by Robyn Bavati
The next time I wake up, it’s nearly ten. Oscar is fast asleep on his bed, still in the clothes he wore all day, though at least he’s taken off his shoes. He’s skipped his shower and won’t have brushed his teeth. There are worse things.
I cover him with the same blanket he draped over me, close the door gently and make myself a cup of tea. Then I text Zara: R u awake?
She rings me straight back. “Sorry I had to hang up on you yesterday.”
“No problem. Your mum needed help. I understand.”
We chat for a while.
“How’s Dan been the last few days?” I ask.
“I haven’t seen much of him,” Zara says. “He’s hardly ever at school.”
“I should probably call him.” Things can’t have improved if he’s still skipping school.
“But when he is there,” Zara continues, “he’s always trying out new material on anyone who’ll listen. He’s really funny.”
“Yeah,” I say. “He’s a talented guy.”
“How’s your mum?”
“Still in a coma.”
Zara sighs. “I’m so sorry, Jamie. I wish I could help.”
“There’s so much I want – need – to tell her. And I can’t.”
“Why not?”
I think of Zara’s painting – letters falling into deep, dark crevices. “The words fall between the cracks.”
“Don’t let them,” she says.
Saturday. It’s only our third full day in the hospital, less than seventy-two hours since we found Mum, but it feels like forever. We’re in a strange kind of limbo. The hours stretch out, the days interminable. I’ve never seen Mum’s doctors. They come and go before we arrive. The nurses are the lifeblood of the ICU.
Oscar: Why did the cookie go to the hospital?
Me: He was feeling crumby.
But Oscar’s voice is unenthused.
I think of the affirmations on the walls of Mum’s office. It might be pointless to read her books on psychology or philosophy, but what about a few life-affirming mantras, or some of her favourite quotes? Right now, I’m finding it hard to feel optimistic, because there’s still no sign of her waking up. She’s just as immobile as she was when we found her – an injection of optimism might help me, even if it does nothing for her.
Oscar interrupts my train of thought. “I’m bored,” he says.
“So am I.”
“How long will Mum be here?”
“Until she wakes up.” I don’t add, That might be never.
We spend the rest of the day going in and out of the ICU, saying nothing much to Mum, taking short walks in the hospital grounds, eating mediocre cafeteria food and dodging Matron.
At last, the interminable day comes to an end and it’s time to go home. When did I start thinking of Selena’s as home? Guilt stabs my chest when I say goodbye to Mum, because once again I’ve said nothing important, nothing real, nothing that would entice her to wake up. I’ve let her down.
“I want to go back to Melbourne,” Oscar says as we wait for the bus.
I’m not surprised. Oscar needs his routine. And there’s been no change in Mum’s condition. Tomorrow, it will be two weeks since she was first admitted to the hospital, two weeks she’s been comatose. And though I hate the thought of leaving her here, our presence doesn’t appear to be helping and I’m not sure there’s any point in staying.
Maybe Mum could be transferred to a hospital in Melbourne – though I’m not sure that can happen without an adult to sign the forms.
“Okay,” I say. “Let’s visit Mum again tomorrow and leave on Monday.”
“I want to leave tomorrow,” says Oscar.
“Flights are cheaper on Mondays. And don’t you want to see Mum again?”
“Okay,” he says.
I’m scared I might cry. I can’t stand the thought of having come all this way just to go back. I can’t bear the idea of leaving Mum. And I’m too terrified to think about the future, about what might happen when the little money I have left runs out.
I hold back the tears because I’m fighting a battle and crying won’t help. We get off the bus and trudge back to Aunt Selena’s and I’m too miserable to say a word.
“Wait here, Oscar.” He knows the drill. He has to wait outside while I climb in through the open window and unlock the door from the inside. But I say it anyway. Every time.
I climb in through the hopper window, into the room that smells of Mum and immediately sense that something is different. I hear a voice. My heart clamours in my chest and I follow the sound. Aunt Selena is standing in the kitchen, looking out of the window.
She’s not as plump as she was and her hair is lighter, but she’s still the Aunt Selena I know so well. I want to fling my arms around her. I want to cry on her shoulder. But I can’t. Not yet. Because she’s on the phone.
“Yes, squatters,” she’s saying. “That’s right, in my house. No, they’re not here now, but . . . Yes, clear signs of habitation. Well, of course I’m terrified. Thank you, officer, yes, I’d appreciate it if you could send someone round as soon as possible.” She ends the call.
I want to alert Selena to my presence, but I don’t want to scare her, so I cough softly. It doesn’t work, the not scaring her, because she spins around and almost jumps out of her skin. And it takes a second before she registers that it’s me in her kitchen.
“Good Lord, Jamie! What are you doing here?” She comes towards me to give me a hug and the hug takes longer than it should, because I cling to her as if she’s a lifeline.
“It’s a long story,” I say, “and Oscar’s waiting on the doorstep.”
We bring him in. Oscar and Selena give each other a good, long hug.
Oscar smiles, then starts to cry. “Mum is in hospital,” he says.
“What? Where? Just a minute . . . am I right in thinking that the two of you have been living here?”
