by Eve Smith
I pray for death to come.
It’s close now, I can feel it.
Stalking through my body. Claiming me bit by bit.
CHAPTER 49
KATE
She leads me down a corridor that smells of detergent, filled with the rumble and rinse of machines. We pass through what must be a drying room. I peel off my coat and fumble my way through steam into another room peppered with ironing boards.
‘That’s it. I’m not going any further.’ I stop and wipe my forehead.
She closes the door behind me and leans against it, sweat sheening her face. ‘I couldn’t see it at first,’ she says, studying me. ‘But now I can. It’s the eyes.’
‘Look, I told you, I only have a—’
‘They’re not the right colour. But they’re the same shape.’
The breath spills out of me. ‘That’s it, I’m leav—’
She raises a hand. ‘Wait, sister.’ My mind swerves. ‘Well, half-sister, to be precise.’
I stare at her blondish-brown hair. Her fawn eyes.
‘It was a shock to me, too.’ Her mouth twitches. ‘She managed to keep it a secret from everyone. Including the father.’
‘You mean … you mean, you’re Lily’s—’
‘Your mother fucked my dad.’ The expletive stings like a slap. ‘While he was married. To my mum.’
It’s like an icy breeze. Of course. The family I never knew. Sweat slicks down my neck.
‘I used to hear Mum sobbing, night after night, when she thought I was asleep. I was six years old. Only later I figured it out.’ She wets her lips. ‘She knew that whore was trying to steal him…’
I cringe. ‘Please, don’t call her—’
‘But he wouldn’t leave. He would never leave us, not by choice.’
Her voice cracks and it’s as if a fissure has opened up. Behind shines molten lava.
‘How does that saying go? “Stronger than lover’s love is lover’s hate”.’ Her eyes glitter. ‘Twenty-eight years she waited. Well, I waited too.’
A high-pitched whine drills through my head. I scan the room for another way out. There isn’t one.
‘I was there, you know. At the trial.’ Her lips tremble. ‘They called him “the plague doctor”. My father! A man who devoted his life to curing people!’ She steps closer. ‘Without her evidence they’d never have had a case.’
Her breath blows in my face. ‘Have you worked it out yet, Kate?’ I bring my hands up, as if they can protect me. ‘Your father was Piet Bekker.’
It all spins loose: photos, articles, conversations collide in the vortex. I stagger to a sink and grip the cold porcelain with both hands.
‘They refused him bail, sent him straight down. Do you know what the death rate was back then, in prisons?’ She punches out each word. ‘Eighty percent.’
She is building to something. Something terrible. I want to hurtle past her, to safety, but I am paralysed, like a rattlesnake’s prey.
‘They never proved it was him, but nobody cared. He died before he was sentenced. From the disease he’d worked so hard to cure.’
I have done some good things in my life, Kate, and some bad things. Things that I regret…
She looms over me. ‘She’s not a nice person, your mother. Your father was a good man, a brilliant man. But Mary—’
‘What did you do to her?’ The words creep out of my mouth like mice: small and frightened.
She regards me with lacklustre eyes. ‘Nothing she hadn’t already done herself.’
My panic spirals. I edge away from her. ‘Better to confess now. Let them try to save her.’ I swallow. ‘They’ll charge you with murder.’
A shadow flickers over her face. ‘Let me tell you about murder.’ She lunges forward and grabs my wrists. ‘An innocent man, destroyed.’ She drags her nails across my veins. ‘A wife so wretched she slits her wrists.’
I wrestle free. ‘I … I’m sorry, I didn’t know—’
‘Just leave her,’ she hisses. ‘Like she left you.’
I see the hatred in her eyes, like a force between us. I meet her gaze. ‘I can’t.’
Something like a sigh escapes her lips. Her hand slides into her pocket.
My body tenses. ‘Please. Don’t.’
She smiles as her hand closes round something I cannot see.
