by Mick McCoy
‘You’re nuts! Why would you take such a risk?’
‘He raised his hand, the cop, and pointed at me, thumb cocked, like a pistol. “Ostanovis pryamo tam!” he shouted, from across the street. “Stop right there!”’
‘What did you do?’
‘I had my residency pass and my student ID, so I waited while he crossed the street. I was shitting myself.’
‘Did he do anything?’
‘He snatched my ID. He wanted the camera too, but I wouldn’t give it to him. I started rewinding the film. “Take the film,” I said to him. “It’s yours.” There were good shots on that roll, but so what? He didn’t want to be recorded. I opened the back of the camera and gave him the roll. He threw the cartridge on the ground, stomped on it until the case cracked and then pulled out the film, exposing it all before stuffing it into his coat pocket.’
‘But he didn’t take your camera?’
Alex shook his head, then imitated a deep growl. ‘“V sleduyushchiy raz vashi dokumenty ne spaset vas. Next time your papers won’t save you,” the cop said. “Teper’ otvali! Now fuck off!”’
‘Then what happened?’
‘I fucked off.’
Sinead shivered. ‘You hear so many stories about people disappearing.’
‘Have you noticed there are so few old men around? Most of the ones you see are vets and deros. Sometimes it seems like the rest must be dead or in prison. Or working for the government. Men my father’s age, who were in the war – there’s hardly any of them around. If they’ve survived, they’re all wealthy enough and well connected enough to be invisible to the likes of us. Or else they’re loitering with the dogs outside the Metro.’
‘How is your dad?’
Alex hunkered down against the pillow. ‘He’s going to die tonight,’ he said, his voice matter-of-fact, as if he’d told her Conrad was going to the theatre.
She leaned into him. ‘How do you feel about that?’
It was a question his mother hadn’t once asked him.
For the hundredth time he thought about the accident and the secret his father made him keep. His complicity stabbed at him. He killed his brother but the secret made it so much worse, even though it was done to protect him. The adoption, though – that was different. That was all his mother, he was sure of it. All to protect her. Alex was a conspirator in his father’s secret, but a victim of his mother’s.
‘I get the sense he’s ready,’ he said. ‘He’s accepted what’s coming.’
* * *
When he woke late the next morning the dorm room was empty. A note on the desk said, Gone to the library.
The hospital was four bus stops towards Moscow’s centre. When Alex got there his father’s room was empty, the mattress bare. Breathless, he ran from the ward and down the stairs without speaking to anyone, walking the mile and a half through the snow back to the dorm. He didn’t want to go back to his mother’s flat. He didn’t know when he would.
RUBY
Ruby pulled aside the curtain to a black, starless sky. The clock read 4.21 a.m. The bed was empty but Conrad had never been in hospital. He’d been at home the whole time. So where was he?
He’s left me. He’s found out about Karl and he’s left me. But he was in the living room, at the table. Of course he was. Where else would he be? Her shoulders loosened. Bent over a manuscript, asleep – he must have come out to work after they went to bed. His thin hair was storm-blown, his back and neck like a slender stem, bowed under the weight of a head so heavy. When she touched him, lightly, he was swept from the chair and sprawled onto the floor. On her knees, with her hands to his face, his skin was cold and thin, smudged bluey-black, his eyes blank. She sat with him, his head in her lap, his body trailing across the floor, flat and fleshless like dirty laundry. When the wintry dawn broke four hours later she was alone on the living room floor. No Conrad. No Peter. No Alex.
She went back to bed, fierce with herself, exasperated with Conrad. Sleep was impossible but she refused to run to the hospital. Not again. It would make no difference. Was he dead? Why did she dream it? Would he die? Today? Next week? Even if his body still drew breath, by mouth or by plastic tube, he was gone. Peter was gone. Alex was gone.
‘I shouldn’t be here,’ she said out loud to the empty flat, as if she were late for a train that would take her away from this empty city. This empty life. But she couldn’t leave with Conrad like he was.
Was she a wife? A mother? She was once Ruby Brownlie: smart, passionate, with direction and belief and singularity. Despair swam about inside her. Once Conrad was gone she would have to find Ruby Brownlie again.
