Sliding Down the Sky (33 page)

The only thing I knew for sure was that I needed to forget. Like I had in the past, I turned to my old friend whisky. Whisky would help me forget, whisky always did. The weird part was, I didn’t even feel like drinking. I just didn’t know what else to do. I wanted to shut my Dad’s voice out of my head, and I figured whisky was as good as a pair of earmuffs as anything in that regard.

So, that was my plan. I was going to drink myself deaf.

This bar wasn’t like the other one. It was quieter. There were only a handful of us in there, and all of us were spread out. Clearly not the place to come for conversation, which suited me fine because I had nothing to say to anyone. I sat at one end of the bar, an old guy sitting at the other end. The bartender was a woman, kind of chunky, with dyed blonde hair and dangling, ugly silver earrings. She was in her late fifties by the look of her, or she could’ve been younger, I’m not sure. I wasn’t very good at the guess-the-age game, especially when my mind was on other things. The important thing, the thing that made her a good bartender, was that she could read her customers. She didn’t hover and she didn’t make small-talk, but she was always on hand to fill up my glass. In my book, that made her pretty much perfect.

Someone sat down next to me, and without looking up, it annoyed the shit out of me. There were at least eight bar stools between me and the next guy, down the other end. Why choose the one right next to me? I took another sip of whisky. This was taking longer than I had hoped.

The bartender came over to us.

“What can I get you?” she asked, addressing my new neighbour.

“Lemonade, thanks. With ice.”

My heart stopped. I turned to the side and my father was sitting there, his forearms leaning on the bar, seemingly without a care in the world.

“Can’t you take a damn hint?” I demanded, fixing him with my most withering stare.

He didn’t seem at all concerned. He just shrugged.

“I’m thirsty.”

I shook my head, dumbfounded. What was it gonna take? I stood up and prepared to go and sit somewhere else, but he put his hand on my arm.

“Don’t go,” he said, his formerly calm demeanour crumbling. “Please. Stay. I won’t talk to you if you don’t want me to.”

I faltered, standing there, drink in hand. Something about the way he said it got to me. He seemed different, a kind of different that I couldn’t put my finger on. Against my better judgement, I sat down again. I was too tired for this.

The bartender served him his drink, and he thanked her. For several minutes we just sat there, the eighties soft rock billowing around us out of the sound system. I had a thousand things I wanted to say to him, but I said none of them. All I could think about was Mom, and what she would say if she was awake.

Finally, I couldn’t stand it a moment longer. With my heart pounding, I turned to him.

“What are you doing here?”

He seemed to take the question then kick it around for a while before answering.

“I was here when it happened. I couldn’t just leave.”

I frowned.

“What do you mean?”

“I was visiting your Mom. I try to come for a couple of days every month. We’d meet for coffee, or I’d go over to her place, and we’d just talk. I was supposed to meet her the day she collapsed. When she didn’t show up at the coffee shop, I called and Coop answered. He was at the hospital with her.”

I shook my head, the details swimming around in there.

“What the hell would you possibly have to talk about?”

I said it with a decent sprinkling of malice, not that he seemed to notice. His eyes, clear and blue, didn’t waver from mine.

“Mostly it was just me apologising for the crap I put her through.”

My heart felt like it was being sucked out through my eyeballs.

The crap I put her through.

That didn’t even scratch the surface.

“I’ve been clean and sober for two years, four months, three weeks and a day,” he said. “And believe me, I’m counting. But that doesn’t mean I’ve wiped the slate clean. I can’t, I know that. What I did, the man I used to be, is something that I have to live with for the rest of my life. I know it’s something she has to live with too, and so do you. I can’t ever apologise enough for what I did, for the person I was, and for how that affected both of you. I wish I could, but I can’t. But regardless of that, I want you both to know that I’m sorry. You didn’t deserve the way I treated you, either of you. You deserved so much better. I loved you, all of you, and I was never the husband or father you needed. I’ll carry that with me for the rest of my life.”

I wanted to look away but I couldn’t make myself. The music faded into the background, and his words were the only things I heard. That, and the frantic beating of my own heart.

