Lessons From Ducks (21 page)

Chapter twenty eight

Eighteen hours.

Not a particularly lengthy amount of time in the grand scheme of things. Not when you compared it to say, a week, a year, or a lifetime.

But Anna knew different. Anna knew that eighteen hours could seem longer than a lifetime. Longer even than an eternity.

They’d been on the way to his parents for Long weekend. The car was packed to the gills with all the paraphernalia that goes along with having a baby; high chair, portacot, baby bath. The thing – she’d forgotten now what it was called – that she placed him in the middle of and it supported him because he was too young to stand, and it had toys hanging off it all around him in a circle. He’d sit in there happily and babble away while she did dishes or folded washing, and he’d bash away at the toys and gurgle in delight when they made noises. She couldn’t remember why they’d thought it so necessary to drag that along with them, but they had.

Now, looking back, she wished she could add up all the time he spent sitting in that odd contraption and have him in her arms for that time instead.

They’d decided to go up on the Thursday night after work so as not to lose half of Friday travelling. Anna had her usual quiet misgivings, she hated travelling in the dark and by the time they got there it would be bordering on twilight, but she trusted her husband to get them there safely. He was a very conscientious driver. He abided by all the road rules, travelling the appropriate car length behind the car in front - extended further if the weather was wet - and only overtaking if the road was clear for a very long distance ahead. He always pulled over to the left to let faster traffic pass and he dipped his lights so he didn’t blind oncoming traffic. He was not a man to take unnecessary risks.

The headlights came out of nowhere.

They were only twenty minutes from their final destination. Twenty minutes from where a set of eager grandparents were waiting, with the table laid and roast chicken and vegetables keeping warm in the oven.

When the oncoming campervan crossed the centreline taking the corner, Tim took the only evasive action open to him, jerking the steering wheel to the left as hard as he could. In those seconds, when Anna realised what was happening and looked to her husband for reassurance, she saw real terror on his face and she knew then that they were in trouble. She turned in her seat to see her son’s curved cheeks, his eyes closed in sleep, and she had only time to try and reach to protect him before she heard the car hit gravel and become airborne as it sailed out over the bank and into the gaping void below. It felt like it hovered there forever before it finally fell, into the trees below, heavy and with enough momentum behind it to drive it still forward, crashing through undergrowth before it hit the thick trunk of a Wattle. The bonnet folded in on itself like a concertina. A branch pierced the windscreen and the glass shattered inwards.

Anna heard her own voice scream before it was cut off abruptly by the impact. Her head snapped forward and then back against the headrest violently .

And that was it for awhile.

She would never know how long she was unconscious for. It could have been an hour; it could have been a minute.

It was the silence that woke her, a deathly silence apart from a gentle hiss as steam escaped from the mangled bonnet. The headlights were somehow still going, and they lit up the macabre sight of their car wrapped around the tree. She noticed the tree seemed to have survived relatively unscathed.

Anna’s body was in an awkward sideways position in her seat, and as she became more aware of her surroundings her neck let her know it was in a bad way with an agonising sharp pain. She figured that must be a good sign though, it meant she was alive, and it probably meant she wasn’t paralysed. The front of the car had compacted so much that the dash which was normally a comfortable knees distance in front was now in her lap, and she couldn’t move her left leg although she realised she could, with relief, wiggle her foot. A moan sounded beside her and she wriggled and twisted some more until she could see her husband. She gasped.

“Tim,” she croaked, her voice hoarse from the screaming. “Tim!”

He looked in a bad way. There was blood everywhere from where his head had impacted with the side window. It was all through his hair and staining his face a crimson red. There was so much of it she couldn’t make out any of his features. He looked like a character in a horror movie, with no face just a bloody, gory mess. He was making a horrible rasping sound, and she could hear blood gurgling in his throat as he tried to breathe.

“Tim!” she attempted to undo her seatbelt but her fingers couldn’t make it happen. She looked over the back and felt relief, her son was ok, his peacefully sleeping face exactly as it had looked when she’d last checked on him. His expensively cushioned car seat that looked like a miniature lazy boy and which had cost almost as much as one had done its job, and she thanked her lucky stars that they had not scrimped when it came to his safety.

“It’s ok baby,” she soothed, “mummy’s here. Daddy’s here, everything is going to be ok.” She felt certain that the driver of the campervan who had caused them to go off the road was at that very moment peering down at them from the top of the bank, calling for help on his cellphone. If not him then someone else, someone would have seen what happened or the tyre marks leading off the road.

“Hang in there Tim,” she said, “help is coming. Any moment now, it won’t be long. Can you hear me?”

But Tim didn’t answer, and she realised with horror that his breathing had quietened and was now shallow; small gasps rather than breaths.

“No.” She made a renewed effort to free the seat belt clasp so that she could reach as far as her trapped leg would allow her. “No Tim, don’t you dare leave us, don’t you dare. You hang in there, you hear me? Someone is coming, they’ll be here any minute. You just need to be strong a little bit longer, ok? Just a little bit longer baby, stay with us.”

She shook his shoulder. His head was lolled forward, his chin on his chest at an unnatural angle.

She tried cajoling. “Tim? Baby? Answer me. Please? I need you.
We
need you. I can’t do this on my own.”

Reassurance
. “I know you’re hurt baby but help is almost here, I can hear them. They’re just trying to figure out a way down the bank then they’ll be here. Any minute ok, just stay with me.”

Anger.
“Tim! Answer me! Don’t you dare die on me, you hear? Don’t be so selfish! Ben and I need you, we need you!”

