Three Dollars, Page 20

  ‘Tess?’ I asked tentatively. ‘Is that you?’

  She was shivering and did not seem to hear me. I could not even make myself heard in the darkness. The moon had set and there was nothing to be seen of her outline anymore but a pale nebulousness which represented the white terry-towelling dressing gown she had borrowed from Tanya and which was now all that separated her desperate form from the leaves underneath her and the vapour above. I called her name again but she did not stir. I could not move her.

  Darkness and silence ruled everywhere around. Rabbits and hares were about, birds rested above us but no guardian angels were on hand to keep us from a closeness born of need, born of cold. Then tenderness closed the gap, the hungry gap in the terry-towelling and in both of us. In closing it another opened and, even before it was over, I was crying. What had I done?

  She had my face in her hands and was wiping away tears, my tears.

  ‘It’s alright,’ she said. My heart was beating with more force than was good for it. I rested my face against her chest, my nose was in her cleavage, that other lacuna of hers I had never before known. One ear was warmed between the terry-towelling and the exposed mammalian face of our malversation.

  ‘It’s alright, Eddie,’ she whispered. ‘You must have been dreaming.’

  She turned on my bedside light, the one that was serving as her reading lamp.

  ‘It’s okay. You’re awake now.’ But she was only partly right.

  ‘Oh my God! Was I calling out?’

  ‘You’d fallen asleep. I’d just finished the dishes and was tiptoeing around you undressing for bed when I heard you.

  ‘What was I saying?’

  ‘It was nothing.’

  ‘No. Kate, what was I saying?’

  ‘Nothing. You … you were crying.’

  ‘Oh shit, I’m so sorry. That’s so embarrassing.’ I sat upright.

  ‘Hey. Eddie,’ she offered with warm understanding, ‘you can never be embarrassed in front of me.’ She was stroking my face. ‘You’ve been so good to me. You’re such a good man.’

  Her stroking hand ranged from my cheek to my hair. She combed with her fingers. When I closed my eyes there was still some moisture there that had not seen the light of that night. She held me to her and squeezed, rubbing my back. I could hear her breathing. This was real and when I looked up our mouths were joined and neither of us could speak.

  It was the first time in our married lives that either of us had kissed someone other than our spouses in that way and we could not stop. I ran my fingers through her hair and the ribbon slipped off. Tanya’s dressing gown came untied revealing a sweetly scented naked woman who had my head in her hands, who wanted me in a way I had forgotten and was bringing me to boil with her caress. But it was not Tanya. It was not even Amanda Claremont. And it was all wrong.

  ‘Eddie, this is madness. We’ve got to stop,’ Kate said without much breath. I pulled back in a way that I am sure she will always remember and whenever she does it will hurt her. I was appalled by my own weakness. And in the shock of the simultaneous arousal, comfort, guilt and furious regret, I was unable to control the violence of the movement. It was as a result of the eventual triumph of one of the many voices in my head screaming wildly at me that I heard my bladder begin to complain about the wine.

  ‘It’s not your fault, Kate, these things happen, these … mistakes. I was drunk, am drunk and barely awake. I hope you can forgive me. Forgive and forget or just forget. Either one. Up to you,’ I called, leaving her undone on the couch and racing to listen to the complaints of my bladder.

  The unambiguous sound of that part of the wine which had no use for me hitting the water at the bottom of the bowl did not drown out the thought of her thoughts in the other room. What was she thinking? What could she think of me? She would be right to think it, more right than she was aware unless, of course, she already knew of Tanya’s pending unemployment. Did she know? Perhaps Tanya confided in her the way she should have confided in me, the way she used to confide in me. If this were so it was likely Kate reciprocated with confidences of her own and what could be more confidential than what has just happened. Or could that be categorised under the rubric of ‘not to be divulged to Tanya for Tanya’s sake’? No one rationalises better than an unfaithful husband nor is there a more receptive audience for the result of that process. How sophistical I had become. How sophistical had I become? I looked down at my visage in an attempt to answer the question but the wine, once a dry white with just a hint of mischief, sabotaged the attempt with a two-pronged blitzkrieg of obfuscation, shaking inside my head and shaking the image of my head inside the bowl. I flushed for redemption but the cistern contained only water.

