaze settled on the towering blank screen. White paint was beginning to peel away from its surface.

  WHEN THERE’S NOWHERE ELSE TO RUN

  My turn by Jenna’s bedside started at eight o’clock in the morning. She slept the whole time. I talked to her anyway. I knew from work that hearing was always one of the last senses to go. The first few times she slept I couldn’t think of what to say, but then I started telling her things that I hadn’t talked to anyone else about. It was actually quite liberating. I spent most of the morning talking to her about the private girls school I had attended back home in Johannesburg. Then I told her about our family’s old maid, Wanda, because she was in no state to judge me.

  Afterwards I saw Ben sitting out on the decking, staring at the red gums. He was holding the previous week’s Green Guide. I was glad Jenna would never see him like that. He wouldn’t have let her. He smiled at me in that pained way he had learnt over the past two years. It seemed unimaginable that he’d once drunkenly chased her around the living room of our share house with a couch pillow between his teeth, growling and barking. I remembered her screaming, ‘Stop it, Ben! I’m serious, fucking stop it or we’re through!’ But he didn’t stop it and they weren’t through.

  I told him I was taking a walk into town and he was welcome to join me.

  ‘No thanks,’ he said. ‘I’m okay.’

  We’d made a point of giving Ben space and not asking how he was feeling. It was easy to see how he was feeling.

  ‘Come on, we don’t even have to talk,’ I said. ‘It’s a nice walk, trust me.’

  He put down the Green Guide.

  We walked downhill in silence until we reached the town. I bought two takeaway coffees from an upmarket café on the foreshore. There were flyers up all over town for a model boat regatta the following weekend. I decided that I’d wander down to watch it if we were still around. We continued walking past an open-water swimming pool and the surf lifesaving club. Grey clouds were rolling in above the mountains. We sat on the sand and stared at a handful of surfers who were trying to catch waves in the bay.

  ‘When it’s over I think I’ll go overseas for a year or two,’ said Ben.

  ‘Anywhere in particular?’

  ‘No, I haven’t really thought about where. I’ll come back eventually. I just need some time alone.’ He scratched his messy hair.

  ‘Twenty-seven isn’t fair,’ he said. ‘Or it doesn’t seem fair. I know heaps of people don’t even get to live that long. People in third world countries, I mean. But on these shores it feels like an injustice.’

  In the past few weeks I’d regularly had the same thought.

  ‘All that study and all those good grades and all our planning for a future that was never going to happen. It seems kind of pointless now. I know that’s the wrong way to think about it. It’s just, I keep thinking maybe if we’d known everything right from the start, we would have done things differently.’

  I wanted to say that he didn’t have to do this to himself, but since he was finally speaking, I decided to leave it alone.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said, watching a surfer miss a wave. ‘How do you feel about it all?’

  ‘I think I’m still assembling my feelings, or trying to. For now all I know is that we have to be there for her and nothing else, but not to pretend like it’s not happening when we’re with her, if that makes any sense. I hope she can’t tell how scared I am. Because if I’m scared, I don’t know how scared she might be.’

  ‘I don’t think she’s scared at all, you know. It feels like she’s beyond that. Being scared implies there’s hope, and there’s no hope anymore.’

  I wondered whether Ben would ever come back if he went overseas.

  ‘I think I’ll keep walking,’ he said.

  He stood up, brushed the sand off his jeans and set off along the beach. When he was halfway to the jetty, he turned around and walked back to me. He poured several moist coins into my hand.

  ‘That’s for the coffee. Sorry, I almost forgot.’

  ■

  When I got back, there was a delicious aroma throughout the house. A bolognese sauce was simmering on the stovetop. Maurice and Frank were slouched in the open-plan living room, watching an Owen Wilson comedy. Frank was the only person who’d thought to bring DVDs. Jenna hated his taste in movies. She couldn’t believe they had both come from the same womb. Unlike Frank, she liked movies and shows that actually gave the viewer a bit of credit. When we lived together, we used to pirate HBO shows and churn through them in our pyjamas. One time we almost got through two series of The Wire in a day.

  I sat on the sofa and pulled my sleeping bag over my shoulders, quickly slipping out of consciousness. Every so often my head would jolt forwards and my eyes would struggle to focus on the plasma screen. It would take a few seconds of blinking before I remembered where I was and why I was there. My heart must have broken six or seven times.

  Maurice woke me when lunch was ready. The television had been switched off.

  ‘We’ve all got to eat,’ he said.

  I joined Frank at the table. Ben still hadn’t returned from his walk. I wasn’t worried. Walking was just about the best thing he could be doing. Maurice put the remaining bowls of pasta in the fridge and joined us. Frank stood up and raised his plastic cup of red wine. Even though Ben had given us the go-ahead to plough through the contents of his cellar, I knew the sight of Frank with that plastic cup would still have given him a heart attack.

