Missing Christopher

by Jayne Newling

  ‘I grabbed his hand and said, “If you can hear me, squeeze my hand”, but there was no movement. I placed my cheek against his mouth and could feel a slight breath.’

  The ambulance officers arrived then, followed shortly by Phil and I, and Christopher was carried to the ambulance. While Phil and I waited outside the ambulance doors, Jack, Ally and her family were about 25 metres away as they told police their version of events. When the ambulance drove away Ally and Jack went to the hospital. The ambulance doors were open; they saw Christopher lying in the back with a sheet covering his body, his feet ‘hanging out’. It was then they knew Christopher had ‘passed away’.

  Both Jack and Ally stated they were unsure whether he jumped or fell.

  Ally’s final statement reads: ‘All I can say is that when he fell, there was the sound of rocks falling but no screams from him.’

  From the statement of the ambulance officer, Terry:

  11:45 P.M.

  ‘When I got to the patient his body was partly lying in water which was discoloured red with blood. He had an amount of bleeding from his mouth. I found him unconscious with multiple lower limb fractures, a very faint carotid pulse and no sign of respiration. There were obvious signs of injury to his upper body. His pupils were fixed and dilated.’

  The two officers rolled Christopher onto a spinal board and along with two other officers from an intensive care ambulance commenced CPR. He was intubated.

  ‘Heavy bleeding continued through the tube and it became evident that the patient had massive internal injuries,’ Terry stated.

  ‘These injuries were incompatible with life and the patient was pronounced deceased at midnight.’

  Jack eventually found the mirror—a metre away from where Christopher’s body landed. Ally would find the rest of his phone. By the time I got it back from police weeks later, all his messages had been wiped.

  Christopher loved Bunny, his Buddha, incense and moonstones. He hated injustice, cruelty, judgement.

  He was scared of the dark and being alone.

  That’s how he died.

  He didn’t even scream.

  chapter 18

  As I write this, the last leaf of the weeping birch flutters onto the murky surface of the sandstone birdbath. It sits among the forget-me-nots in an arched garden I created when we first moved here three years ago. A red climbing rose, shadowed by a large crab apple, struggles over one arch and on the other, a pink and a white clematis hold hands for the cold months ahead. The grape hyacinths and jonquils have popped through their mulched blanket and when I scratch just below the surface, the tips of hundreds of orange, yellow and white daffodils hint an annual promise of a carpet of wintry cheer. The black tulips, bluebells and the purple-veined crocus will be next, completing the coloured splendour in a leafless winter garden.

  In a corner near the fish pond, a semi-naked Chinese elm quivers. My favourite tree—I’ve planted one in every garden I’ve owned. Although this one is only 3 metres tall, in time its crown will match the 20-metre sycamore.

  My Chinese elm started out as a 3-centimetre sapling in a pot which Daisy gave to me during our years of renting. He had taken it as a cutting from Christopher’s memorial tree which was planted at Shore’s preparatory school and rugby grounds at Northbridge a month after he died. Only 3 metres tall at the time, the memorial tree is now a 15-metre majestic grandfather, shading the playground’s forecourt and tall enough to be seen from the rugby oval. It was commissioned by Headmaster Grant who, in his final year at Shore, wanted to leave a legacy for our son. He had chosen a Chinese elm, unaware it was my favourite tree.

  At its base a plaque, mounted on a large rock, reads:

  Christopher Newling ‘Cricket’ 22.10.1984–29.8.2002.

  At Shore 1996–2002.

  Vitai Lampada Traditit; He Handed On The Torch Of Life.

  Recently, Phil and I went to see the tree for the first time since it was planted. We had avoided the rugby grounds, the memories too sad. Kelly Courtnall is a teacher at the prep school’s early learning centre, and she arranged for us to visit the tree during school hours. She was also a great friend of Christopher’s.