  ‘Are you okay? I am so sorry.’ I could not look at her, uncomfortable with both the guilt and the arousal.

  ‘Eddie, I’m as much to blame. You really shouldn’t … It’s probably best if we get some sleep. I really think I should get some sleep. I’m sure it will all seem … in the morning. You sleep well and don’t worry about anything.’

  From the passage I called in a whisper. ‘Goodnight, Kate. Can I get you anything?’ Always the perfect host.

  ‘No, it’s okay, Eddie, I know where everything is.’

  Our bedroom door had never been so light, never been so easy to close. I pulled off my clothes and threw them onto the chair. I chose my thickest pyjamas. It occurred to me that I should never again allow myself to be alone in the same suburb with a woman other than Tanya.

  Hiding under the covers in the dark, it was the sweetness of what had nearly happened that scared me the most. On trains and buses, in queues and at traffic lights, it would always be there to call on, and if call on it I did, far too much of me would remember it fondly. It was the knowledge of this which discomforted me the most. I had to get to sleep. Tomorrow this would have happened yesterday. Or perhaps not at all, perhaps it was a dream most of which I would forget. I was slowing down again, imagining calm made a reality of it. Perhaps it was a dream, her dream. I would not condemn her for her dreams. My eyelids grew heavy with forgiveness for her. Sleep, for once, took a liking to me. I thought I could hear the distant sound of Kate brushing her teeth, but, as if conscious of my need to court sleep, she seemed to brush softer and softer. The bathroom moved further and further away, Gonna wash that man right out of my gums. Even the helicopters were silent, discreet. It would be fine.

  What had happened mocked the hitherto firmly held conceit that my fidelity had always been far more than the product of inertia. Perhaps I was just another of the many faithful men whose cringing fidelity was a habit with them like shaving, flossing after meals or remembering rubbish nights.

  How long had I loved Tanya? Since before I knew what love meant. Still unsure, I knew that it was whatever I had felt for her since, more than half my life ago, I first spied her in the supermarket from my vantage point deep within fresh produce and nominated her for my wife. My gypsy girl, my own dark storm with her eyes so round and black, always hunted by the shock troops and standard bearers of line-toeing mediocrity, of conformity, haunted like her father before her, I wished her with me. I wanted her, to show her I would fight the bastards for her until she was able to fight them with me.

  ‘Eddie.’

  I could hear her calling me.

  ‘Eddie.’

  This time she was afraid.

  ‘Eddie.’ The call was insistent.

  ‘Eddie.’

  It was not her voice.

  Kate’s calls broke through the door. But we had to sleep this thing off. Sweet Kate, don’t make it any worse. I did not answer, burying my head under the pillow. She would tire soon and be thankful in the morning that I had stayed asleep.

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Eddie, wake up will you!’

  She pushed open the door and switched the light on. My clothes fell from the chair and lay on the floor against their will.

  ‘It’s Abby.’

  CHAPTER 22

  The
longest part of the longest night began with the seconds it took me to rouse myself and follow Kate down the hall and into Abby’s room. In those seconds I had begun to drown. Still in the dark of her room I was now fully awake. She lay on her back snoring through clenched teeth. It was a sound I had never heard her make before, like the feeble erratic running of a small and unreliable engine moist on the inside through a design fault, gurgling in stops and starts.

  ‘Is she dreaming? Abby? Sweetie?’ Kate found the light. I became frightened at what I saw, sickly afraid as I had never been. She bounced. She appeared to be bouncing. Her back was arched unnaturally and her arms and legs stiffened and then relaxed arrhythmically. It was no rhythm at all but a violent madness in her, no rhythm I could recognise.

