Everything Left Unsaid (22 page)

Over the next week word gets around that I’m having palliative care and people start to visit. Grandma Eve comes, but she’s so hysterical the first time that Dad won’t let her in the room, and I’m vaguely thankful for that. ‘You’re scaring the kids,’ I hear him hiss at her. The next time she visits she just cries softly.

The guys come to visit, looking taller and older. They talk about a few funny things they remember from our fishing trips, from schoolies, and I guess it’s their way of saying goodbye – we all know I’ll never see them again. Tom and Alex both shake my hand, clap me on the shoulder before they head out the door. Sam hugs me then looks me in the eye. ‘See ya, Tai.’

Every night, Juliet looks at me with panic in her eyes as she leaves, and most mornings she texts me about something small, inconsequential, and I know it’s just to see if I’ll reply or not.

One night, when she’s sitting on the bed, I look at her and say, ‘You can’t miss me too much, Juliet. I know you. Okay?’

She looks at me, tries to say something, and cries instead, holding my hand.

With the other hand I wipe away a tear that’s taking eyeliner down with it, and keep going. I have to. ‘You’re going to uni, girl. And you’re going to get your licence, and a bomb of a car to drive around in. And Gen will probably take you to get your first tattoo soon.’ She smiles faintly and I realise that she’s already got that planned. ‘You’re going to move out of home, and get a great job after uni, and probably meet a guy who wants to marry you the second he sets eyes on you. And you’ll be happy, yeah, and sometimes you’ll think about me and you’ll probably cry, but . . . you can’t miss me too much, girl, or you’ll miss out on all of that.’

She lays her head in my lap, then, and sobs. ‘I love you, Tai,’ she says brokenly.

After she’s gone, River creeps into my bedroom, looking small and afraid. ‘Did you make Juliet cry, Tai?’ he asks.

‘Yeah. Not on purpose though. It was an accident.’

‘Is she crying because you’re going to die soon?’

‘Yeah, I think so, buddy.’

‘A girl in my class said that when you die you know everything anyone has ever thought about you. Will you be angry when you find out I was jealous you got a cat, Tai?’

I’m tired now, and I can feel my eyes closing, but I don’t want them to, not yet. ‘I already knew that one, River.’

Relief floods his face, then another question explodes out of him.

‘She said that after you die you forget everybody. Are you going to forget me, Tai?’

‘Forget you? No way. I could
never
forget you.’

River doesn’t look convinced.

‘You know how Juliet sometimes draws on you, and Mum gets mad because it takes so long to wash off?’

‘Mmm.’ I’m fighting off the blanket of sleep that’s rolling over me with everything I’ve got.

‘Can I write my name on your arm, just in case you forget it?’

I nod. ‘There’s a pen on my desk.’ He leaps up, grabs it, and painstakingly writes his name in sloping letters.

‘There. Don’t wash it, Tai. Not even a bit, okay? Promise?’

‘I promise, River.’

The next day the doctor goes to visit Tai again. When I visit afterwards, I stop in the kitchen first to see Mia. Today Stanley’s there too, his arms around her shoulders, whispering comforting things in her ear while Mia sobs. I feel a cold stab of fear in the pit of my stomach.

‘Did something happen?’ I ask in place of a greeting.

Stanley looks up. ‘We saw the doctor today, Juliet.’

‘I know. Did something happen? Has Tai—’

‘No.’ Mia’s face is red and blotchy. ‘He said everything was going as expected, that it won’t be long.’ As a fresh wave of tears starts she says in a choked voice, ‘The doctor told us it’s time to say our goodbyes.’

The static pain that’s been there for months now, an annoying throb just distracting from everything else, is worse. It’s become the sole focus of my thoughts, with small bits of conversations passing through. A nurse begins visiting more often, a few times a day, injecting painkillers straight into the syringe driver in my stomach. They help, but not enough.

At least they were only right about some of the side effects. My lips get so cracked they bleed, my mouth is constantly dry, and all of my senses feel dulled. I can barely remember what it felt like to be able to sit up without the walls starting to spin. What it was like to swim and be surrounded by cold, salty water. What it felt like to grab Juliet and really hold her, breathe her in. I know when she’s kissing me, but because of the morphine, I can barely feel it, and we never kiss like we used to, anyway.

But my broken brain still manages to function just enough that I still know who everyone around me is, and I’m grateful for that. Everyone else is, too.

