28
‘ WHAT ?’ I ASK Ben. My voice sounds hollow. Empty. Like it’s calling up from some dark depth.
Ben reads Dinesh’s text again. ‘I’m taking Jacinta to the hospital. Lucy come.’
There’s a dull, twisting pain in my stomach. I shake my head. This can’t be happening. Not again. Please . But why couldn’t this be happening again? There’s absolutely no reason why Jacinta couldn’t die tonight. Or Ben. Or my parents. Or me. The universe doesn’t care.
Ben has turned the engine back on, flicked on the headlights and started driving. He tries calling Dinesh but in the few metres we’ve moved we’ve lost reception.
He holds his phone out the window, causing the ute to slip slightly on the narrow road.
‘Give it to me,’ I say. ‘Just drive.’
But no matter how good your driving skills are there’s no turning around on this road, so we have to head in the opposite direction for what feels like a lifetime before turning left and heading parallel to the fence we came in through, then finally turn left again and we’re headed back towards the gate. Stars above and below us taunt me with their indifference. The whole time I’m trying to call Dinesh but it’s not connecting.
Ben chucks me the gate keys and I jump out to unlock it with shaking hands. He drives through with my door still hanging wide open and then I run through, lock it behind us, and jump back in. The tyres growl as the ute takes off on the gravel road and Ben reaches across to me.
‘It’s okay,’ he says. ‘It’s going to be okay.’
You don’t know that , I want to scream.
I grip the phone and try Dinesh again. Finally, I get through.
‘It’s me!’ I say. ‘It’s Lucy! What happened? What’s going on?’
I brace myself against my sickening terror.
‘Lucy! Hey!’ he says. ‘I’m in the car with Jacinta. We’re going to the hospital. Her dad’s been taken in.’
My entire body fills with relief so hot it’s nauseating, and I want to yell at Dinesh for his stupid, vague message. But then, in the background, I hear Jacinta speak and the fear in her voice erases everything else.
‘He’s in emergency, L. I don’t know what’s happening. Can you come?’
Even though I’ve never seen her properly cry I can tell she’s in tears right now. And that’s when I realise that this isn’t the moment I’ve feared—it’s the one she has.
‘We’re coming!’ I yell into the phone. ‘We’re coming!’
·
Ben and I park in the same section of the Franklin General Hospital carpark as Lockie and I did almost a year ago, the last time I was here. Level 3 green. When Ben turns the engine off I sit, frozen in the passenger seat with fluorescent lights above us instead of stars, wondering if I can do this. If I can be there, on the edge of someone’s life again.
‘Are you okay?’ Ben asks.
‘Yeah. Are you?’ I stare into his eyes. I don’t know if Ben came to the hospital for his mum. I don’t even know how old he was when he lost her, or when his birthday is, or what he likes on his pizza, or how he got the tiny scar near the outer edge of his eyebrow. But I do know a part of his heart, and how deep his thoughts run, and that he didn’t hesitate to drive me here, and that he’s going to come in and stay as long as I need him to. It’s like we’ve done getting to know each other in reverse, with the deep, hard, heavy stuff first. Maybe that’s how it works when you’ve been through the things we’ve been through.
‘Yeah, I’m good,’ Ben says. He takes a drink from his water bottle then hands it to me so I can have a slurp.
‘Okay. Let’s go.’
Once we’re inside we find our way along bright white hallways, following the instructions Dinesh texted us. We find him, Jacinta and Jacinta’s mum holding paper water cups and sitting in a little waiting alcove on flimsy-looking plastic chairs. I feel a rush of affection for Dinesh for being here. When Jacinta sees me she stands up and I race forwards and we hug so tight it almost winds me. When we pull apart, I glance at Jacinta’s mum and feel awkward about there being three extra teenagers here that she either doesn’t know or barely knows, but that weirdness disintegrates when her watery, fragile expression melts into something like gratitude.
‘You’re gorgeous, you kids,’ she says, pulling the green cardigan she’s wearing over her pyjamas tighter around her body. Her voice is raspy and dry, like it ran out of tears months or maybe even years ago. ‘Thanks for being here for my baby.’
‘Mrs Harris?’ says a nurse with grey hair and smooth skin, interrupting us. Jacinta’s mum nods. ‘Can I talk to you in private?’