“Yes,” I say.
Selena rings the police back. “The ‘squatters’ were my nephews. Yes. No. No need to come here. Everything’s fine.”
“I can’t imagine what you must have been going through,” Selena says, after I finish explaining, after Oscar is fed, showered and sound asleep. “I had no idea that your mother never got home.”
“But don’t you talk every day?”
“We did. I mean, we used to.” Selena sounds sheepish. “But I . . . wasn’t much fun when your mum was here.” She takes a deep breath. “It was such a shock when your uncle left me. I was too depressed to get out of bed.
“Your mum flew all this way. She tried to get me to talk. To eat. I was a terrible patient.
“When she came into my room to say she was leaving, I couldn’t even get up to give her a hug. She leaned down and kissed me, and said she’d rung my friend Janine. And she told me I should come and stay with you in Melbourne when I was feeling well enough.
“Then she mentioned there’d been weather warnings on the news. I told her to postpone her flight, but she didn’t want to be away from you boys an hour longer than she had to.
“I’m so sorry, Jamie.” She must have apologised at least six times. “I can’t bear the thought of her lying unconscious . . .” She’s getting teary again. “And to think I wasn’t here when you needed me most.”
“It’s okay,” I say. “You didn’t know.”
“Your mum saved me by calling Janine. Janine came round the day after your mother left and made me get up. She found a cheap deal to Bali – a seven-day package. I didn’t want to go. She had to talk me into it. But she was right. The holiday was wonderful. So much better than moping in bed. But Jamie, if I’d known . . .”
“You wouldn’t have gone.”
“No, of course not. I’m so sorry,” she says, for the seventh time.
When Selena rang the hospital, they told her not to come in till tomorrow morning. So the two of us are sipping hot chocolate in the kitchen. We’ve been talking for the last two hours. She’s been asking me a lot of quest
ions and I’ve answered her honestly. She knows I’ve struggled to look after Oscar and had no time for schoolwork. She knows of my fears that someone would find out about Mum and Oscar would be taken away. Now, I tell her that Oscar and I are flying back to Melbourne on Monday.
“But that’s . . . the day after tomorrow,” Selena says.
I nod. “Oscar’s had enough of hanging round the hospital. And he needs his routine.”
“I’ll come with you. I’ll help you look after him. I’ll stay until your mum gets better.”
What if she doesn’t get better? The thought hovers in the air between us. I see it in the expression on Selena’s face.
“I don’t want to leave Mum here by herself. It might be better if you stayed here to visit.”
“I’ll ask Janine to visit.”
It won’t be the same, but I can’t think of a better alternative.
“The money in my bank account is running out,” I finally admit. I didn’t want to talk about finances, and feel ashamed. “I don’t know what I’ll do when it’s gone.”
Selena covers her face with her hands. “I hadn’t even thought about money. You must have been terrified.” She gives me a look of such sympathy I want to cry. “Don’t worry. I’m sure your mum has savings we can access. And I’m fairly certain your dad set up a trust fund.”
“Just for Oscar, I think.” I tell her that I read the will.
She shakes her head. “He wouldn’t have left you destitute. It might take a while to access the money he left in trust – there’d be legal fees and red tape involved – but in the meantime, I can help. I have some savings of my own.”
Selena has a small catering business. I don’t know how successful it is, and now that Roger’s done a runner and she has only herself to rely on, I’m not sure she has money to spare.
“Don’t worry, Jamie. At least, not about money. We’ll get it sorted.”
The next morning, with Selena driving, it takes only twenty minutes to get to the hospital. We walk straight up to the nurses’ desk in the ICU, where the nurses already know me and Oscar, and greet us by name.
“This is my aunt,” I say.
Selena takes over. “I’d like to see my sister. And then, I believe you want me to sign some forms.”
It’s Matron’s day off, but the nurse running the ward today is almost ecstatic. “Thank goodness you’re here. We’d started to think you didn’t exist. If you hadn’t turned up today, we’d have told the police about these boys.”
Selena doesn’t look shocked when she sees Mum lying immobile in the hospital bed. She doesn’t seem fazed by the medical paraphernalia that surrounds her. I guess she already knew what to expect. She goes straight up to Mum, pulls the chair a little closer to the bed and strokes Mum’s arm. “Helen?” she says. There’s no response.
The nurse is watching. “Well, it’s definitely her,” Selena says. “My sister. Helen Anderson. I suppose you want me to make an official identification.”
“You just did,” says the nurse. “Now, if you’ll pop over to the desk with me.”
I wait by Mum’s bed while Selena goes to sign the forms. Oscar trails behind her. For once, I am alone with Mum. This is my chance. No more excuses. I’m going to remind Mum of our life together. I’m going to tell her everything I remember. Because if the words fall between the cracks, I’ll have only myself to blame.
I take a deep breath, and begin.
“My earliest memory is when I was three and Oscar was born. I remember going to the hospital with Dad. I remember Nan looking after me, telling me there was something wrong with the baby.
“I remember the early intervention program you took him to. Do you remember, Mum? They gave us exercises to practise at home. We did them with him every evening. All of us together. You, me and Dad. All working with Oscar. I remember how excited we were when he took his first step, said his first word.
