Chapter Thirty-three
The crash back down to reality was brutal. It wasn’t as though it hadn’t occurred to me that it could all, in an instant, fall apart. But I’d flirted with the idea of that delicious feeling lasting long enough to make the fall from the heights of the last few days a savage assault.
The morning with Abel’s parents had been gentle and relaxed.
I felt as though I’d found a family I could belong in, that there had always been a space carved out there, ready for me to sink in to.
On the drive back to Hobart, Abel’s music filled the car and it took me on a journey of hope, a tangle of ideas forming in my mind of what life might be like.
Could I stay in Hobart? Could Abel and I have a future together?
These were fanciful, naive ideas, but I was too drunk on ecstasy and wonder to contradict them.
When we drove through the first town on the trip back, it occurred to me to turn my phone on, now that we’d be back in range. The moment after putting my passcode in was a blur, my emotional state going from totally blissed out to panic.
There was a string of messages from Ebony indicating calls I’d missed over the last forty-five minutes.
Ebony: You missed a call, but the caller didn’t leave a message
Ebony: You missed a call, but the caller didn’t leave a message
Ebony: You missed a call, but the caller didn’t leave a message
Ebony: Where are you?
Ebony: Can you please answer the phone.
Another five missed call messages followed.
My hands were already shaking as I hit call, my head spinning as the blood seemed to change the way it flowed.
‘Are you okay?’ I heard Abel’s voice from somewhere distant.
The phone rang in my ear with no answer, no answer and then – thank God – she picked up.
‘Mary—’
‘Ebony, what is it? What’s happened?’ My voice was frantic.
‘Why weren’t you answering?’
I could hear the panic in her voice too and I knew it was bad. ‘What’s going on? Are you okay? Is Mum okay?’
‘I don’t know, but I don’t think things are good. I’m with her and she’s acting really strange, but not just drunk, like, really strange.’
I could hear Ebony’s voice cracking and my heart cracked with it. ‘Where are the kids?’
‘They’re here but Erin is coming to pick them up.’
‘Put the TV on. Tell them everything is fine. Where is Mum?’
‘She’s in her bedroom.’
‘What’s she doing, Ebony?’
‘She’s talking really weirdly. She seems really, like, fucking away with the fairies. And she’s really sweaty and— I don’t know, Mary. Is it a bad thing if she’s yellow? She looks kind of yellow. Very yellow to be honest.’
I felt my insides turn cold with fear. A wash of nausea. But my brain was focused. The car had stopped – Abel had pulled over and was watching me from some parallel world I was no longer a part of.
‘Okay, honey. I’m going to get off the phone. I’m going to call the ambulance and I’m going to find the first flight I can to be there. You need to keep the kids safe. Get Erin or whoever can take them as soon as possible and make sure they don’t see Mum. Please.’
Ebony started to cry.
‘It’s okay, sweetie, it’s all going to be okay.’
When I hung up, I turned to Abel, whose face was full of worry.
‘Please drive,’ was all I could say. I needed to get back straight away.
Hyperfocused, I called the ambulance and gave the situation and address.
Then I searched online for the next available flight to Sydney – one left in two and a half hours and tickets cost an obscene price.
Through the fear and adrenaline, I felt the rising guilt.
I’d fucked up. I’d gotten distracted. I’d let myself go and now my world was falling apart.
I could feel the guilt ripping me and I wanted to cry but I couldn’t let myself.
The Mary who was soft and tender had let me down.
I didn’t have time for that Mary anymore.
I didn’t have the life where that Mary could even exist.
The rest of the car trip was both excruciatingly slow and a total whirl.
Phone calls back and forth with Ebony. Panicking about what was happening with Mum.
Fulminant hepatitis? Did she have spontaneous bacterial peritonitis?
Or alcoholic encephalitis? Would she recover or was this life-threatening?
My brain was in overdrive, organising what I needed to do.
Call in sick for tomorrow. Make sure I took with me everything I needed.
My exam. My exam. Selfishly, I felt the pain of knowing it was all over now; I wouldn’t be able to sit the exam.