CONRAD
He woke.
His lungs were still wretched, his hands trembled, but he had a sense, a faintly flickering whisper that he wasn’t going to die.
In the night, it seemed so long ago, he’d seen Ruby up in the corner of the room, curling a finger and beckoning him to come, impish, smirking. The next moment he’d been at her side, floating, gazing down at himself in the hospital bed. His body had been perfectly still, no rise and fall of his chest, not the slightest twitch of a muscle. No colour, no essence. Cold.
He hadn’t been afraid of what he saw, but beside him Ruby had shouted, ‘Wake him up! Wake him up!’
Galina Romanovna, the night nurse, had run into the room and begun pumping his chest. The floating Conrad had wrapped himself within Ruby, her skin his, her eyes and ears and voice his. He’d felt his chest, Ruby’s chest, being shoved and bullied by the nurse. A doctor had come in, his scrubs frayed and his forearms hairy. Not his doctor. Not Zubrin. He’d done nothing but watch as Galina Romanovna pumped his rib cage and the dormant heart within it.
And then he woke to another day, in a different room, in the company of three sick men all hooked to machines, and to a faith that death had missed its chance to take him. He was wraithlike, but not a wraith.
‘I’m awake!’ he called out.
RUBY
Conrad’s room was empty. There was no patient or respirator and the bed was stripped of its sheets, the pillows without slips. All that remained was a lingering smell of aromatic tobacco and rings staining the mattress like shadows of the patients who’d left.
There seemed to be no doctors working, no nurses to ask about her husband, whether he’d had some kind of emergency and been transferred to a different ward. Only orderlies, who couldn’t tell her where Conrad or the medical staff had gone, or if the room had been stripped because the patient had died. She should have been frantic, like she’d been the day before when she’d dreamed him dead, but she was calm.
The corridor looped around the entire floor, with smaller rooms to the outside and a single twelve-bed room, windowless and stagnant, in the centre. She tried there first and was relieved not to find him. She went from room to room, always expecting him to be in the next one. But he wasn’t in the next one. Maybe he wasn’t on that floor? Maybe he was in a morgue in the basement, his body waiting to be moved to Donskoy Cemetery to join Peter. She continued. Each new room was occupied, sometimes by two patients, sometimes four. No one else had a single room like Valentin had arranged for Conrad. Doors were always open and she simply walked in, her former nursing life making her immune to ideas of privacy. Illness wasn’t private, not in a public hospital. Care was more important, and she carried herself with that kind of authority as she walked through each door. Ruby Brownlie would soon resume her nursing. In Australia, alone.
She’d almost done a complete lap, arriving back at the nurses’ station, when she entered the last room and someone spoke from within the clutter of beds and machines. She turned to the voice.
‘I’m awake,’ Conrad repeated. ‘Did you hear me?’
‘Oh,’ she said, the relief tingling at her scalp. ‘I’ve found you. You’re not dead.’ She sat with him and threaded her arms around the tubes and wires to hug him gently. ‘I’m all dizzy.’
He laughed with a lightness she hadn’t heard in months. ‘I�
�m saved.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Last night,’ he said, ‘after everyone was gone, I had a bit of a scare. That’s why they moved me in here.’
Ruby scanned the room. The equipment and its location next to the nurses’ desk suggested it was some kind of high-dependency unit. Conrad’s familiar respirator was beside his bed, as was a blood pressure cuff on a wheeled stand. A surprisingly modern ECG monitor sat on a table, Conrad’s green-lit heart trace pulsing inside its round screen.
‘My heart stopped, they tell me.’ He was smiling, though. ‘But it’s the strangest thing. The nurse who resuscitated me came in before her shift ended this morning. She said she was out there at her desk when a voice in her head called out to her, saying “Wake him up”, and she found me reaching towards the ceiling with both hands. I took one last big breath out, my lips flapping like a horse’s, she said, and then my arms dropped and I went limp.’ He stopped to cough, his lungs less boggy. He swallowed. ‘My heart had stopped and she brought me back.’
Ruby smiled at him, wanting to share his excitement but not trusting in it. How could she? It was some kind of mania that would be exhausted by the afternoon and he’d be ailing again, or dead. ‘How do you feel? Are you tired?’