‘Mum?’

She’s in the doorway instantly.

‘My head . . . it really hurts today.’

She nods grimly and fetches some painkillers. ‘Until the nurse gets here, Tai.’ Not even five minutes later, I vomit them back up. Mum takes my shirt off, wipes my face with a cloth as tears explode out of me.

‘Tai? What’s wrong?’

‘I need to piss,’ I choke out, ‘but I don’t think I can get out of bed.’

‘Oh, Tai,’ she says. ‘It’s okay.’ She grabs me in a hug, rubs my back soothingly. ‘It’s okay, Tai, it’s okay.’

She sends Dad in with a measuring jug from the kitchen, and I pee in that.

‘Sorry,’ I whisper. ‘Sorry.’

‘You peed in my mouth when I changed your nappy once,’ Dad says gently. ‘This is nothing, Tai.’

Later, I can hear Mum and Dad talking to the nurse in the hallway outside my room.

‘Should we call the hospital?’ Mum whispers.

‘There’s no need,’ the nurse says, ‘not unless you’re really concerned. Just be with him. Reassure him and let him know it’s okay. Ask him if there’s anything you can do.’

The nurse comes in, injects the painkillers, makes a note of it. ‘I’m going to stay nearby today, Tai,’ she says. ‘You’re my only patient for the rest of the week.’

Is that because I’m the only one dying this week?

‘So you just sing out if this doesn’t take the edge off the pain, and I can be around in a jiffy.’

Who even says jiffy?
I’m thinking, but the painkillers have kicked in . . .

Mum sits on the bed for a long time, even though I keep falling asleep. When I open my eyes, she looks at me anxiously. ‘Do you need anything, Tai?’

Sometimes I ask for a drink of water, but mostly I don’t. I’m just . . . tired, even my breathing is slower.

When I wake up the next time it’s getting dark, and I can hear Mum in the kitchen making dinner. Texy is sleeping on my chest, purring, and I pat him slowly.

Juliet comes to visit later, like always.

‘You’re beautiful,’ I whisper, and she smiles. I shiver, despite the blankets, despite the summer.

Juliet pulls off her jeans, climbs under the blankets. ‘You’re so cold, Tai.’

I reach up, stroke her hair, and she rests her head on my chest, drumming her fingers against my collarbone in time with my heartbeat.
Tap. Tap. Tap
. ‘Your heartbeat . . . it’s so slow tonight,’ she whispers.

‘You’ve been drinking too much caffeine again,’ I whisper back, followed by, ‘I wish you could stay.’ Tonight, I mean. Wish you could stay tonight.

I fall asleep again, and wake up to her gently shaking me. She’s dressed. ‘Tai? I’ve got to go.’

‘I wish you could stay.’

‘I wish I could, too.’

‘I love you, Juliet.’

‘I love you, too. Tomorrow?’

The next afternoon I’m in the bathroom doing my hair, getting ready to go to Gen’s place for a bit before going to visit Tai, when the phone rings.

A few minutes later, Mum is standing in the doorway to the bathroom, a tissue clenched in her hands, crying. A ball forms in my stomach, a lump in my throat, and I know immediately that Something Bad Has Happened. And I think, even though I don’t want to, I think that I know exactly what that something bad is.

Mum says, ‘Juliet, honey, I just got off the phone with Mia. Tai went to sleep last night after you left, and he didn’t wake up this morning. I’m so sorry, honey.’

No. I was only there last night, and he seemed okay, we listened to music and he kissed me goodnight and . . . no.

There are no words though, just tears, the kind so forceful my knees give in and I sit on the floor. I can’t stop crying. Tai is dead.

He’s dead. Tai. I loved him so much, and he’s dead. Oh god. He loved me like no-one else. And now he’s dead. And I wasn’t there.
He died alone and I wasn’t there
.

I sit there on the tiles for what feels like hours. The sky turns dark, Mum offers me something to eat, a coffee, and somewhere in the background my phone rings. I don’t care. Tai’s gone and nothing else matters anymore.

Eventually, Mum comes back, takes my hand and leads me to bed, tucking me in like when I was small. I press my face into the pillow and cry.
Oh, Tai. I’m sorry, Tai, I’m so sorry that you were alone. I’m sorry, Tai, and now you’re dead and
I’m
alone
.