  ‘To staying strong,’ said Frank.

  We ate in silence for several minutes.
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  ‘Maurice, I think this might be the nicest meal I’ve ever eaten,’ I said.

  ‘Fresh pasta,’ he said, taking another mouthful of wine.

  We ate on in silence as the wind buffeted the retractable glass doors. It was a lovely house. Frank’s girlfriend, Megan, had found it online. The owners were super friendly about the situation. They’d cancelled all bookings for the next month and told us that we could sort out a price at the other end. I had no idea how my life was going to function again at the other end.

  When I tuned back in to the conversation, Frank was telling Maurice about a man in his office who took several fifteen-minute bathroom breaks every morning. He and some of his colleagues had started a secret spreadsheet to record the man’s bowel movements. Maurice was laughing and I found myself laughing too. It felt nice. Frank was good like that, although I still hated it when he mocked my accent. He sounded more like a New Zealander. Jenna always described him to strangers as a big, loveable oaf. There weren’t any other words for him.

  Megan appeared in the living room, mascara running down her cheeks. Frank stopped talking about the spreadsheet and gave her a big hug. Maurice rinsed his bowl and made his way to the master bedroom. Even though it had been over five years, it must have been strange for him. I still remembered what Jenna had said when they first started going out. The sex wasn’t great, she’d confided. When she’d finally ended it, she told me, ‘He’s just too nice.’ Somehow, with age, ‘nice’ seemed like less of a deterrent.

  ■

  Ben returned just before nightfall. Megan offered to heat up some pasta for him, but he said he wasn’t hungry. He curled up on the sofa and fell asleep. I watched him wincing and turning restlessly. It was sad seeing him use a pillow for its intended purpose instead of putting it between his teeth and growling.

  I was sitting in the cafeteria at the hospital when he’d called to break the news. I’d just finished a night shift. His delivery was painfully dry. He had already spoken to Frank and Jenna’s parents, he told me, his voice eerily measured and calm. It seemed awful that he’d had to invent a protocol for the call. Afterwards I sat in the empty cafeteria and imagined him making a list of friends and their phone numbers, coming up with a script to help him get through each call without falling apart. Now, as I watched the violence of his sleep, I realised that he was still trying to postpone the falling-apart.

  ‘Should we do the dishes?’ I whispered to Megan.

  ‘Yeah, great idea.’

  I piled the dishes into the sink and ran some hot water. Megan and I had come to look forward to the ritual, even though the house had a state-of-the-art dishwasher.

  ‘Frank was hilarious at lunch today,’ I said.

  ‘He wasn’t talking about the spreadsheet, was he?’

  We both laughed.

  ‘I think the whole thing’s awful,’ she said. ‘Imagine how bad the guy’s going to feel if he finds out. I love him, but Frank’s not exactly discreet.’

  I started rinsing the plastic cups. ‘So,’ I said.

  ‘So,’ she sighed, without any of her usual bubbliness. It was strange to see Megan looking so uncertain. During our first few days at the house, she kept calling me into the bedroom to make sure everything was okay. She reminded me of the anxious relatives I often had to deal with at work.

  ‘It sounded like she was gurgling a bit today,’ she said.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘That’s normal. She doesn’t have a strong enough cough reflex to get rid of all the mucus and saliva that’s building up.’

  ‘Are you sure she’s not in much pain?’

  ‘Yeah, I’m sure.’

  I watched her absently colour-coordinating the plastic cups on a tea towel. ‘Do you remember the Blues and Roots Festival?’ she asked. ‘That’s about as loose as I’ve ever seen her.’

  I smiled. I hadn’t thought about the Blues and Roots Festival in ages. I remembered the night that Jenna and Ben dropped a tab of acid each before a George Clinton set. They wound up having a naked dip at the beach. It certainly made me feel like a private-school girl. Afterwards she returned to our tent at the Arts Factory, shivering, and asked if I could hold her until she felt normal again.

  ‘She told me if she let go of the lip balm in her left hand, she was going to go into cardiac arrest,’ I said.

  ‘What?’ said Megan, smiling.

  ‘I know. I tried to calm her down with some basic medical facts, but she still wouldn’t let go of it.’ It felt like we were already starting to talk about her in the past tense.

  I noticed that Ben had joined Maurice out on the decking. They were passing a joint back and forth, both staring into the blustery evening.

  ‘Frank said she wants me to play at the funeral,’ said Megan, removing a stack of forks from the dish rack and drying them one at a time.

  ‘Do you think you’ll be up to it?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t know. How can you tell?’