Then she turns to Jacinta and grips her arm.
‘I’m okay, Mum,’ Jacinta says.
Her mum lets go and follows the nurse.
Dinesh stands up so I can sit next to Jacinta and the boys say they’re going to get us all something from a vending machine. I’m not even slightly hungry but we let them go because they want to do something.
I turn back to Jacinta.
‘They said he has a really bad fever,’ she says before I can ask. ‘He could barely breathe when they brought him in. They thought he wouldn’t…but he’s on a ventilator now. They think it’s pneumonia. It’s a thing with Alzheimer’s, apparently. As they get weaker and stuff.’
I glance at her phone which is sitting in her lap, a Google search open: can you die from pneumonia alzheimers?
‘I’m so sorry,’ I say, squishing closer to her so our arms are touching.
She leans her head on my shoulder. It’s warm and heavy.
‘I feel like it’s my fault,’ she says softly. ‘If I’d been better at taking care of him wouldn’t I have seen the signs?’
Her words are so quiet I almost can’t hear them.
‘Or what if it’s somehow my fault for wanting to do beauty therapy instead of help people? What if the universe is punishing me?’
‘Cint,’ I say, shaking my head. ‘No. That’s bullshit, okay? First, you’re a teenager with no medical training so you wouldn’t have seen the signs. Second, the universe doesn’t care if you do nursing or beauty therapy or bring about world peace or start a death cult. You’re, like, a grain of sand in a million cosmic beaches. In the scheme of things, it literally doesn’t matter what you do.’
I cringe, realising my pep talk took a very sudden and depressing turn, but thankfully Jacinta doesn’t interpret it that way.
‘Okay. I don’t know where that came from, but it was…weirdly comforting,’ she says.
I frown. ‘It was?’
‘I mean, I think so? It’s kind of…freeing.’ Then she adds, ‘Thanks for coming.’
‘Friends, shitty days, etcetera etcetera,’ I say, and I can sense her almost smile.
A few moments go by before Jacinta speaks again, and this time her words are almost a whisper. ‘My dad’s going to die.’
A tear of hers trickles down my neck.
I push down my own tears, trying to stay strong. I know she doesn’t necessarily mean today, or this week, but she means soon. Or eventually. And she’s right. So, I don’t contradict her or tell her it’s okay when it’s not. I just want her to know I get it.
I get that Jacinta has actually been grieving her dad for a long time already. And I wonder if that’s what drew me to her that day in the Frank, when I felt like we might have something in common. Maybe it was this.
Eventually Dinesh and Ben come back with armfuls of chips and drinks, clearly proud of their offering.
‘We didn’t know what you wanted,’ Ben says. ‘So we got…’ he trails off, glancing down at their bounty.
‘Everything,’ Dinesh says.
Ben nods. ‘Yeah. Pretty much.’
We open the food and drinks and I’m surprisingly grateful for something to replace the gluggy sadness in my mouth. Even Jacinta manages to eat a few corn chips and seems glad for the distraction Ben and Dinesh are providing with their attempt to devise a universal snack-rating system.
While we wait, I glance at a clock on the wall. It’s after eleven. A jolt of guilt hits me. I pull out my phone and turn it on and, like I’d feared, the missed calls and messages from my parents start flooding through. Ugh, I’ve been so selfish. I’m not the only one who knows you can lose someone you love in an instant, any time. I tap out a few rapid messages.
I’m so sorry. I’m fine I went out with Jacinta but now I’m at the hospital with her because her dad is really sick. Her mum is here too Sorry Sorry!
A moment later Jacinta’s mum returns.
‘He’s stable,’ she says.
Next to me, Jacinta goes floppy with relief.
‘He’ll be here for a while, though,’ her mum adds.
I get up so that Jacinta’s mum can sit next to her, and then Jacinta looks at me. ‘You guys can go. I’m okay now.’
‘Call me any time,’ I say, as Ben and Dinesh get up.
She gives us all a weak, exhausted smile. ‘Thanks for coming.’
Ben and I are too worn out to talk much as he drives me home. We hold hands and let the night air flow in through the windows and over our faces. When he pulls up to my place the lights in the house are on.
