Page 128 of Here One Moment

I sat in the high-backed chair that had once belonged to Dad and from which Madame Mae had done all her readings. The light was softening, and Auntie Pat had said to me earlier in the kitchen, “Not long now, Cherry.” She sat on the other side of the bed in the chair where Mum’s customers had sat, hugging the gold pillow to her stomach.

There were long periods where nobody spoke. We could hear magpies singing, the far-off sound of a lawn mower, the steady drip of the IV, and an occasional huge yawn and corresponding jaw click from poor Auntie Pat.

Auntie Pat had warned me about the death rattle. It’s when saliva or mucus collects in the back of the throat and the person can’t swallow or cough. It sounds very unpleasant, like a loud gurgling or choking sound, but it doesn’t mean the dying person is distressed. (Or so they believe.)

Mum never made that awful sound. Not everyone does. She always said she simply refused to snore.

Her breathing got erratic and then labored. I kept thinking she was gone and I’d hold my breath, but then her chest would rise again and I’d breathe again. At one point she waved two fingers like a conductor, her eyes still shut, and said, “Dancing the Swiss fondue! Wasn’t that funny, Pat?”

“It was so funny, Mae,” said my aunt, and she smiled at me.

I think maybe Mum could already see Dad and she was telling him about it, because she said, “Oh, darling, isn’t she the funniest little thing?”

Those were her last words. They were excellent last words, Mum. Well done.

An hour later, she took a breath.

We waited.

There were no more breaths.

I like to imagine Dad waiting for her on the dance floor at The Cab, one hand behind his straight back, the other hand outstretched, ready to take hers, to swing her away.

—

The other night I dreamed I saw my parents dancing and they turned and saw me, and held out their arms. I ran to them, fast as the wind, like a child.

Chapter 104

Allegra, wearing a blue hospital gown—“underpants on, bra off”—lies face down in a small tunnel. She does not suffer from claustrophobia, but she now understands why people do, because this is not fun. She is wearing giant headphones. Michael Bublé is crooning love songs to her through the headphones. Her mother is a Michael Bublé fan, Allegra not so much. She holds a buzzer she can press if she needs to talk. A clip on her finger is attached to a long tube monitoring her heart rate and breathing. She rarely goes to the doctor, has never been admitted to the hospital. Everyone is friendly and kind, but she doesn’t like the way they are in charge of her, the way she is in charge of her passengers. She recognizes something of herself in the authoritative boredom of their tones. Everything they say they’ve said a thousand times before. Every question Allegra asks has been asked and answered before.

Her back pain is far worse this time around. Nothing seems to help. She may require surgery. They just have to work out what’s going on. She has never had surgery.

Her mother remains in a state about the prediction, in spite of the blessings, mantras, and the famous astrologer in India who could see nothing untoward in Allegra’s birth chart.

She overheard her brother saying, “Mum, no doctor is going to prescribe Allegra antidepressants as a preventative measure based on some nutjob’s prediction.”

“But back pain causes depression, Taj!” said her mother. “And depression causes back pain! It’s a loop! She’s stuck in a loop! Now she can’t work, she can’t drive, she’s stuck at home all day, she is a sitting duck for depression!”

“So we fix her back pain,” said Taj. “We don’t muck around with her brain chemistry.”

Allegra is not suicidal, absolutely not, but in the same way she now understands claustrophobia, she also has a new understanding of suicidal ideation. There have been times when she would do anything to escape the pain.

A disembodied voice says, “All right, Allegra, we’re about to begin! It’s going to get very noisy, but try to relax and press the buzzer if you need me.”

In spite of the warnings, she is still surprised by the loudness of the machine when it starts up. The noises are so comical she wants to laugh. Is someone playing a joke on her? They are like pretend sounds for a children’s spaceship toy.

Eow, eow, eow, eow.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

Thump, thump, thump.

Beep, beep, beep.

The fact that these strange sounds are interspersed by snippets of Michael Bublé makes it all the weirder. How did she end up here? She thinks of the moment she took the full weight of that caftan woman’s carry-on bag, and then that day, when she’d felt so happy, Anders running, the dog on the lead, her legs tangling so unnecessarily. Nobody to blame for all this except herself.

She tries to remember all the MRI sounds so she can replay them for Jonny, and then she remembers that she and Jonny are not together anymore, or were never really together in the first place, she isn’t sure. Of course, he didn’t abandon her on the grass that day. He and Anders got her to her feet—she was nearly sobbing with the pain—and Jonny drove her home, got her into bed, and gave her two painkillers left over from last time. Her parents came over because she called them like a child. She didn’t know what else to do. Who do people call if they don’t have parents?

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