Then I head over to the kitchen, snatch the phone number from the fridge and before I can second guess myself, I make an appointment in a few day’s time. The receptionist is also nice enough to suggest a short-term rehab clinic I can check into on the weekend, so it won’t interfere with the games.
I have some people I need to talk to. Jessica and Donald. Alan. Amara and Thierry. I need to be honest with them, as honest as Brigs was with me. They need to know what’s going on in my life. They need to know I’m not well and I’m not doing okay and I need as much love and support from them as I can possibly get. I want to do this for myself but I can’t do it alone. I’ve been doing it alone for too long. And it’s not enough.
I know now who I want to be.
Still me.
Just better.
CHAPTER TWENTYEIGHT
Kayla
It’s been three weeks.
She’s been in a coma, unreachable, for three fucking weeks.
My life has become a living hell but I can’t even imagine what she’s going through, where she possibly is in this world in such a hopeless, dead state. I can only hope that somewhere, somehow, in whatever limbo she is in, that my father has her hand. I know the stronger he holds onto her, the less likely she’ll return to us. But at the same time, I can’t bear the thought of her being alone, lost inside herself.
Because I’m lost too.
So lost.
And throughout all the pain, I keep thinking back to Lachlan, the way I treated him on the phone. I told him to leave me alone and never call me again but in truth, that was a lie. I just didn’t know it at the time. I pushed him away, punished him for caring for me, making him feel worse about himself than I’m sure he already does.
I just want to take it back. I want to hear his voice, to hold me in his strong arms and tell me everything is going to be okay, even though we both know it won’t be. But just to hear it from him – he used to make me feel like it was us against the world and that he could protect me from everything.
He just couldn’t protect me against himself.
Then again, he couldn’t protect himself against that either.
I wasn’t lying when I said I missed him. Because I do. All the time. Constantly. This dull, throbbing ache in my heart that won’t go away. It’s a different kind of pain than the one I feel for my mom and they are both so terribly unbearable.
And when he told me he loved me…I remembered for one blissful second what it was like to so freely have his love and so eagerly give him mine and it feels like another time, like we were just these young kids in love and the world was this sunny, endless place, our playground. I crave those days so badly that it makes my gut twist, hungry for something I’ll probably never have again.
It’s a Friday when Paul calls me at work and asks me to meet them all at the hospital around lunchtime. I don’t even have to ask Lucy if I can leave, I just go. I have a feeling that they’re just waiting to fire me when the time is right, they just don’t want to be total dicks and lay off a long-term employee whose mother is dying. But really, I do nothing all day because Candace has taken over everything and even when I try and am in the right frame of mind, it’s a half-hearted effort. There’s too much on my plate and I’m not going to fight for a job that I wanted to leave in the first place.
I decide to pick up Toshio on the way to the hospital, needing support to even make it through the drive. We all know what this is about, what it’s come to.
In three weeks there has been no improvement at all.
It’s time to decide how long we can do this to her.
And, let’s face it, how long we can keep doing this to us.
Though her stroke has brought us closer together, unlike ever before, all five of us are gaunt and ashen, just shadows of our former selves. This is not what our mother would have wanted for us.
“So you think this is it?” Toshio asks, and the pain is fresh on his face.
I swallow, nodding. “Yes. I think we’re going to have to make a decision. Together.”
He stares at his nails for a moment and then says, “Sean broke up with me.”