‘Should I, ah, come in and say hi?’ Ben asks, looking like he’d do it if he had to but he’d way rather go to bed.
‘Um, maybe not,’ I say. ‘I kind of…I kind of snuck out tonight and my parents found out.’
He smirks. ‘Ninja fail.’ He leans over and gives me a feather-soft kiss and says he’ll message me.
Then I’m out of the ute and trudging towards my inevitable lifetime grounding. Except when I walk inside and reach the living room, I’m enveloped in a huge lavender-smelling, dressing-gown-warm, mum-hug. I snuggle into her shoulder, breathing her in as she coos, ‘Oh Luce Cat, oh sweetie.’ Then Dad appears next to us. He puts a hand on my back and rubs.
‘How’s Jacinta’s dad?’ Mum asks as soon as we pull apart.
‘He’s stable,’ I say and explain what happened.
She puts a hand to her heart. ‘Poor Sheryl.’ It takes me a second to figure out Sheryl is Jacinta’s mum. I wonder if Mum’s imagining going through something like that with Dad. How much she’d miss him if he was gone.
‘It’s good you were there for your friend, Luce,’ Dad says, hand still on my back. ‘That must have been hard for you.’
I shrug. ‘Yeah. Not too bad.’ I yawn then, hoping they might tell me to go to bed so we don’t have to face all the unsaid things floating around the room. But then I catch Mum’s expression and realise it’s not going to be that easy.
‘Lucy,’ she says, tightening her dressing-gown around her waist. ‘You can’t do that.’
I can tell she’s trying to stay calm, stay together.
‘You cannot sneak out of our house and turn your phone off and leave us wondering where our daughter is at 10.30 at night. Ever, EVER again.’
Her voice is so deadly serious that I can answer truthfully without hesitation. ‘I know. I won’t. I’m sorry.’
Thankfully Mum looks like she believes me.
Then it’s Dad’s turn. ‘You’re not in trouble’ he says, similarly stern. ‘We’ve decided we’re not going to ground you, because we don’t reckon punishment is the answer here. But you’ve got to talk to us, or to Leonie, if you’d rather, about what’s going on for you.’
I nod at the carpet. Given I expected never to leave the house again, that sounds quite reasonable. And I know I don’t have a choice. That I should talk about it all. But I don’t know what to say.
Dad’s not done, though.
‘Now, this next bit’s really important.’ He waits for me to look up at him. His forehead is creased, his eyes earnest. ‘Your mum and I love each other very much, okay? It’s been—’ His voice catches, and Mum reaches out to hold his hand. I see him squeeze it and my chest spasms. ‘We just—’
‘I know,’ I say, cutting him off. I kind of wish I hadn’t said I think they hate each other now, because I know it’s not true. Just like I know they didn’t love Charlie more than me, or that I’m a crap only child, or that I’m not enough for them on my own. That those are just things my mind tells me to distract me from the actual reasons I feel so bad. The real reasons I’m so scared sometimes. And suddenly all the jealousy I’ve secretly felt about the ways Charlie seemed like the special one melts away. Because despite his outward confidence, I know he didn’t feel like the special one. And because there’s no point in your parents or a guy from school or the internet or the entire universe thinking you matter if you don’t feel it about yourself.
‘I know you don’t, like, hate each other or whatever. Just…’ I try to find the right words, to tell them I don’t want them to pretend to be okay around me because it makes me feel like I have to pretend to be okay back. But I don’t want to see them totally fall apart either, even if it’s honest. I want my parents to be coping, to be strong, so I can suck some strength of my own from them, but also to admit the truth that there’s no way to be okay right now so I don’t feel so bad about feeling so bad. How do I explain all that?
‘Just…just stop being such weirdos about everything,’ I finally blurt out, hoping they’ll somehow understand the impossibly complicated mess of thoughts behind those words. ‘And just, like, let me wear black!’
There’s a long silence.
I stare at the carpet again, sensing some kind of wordless exchange between my parents, before Dad finally speaks. ‘Yeah. Fair enough.’
Huh.
After some pretty awkward hugs we say goodnight, promising we’ll talk more, and I drag myself to my bedroom. I’m completely wrecked, but when I crawl into bed I check my phone and see there’s a message from Ben:
I think ur gorgeous and amazing in about 50 different ways xx