  I was worried I wouldn’t recognise her but when she put her arms around us and smiled, it was as if no time had passed. As we entered the playground, a throng of five- and six-year-olds gathered around her, calling out her name: ‘Hello, Miss Kelly!’ She is strikingly beautiful with long, straight blonde hair framing a delicate face with porcelain skin. But it was her warmth and kindness which attracted us as we talked under the wide limbs of Christopher’s tree.

  ‘He was a very good friend to me,’ she says. ‘When I was sixteen, I had a stroke and was in hospital, rehab and then at home for quite a long time. Chris was home, too, after his leg operations. He came over every day for a while to sit with me. We talked and watched movies together. It was such a special time.’

  Kelly says Christopher was a supportive friend who shared with her their common stories of struggle. She says she never knew he was depressed.

  ‘He always seemed so full of love, laughter and light-hearted fun. He was the life of the party—the popular one. He was so easy to love. I heard from others he was having a hard time but I presumed it would pass.

  ‘I started teaching at Shore three years ago. I noticed the tree and the plaque on my first day teaching here. I didn’t know it was Chris’s tree. It shocked me when I read the plaque. I sat here and cried and cried.’

  Now she says she loves looking at the tree, watching the children play around and in it. When the kids ask her to read the plaque, they always say, ‘Who’s Cricket?’

  She tells them he used to play rugby here and was a very special friend.

  chapter 19

  I didn’t know her name. She was someone’s daughter, someone’s mother, maybe someone’s wife. But she was alone, alone with her grief, her particular madness. She draped herself over the handrail at the top of the stairs near the entrance of one of Sydney’s major psychiatric hospitals in a leafy suburb on the North Shore. It was early afternoon but her hair was mussed as if she’d just woken and didn’t care. She wore a grey tracksuit which sagged at the knees and well-worn ugg boots, stained with ash and egg yolk. A cigarette dangled from her dry and cracked lips. She drew back, exhaled then coughed with a guttural explosion. She glared at Phil and me as we hesitated on the first step. She thought I was ‘going in’ by the wild look in my eye and by the way Phil was steering me with a gentle hand at my elbow.

  The corridor was long and narrow. The white walls had yellowed over the years and were stamped like a child’s painting with handprints. Doors to the wards were all open and men and women stared at us as we walked slowly past. I smiled at them but they didn’t return my phoney bonhomie. They all had lost interest some time ago. The stench of chlorine and urine wafted after us as we shuffled discreetly down the hall. Somewhere nearby a woman screamed, a wail so mournful I wanted to go to her. Phil grabbed my hand and forced me to keep up with him until we reached the glassed, bulletproof, locked cubicle at the end of the hall. Nic was in there.

  They had locked up our sixteen-year-old because he wanted to die just like his brother did two months before. He was in a room just big enough for a single bed and a chair. He was asleep, his cordless computer opened by his feet, his school uniform slung over his bag in the corner of the ward.

  His school counsellor, John Burns, and Gordon Parker had agreed Nic wasn’t coping at school. John had called me that morning for my permission to admit him. I knew it was serious because, even though I said I’d pick Nic up from school, John said he’d take him as the hospital was just five minutes away.

  I ran my fingers through Nic’s hair and kissed his bloated cheek.

  He stirred, opened his eyes, then closed them again. He didn’t want to see us. He didn’t want to talk about why he was there. He just was and we had to accept it. And somehow we had to live with the horror that we may lose another child.


  My mother was in this hospital five years before but two floors down on the drug and alcohol ward, one floor above the eating disorder unit. She nearly died, too. My father was overseas and she didn’t want to live either. She drank herself into a stupor and fell down the stairs at home. A neighbour found her, called me and I drove her bruised and battered body into this hospital.

  Doctors knocked her out with Valium. I sat crying by her bedside all night while Phil looked after our boys. The doctor told me to get help, because, he said matter-of-factly, children of alcoholics need support, too. I wondered what he would say if he saw me now, sitting by Nic who wanted to die to finally free himself of the demons in his head and because that’s what his brother did eight weeks earlier.