‘And my test results have come back.’ He pulled her towards him again. ‘I don’t have cancer.’
‘What?’ Her bag slipped from the bed and dropped to the floor, her keys and purse and handkerchief spilling out.
‘The tests. The ones they did two weeks ago.’ His eyes were moist. ‘They were wrong. I don’t have cancer.’
‘Oh,’ she said again. He was all salvation and joy, while she was filled with doubt and confusion. She wanted to say I told you so and I’m so glad they’re wrong and But you nearly died last night! She bent down for the fallen handkerchief to wipe away the tears she found herself crying. ‘You surprise me,’ she said, ‘so beautifully and so much.’
‘They’re going to wean me off the paraldehyde. My breath won’t stink and I won’t be so zonked out, or have those horrible stomach cramps.’
‘You deserve a kiss,’ she said. His lips seemed warmer, fuller, if still dry and chapped. ‘How do you feel?’
‘Awake. Saved. By you and Galina Romanovna.’
His chest still crackled but in his face she saw something of his old optimism and determination. And hope. She wiped her eyes again and sat up tall.
‘It was your voice she heard calling out “Wake him up”. It must have been, because I remember that you were with me.’ He paused to beam at her again, light in his eyes. ‘I do remember that.’
More tears fell: of hope that he might live, of shame that she’d twice dreamed him dead, planned for him dead, so nearly wanted him dead.
‘You’ve missed Zubrin,’ he said. ‘He did his rounds earlier and told me about the test results.’ He squeezed her hands tightly. The day before, those same hands hadn’t enough strength to hold on to tiny chess pieces. ‘So I’m coming home. I’m getting out of here!’
‘It’s so hard to believe,’ she said. ‘I can’t stop crying.’
* * *
‘He will not recover, not fully,’ Dr Zubrin said, hours later. ‘And progress will be slow.’
‘But enough to fly?’ Ruby asked. ‘In an aeroplane to Australia?’
The doctor hesitated. ‘Living in a warm climate would be good for his lungs, but getting there?’ he said. ‘He is not ready for that.’
‘When will he be?’
‘Ruby, please,’ Conrad said.
‘Maybe never,’ Zubrin said. ‘Or maybe two weeks, I don’t know.’ He put his hands in his pockets and leaned in towards them. ‘But you should try,’ he said quietly.
‘What about the respirator?’ she asked. ‘Will he need it?’
‘I hope not. He needs it less already than yesterday, although I don’t exactly understand why. We will wean him from it and see. There are medications that will help. But he will not get as well as he seems to think he will. I have told him, but he is stubborn.’
‘What else will he need to do?
‘Medications, always. For as long as he wants to continue to draw breath.’ His smile was flat and thin. ‘There will be more drugs in the West. Different drugs.’
‘Thank you,’ Ruby said, as he walked into the corridor.
‘He doesn’t exactly understand,’ she said to Conrad. ‘That’s an understatement.’
‘Can you keep your voice down?’
‘Let’s not forget he diagnosed you with cancer and gave you up for dead. Convinced you tests he hadn’t run would show you had cancer, so that you gave yourself up for dead.’
‘But Ruby …’ ‘
But nothing,’ she said. ‘We’ve got to get you out of this place as soon as possible.’
That took another week.
CONRAD
Valentin would have to carry Conrad up the five flights of stairs. While his strength had improved, he could walk no more than twenty shuffling steps, always with someone at his side. He managed to get from the car park at the rear of the block to the foyer, his longest walk in two months, and the first time he’d tasted fresh air. But climbing stairs, even a single step, was impossible.
‘I have overcoats heavier than you,’ Valentin said as they stood in the foyer.
‘My weight won’t be the problem,’ Conrad said. ‘I won’t be able to hold on.’
Valentin didn’t smile. ‘Let’s try,’ he said. He lowered himself to his haunches. ‘Jump up,’ he said. ‘Put your legs around my hips.’
‘Really?’ Conrad said. ‘Jump?’
Ruby laughed at them. She stood off to the side, holding Conrad’s bag. It contained the remains of a bottle of Johnny Walker, two shot glasses, a dried-out half-smoked cigar, a crumpled but unsmoked cigarette, and several bottles of pills.
