Flight of a Starling

by Lisa Heathfield

  It’s Ash who now somehow finds his strength. He steps forward and sits on the chair. He lets go of me, so that he can hold both of Lo’s hands in his.

  “Lo,” he says quietly. She doesn’t wake up. I hadn’t warned him about how her skin is a dull yellow, but if he’s shocked, he doesn’t show it. “I’m here.” Her eyelids flicker and I know she knows. She can feel his hand and hear his voice. “You really need to come back,” he says. “The performance is rubbish without you.” He breathes deeply. “And we miss you.”

  His head drops down and he closes his eyes. I stand behind him, my hands on his shoulders.

  He leans forward and kisses her on the forehead.

  “I promise I’ll look after Rita for you,” he says, before he stands up so quickly and runs from the room.

  Lo

  “OK, lovely?” Chrissy asks. I tip my head to watch as she presses a button on the screen and writes something on a chart.

  “Am I doing well?” I ask.

  “Just grand,” she replies.

  “I’m scared,” I whisper.

  I feel myself sinking into Dad’s clothes as he hugs me.

  “It was nice to see Dean,” I tell Rita. She lies next to me on the bed, her head tucked close to the tubes in my neck.

  “He wasn’t here, Lo,” she says.

  “Will he come back soon?” I ask. My words wade through thick mud, each letter stuck to the last.

  There’s a pause. Maybe she hasn’t heard me.

  “Yes,” she finally says. “He’ll be back soon.”

  “He’ll be with his ma,” I say.

  Rita’s arm stretches along the length of mine and at the end she holds my hand.

  “I wanted a garden, to grow tomatoes,” I say.

  Our tears ripple along the floor, they walk up the walls and fall down on us from the strange ceiling.

  “You can’t leave me,” Rita says, her body curling into a ball next to me.

  Her pain burns up my inside, turns my blood thick.

  “Lo?” Rita sits straight up. “Ma! Get someone.”

  I should tell her that I’m all right, that I just need to breathe, but I’m fumbling for words and only letters come out.

  Chrissy is here, her face calm.

  “You’re fine, Laura,” she tells me. “Try nice, easy breaths.” The machine next to us beeps steadily. I’m not dying. I’m alive. A liver is coming and I’ll go home.

  Ma smooths the hair back from my face. By the curtain, Dad holds Rita. They’re a pocket of fear, and I have to look away because I’m scared my breath will go again.

  “Laura?” It’s a man’s voice that pulls me back. “Laura?” I open my eyes. My mouth is dry and I feel sick.

  “I’m too hot,” I say.

  “I’m Dr. Jameson. I’m one of the intensive care physicians. I need to check a few things. Is that OK with you?”

  Ma is sitting on the chair next to the bed. She’s holding my hand, and she doesn’t let go.

  “I need to examine your stomach. It might be a bit uncomfortable, but it won’t take long.”

  Already he’s rolling down the sheet. He prods my stomach, but I barely feel it.

  He’s losing the hair on the top of his head. Bit by bit it will go.

  “The swelling is basically fluid from the body going to the wrong place,” he tells my ma, as though I’m not here. “Water leaks out from the arteries and veins and has settled in the stomach cavity.” I’m a fish he’s scooped from the sea, my bloated body stuck on a rock. “It’s what we’d expect at this stage.”

  My mom looks at him blankly, but I know what’s behind her eyes.

  The curtain moves, and Rita walks in with my dad. Panic comes with them.

  “She’s fine,” I hear Ma say quickly.

  “I’m Dr. Jameson.” The man turns to shake Dad’s hand.

  “You’ve been told about Laura’s creatinine levels?” the doctor asks. “And you understand that her high level is a sign of kidney damage?”

  “Yes,” Ma says, her voice suddenly bold.

  “At this point, it’s more about keeping Laura as comfortable as possible.”

  “Have they found a liver?” I ask.

  The doctor sits down on the bed next to me. Ma has to move her arm slightly, but she keeps holding my hand tight.

  “Laura, your kidneys are failing, so you would need a liver and kidney transplant. I’m afraid that the chances are very slim.” His shoulders slump slightly, but he doesn’t take his eyes from mine.