An apology. The last thing I’d have expected, particularly from him. He never apologised. He just left, and we tried our best to rebuild our lives.

“You did me a favour that day,” he went on. “The day you threw me out. I knew I had to leave, that I was out of control, but I didn’t have the guts to do it. You were sixteen years old, and you had more courage and strength than I did, a grown man.”

Courage? Strength? Was he kidding? Couldn’t he see the state I was in?

He picked up his lemonade and took a sip. When he put his glass back on the bar, he stared at it. I thought he was done, that it was over, and I was almost ready to get up and walk out, to leave him behind, but he wasn’t finished.

“You blame me for Robbie’s death. Your mother does, too. She’s right, you’re both right. It was my fault, no one else’s. I did it, and I have to live with that every day. It was the guilt that tore me up inside. After he died… I considered suicide, but I didn’t have the guts. I was a coward y’see, and it wasn’t just the booze that turned me into one. I was a coward before the booze, too. The booze just helped me forget for a while. I thought I was hiding it – from you, from your mother – but I wasn’t. I know that now.”

What the hell was I supposed to do with any of that? I saw Robbie disappearing under the car and it made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end.

“You’re right,” I said, my voice wavering. “I do blame you for Robbie’s death. I blame you for a lot of things.”

He nodded, then turned to look at me again.

“I’m not asking you to forgive me. I don’t deserve that. I don’t deny that it was my fault. I know I can’t just snap my fingers and make the last thirty years disappear so we can start again. I really want the chance to earn the right to be your father, I want to be a part of your life – even a small part – but I understand if you don’t want me to be. I just had to ask.”

My head was spinning. I had that dizzy feeling that comes with standing on the edge of a precipice, staring down into the void. The thing that frightened me most was that it was my own face that stared back up at me from out of the clouds.

“Love is the most powerful energy there is.”

– Lenny Kravitz

Callum

Having a drink with my father was the most surreal experience I’d ever had. It bypassed everything – reality, fantasy, and everything in between. There was no way I could forget my childhood. It was a part of me, it had shaped me, and I was still angry about that because I’d had no control over it. I didn’t think I’d ever forget it, or forgive him for taking Robbie from us.

But a part of me recognised the strength I saw in my father now. I’d never seen that before. All through my life, he’d been weak. He’d been a bully, preying on our fear. Now he’d been clean for over two years. Deep down, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to do that myself, so I gave him reluctant praise for it. But there was something else, too. He had changed on a more fundamental level. He’d faced up to the man he was, and he’d accepted his past. That was something I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to do either.

It was a strange feeling, reluctant admiration for a man I’d spent the majority of my life hating.

Oddly, it gave me hope. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to see him again, but seeing him, talking to him, wasn’t something I was ever going to forget. I got the feeling it was going to haunt me for a long time.

He left not long after that. He didn’t even finish his drink, he just thanked me for listening, got up and left. I finished my whisky slowly, which was a first for me. Then I pulled out my phone and called Jack. I waited outside the bar in the cool night air for him to come pick me up. I could’ve walked, but I’d had enough of being alone, and my head hurt. I was relieved when his car pulled up in front of me soon after.

“Hey,” he said, as I got in. “You okay? You don’t look it.”

“I’m not drunk,” I said, running my hand down my face. “I’m just tired.”

He gave me his most discerning look, gauging me.

“Your Dad came back to the hospital about half an hour ago. He told us he found you.”

I shrugged. Words still escaped me. My head still swam.

“You sure you’re okay? Wanna talk about it?”

I reached for my seatbelt.

“Yeah. And no. Not yet. Maybe later.”

I was grateful when he didn’t push it.

“Well, we better get back, I guess. Coop was meeting with the doctors about five minutes ago.”

He pulled out onto the road.

“Is she okay?” I asked, almost afraid to.

“I don’t know. It’s hard to tell. Nothing seems to have changed.”

“Is Coop pissed off at me, for leaving?” I asked.

“No, I don’t think so. He’s not an ogre. He knows how hard it is for you. He’s offered me a bed for the night. Is that okay?”

“Yeah, of course – why wouldn’t it be?”