I charge at her; we crash into the ironing boards. I yank her arm up hard, behind her back, as I’ve been taught. She claws at me with her other hand, but I manage to swivel her round and pin her against the wall. I press my body tight against hers and reach into her pocket.
My fingers touch plastic and cool metal. ‘What is it?’
She doesn’t reply.
‘What’s in the syringe?’
She swallows. ‘Just a sedative.’
I yank the sheath off the needle and press it against her skin. ‘You’d better say now if it isn’t.’
Her throat makes a clicking noise. ‘Be my guest.’
I inject her in the median cubital vein. Her body stiffens and relaxes. Her head lolls back, and she slurs something that I can’t quite hear. It sounds like ‘save the trouble’.
Her eyes haze over. She slides down the wall to the floor.
I bring her left arm and knee up and roll her onto her side. My hands are shaking. But as I rest her head on her other arm I realise something’s wrong. Her breathing’s slowed. I’d expect that.
It’s too slow.
I put my fingers to her neck. The pulse is already faint.
I bend my cheek to her mouth.
She has stopped breathing.
I pull her onto her back and check her airway. My hands run over her sternum and find the spot. I press the heel of one hand to her chest and start pumping. I count to thirty as my own pulse thunders in my veins.
No response.
I yank out my key ring and pull on a face shield. I tilt her head up and pinch her nose then clamp my mouth over hers. I breathe into her once, twice and check again. Nothing. I feel for a pulse and start the chest compressions again.
I keep going, the sweat running down my face. I don’t know how many cycles. Eventually my arms cramp up and my knees go numb. I drop back on my heels, panting.
She stares at me, unseeing. Her eyes are a different colour, but she was right about the shape. I brush my fingers over her eyelids and feel their warmth, not yet ebbing away.
A part of me collapses. I brace my hands against the floor. As if they can stop my fall.
I had a sister. A half-sister.
And I realise. What she actually said.
It wasn’t ‘Save the trouble’. It was ‘Save me the trouble’.
That needle was never meant for me.
It was meant for her.
CHAPTER 50
LILY
Something moves in front of my eyes. Is it a hand? I’m not sure. I can’t stop shivering. Like those others. Glazed eyes, sodden in sweat, they shiver from their beds to their graves.
‘Lily?’
Too bright. A fierce white light, like … What’s it called? That metal? All the sparks fly out when it burns. Mags … magsenium. Is that it? You have to wear goggles, though. Or you’ll hurt your eyes.
‘Lily, it’s Kate.’
I dreamt they were here. We were all together. I tried to tell her the things I need to say.
But this whining drowns everything.
Like crickets.
They used to go all night, in the savannah. The night orchestra. Who called them that? Was it him? I think it was.
‘I’m right here.’
‘Kate?’ Even in my dreams she comforts me. I try again. ‘Sorry … I’m so sorry, I had to protect you…’
They sound like the husks of words. Like words that have rotted, buried for too long.
‘It’s OK, Lily. None of that matters now.’
I love you.
I would have liked to say that, one more time.
Words, letters fail.
Sh
e cannot hear me. No one can.
KATE
I know what to expect, but it crushes me. Tears spring to my eyes and I furiously blink them back. She looks so small. A child in an adult’s bed. Fiery tracks criss-cross her skin like bloody rivers, mapped with angry red spots. Her left arm’s so badly swollen; it must have been agony. I grip the chair I lifted from the nurse’s station. There’s none to be found here.
I unbuckle the straps and ease off the cuffs. Despite the padding, I can see the marks on her wrists where they’ve chafed her. A deep-purple bruise flowers her skin where they put in the cannula. I temper my breathing and take her right hand. It hangs cold and limp in my palm.
‘Lily, it’s Kate.’
I hope she can still hear me. Hearing is the last sense to go. People forget that; they talk as if the patients aren’t there. Sometimes they say terrible things.
I stroke her hand. ‘I’m right here.’
‘Kate?’ Her voice is like sandpaper.