  “If I go home, I’ll get better,” I tell him. I need to be in my own bed and wake up and walk down the steps of Terini. I need to climb the ladders in our big top and jump and be caught. The sticky smell of popcorn and clapping hands. If I just put on my costume, I know I’ll be cured.

  “You’re in the only place that we can properly manage your pain,” the doctor says.

  I’ll shell peas with Gramps and watch as dinner boils. He’ll tell me his stories and I’ll have time to make my own.

  “I’m sorry, Laura, it’s difficult to understand what you’re saying,” the doctor says, leaning closer to me. My mouth moves, but the words somehow lose their way.

  A song starts to play in my head, one that Dad sang to us as children. We’re pirates, alive-oh. It loops around my mind dipping in and out, taking the tune along the tracks. Alive-oh. It’s Dad singing and Ma and Rita with her child’s voice wonky and making me laugh.

  The laughing sweeps me clean, along my arms and legs and charging through my belly until I’m crying.

  “Lo?” Dad’s voice and his arms are around me. My throat burns and breaks with tears. “I’ve got you,” he whispers into my hair.

  And he has. He’s a wall and nothing can get past him. As long as he holds me like this, nothing will be able to reach in and stop my heart, because he’ll be in the way.

  My head suddenly jolts back. My muscles clench and turn to stone. My teeth slam shut. There’s blood in my mouth and a searing pain under my skull that shakes me.

  I lose my balance and fall.

  Rita

  Lo throws back her head sharply, and I don’t know who she is. Her eyes strike open, the whites murky yellow, but she doesn’t see us. She jerks against the wires and tubes, her neck twisted and stiff. Her whole body shakes, as the doctor lowers the bed flat and calmly puts my sister on her side.

  “It’s OK, Laura,” he says, but each jolt and shock of Lo’s body takes a part of me with her.

  When the shaking has passed, the doctor turns Lo on her back again and pulls the sheet straight across the rise of her swollen tummy. He wipes Lo’s mouth gently with a tissue, before he turns to look at us.

  “A seizure like this is due to brain swelling,” he says. “I’m afraid it means that we’re going to have to sedate Laura. We need to prevent further seizures and think about how we can keep her most comfortable.”

  But if they sedate you, how will I talk to you? How will you reply?

  “It means that we’ll also have to put Laura on a ventilator.”

  “No,” Ma says quietly, her eyes wide with fear.

  “It’s important that we do it,” the doctor says gently. “To help Laura breathe. She won’t be in any pain, I promise.”

  I look at the broken body in the bed, but it’s not my sister. I try to silently tell the doctor that this is all wrong, because someone has sneaked in and hidden a stranger under the sheet.

  Our Lo is sitting at home, waiting safe for us.

  Tubes go into Lo’s nose and sit thick and awkward in her mouth, pressing her lips wrong. There’s still a bit of blood on her, from where she bit her tongue, but I’m too scared to touch the swollen skin on her face, so I don’t wipe it away.

  I sit on one side of the bed, with Gramps next to me. Ma sits with Dad opposite us. They are shadows. I think I’m one too.

  “Dean needs to see her,” I whisper loud enough for them to hear. Dad doesn’t look at me. He can’t take his eyes from Lo.

>   “He’s not welcome here,” he says.

  “It’s what Lo would want,” I say. He physically recoils from my words.

  “He’s not coming here,” Dad says.

  The lines go in and out of my sister, the machines clicking and humming to keep her safe. I put my hand on the sheet to feel the up and down of her breath, the swell of air keeping her alive.

  And I pray to God and to the moon and the stars to keep her with us.

  You can take my eyes and my tongue and every drop of happiness I’m meant to have if you just give her life.

  Dad holds Ma’s hand and their heads are bowed, too heavy to look forward. Because what is there? A road without Lo?

  Wake up, I tell her. We can’t do this without you.

  Her bleached white hair is flat against the pillow. She wouldn’t like it to look like this, but I don’t touch it.

  Fight harder, Lo. You need to stay with us. Underneath her eyelids, her eyes flutter. We’re here, I tell her.