  ‘I guess you can’t.’

  ‘I’m starting to get a bit worried about it,’ she said. ‘I’ve never been to a funeral that wasn’t for a family pet.’

  ■

  The curtains were open, allowing a dark purplish light to wash into the master bedroom. I crawled into the bed and lay next to Jenna. Ben had replaced the sheets and covered her feet with woollen socks. Her lips looked dry and sore. It had been over a week since I’d told everyone they weren’t allowed to put small ice cubes in her mouth anymore. I inspected her engagement ring. Her fingers felt like chalk that might snap if I pressed too firmly. I felt the portacath that jutted out below her collarbone. At first the strange contraption had frightened the others. Frank said it looked like something out of Dawn of the Dead.

  I lay there for almost an hour, watching her and listening to her breathing. It started to sound less regular, so I propped another small pillow under her head. I studied her hollowed-out cheeks. They seemed so dreadfully incapable of laughter. Jenna laughed more than any person I’d ever met, even more than Frank. I took some solace from the fact that even if I lived for another fifty or sixty years, she would still have laughed more than me.

  I sat up in the bed and started to tell her about a man I’d dated the previous month. We’d met on a Friday night when I was out drinking with some of the younger nurses. He was a member of the metropolitan fire brigade. He explained how the wet pipe sprinkler system worked at the bar we were drinking at. Aside from that, he seemed normal. We both worked crazy hours. The next week we went to a Moroccan soup bar and ended up back at my place. Once we got beneath the covers, he burst into tears and started telling me how he’d just lost custody of his twin daughters.

  ‘Why do I always attract men like that?’ I asked out loud. I knew Jenna would have had a field day with it. It felt surprisingly normal telling her about my dating woes, even though I knew they were trivial compared to her suffering. She had taken it with such grace from the beginning, fighting when there was a fight to be had and understanding when the fight’s outcome was decided. She never seemed scared. The hardest part at work was when they were afraid right up until the end.

  There were still so many things I wanted to know, questions I had wanted to ask but had never quite found the right moment for. What was it like when no one else was around? Did she view it as an injustice? Did she want to scream ‘why me?’ a thousand times over? I already knew that no matter what good came my way in life, there would always be a part of me that would resent this and view it as proof of an almighty failure.

  I knew we’d never speak again. It had been days since she’d given any sign of knowing who I was. One of the last times we’d had a proper conversation was when we were driving along the Great Ocean Road on the way to the house. Ben thought it would be nice for her to see the coastline. I’d sat in the back with her and we’d talked about our favourite stand-up comedians. I tried to do Trevor Noah’s impersonation of the South African president. As we were approaching the Twelve Apostles, Jenna asked me
to wind down the window. She wanted to feel the wind from the Southern Ocean on her face. ‘That feels so nice,’ she said, eyes half-closed. ‘Thanks for everything.’

  ■

  I woke up in Frank’s gymnasium-built arms as he was carrying me back out to the living room. First light was breaking over the bay. I could see Maurice’s silhouette on the decking, so I made a cup of tea and joined him outside. He offered to roll a joint, but I declined. The tag was hanging out the neck of his grey Kmart jumper. It had been days since he’d changed clothes.

  ‘Have you been to sleep yet?’ I asked.

  ‘I haven’t really felt like it.’

  ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘Not bad.’ He removed a tissue of skin from his lips. ‘Those loose veins on her hands freak me out,’ he said. ‘I don’t know how you put up with it every day.’

  ‘People often say stuff like that to me. It’s weird, you kind of get used to it. Or you learn to build up a bit of a wall between yourself and the patients. Sometimes it all catches up with you at the end of a shift. I know a few of the girls are on Ativan.’

  ‘Do you have a wall with her?’

  ‘No, that’s the hard part. I’m too invested. She’s the last person in the world I ever wanted to treat as a patient. Maybe it seems like I’m in control. I don’t know.’

  ‘It does seem like you’re in control,’ he said. ‘We all feel safer when you’re in there with her.’

  The bay looked calm. I doubted that I’d get to attend the model boat regatta.

  ‘So, how long were you up north for?’ I asked.

  ‘About half a year. It was a good piece of escapism, wasn’t it?’ He smiled sheepishly. ‘She said we were better off as friends. It was a bit patronising, but when I see her around Ben, I know she’s right.’

  I liked that he was still talking about her in the present tense.

  ‘What was it like up there?’ I asked.

  ‘It was exactly what I needed. My uncle owns a seafood restaurant in Bundaberg, so he put me up and gave me some hours in the kitchen. I started out washing dishes, then worked my way up to doing some food prep. That’s how I sort of fell into cooking.’ He wiped his nose with his sleeve. ‘It’s not very glamorous or anything.’