  ‘She’s fitting,’ Kate said. ‘I think we should call an ambulance.’

  I said nothing. My daughter was bouncing. She had bounced out of sleep and into unconsciousness. Her eyes were open, the pupils rolled upwards as if drawn by something inside her. Then they rolled down a little and then back up, flitting up a little more, then down then up again, and all the while her arms and legs waving as if in panic, as if she shared my panic. How long had she been like this? How long would it last, so much like Abby but not like her. At times, there was nothing but white in her eyes. She slapped the mattress with her arms, kicked it with the back of her legs.

  And it would not stop as the half-remembered half-hatched treatments from a lifetime of charts on the walls of doctor’s surgeries echoed in my head: roll her on her side, stop her from swallowing her tongue, find the blame, call an ambulance. Her moist snores kept coming from the back of her throat. Let her sleep. But she was not asleep. She was deep in battle. Let her breathe. Clear the passages. Press the blame tightly against the father’s chest. Was she breathing?

  ‘Call an ambulance!’

  It wasn’t stopping, it wasn’t slowing. She kicked. Her muscles tensed and untensed alternately.

  ‘I called one. Has this happened before?’

  ‘No. I don’t think so. I don’t know. I don’t know what this is.’

  ‘She’s fitting.’

  ‘I know. Can she breathe?’ I touched her head. ‘Is she breathing? Abby, what are you doing?’

  ‘She’s fitting.’

  ‘I know. Will you stop saying that and call a fucking ambulance!’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘When will it be here?’

  ‘Five or ten minutes.’

  ‘Ten minutes! She’s not breathing. Kate, she’s not breathing!’

  ‘She is breathing. She’s fitting. What are you doing?’

  ‘Turning her on her side.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘So she won’t swallow her tongue.’

  ‘You don’t need to do that with children.’

  ‘Are you sure? You do when they’re fitting.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘I’m doing it. Will you help me? Should we hold her? Ring them again. Ring the ambulance again. She’s having some kind of fit.’

  We turned her on her side.

  Because neither of us thought to leave the door open the ambulance officers had to ring the doorbell like friends dropping in for afternoon tea. Kate let them in. They looked at Abby dancing on the bed. One stayed at the bedroom door, the other approached the bed.

  ‘How old is she?’ he asked firmly, routinely and without panic, an older man with thinning hair.

  ‘Six,’ Kate said.

  ‘Six and a half. She’s had the flu. For a couple of days. Temperatures.’

  The younger man at the door ran out of the house as if to get something from the ambulance. The older man stayed by her bed. It was just after four in the morning. He stooped over her slightly and laid his hand gently on her head. The government and certain editorial writers thought this man had it too good in his job.

  ‘Are you her parents?’

  ‘I’m her father.’

  Kate pulled the flanks of Tanya’s dressing gown closer together. The ambulance officer kept his eyes on Abby.

  ‘She’s fitting. Has she done this before?’

  ‘No. I don’t think so.’

  ‘How long has she been like this?’

  ‘About half an hour,’ I said.

  ‘We don’t know exactly. We found her about ten minutes ago, just as she is now,’ Kate said.

  ‘Is she breathing?’ I asked.

  ‘Yeah, she’s breathing,’ he said calmly. ‘We’re going to have to call a MICA.’

  ‘What’s a MICA?’

  ‘Mobile Intensive Care Ambulance. We’re not equipped for this.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘She needs valium. A MICA unit will treat her with valium to stop the fitting but she’ll need to be hospitalised for diagnosis and in case she fits again.’

  ‘Why can’t you give her valium? I think we have some. My wife has some … unless she’s taken it to her mother’s.’

  ‘No, it’s given rectally. My partner’s gone to call a MICA unit. I’ll stay with you till it gets here. She’s okay.’

  ‘Is she really okay?’

  ‘She’ll be fine.’