  I look at her two freckles on the top of her cheek that never go away, even in winter. Sometimes she colors them darker with a pen and sometimes she adds a third.

  “Do you remember,” I whisper, “when you joined your freckles with a biro and drew a balancing man on the tightrope?” She left it there for a whole performance and no one said a word.

  Please get better, Lo.

  Her eyes flicker and I know she hears me. But she doesn’t wake up. It’s dark outside, but Lo can’t see it.

  Open your eyes. I want you to see the stars.

  I won’t sleep. I need every second to watch her and hear her breathing.

  Chrissy puts a hand gently on Ma’s shoulder.

  “I’m sorry,” she says. “I don’t think you have long.”

  Have long?

  “There might still be a liver,” Dad says firmly.

  Silence whispers around us. In the middle, the sheet on Lo rises and falls.

  “Is she hurting?” I ask.

  “No.” Chrissy smiles at me, but it feels out of place. We’re out of place. This isn’t somewhere we should be. “I promise she’s not in any pain.”

  “But she has the ventilator. She could wake up,” I say. Chrissy takes my hand and places it tight in hers.

  “Laura’s organs are failing, Rita. The ventilator supports her breathing and keeps her airways clear, but it can’t keep her alive.” No. It’s a mistake. Lo is going to open her eyes and surprise you all.

  “Keep talking to her,” Chrissy says kindly, as she lets go of my hand. “She can still hear you.”

  Her smile goes and she walks out through the curtain and leaves us to wait for time to tick away. For the cells inside my sister to struggle and fail.

  “If you get better,” I whisper to Lo, “we’ll grow vegetables in the van. Gramps says we can start them in small pots in the back of the car where they’ll get the sun.” I’m talking quickly, needing to fill every moment. “We won’t be able to grow anything too big, but we could do your tomatoes. It’ll be worth it, Lo. Everything will be worth it.”

  Ma sits next to Dad. They both have a hand on Lo’s arm, above the tube that sinks into her swollen wrist. They’re both holding her tight, keeping her in this world.

  “And the new trick Rob has promised to show us,” I whisper to her. “We can learn it, and he says we’ll love it because it’s dangerous.”

  I turn her bracelet around on her wrist, but she doesn’t move. I let it fall onto the others. The sound of stars breaking.

  “If you’d told me, I would’ve stopped you,” I say. I don’t want her to hear me cry, but my tears are wet against her arm.

  I watch the silent lines on the screen that hold Lo to us. They look like waves, rising up together in a storm.

  There’s a sudden gap, and I feel the world stop.

  “Lo,” I say. “Keep going.”

  The flat line rises again. Her heart is still beating.

  I hold her swollen hand in mine, trace the moons in her nails with my fingertips.

  “I’m here,” I whisper.

  The tube breathes air into my sister, but the lines are drifting wrong.

  “Chrissy?” I hear our mom ask. I glance up, at Dad holding her and the terror sitting sharp in both their eyes.

  Chrissy puts her hand on my shoulder. I feel the weight of it there. Hear the click and whir of the ventilator.

  On the screen, I watch as the red line falters. The waves become smaller.

  “Stay with us, Lo,” I hear Dad say.

  But the waves disappear. And there’s only a horizon, the single blood-red line of the sea.

  Chrissy turns off the screen. She’s turning off the ventilator, shifting silence into the room.

  “No,” I tell her. “You’ve got to leave it on for her.”

  “I’m sorry,” she says.

  “But how will she breathe? You have to help her breathe.”

  “Lo,” Gramps says, his one word filled with fear.

  “I’m so sorry,” Chrissy says.

  Ma is crying. She has Lo’s hand clasped to her face.

  Chrissy tries to put her arms around me, but I push her away.

  “You can’t give up on her,” I beg.

  “We did everything we could.”

  “No,” I say. “She hasn’t gone.”

  I look again at the bed, at my sleeping sister. I wait for her to breathe.

  Dad leans his face next to hers and his whole body shakes with tears. But Lo doesn’t move, she doesn’t wake up. Beneath her eyelids, her eyes are still.