I bend closer. ‘Yes, it’s Kate.’
Her body judders with fever. As much as I want to believe otherwise, I don’t think she knows I’m here.
She says sorry, over and over. ‘I had to protect you…’
‘It’s OK, Lily. None of that matters now. I’m here.’ I pull up the blanket and try to piece her words together, like a jigsaw. Her language is already compromised. My chest tightens. Won’t be long.
The nurses said she went berserk when she came to. That it took three of them to restrain her, and even then she managed to yank out the IV line and the feeding tube. I find that hard to believe. But then, things are different at Penworth; they work to their own agenda here. I doubt they’ll do another PEG after this one. They should just let her pull the damn thing out.
‘She hasn’t signed, you know,’ said one of them when I arrived. A small woman, sounded Asian, but it’s hard to tell in the suits. ‘We have to log you’re here.’
It was her way of being kind. I know I can’t do anything; I’m in enough trouble already.
I think of my sister, sprawled on the floor, and despair swells through me.
I used to help people live.
I should have come straight away.
I mop Lily’s face with a wipe. The skin is stretched over her bones like papyrus. I moisten a swab with fresh water and dab it around her lips. They’re already parched; soon they will crack. I take another swab and gently work my way inside her mouth, careful not to wet it too much in case she chokes.
‘Help! Please, someone. Help me.’
There she goes again, that poor woman by the window. She keeps wailing, but nobody comes. She’s not my responsibility, none of them are, but it’s hard to block out the cries of the dying. I get up and draw the curtains, but I still hear them. The whimpers and groans. The mutterings. Someone – a man, I think – is weeping. The rest are either asleep or unconscious. The lucky ones.
Lily moans and starts scrabbling at the sheets. I pull out the kit, ready.
‘There’s something on me!’ She tugs the feeding tube. I fill the syringe: 5mg of haloperidol. What they’ve given her isn’t enough, not now.
‘It’s crawling across my stomach! Get it off!’
‘It’s OK, Lily.’ I lift her wrist and inject it into the cannula port. She screams and her other arm flails round, catching my ear.
‘It’s bitten me!’
‘It’s OK. It’s just a sedative. To help you sleep.’ I lean across her, let her beat her fists against my back. They’re like a toddler’s, drumming slower and slower until eventually they drop back on the bed.
I lift her hand. Her fingers are bent, locked into her palm, like crooked bicycle spokes. I rummage in my bag for some cream. I uncurl each finger and gently rub it in.
LILY
‘Piet? It’s me, Mary. Piet?’
He doesn’t answer. Why won’t he look at me? He’s lying in that gully, with his face in the dirt. If I could just touch him … maybe he would listen. But my hands are frozen, unable to move.
‘Piet!’ I slip down beside him. His arms are splayed, feet angled into the red earth, as if he’s about to burrow his way down. Blood fans out around his head like a blanket.
He turns; there’s a gurgling sound, like river water running over stones.
I stagger back and scream but no sound comes out.
There’s a gaping hole where his face should be. Splintered bone. Tatters of skin and sinew.
‘I’m sorry,’ I whisper. ‘I’m so sorry.’
The only things left are his eyes. His beautiful eyes.
The colour of a monsoon sky. Before the rain falls.
KATE
She says his name, over and over. My father’s name.
I smooth the sheets and whisper: ‘It’s OK, Lily, it’s OK.’ I daren’t give her any more Haldol. ‘Don’t worry about the past. Try to rest.’
Gradually, her breathing slows, but it’s still too fast, as if she’s running a race only she can see. I brush her hair off her forehead. It feels like wet strands of silk.
A new noise chimes above the mutterings. I peer round the curtain at the rows of faces. An eerie silence descends, as if they know. The chimes are coming from the bed at the end, by the window. For her sake, I hope it’s that woman. Or the weeping man.
I check on Lily, but she’s somewhere far away, resting at last. Those chimes used to be a warning; they used to bring nurses running. Not any longer. When it gets to ten minutes I stand up and start to pace. All this technology and they still can’t get it right.