  She did not look fine. I had never seen her look less fine. She looked angry, furious to the point of madness. Bouncing involuntarily on her little bed, gurgling, frothing, she would not look at me. Her body was trying to rid itself of what it knew and no words of calm from the uniformed older man with the thinning hair could take away my fear as we watched the storm inside her, her flailing arms and legs signalling a frenzied protest against her health.

  ‘It’s never happened before,’ I said looking for some sort of comfort. But still she would not stop, and still the fever burned as bright. I had previously always been able to stem her tears and sweeten her rare bouts of ill-humour but by her bedside now I was alone, deserted by all my previous selves, useless against this insult to my child’s reason. She danced this repulsive dance in front of us without embarrassment and without showing any signs of stopping.

  ‘Will she stop?’ I asked him like a child.

  ‘Oh yes, it’ll take its course. These things have to take their course. The MICA boys will be here any minute.’

  The arrival of the MICA unit, the continuing need for it and the idea of these things taking their course seemed mutually inconsistent. Did it mean that without it she would not stop?

  ‘But will she stop?’

  ‘Oh, she’ll stop alright. That’s them now if I’m not mistaken.’

  But what if he was mistaken? Would she stop? Kate held my arm.

  There were now four uniformed men in my daughter’s room. The two MICA men tended to her. One of them held her as still as he could. The other prised apart her cheeks with one hand and inserted a catheter into her anus with the other. Something was being done at last. The MICA men had come to penetrate her with valium and take her to hospital. I sat beside her with one of them, a younger man, and together we rode the ambulance to hospital. Abby slowed her dance but would not wake up. Her spasms weakened their resolve, their intensity and their frequency. I wished the older man had come with us.

  Abby and I were as one with the trolley. She was strapped in. I grasped its handle with such pointless intensity that my hand whitened and petrified in its grip. In this way MICA-the-younger wheeled us both into the Emergency Ward. He parked us in a queue a little way in from the doors and then left us in order to translate his version of our situation into something the system could rank. Abby was in a deep sleep now. She did not stir whenever her trolley was assailed by the passing traffic of other people’s traumas or by the crying or random screams which lit up the room like an audio pinball machine and penetrated the thin partitions separating each trolley’s panic, fear and regret. My little girl slept calmly through it all.

  The turning points of so many lives had come together under the hatching fluorescent light of this confined space as if for a convention. The partitions lent an air of privacy to each case,
but above, beside or through each partition misery did out. A young man let out cries of such distilled pain behind a partition slightly deeper into the ward that an older woman unacquainted with English was forced to interrupt the tragedy inside her own neighbouring partition to get some help for him. He had screamed the loudest of us all, his howls being interrupted only by dry retching. This had been his fifteen minutes. They gave him something through his arm and he went about his waiting quietly from then on.

  A crisp, confidence-inspiring woman, a nurse, still young but ageing by the minute, came over to us with a pen and clipboard in hand. She went through a barely audible drill with the man from MICA. He told her all she needed or had time to know about us before nodding to her then to me and finally riding off into the sunrise.

  ‘Abby, is it?’ she said to us.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Doctor will be with you as soon as possible,’ she said in a tone which meant the system was apprised of our existence so there was no point making trouble.

  Trouble came here ready-made. It followed no pattern, it could not even be relied upon for its own rhythm. Sometimes there was no beat to it at all. Two orderlies greeted each other over a sheet-covered trolley. I listened to them as Abby continued sleeping.

  ‘Internal bleeding,’ said the one pushing the trolley.

  ‘And he was so well behaved. Undetected?’

  ‘Yeah. S’pose so. But what would I know.’

  A woman with thick black hair on her sagging head thrashed about in a motorised wheelchair unable to communicate except through a small computer. She combined with the whirring sound of the wheelchair engine to produce an angry, frothing grunting hum. Mobile at right angles to everything, she would not take her disability lying down. She looked to be in her late twenties or early thirties. Her animal sounds protested against her indignity. Finally calmed she had the attention of one of the older nurses who spoke to her as one speaks to boys who cry wolf.