Day Twenty Five

 

Caroline, freshly released from the hospital, was bored and lonely now that she was back at home. As it was a Saturday, she decided she would wander over to drop in on her Uncle Nathan. It had been a while since she had last seen him and she had often thought of him. Like her grandfather and everyone else in the family, she had been devastated when had been so badly injured in the accident. No one had said very much but she had witnessed the unspoken agony on everyone’s faces. To get to Nathan, she would have to get a couple of buses but, as she had nothing else to do, it didn’t seem like a bad idea to reconnect with family.

Persephone had been fretting over Nathan’s fast decline back into absolute decrepitude. All the progress he had made the previous months was undoing at an alarming rate. The tom cats were back and demanding to be fed, the toilet was blocked again and the kitchen was a mess. Worse, Nathan was flopped back on the couch totally comatose of sugar and mindlessly watching television. There were red and green dots on the screen and the one representing him was flashing red.

There was a knock at his door but Nathan did not even flinch. Persephone jumped off the couch and walked over to the tom cats with her tail in the air. There were two older toms lounging near the front door. Neither of them was interested in tail anymore and had reached the stage of their life when they wanted nothing more than a peaceful life. So when the younger toms started to fight, the two older ones decided it was time to make an exit.

Over time, cats imitate certain skills they have seen humans do. There are cats who have managed to toilet train themselves for example and other cats that can open boxes of dry cat food and cats that can squeeze through impossible places. And then there are cats who have lived together for so long and have seen humans do so many things that they learn to collaborate and do as humans do. So one old tom cat simply stepped on the back of the other tom cat and reached up, unlocked the front door and let themselves out. In the process, they let Caroline in.

Caroline realised as she let herself in that she had been so busy with her own sadness that she had lost track of nearly all members of her extended family. By her calculations, she hadn’t seen Nathan for nearly two years—and she thought that was quite a conservative estimate. The last time she had seen him was just after his accident. He was recovering and was eagerly talking about the house he would buy with the compensation.

“I just want a very simple house,” he had told her. “I don’t want to have to take care of too many things or get bogged down with renovations. Just an easy place to lay my head at the end of the night.”

The last time she had seen him, there were still obvious scars from the accident imprinted on him. Nathan was only a few years older than her and he had graduated from high school just before she had started. When he finally got his driving license, he would come collect her to hang out at the 7/11 across town where they’d get a sugar high from too much cola and shoot the breeze about nothing terribly important. But he made Caroline feel important and protected. Everyone in the family had said (repeatedly) how lucky she was not to have been in the car when he pulled out in front a pickup truck after he had dropped her off.

Caroline’s parents had been screaming and shouting at each other (as usual) when the phone had rung. Neither had heard it so it had been her who had picked up the phone.

“Caroline?” said the voice on the other end.

“Grandpa!” She was always glad to hear from even though he was often tired and cantankerous. He was not moving as fast as he used to and she was just starting to become afraid that she wouldn’t have him for too much longer.

The shouting carried on and Caroline felt embarrassed for her parents. “Caroline, can you get one of your parents on the line?”

Caroline looked at her parents, both red faced from screaming. Her mother had tears running down her face. “And what do you do? Huh!! Nothing! You never do nothing!”

“It’s not a good time,” she had whispered. “Is there something I can do for you?”

To Caroline’s horror, Alfie began to cry. He didn’t make it obvious at first but she could hear his voice breaking with emotion.

“It’s bad news,” he sniffed. And Caroline could imagine him holding the bridge of his nose as he tried to get himself under control. “Nathan—“

As soon as Caroline realised something had happened to Nathan, she had put the phone down and begged for a lift from a neighbour.

Seeing her grandparents so upset had a huge effect on Caroline. When you’re growing up, you want to believe that grownups never have such huge problems that they cry. You want to believe they have all the powers to change everything. Nathan was in surgery so she didn’t get to see him that evening. Getting her to go home to her warring parents had been very difficult and in the end, Alfie and Lucy had let her stay with them so they could all go to the hospital together the following morning.

Nathan had been a pathetic sight, covered in plaster. He was in an induced coma so was completely unresponsive. Caroline had a hard time believing he was actually under all those bandages. The worst part of his injuries was the ones that couldn’t be seen, she had been told. She had never been to church in her life but had prayed for Nathan, not caring if he didn’t suffer long term damage for his injuries. Caroline would have loved him no matter what had happened and taken care of him no matter what state he had been left in. he deserved people who weren’t going to give up on him.

And so, she felt terribly guilty on the day of her first visit to him in a very long time. Caroline closed Nathan’s door and stepped into the living room. Garbage was knee deep and there was an awful pong of cats and rot. But worse than that, was the certainty in Caroline’s gut that something was very wrong. Everyone could be a slob at times but this was far, far worse than just a pig out.

Like Alfie had found, every room was simply beyond the imagination. Persephone rubbed against Caroline’s legs the best she could do. Caroline took another tentative step inside. For a few moments, she saw no sign of life and she thought perhaps the house had been overtaken by squatters. She hoped, it had been overtaken by squatters.

And then her eyes rested on the pile of rags piled on the couch.

Nathan was curled up on the couch and was sucking his thumb. Except for the sucking motions he made with his mouth, he appeared asleep. It was difficult to know whether or not she should wake him up to end this embarrassing situation or let him sleep through it so he could be oblivious to it.

Her indecision came to an end when Nathan began snoring. It was not the snore of someone lightly sleeping but perhaps the death rattle of someone who might at any moment find it impossible to inhale due to the tongue’s sudden and irrevocable lodging in the throat.

For a few seconds, Caroline had been fearful Nathan was beyond saving and then there came a flurry of twitches in his limbs.

“I’m awake!!” he shouted. “I’m awake!” Unseeing, he turned in Caroline’s direction.

Seeing Nathan was awake, Caroline visibly relaxed. They could fix the house up again but perhaps Nathan was beyond fixing.

Unknown to either Nathan or Caroline, the dead birds were watching them, and began to high five each other and perform a weird bird dance. It didn’t take long before Maurice and his new friend Ralph joined in the fun.

“Not so bad being dead, is it?” Maurice asked Ralph.

“I’ve felt better,” he said with a straight face.

“If there was anything you could do again,” Maurice probed, “What would you do?”

Ralph was very thoughtful for a few minutes. In fact he was so thoughtful Maurice had thought he had fallen asleep. “If I had time,” he said, after waking up, “I would tell Janie that I loved her.”

There was a collective gasp. They had all heard of the name Janie but no had thought much about her. Janie was Brandon’s wife, a nonentity really.

“There must be more than one Janie in the world,” Ivan said authoritatively whilst trying to remember any Janie other he had ever met before.