  Over the following days his depression gave way to his mania. He was allowed his computer cord but only under supervision.

  He spent every waking minute designing T-shirts of ‘Criddy’, funny ones which captured his smile, his naughty personality. Nic turned him into an animated cricket, standing, ankles crossed against a lamp post, smoking a cigarette.

  He asked a friend to help him with the design and manufacture, and every day there was a new T-shirt, a new cricket with something else to say.

  He’d ask us what we thought and we encouraged him, anything to keep him focused and alive. He was exhausting—talking too fast to be understood, swiping at the keyboard in hurried jabs too quick for the eye to follow.

  The nurses told us they had to take the computer away from him at night so he would get some rest but by morning’s light he would be at it again, only breaking for something to eat.

  We were told he’d be in the hospital for at least ten days. Gordon, who had no jurisdiction at this hospital, still came to see him every day. He called us after one visit to tell us he thought he’d finally diagnosed Nic. For the first time he had witnessed Nic’s mania. He was almost certain Nic had bipolar disorder, which necessitated a whole new set of medications.

  After a week it was deemed he was safe enough to be moved into a non-acute ward. Unbeknown to Phil and me at the time, he was put into a ward with three other men, all in their forties. That night while Phil and I sat silently on the deck I felt a jab of panic in my chest. Something was wrong. I couldn’t get my breath and my lungs were screaming. Phil poured me a strong drink and I drained it. He put his arms around me until my panic eased.

  ‘Something is wrong,’ I said to him breathlessly. ‘I have to ring Nic.’

  His phone rang and rang until he finally answered. He sounded strange. He told me he had been moved from the acute ward. I heard the fear in his voice.

  ‘Are you okay, Nic?’

  Silence.

  ‘Nic! Are you okay?’

  Silence, although I was sure I heard him crying.

  ‘What’s wrong, Nic?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘I’m coming in.’

  ‘No, don’t, Mum. I’m okay.’

  His voice was flat, uninterested, monotonic.

  ‘I’m worried about you, Nic.’

  He couldn’t talk. I could hear the emotion in his breathing, the sharp intake of air. I knew for certain he was crying.

  ‘I’m leaving now, Nic.’

  ‘No, Mum! I’m sorry, Mum. I just can’t do this anymore. I’m so sorry, Mum. Forgive me, Mum.’

  ‘No, Nic, no! Please. Please wait for us. Please, we’re coming now. Please, Nic.’

  The phone went dead.

  Hearing my end of the conversation and my panic, Phil had called Daisy, who screeched up the driveway as I called Gordon at home. I told him that Nic was alone and going to kill himself. I was hysterical, screaming. He told me he’d ring me back after he spoke to his colleague, the psychiatrist looking after Nic.

  Daisy broke all records getting to the hospital so it only took us half an hour.

  Gordon called back. The off-duty psychiatrist had alerted staff and was on his way to the hospital. Gordon and I talked continually during the trip as updates came through. We knew they had found him, we knew he was alive, but nothing else.

  Daisy, Phil and I ran into the hospital, not caring about the noise or who we crashed into. A nurse tried to slow me, calm me, but I told her to fuck off. A doctor led us into a quiet anteroom where Nic was lying on a high examination bed. He looked dead.

  I reassured myself with an ear to his mouth. He had been heavily sedated and his wrists were bandaged. I laid my head down on his chest and sobbed. After an hour, Phil and Daisy wanted to take me home but I wouldn’t leave until the psychiatrist assured me Nic wouldn’t wake till morning and would be closely monitored. ‘Like before?’ I wanted to say, but what would that have achieved?

  The next day Nic was back in the lock-up ward. He was lying like a toddler, his head under the sheets.

  I lifted a corner and was shocked to see how pale and sad he looked, even with his eyes closed.

  ‘I love you,’ I whispered in his ear.

  He opened his eyes and smiled wanly.

  ‘Me too,’ he managed.

  I wanted to ask him why he wanted to die but I already knew. Tears leaked through the slits in his fingers and he sobbed, giving in to his devastation.

