Chapter Thirty #2
As she helps Danny out of bed, sitting him on a towel on the chair, she talks to him.
Tells him about our day together yesterday, distracts him with a lengthy critique of his music collection and asks him if he wants me to bring in his ‘No. 1 Daddy’ mug to the ward.
After she suggests I strip him of his wet pyjamas, she dives into a detailed account of everything Deepak has said about him, about their dancing together, and their kiss.
She tells Danny that Deepak is smitten. She tells him he's asked to be moved to the cubicle next to Danny. She even gets a shaky laugh out of him when she informs him that the hospital beds squeak horribly, just in case he’s thinking of getting up to something.
All this while I’m removing Danny’s clothes and seeing him – all pallid skin, cruelly dark lesions and jutting-out bones – in his underwear, and even those white Y-fronts are baggy on him.
I thought Kate not wanting to be in a relationship with me was heartbreaking, or had that potential at least.
But no, I was wrong. This is heartbreaking. Heart-shattering. Heart-imploding.
Where did my beautiful friend go?
It takes all I have to just keep breathing, to keep my eyes dry and to keep moving as Kate washes him with the soapy water, and I find clean pyjamas before eventually helping Danny into them.
Momentarily, I think about doing this alone, and I know in some deep, buried part of me that I could, I would if I had to. But fuck, I am so glad I don’t have to. I am so glad Kate is here.
“Outfit change completed,” Kate says with a hint of satisfaction, although I suspect it’s performative.
“Such a diva,” I add, weakly.
Laying back in bed, Danny looks from Kate to me and back again. “I guess I do need that catheter,” he says eventually.
She nods. “Roger that,” she says. “We’ll get that sorted before too long.”
And then with her arms full of the dirty laundry, she’s gone, because of course this is all in a day’s work for her. Her heart isn’t splintering into razor-sharp pieces.
I sit down in the chair again. “I’m sorry,” I say to Danny.
He turns his head to me very slowly. “Why are you sorry?” he croaks. “Did you piss yourself too?”
My laugh is short and tired. “No, but I should have been here, yesterday. I should have visited.”
“You were with Kate,” he says like that explains my absence, which I guess it does. There’s no menace or disapproval in his voice and yet I feel silenced by guilt. To have had the most perfect day of my life yesterday while he was… here.
“Oh, God, please don’t,” he mumbles.
“Please don’t what?”
“Look at me like that.” He lifts a hand little more than an inch off the bed. “All pity and sympathy and sorrow. It’s not a good look on you, Sharon.”
“I… I’m…”
He coughs, although even that is more of a wheeze than anything, like even the things he needs to do to find comfort are too much for him. “I was expecting you to waltz in here looking loved-up and well-fucked, not like you feel desperately sorry for me.”
I could laugh at how perfectly he’s just described my last twenty-four hours for me. I study him for a moment before I reply. “I was well-fucked,” I say quietly.
Miraculously, his eyes seem to brighten, emerging a little way out of their shadows. “Jolly good,” he says and then he closes his eyes.
“Do you need to sleep?” I ask, somewhat uselessly.
He nods. “If you don’t mind. That was all rather exciting, and maybe if I’m lucky,” his eyes stay closed and his chest heaves with another breath before he continues, “I’ll have a dirty dream about Deepak. But don’t tell him. I don’t want to lead the poor boy on.”
“Okay,” I say, and then I stay very still and very quiet as I watch Danny fall asleep.
*****
Orla tells me that the nearest payphone is two floors down on the maternity ward.
I had no idea that ward was down there and it’s a hard reality to wrap my head around.
That just two floors down, there are babies being born, new life taking its first breaths, while up here it feels like death is just around the corner or hiding in a cupboard.
I find it easily and it’s a relief when I see that it’s free. Digging out the piece of folded paper in my pocket, I fumble to open it up and then juggle the coins into the phone’s slot, not helped because my hands are shaking and I can’t seem to make them stop.
But finally, there’s ringing on the line and I grip the receiver so tightly to my ear, my hand starts to ache.
“Hello?”
I have a visceral reaction to the woman’s voice. This is a mistake, I think.
“Hello?” the woman says again.
I inhale. Hold it. “Hi, Mum,” I say and then exhale.
“Sharon?”
“Yeah, it’s me.”
“What are you… are you all right?” The words suggest she cares. Her tone – accusatory, critical, waspish – does not.
“I’m fine,” I say. “I’m calling to see how you are?”
Silence is my only answer.
“After Bubbe’s passing and sitting shiva,” I offer as explanation.
“She’s dead, Sharon. How do you expect I feel?”
I don’t know! I want to shout. I don’t know how you feel about it or about anything. Apart from me. I know you feel nothing but disappointment in me.
“You shouldn’t—” I start, talking to her like she can read my thoughts. I backtrack. “I’m calling from Queen Street West. The hospital.”
“Oh?” she says, a question.
“My friend Daniel is a patient here. He has AIDS.”
Her intake of breath is so sharp it rattles down the phoneline.
“I’ve been looking after him. And some of the other patients too. Well, not looking after them, exactly, more keeping them company and baking the cakes and biscuits Bubbe used to make for us. I even made her babka recipe. That one was very popular.”
There’s another noise in my ear but no words.
When she doesn’t say anything, I continue.
“I’m gay, Mum, a lesbian” I sigh but it’s with relief, surrender, release, not disdain or despondency.
“I know you know this. I told you before, but that time… I was so scared and so unsure. But now I’m not.
I’m gay and I’ve met someone. A woman. I think…
I think I love her. I don’t know why I’m telling you that.
Maybe because I can’t tell her I love her.
It’s complicated, you see. But it’s real. So very real.”
More silence. I push on, squaring my shoulders and turning my body to the wall.
“That’s my truth, Mum. But it doesn’t have to mean we live like this. I don’t want you to be on your own. I’ve seen what happens to people when they’re on their own… at the end. And it’s not pretty. It’s awful. I don’t want that for you. So if you wanted…”
The line goes dead. My mum has hung up on me.
I almost can’t believe it. So much so, I pull the receiver away from my face and stare at it, as if it’s going to give me an explanation.
Seconds pass as I stand like that, waiting for something to happen that I already know is impossible, until a switch in me flicks. It’s like a light going on, a door opening, a loud noise being silenced.
I tried. But I didn’t fail. My mother did.
I hang the phone up, glance at the folded piece of paper again and find some more coins in my jeans pocket.
Picking up the phone again, I dial the number for Danny’s mother.
As a ringing returns to the line, I realise my fear has completely gone, because surely, this conversation can’t go any worse than the one I just had.