Chapter Thirty-eight
Mum was discharged two weeks later, with an improvement in her liver function tests that was staggering, and a mind that had been reset almost like people experience after electroconvulsive therapy.
I treated the event with gratitude and hope but without unrealistic expectations.
Each day of clarity in her thinking and conviction in the way she planned to move forward with her life was something to be celebrated.
That first night with Mum home had a delicate promise to it, like no one wanted to jinx it, but we all wondered if this might be the first day of the rest of her life.
She was so thin after all the fluid she lost during her time in the hospital.
She’d been so malnourished for months and her recovery still had such a long way to go.
But there was something very strong in my mother’s spirit that had grown in the last few weeks.
Like she really had gone somewhere holy, touched something close to salvation that she had brought back to this world.
And whether it lasted or not, I felt in awe of the determination she had in her eyes.
I was proud of it, and of course I was hopeful.
Abel fitted as easily into my family world as I had fitted into his. He was gentle and funny, kind and attentive, and his love flowed over all of us. He was the type of man none of us had ever experienced before. And his encouragement and care seemed to make each one of us grow in strength.
I made no plans for when or how life would return to normal, but within a few days of being home, Mum was making them for me. I might almost have felt offended by the way in which she urged me out of the house.
‘I love you, darling. But you need to take that boy home now. You need to go back to your job and your life in Hobart. And I’ve got work to do of my own.’
Mum had a full schedule booked. Dietician appointments, gastroenterologist follow-up, blood tests for liver markers, monitoring her bilirubin returning to normal.
She was booked in with exercise physiologists and had a diary filled with her plans and appointments, treating her recovery with the importance and dedication of a new full-time job.
‘Come visit us soon,’ Ebony said. ‘And we’ll come visit you. But you need to go live your life, Mary. For you. And for all of us.’
Abel flew back ahead of me. I still didn’t know what our relationship would look like, but I knew we would find a way.
After another week with Mum, she and Ebony had convinced me that it was okay for me to go and do what I needed to do.
What I wanted to do. And it was with a joyful sense of discovery that I realised I did want to go back to Tasmania, with its raw and vulnerable beauty. Its gentle and unusual personality.
And its textures that had grown the man of my dreams.
When I walked across the tarmac from the plane, the wind was almost enough to blow me off my feet.
The air was freezing, bitter and wintry for what should have been a mid-spring day.
I heard the mutters of people around me complaining about the inclement weather and I just smiled, turned my face into the harsh wind, this brilliantly volatile place that made me feel so alive, and experienced a gallop of joy at the realisation of how good it felt to be back.
When I came through the doors into the warm terminal, Abel was there, leaning against the wall, eyes already on me.
I walked to him and we just stood there facing each other, oddly restrained, as though we were savouring this moment of looking at one another, of starting something together.
Beginning a life that didn’t have an end point.
‘Abel Sutherland,’ I said, my heart expanding at the sight of this man who was standing there for me.
‘Sugarplum,’ he said, his eyes glistening. Then he gathered me to him, his arms enveloping me in his perfect embrace, and we stayed there for some magnificently unhurried time.
‘Let’s go home,’ he breathed into my hair.
‘Yeah,’ I said, my heart brimming to almost overflowing. ‘Let’s go home.’