“I don’t know. I just thought I’d ask. I thought maybe you’d prefer I stay in a motel, so you and Coop can have some time together or something. I don’t mind – I get it.”

“What? No. For Christ’s sake, you drove all this way. You deserve a comfortable bed.”

“Okay, then. I’m not gonna argue with that.”

“I really appreciate the fact that you’re here,” I said. “I’m sorry, but I’m grateful.”

He glanced over at me as the hospital parking lot came into sight, lit up like a Christmas tree.

“No need. You’d do the same for me,” he said.

“You know I would.”

I could tell, from the moment we got out of the elevator, that something was wrong. It was a gut feeling, something I couldn’t quantify. I felt like I was walking in slow motion, as if everything around us had stilled. Approaching the waiting room I saw Coop with my Dad and two doctors, and I knew I was right. Coop was sitting with his head in his hands. It was the kind of picture that stays with you forever.

Utter and complete devastation.

My stomach fell, my heart stopped and I couldn’t breathe.

“Come on,” Jack said gently.

I wasn’t even aware that I’d stopped walking. I felt like I was stuck in a nightmare, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t wake myself up.

We walked over to the waiting room, and everyone’s attention turned to us. Steph was sobbing quietly, sounding much more like the little girl I remembered rather than the teenager she was. My father, whose strength I had only just been admiring an hour or so beforehand, looked broken. Even the doctors looked uncomfortable.

Coop glanced up, his hands falling from his face.

I looked over at Mom’s bed, at the far side of the room. The nurses that had been buzzing around her intermittently were gone.

“Callum,” Coop said, standing up.

I waited for him to continue, my heart in my mouth, but he didn’t. Dad was standing on the other side of the small room, his eyes downcast as if he wished he was somewhere else. Steph’s sobs continued, now muffled by her hands.

“What is it?”

No one said anything for what seemed like an eternity. Then finally, one of the doctors spoke up, obviously realising that no one else wanted to tell me.

“Your mother’s brain is dying,” he said gently. “We can’t stop the bleeding. We can’t do any more for her. I’m very sorry.”

I stared at him blankly, willing him to take the words back. He was wrong – they all were. They had to be.

“The doctors are suggesting we take some time to come to terms with this, then turn off the life support.”

Coop’s voice had a hollow ring to it, and I could tell he was struggling with this as much as I was.

I turned to him, and I heard Jack breathe out a ragged sigh from behind me.

“You can’t,” I said, my heart pounding. “You can’t.”

“Your mother can’t breathe on her own,” the second doctor said. “Her heart isn’t pumping on its own. Her body is shutting down. The only thing keeping her body alive right now is the machines. I’m so sorry. We’ll leave you all to take some time to think about this. We know it’s not an easy decision.”

The two doctors left us alone, but no one moved. Steph stopped sobbing long enough to look up at us. I wanted someone to come back and say that they were sorry, they’d made a mistake. No one did.

“We need to let her go,” Coop said brokenly, his eyes filling with tears. “It’s out of our hands now.”

“It’s not out of our hands,” I snapped. “Not yet. We should wait. We don’t have to do this.”

“Yes we do,” Dad said, looking over at us. “She wouldn’t want us to keep her holding on like this. It’s selfish. We need to do the right thing, for her. We need to give her her dignity back. She deserves that.”

I fell into the nearest chair, my legs giving way to the sorrow that pushed down on me from a height so great, I thought it might crush me. Would this nightmare ever end?

“Her brain is dying,” Coop said. “You heard the doctors.”

“She might –“

“No,” he sniffed. “She won’t. They’ve already told us that. They can’t do anything. Her heart isn’t pumping, her lungs aren’t working. Her organs have shut down. She’s on life support.
Machines
are keeping her alive. Dan’s right, she deserves to keep her dignity. She’d hate this, I know she would.”

Steph began sobbing again and he went to her, pulling her into his arms.

“It’s okay, sweetie,” he soothed.

I looked over at them. I wanted someone to hold me like that and tell me everything was going to be okay. I wanted Sass. I wanted to bury my head in her shoulder and have her wrap her arms around me and make all of this go away.