I’d have to postpone. And my placement would be incomplete because I’d be moving home, all preventing me from attaining my fellowship.
My carefully planned future was falling apart and it was all because I had dropped the ball. I had not been there enough for Mum these last few months. I’d not called enough. I’d not checked in enough. I’d not helped Ebony see the warning signs.
‘Do you want to drive straight to the airport?’ Abel’s voice interrupted my barrage of guilty thoughts.
‘No. I need to pack my stuff. I’ll check in online. There’s time.’
I hated my tone. I hated how closed and cold I’d already become. I’d been a flower, wide open for him, and now I was the thorny skeleton of a dormant rose bush.
‘Do you want me to come with you?’ he asked at one point.
‘No.’ This was my mess. My responsibility to sort out.
When I scrolled through the messages and missed calls, I noticed there were also two missed calls from the Derwent Hospital.
On my day off. That was odd and unnerving.
When I noticed the new voice message, I listened with a growing sense of unease, my brain struggling to process the words spoken by the director of the emergency department. I needed to listen to it several times.
‘Mary, it’s Michael Osworth, director of ED. There’s an issue that needs discussing if you can please call me back as soon as possible. My mobile is …’
There was no room in the scramble of my brain to call him back right then, but the message gripped me, twisting my already troubled mind, giving me a sickly feeling of dread. What had I done? Where else had I dropped the ball?
Abel asked gentle questions and gave reassuring squeezes of my hand and my leg, but I was already far away, closing in on myself, the walls of my fort strengthening with each moment we travelled closer to Hobart.
When we parked the car outside the house, I had twenty minutes before we needed to be driving to the airport. Abel had offered to take me and, thinking in purely practical terms, I hadn’t argued.
It was fortunate I still had so very few possessions, because I didn’t need to waste any time considering what to bring or what to leave. Everything fitted back into a couple of bags and soon, all the traces that I’d ever been at Abel’s, or in Tasmania at all, were hanging off my arms.
‘Let’s go,’ I said with five minutes to spare.
Abel hesitated at the door, seeing me with all my bags. ‘You know you can leave whatever you don’t need. You’ll be back, won’t you?’
I didn’t have the emotional or rational energy to even think of how to answer that.
‘Can we please go now.’
I called Ebony on the drive to the airport.
The ambulance had arrived and Mum was on her way to the hospital.
She hadn’t had any seizures, which was something, at least. A friend was looking after the kids.
I would take a taxi straight to the hospital from the airport and notwithstanding delays, I would be there in about three hours.
When we arrived, there was only thirty minutes until boarding time.
‘I’ll come in with you,’ Abel said as he pulled into the drop-off bay.
‘There’s no point. I’m about to get on the plane.’
‘Mary, let me come in with you.’
I tried not to hear the way his voice rang with hurt. I tried not to notice the way my heart ached in response, and how much I hated my coldness.
‘I’m sorry, Abel. I need to make some phone calls. My head is a mess. I need to pull myself together now.’
He just nodded, his eyes straight ahead. It tore me apart.
I kissed his cheek and got out of the car, pulling my bags from the boot. But before I’d loaded myself up, he’d rounded the car and pulled me to him so forcefully, I couldn’t resist it.
I felt myself melt into him in an infinitesimal way, and it soothed me and tore me in equal measure.
He held me at arm’s length and his eyes bore into mine. The first time I’d properly looked at him in the last two hours.
‘You haven’t done anything wrong, Mary.’
My eyes filled with tears. How I wished I could believe him. How I wished to stay with him, go back to the version of life where I lay in his arms.
‘Bye, Abel.’
‘Please come back. Promise you’ll come back.’
‘I’m so sorry, Abel.’ My eyes were streaming now. ‘I messed up so badly. I’m so sorry.’
I could see him trying to be strong but he was faltering, the thought of hurting his beautiful heart was enough to rip me apart.
I pulled him to me, my forehead pressed to him, my nose beside his. I took in a lungful of the sweetest, most wonderful man.
Then I turned and I didn’t look back.