  We go out of the room, so that Chrissy can take all the tubes away. I don’t want to go far. I don’t want Lo to be alone with a nurse she hardly knows. Instead, I stare at the blank wall, at the white paint that looks barely dry. Somewhere, my mom holds my hand. Somehow, my Gramps stands by my side. My dad sits on the floor, his knees up tight like a little boy, his head low so we can’t see his eyes.

  They let us go back in, on our own.

  Lo lies on the bed. The sheet on her is still. I wait for it to move, but it doesn’t.

  Lo?

  They go to her. Ma is stroking her hair back from her face, soft against the pillow. But Lo doesn’t speak. She doesn’t breathe.

  Lo?

  How can she have gone?

  She is so still. I wait and watch for her to move, to speak, to smile.

  Lo? I need you.

  But she’s silent.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Rita

  I walk out of the hospital without my sister. They’re making us leave our Lo, and we have to walk down this corridor, go through these doors, down these steps. They’re expecting life to carry on when Lo’s heart has stopped.

  “I don’t understand,” I whisper to Dad. I can see his hand is holding mine, but I can’t feel it. I’m somehow trapped behind a wall of glass, watching it all. “Where’s she gone?” I see his fingers squeeze mine. I can’t look at his face. What I saw in his eyes in that room wasn’t my dad. He fell away like a castle of sand, and I can’t know the hollow grains that remain.

  When Lo isn’t here.

  I’m breathing too fast. Dad sits me down on the pavement. Where people have walked and still walk and will always walk even though Lo won’t.

  My stomach spasms, and I feel it now. I’m being cut from the inside out until my brain shuts it all off, and I look up at the sky at how white it is, how it watches us all.

  Ma stops the car next to us. Gramps sits in the front, staring at nothing through the window. Ma gets out, a frail stick-lady.

  “I can’t drive,” she says. Her hands, her whole arms are shaking, and I reach out to touch them, but they won’t stop. A howl from an animal comes from her, and Dad tries to hold her, but she scratches out at him and pulls at her hair. She’s trying to rip her soul out. I know, because I want to rip mine out too.

  Ma is crying, and Dad pushes a doctor away because no one can help us.

  I hold my mom and dad, and we’re
a triangle now, which we shouldn’t be. Three sides is not enough.

  My dad picks up Ma, her arms around his neck, and he puts her so gently in the car. He pulls the seat belt across her and strokes the hair back from her closed eyes.

  He holds my hand and helps me up. I sit in the back, with Ma, but Lo is not with us.

  The car window is hard against my forehead. I push on it. I want to push myself through, hear the glass crack, and the splinters cut into me until I bleed so much that it won’t stop and I will go and join Lo.

  I push so hard, but it doesn’t break. It feels like a bruise spreading under my skin, seeping into my eyes. If it blinds me, I won’t be able to see any of this. I won’t be able to see a world without Lo and if I can’t see it, it won’t be happening and she’ll be here, sitting next to me. I’ll keep her close and never let her go again.

  I reach my hand out and wait to feel her fingers in mine. I wait to hear her move and shuffle up to me and say something funny in my ear. I press my head on the glass and wait.

  Dad stops the car by our site.

  “I can’t get out,” Ma says.

  “We have to,” Dad tells her, but he doesn’t move.

  It’s impossible that we’re here and Lo isn’t. She can’t have gone. She has to be here. She’ll appear, behind Terini, waving guiltily, with the smile that makes everyone forgive her.

  I lie down on the seat and imagine my head in her lap.

  Don’t go, I beg her. And she strokes my hair as I cry.

  “Rita.” Dad has opened the door and Lo disappears.

  “No.” If I curl myself up so small I can disappear too.

  “Rita.” Dad touches my shoulder, but I hold tight to the seat. I want to claw through the material, rip all of it apart. Wind myself in its shredded springs.

  I feel our ma’s arms around me and she starts to rock me.

  “Shhh. Shhh,” but she can barely breathe for her own crying.

  Outside the car, there’s music from the big top.

  A performance is on. They’ve had to carry on without Lo, without us. Spider and Ash and Rob, they’re all in there and they don’t know. That Lo has gone and the world has stopped.