That night, I try to picture Tai the way I want to. The way he wanted me to, the way he asked me to. That mad laugh, those midnight cuddles. The way he held me when he told me he loved me that first time. Holding hands in the waves at schoolies. But all I can see is Tai sick, with hands like claws, so thin and bony, reaching out to grasp mine. How they’d shaved his hair and how his eyes were so shadowed, so sad.
Let me remember him the way he wanted
, I beg the universe.
Don’t haunt me like this
.

• • •

The next morning I feel cold and numb. I walk to Tai’s place, barely able to see through the tears that are still choking me. I never knew I could hurt this much, this badly. I read somewhere once that a lot of the grieving was already done when you knew the person was going to die, but it doesn’t feel true. It’s impossible to feel this broken and have already grieved; it’s happening
now
and it hurts
now
.

Stanley and Mia want my help to plan the funeral, and I wouldn’t be strong enough, wouldn’t be able to, wouldn’t even
want
to if I hadn’t promised Tai. When I open the door I’m engulfed in fierce hugs. I cannot stop shaking, stop shivering, despite the heat. Mia sends me to Tai’s room to get a jumper and I sit there for a minute at his desk. His room still smells of him. There are dirty socks on the floor, his mobile on the bedside table . . . his stuff is everywhere and yet he’s gone. There’s a photo of us from schoolies blu-tacked to the wall. Tai had stretched his arm out to take it as we grinned straight into the lens of the camera. I look at it for a while, then pull it from the wall and shove it into the pocket of my jeans. I wonder if Tai left it there for me on purpose. I hope he did. I’m hoping he’d understand why I need something he touched and held, something of his.

Texy’s there, winding around my legs and purring, and as I reach out to pat him River runs in, eyes red-rimmed.

‘Don’t, Juliet. Tai said we get to keep him, me and Hendrix. Don’t try to take him away from me.’ He scoops up Texy and runs out of the room.

When I finally go back out to the kitchen the funeral director is there, a woman who looks like she’s spent years mastering the art of watching complete strangers fall apart in front of her. She smiles at me kindly and tells me she’s sorry. Then she asks softly if I have any ideas for the funeral. I nod, pulling the sleeves of Tai’s hoodie over my hands.

Mia goes to Tai’s room to get some of his clothes for the funeral director, and a minute later calls, ‘Juliet? I need a hand.’

When I join her I see she has been pulling Tai’s clothes from the wardrobe and dropping them on the floor. ‘They’re not right, Juliet. I can’t find anything
right
. Everything I pick out just seems wrong.’

It all seems wrong because
how do you pick out something right for your son to wear at his own funeral?
I don’t say.

‘How about his suit?’ Mia asks.

‘No. Definitely not the suit.’

She sits on the bed, defeated. ‘Can you pick something out? I can’t do it.’

‘You want me to . . . ?’

‘Please.’ She watches in silence as I pick out his favourite jeans, find his favourite shirt in the pile.
Oh god, I’m choosing the clothes they’re burying Tai in
. I hold them out to Mia, but she doesn’t take them. Eventually I walk down the hallway and hand them to the funeral director before going back to Mia, who still hasn’t moved.

‘Mia? They need you out there for some more stuff.’

‘This is so hard,’ she whispers.

‘I know,’ I whisper back.

• • •

Mum must’ve rung Gen, because the girls arrive not long after I get home, climbing onto the bed with me, piling flowers onto my desk. They’re crying, too.

Gen stays on after the other girls have left, and it’s then the tears really come again. Gen hugs me as I’m racked with sobs.

‘He’s gone, Gen. He’s gone and I want him back. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this.’

The morning of Tai’s funeral I dress slowly, waiting to wake up, waiting for the realisation that this has all been a horrible dream, but it doesn’t come. Tai made me promise that his funeral would celebrate his whole life and not focus on the one second that he died, and I want to honour that, I really do, want to do this how Tai wanted. But I want to cry, to mourn, to have the entire world stop from the weight of this pain.

I finish dressing. All in white, like I’d promised. Mum drives me to the funeral home, crying the whole way. She keeps patting me on the leg, reaching over to touch my arm, and I know she thinks it’s helping, but it’s not. Brookston Funeral Home has immaculate gardens bursting with flowers, and their car park is so full people have started parking along the edge of the road. There’s a hearse in the driveway, and I look away as we walk around it. As we enter the doorway, a woman in a black suit smiles at us and offers a program. I take it, but I can’t bring myself to smile back.