  I nearly lost him. How could I protect him when I couldn’t save Christopher? How could I battle and beat the monsters who chant ‘be dead’ in his head? How could I swaddle him in a blanket of maternal cottonwool when I couldn’t promise him I’d be there to catch him? As his mother, how could I allow myself to fail again?

  It felt like a test—a trial of redemption which I knew I didn’t have the courage or the strength to perform. Then I looked into his eyes, so empty, so desperate, and realised I was his only chance. But what hope could I offer when I didn’t want to live, either. Ironically, he would end up being my only chance, a second chance to save a son.

  ‘I love you, Nic.’

  He tried to smile, then closed his eyes. I stroked his hair and held his hand tightly.

  ‘I’ll always love you, no matter what. Remember that,’ I said.

  He opened his eyes. They were lifeless, dark pools in a bottomless pit. Fresh tears fell, a waterfall to the pillow under his head. He reached out and pulled me to him.

  ‘I need you, Mum.’

  For Nic

  Sometimes, when I chance a look at my son

  I can see the pain behind the smear of his veneer

  He will catch me—sometimes

  I move my mood

  Smile

  Try to make amends

  Too late

  I ask him how he is

  He shuffles

  He knows me too well

  He tries to filter through the quagmire of his mind

  Accessing only the immediate

  The rest swirls and twirls in a murky maelstrom of confusion.

  He rocks from side

  to side If I die, you couldn’t live in this house

  You’d see me in every room

  You’d hear me laugh—my violin

  I’d hear him cry. How could I?

  How could I stand in this room

  Where he spent days crafting a shield for King Arthur

  The room where he laughed along with Johnny Bravo

  His bedroom where a thousand words are locked

  In cellular time capsules

  Where his boyhood clown has been left to rest for the day

  If I don’t live . . .

  He falls silent

  He can’t bear to see me cry

  But he doesn’t need to explain

  I know him too well.

  chapter 20

  Nic came home a few weeks later, just before Christmas. He didn’t want to; he was scared. He didn’t trust himself or me. The shine in his eyes had dulled and his heavy step shuffled with dread through our unhappy home. He was grey and spiritless, indistinct as though sheathed in plastic wrap. He didn’t want to eat, drink or talk.

  ‘Too tired,’ he said, pulling Clowny out of his bag.
‘Maybe later.’ Night had finally fallen on this dark day. Phil and I waited, watched and listened as Nic slept. We tried to wake him to eat but he had no desire.

  I should have been grateful my son was down the hall, asleep, and I didn’t understand why I wasn’t.

  ‘Fear,’ Phil said.

  Yes. Fear is as powerful as grief is poisonous. It permeates the skin, seeps into the blood and winds a soporific venal path into the already burdened heart. It smells like turned fish, the pungent odour leaking out through every pore. Fear makes you sick. It mutates into a mass in the pit of your gut where it beats and pulsates then releases the bile in a spasm that renders you breathless.

  The next day was long and agonising as I watched Nic sleep the hours away. I wondered what he had prayed for. Did he ask the God he believed in to help him live or did he secretly still want to die so he could be with Criddy?

  Phil and I pretended to be good parents while shuffling past each other like invalids; like mutes we nodded at unnecessary questions. We were drained and desperate, cold and intractable. We had been stunned by shock; electrical jolts had cauterised our nerves which dangled flaccidly in an airless lacuna.

  Although Nic was still alive, it felt like death to me.

  We spent the following days stroking and soothing him, pulling him out of bed and back into life. After a few weeks I began to see a glimmer of my former son. Phil made him laugh, I made him eat. His smile slowly returned along with the light in his sky-blue eyes. He told jokes again, laughed, loved, lived. He still slept most of the day and night as his body and mind adjusted to the new medication and although panic punched my heart with predictable beats, there were times I heard myself breathe. Gordon was pleased with his recovery and that the drug-resistant Nic was finally properly diagnosed and medicated.