But nothing provoked a response. In front of her eyes his body relaxed, and she realised he was only taking every other breath. With horror, she realised she was literally listening to the life ebb from his body, and there was nothing she could do to stop it.

“I love you,” she told him. “I love you so much.”

And then he went completely limp and she never heard another breath from him again.

It was hard to take it in. She wanted to fall to pieces but she knew she couldn’t; she had to stay strong for the sake of their son. She turned her attention back to him, moaning as her leg sent pain coursing through her body in waves as she reached out for her baby. Her fingertips grazed the buckle on his seatbelt. She strained some more, fresh pain blossomed, and managed to free her leg enough that she could push the red button to release the straps holding him in his seat. They sprang open and she sobbed with relief.

“Come here baby,” she cooed, “come to mummy.”

For the first time, it struck Anna as odd that her son hadn’t been woken by the impact. “Oh no,” she moaned, “no no no no no.” Forgoing all attempts at gentleness, she tugged at one of his chubby legs, each tug more insistent and rougher than the last.

“Ben,” she said, “Ben baby, wake up sweetie. Mummy needs you to wake up now.”

She grabbed his leg tighter and pulled him towards her, and his little body slid down the seat without any resistance, until he was near enough for her to take hold of him with both hands and with some effort lift and drag his small body through the gap in the seats to her lap.

All pain was forgotten.

She forgot that she had just watched her husband die.

Everything in her life, in the world, came down to that moment; the moment she lifted her son up to her face and held her breath as she listened for any sound of breathing. There were none. She wrapped her fingers around his chubby little wrist and swore at herself when she failed to find a pulse; certain it was because she was doing it wrong. How could she be so useless at a time like this? She was angry, so angry at herself. This was her baby, he needed her. She had to pull herself together. Holding his head up awkwardly in the crook of one elbow, she placed her mouth over his and she breathed the air from her lungs into his, over and over and over again. She infused each breath with her deep and endless love for him, and as she passed it from her body to his she begged him with every single fibre of her being to accept it. To take it into his lungs and let it absorb into his body and for it to bring him back to her.

She would never know how long she tried. At some point she couldn’t breathe anymore, her sobs ripping the air from her lungs and then she just held him to her, as tight as she could, not caring whether she hurt him or not, because maybe pain would invoke a response where her breaths had failed. She wept. She wept more than she had ever wept in her life, her tears soaking his hair and skin, the way they had when he was born and she’d wept tears then too, only then they had been tears of happiness.

She held him to her tightly and smothered him in kisses; the tiny curves of his ears, his soft, sweet little lips, forehead, cheeks, and the tip of his nose. His long dark lashes rested against his chubby cheeks like they always did when he slept, and she tried to convince herself that he was just resting. He cooled beneath her touch and she cried and kissed him some more. His little head lolled loosely, and she realised his delicate neck must have snapped and she prayed that it had been swift and he had felt no pain. This precious little boy who she had carried in her womb for so long, nurturing him, and who she had suffered through the worse pain of her life in order to bring him into the world, but pain that had of course all been worth it in the end. She would go through ten times that pain again now for just one more glimpse of his gummy smile.

At some point the headlights dimmed and disappeared all together, and she was left in the darkness with the bodies of her husband and her baby and she wished with all her might that her own injuries were bad enough that she would soon die with them, because she couldn’t see how she could ever live on. Not without her precious baby, her perfect, sweet and innocent boy who had never harmed anyone. What had he done to deserve this?

Only hours before she had been part of a happy family, a little unit of people who she loved and who loved her unconditionally and unreservedly. She had a husband who, despite their differences, adored her. And she had the baby she’d dreamt of for years; a tiny piece of her that she had felt such a fierce love for she would have happily laid down her own life to have saved his.

And now they were both gone. Just like that. Here one second, gone the next. It was the kind of thing you heard about happening, but to other people. How could someone be gone just like that?

Eighteen hours she spent trapped in the car. She dozed fitfully in and out of conscious but she never once let go of her baby. Even when his little body became cold and stiff and started to smell unrecognisable, she never let him go. She kissed him. She told him how much she loved him, how thankful she was to have had him, and she told him how sorry she was that she hadn’t been able to stop this horrible thing from happening to him. One minute she was calm, then next she screamed so loudly she scared the owls from the trees nearby, their frantic wings in the air the only other sound in the night. Any road noise was muffled by the thick vegetation and she wondered whether anyone would ever know what had become of them. Would she die of exposure or blood loss or thirst or shock? She wanted to. She wanted to stay here with her family. In this car. Their own family coffin. She wanted to die. She wasn’t a religious person but right then she clung to the hope that when she died, hopefully in this car and soon, she would be reunited with them again.

But some time the next day she heard voices. And not long after that she saw faces at her window.

Her memories of what happened after that are hazy and fragmented. She remembers the sound of the machine they used to prise open her car like a tin can, freeing her leg. She remembers a voice, male, saying sadly, “this one’s gone, poor guy,” and she knew he was talking about Tim.

She refused to let go of Ben, so they belted her on to the stretcher with him in her arms and carried the two of them up the steep bank to the waiting ambulance, where she refused to let go of him again.

A bumpy drive, then a long corridor, fluorescent lights above her, a doctor talking to her as if she were a child while he examined her leg – “This might hurt a little bit, Anna, but I’ll try to do it as quickly as I can, ok? You just let me know if you need me to stop” – murmurs around her as people tried to figure out the best way to get her to release her son’s body, because she threatened to hurt anyone who tried.

In the end they sedated her, the bastards. There was a prick as the needle penetrated her vein and then she felt herself drifting away and she was powerless to resist. She tried to scream because she knew what they were doing but she was asleep before her mouth could even form the shape.