Conrad draped himself across Valentin’s back. ‘All right then, let’s go.’ Valentin stood and Conrad’s legs slipped immediately from his hips. ‘It doesn’t matter, keep going,’ Conrad said.
They had to stop at each of the first three floors and then at the landing in between as well, Conrad releasing and reclasping his arms around Valentin’s neck, lifting his knees as best he could to keep his feet clear of the steps. He felt like a puppet with broke strings.
‘I want to walk to my front door,’ Conrad said once they reached the fifth floor. He was more exhausted than Valentin.
‘Wait here,’ Ruby said. She went ahead and unlocked the door, dropped his bag inside and came back. ‘Hold my hand.’
He walked along the corridor, leaning on Ruby as little as he could, gripping the door frame when at last he arrived there. ‘If there’s a fire in the block,’ he said, ‘leave me for kindling.’ He steeled himself for one last effort across the living room to the table before slumping into the nearest chair. ‘Ruby, that whisky – could you? And can we find a third glass? We should celebrate this.’
She went back to the door for his bag.
‘Give me a month,’ he said, easing into the chair, ‘and I will climb those stairs on my own.’
‘You don’t have a month,’ Ruby said. ‘We’ll be on a plane to Australia before then. Won’t we, Valentin?’
‘Ah, yes.’ He sat down next to Conrad and spread his palms flat on the table. ‘After we talked at Christmas, I began arrangements for tickets and exit visas. That’s good, yes?’ He straightened his back, smiling. ‘But it’s up to you to sort out the business with your own embassy. Your entry back into Australia, I can’t help with that.’
‘When?’ Conrad said.
‘Don’t back out on me now, Conrad,’ Ruby said, unscrewing the lid of the whisky bottle. ‘Not after all this.’
‘I’m not backing out.’
‘I should leave,’ Valentin said. ‘But don’t get up. Drink the whisky, the two of you. That’s a very good idea.’ He didn’t wait for goodbyes. ‘It’s so good to see you out of that hospital, Conrad,’ he said at the door. ‘Now
for the next step.’
Ruby poured two slugs and raised her glass. ‘Drink,’ she said.
‘I’m not backing out – I just want to know.’
‘Drink.’
Conrad raised his glass, touched it to Ruby’s. Both were drained.
‘Two weeks, if we can get the Australian entry visas.’
‘Two weeks!’ he said. ‘That’s very soon.’
Ruby filled their glasses again. She raised hers and waited for Conrad.
‘I hope I’m well enough.’ He drank. ‘I want to go. I do.’
She didn’t say anything.
‘What about your job?’ he asked.
‘Sacked,’ she said. ‘Back in November. Do you remember Tamara on the train coming home from the police station? “Whatever we can do to help,” she said. Liar. She was only too happy to get rid of an untrustworthy foreigner like me.’
‘And Novy Mir?’
‘It’s not enough work, by itself. Nowhere near enough.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
She took a moment before saying, ‘I didn’t want to worry you.’
All this planning for a life without him. Had she been sacked? Had she quit, knowing she’d go home to Australia when he died?
‘What about my job?’ he said.
‘We’ll be back in Australia before you’re ready to work.’ She nudged the empty glass across the tabletop. ‘You’ll die if you stay here.’
‘And Alex? He’s only half a year into his course.’
‘He’s young. He’ll adapt.’
‘But does he know we’re going?’
‘Not in two weeks,’ she said. ‘Valentin only finalised the tickets yesterday, and Alex hasn’t been here to tell.’
‘But he knows we’re going sometime?’
‘Yes. He knows that.’
‘What did he say?’
Ruby shrugged. ‘He said “okay”.’
Without the paraldehyde the whisky didn’t make Conrad so drowsy, but he still struggled to accept the speed of Ruby’s plans. At first, going home had been an abstract concept he’d thought was right for Ruby and Alex, and then he’d come to terms with it as something real he would unexpectedly be alive to participate in at some time in the future. But in two weeks! He sat at the table holding his empty shot glass, his eyes on Ruby but unfocused.