“When I was eight, we went on holidays. To the Gold Coast. But Oscar didn’t like the beach. We’d only been there ten minutes when he wanted to leave. And we did. Oscar always got his way. We never did anything Oscar didn’t want to do. You and Dad said that he was a part of the family, which meant we had to include him and we could only do things he could do too. I resented that. I thought it was so unfair. But now, I think you were right.
“I don’t know if I’ve ever told you what an amazing mum you’ve been, how lucky we were.”
Mum does nothing to indicate she’s heard but I continue regardless.
“Remember the birthday party you gave me when I turned nine – fifteen kids at Moorabbin Bowls? Oscar was sick the night before, but you wouldn’t cancel the party. You didn’t want to disappoint me.”
I stop talking because Selena and Oscar are coming back. “I’ll sit here with you,” Selena says.
“Actually, I was wondering if you could take Oscar out. I want to be alone with Mum and Oscar gets bored here.”
“Do you want to go out?” Selena asks him.
Oscar nods.
“Okay, then. We’ll come back later.” Selena kisses my cheek, then Mum’s. She takes Oscar by the hand and a minute later, they’re gone.
A couple of nurses come in and I watch as they tend to Mum. As soon as they leave, I start talking again, reminding Mum of hours and days and weeks and years she might have forgotten. I talk for hours, about everything – school camps, sports days, concerts, holidays, trips to the zoo and the movies, children’s plays, Wind in the Willows in the Botanic Gardens, Oscar’s concerts, visits to relatives and visits from relatives.
I talk about the relatives I liked (Nan, I still miss her!) and those I never liked – Adele Simpson, a “born-again” Christian who was always preaching.
I have a sketchy image of what Adele’s husband, the minister, Gregory Simpson, looked like, but I do remember him saying that God gives you only what you can cope with. And even though I was only in primary school, I thought that was a stupid thing to believe, let alone say, because all over the world there were people not coping.
“I always preferred Nan’s brand of religion,” I tell Mum now. “Nan never preached about it, never tried to force her beliefs on anyone else. If you asked her why she became religious, she’d say, ‘God gives me strength’.”
I pause for breath and think about Dad. Dad didn’t believe in God. Mum said the jury was out, that she liked to think there was a God, but in her eyes, God meant love, nothing more. If she were awake right now, she’d probably say that God, like Dad, lives in our hearts.
“Mum, I’ve met this girl. Her name is Zara. She’s amazing.”
I’d planned to go through my whole life – one memory at a time in chronological order – but I talk for hours and everything gets jumbled up. One minute I’m telling Mum about something that happened when I was twelve, the next I’m reminiscing about the blueberry pancakes I had when I was five, so good I never forgot the taste.
“I must have been six or seven when I dreamed there was a lion in my bedroom and woke up petrified. You calmed me down. You turned on the light to show me the lion had gone and tucked me back into bed. But every time I closed my eyes, the lion came back. You lay down on the carpet and promised to stay in the room all night. You said that if the lion came back, you’d chase him away. Do you remember that, Mum?
“Dad said I was too old to be scared, and you said he’d forgotten what it was like, because all boys were scared sometimes and he must have been too. You said there was no such thing as being too old to cry and that even grown-ups could be afraid, and that was okay, because you couldn’t be brave unless you were scared. In the end, he admitted you were right.
“Mum, I miss Dad so much. I miss you too.”
My voice is hoarse from talking. A nurse brings me a glass of water, then leaves as I sip it.
“You always said I could tell you anything. When did we stop talking? When did I stop telling you how I feel?”
Selena and Oscar return at four. The three of us sit f
or a while, Oscar and me on one side of the bed, Selena on the other. Oscar tells Mum about his day. I lag behind when it’s time to go.
“Mum, we’re leaving tomorrow. We’ll be back in the morning to say goodbye.”
For dinner, Selena makes fish with steamed vegetables and baked potatoes. I eat because I need to keep up my strength, though I hardly taste anything. I’m back in limbo. The slight relief I had when Selena came home has disappeared, because I’ve spent over four whole days with Mum and her condition hasn’t improved.
I’ve made the decision to go back to Melbourne but I’m not sure I should. Selena says it’s the right decision. We book the tickets and Selena pays.
“You’ve done what you can,” Selena says. “Now get some sleep.”
“I’ll try.” I text Dan and Zara to tell them we’re coming home.
Letters fly out of deep, dark crevices. They form words that fly into an empty box. The box starts to fill with words but then the words stop flying in. The box isn’t full yet. The top part is empty.
I wake up knowing there’s more I need to say.
It’s awful, coming to say goodbye to Mum, not knowing when, or if, I’ll see her again.
Entering the ICU for the last time, I’m overwhelmed by grief. How can I leave her here alone? Who will talk to her when I’m gone? Will I be taking away her only chance of waking up? Or am I overestimating my own importance?
Megan’s back on duty today. She takes down my phone number and Selena’s and promises to be in touch. “I’ll let you know if there’s any change.” But it sounds as if Mum’s fate has already been decided, as if we all know she’ll never wake up.