After fifteen minutes, I hear footsteps. I move behind the curtain to watch. A nurse strolls along the ward, pushing a trolley: casual, unhurried. Based on the height I’d say it’s a man, but it’s hard to tell. The wheels rattle across the tiles like chattering teeth and come to a halt by the bed. He checks one of the patient’s arms, then the other and punches some buttons on the monitor.
Draw the bloody curtains! I think. You know the procedure!
His fingers drum the rail as the flashing-red seconds count down. After 180, the chiming stops.
Life is extinct.
He tears off the Velcro straps and yanks back the bedclothes. I see now it is the woman; her hospital gown has ridden up, exposing emaciated thighs. He strips off her gown and dumps it into the waste; the lid clangs shut. There’s a ripping noise as he pulls off the electrode pads. Raw patches of skin glisten underneath.
I check the adjacent bed, praying whoever’s in there is unconscious. Above the sheets I see a waxen face – a man’s, I think. His eyes are open. He watches the nurse disconnect the drip and remove the cannula; sees the blood dribble out onto the sheets. The nurse grabs the feeding tube and pulls; there’s a smacking sound as he tugs it out. When he parts the woman’s legs to cut the catheter valve, the man turns away and starts to sob.
I creep back to the bed and take Lily’s hand, trying not to squeeze too hard. She moans softly in her sleep.
A couple of minutes later, I hear the bed wheel past. I think of those refrigerated shelves in the basement, the black numbers on square metal doors. At least her stay there will be brief, unless there’s some hiccup with the admin.
They like to burn the bodies within three days.
LILY
Tired.
So tired.
Her. Here.
Fading.
Yes.
Yes.
KATE
She takes four rapid breaths. I count the seconds on my watch. I get to thirty before she takes her next one.
I stroke her face. ‘I’m right here, Lily. Your daughter: Kate.’ My voice catches. ‘No need to be afraid.’
I notice the purple blotch on her arm where the blood is collecting. I check her wrist: barely a pulse. She is so still. Like a photograph. Like the ones Victorians used to take of their relatives after they’d died.
I swallow. ‘I’m sorry we didn’t meet sooner. That we didn’t get the chance to know each other…’ My words s
tumble as I think of Lily, in that room, with my sister. ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t protect you…’
Her eyes open, and it is as if the film has lifted. She looks so young all of a sudden; the years have melted away.
She tries to say something. Too faint. I read her lips.
Love…
My tears spill onto her face. I press my lips to her cheek. ‘Goodbye.’
A tiny flutter of her hand in mine. Like a butterfly.
It’s enough.
LILY
The African sun beats down on my shoulders. Two hornbills cackle as they hop from branch to branch.
My baby gazes up at me and curls her fingers tight around mine. She smells as sweet as a meadow. As fresh as the newly cut grass.
A droplet of rain kisses my cheek. I turn to him and smile.
He takes my hand.
My hand.
Fingers straight and slender.
Oval nails with little white moons.
CHAPTER 51
KATE
There’s a light rain. Not enough for an umbrella, but enough to make the leaves glisten and the damp creep into my shoes. Flowers weave between the grassy mounds, a carpet of pink, yellow and white. Behind us are dense patches of woodland: the sole survivors of an ancient forest that once stretched for miles. Beyond the fence green and gold fields spread over hills to the horizon, like a giant patchwork quilt. I wonder how many people have stared at this view. How many lie buried under our feet. I inhale the smell of wet earth and try to rally my senses.
‘They’re stunning, aren’t they? The wildflowers,’ says Anne. She looks smaller somehow, wrapped up in her navy raincoat.
I nod. ‘It’s the perfect resting place.’ This natural burial ground was Anne’s suggestion. The bodies still have to be cremated first, but it’s better than some sterile plot sandwiched between a thousand others. ‘I think Lily would approve.’