The Deepest Cut (23 page)

Shut up, Dad.

‘Adam, it's me, it's Debbie. Turn around, sweetheart, let me see you.'

‘You're not real. You're in my head.'

‘I am real, darling. Turn around and see me, turn around now.'

She was stroking my hair, like she did the time I was sick in the night when Jake and I were having a sleepover. I'd thrown up all over Jake's floor.

‘Come on, baby, turn around now. I won't hurt you, you know I won't hurt you.'

‘You hate me, you've just come to tell me how much you hate me.'

‘Now now, don't be silly. I've come to see how you are, that's all.'

‘I don't believe you.'

She moved me slowly round to face her and she was there, right in front of me. I could feel her breath on my face.

She took my hand and put it on her cheek. ‘It's me, I'm here, I'm real.'

I stared at her. She was breathing. She was blinking and there were tears pouring out of her eyes, over her cheeks, and collecting in the corner of her mouth.

She'd come.

A wail came from deep inside me as her arms wrapped around me and I collapsed into her, sobbing.

Thirteen

David closed my notepad and put it on his lap. He rested his hands on it like he was protecting it, or what was inside it.

I sat up in bed, eating the toast Damian had brought me, and I watched David's face for signs of a reaction to all the stuff I'd told him. His face was straight. There was no emotion to be read. I guessed he was trained to be neutral, but I still needed to know what he thought, if he judged me, if he was about to walk away from me, no longer wanting to help me get better.

I wanted to ask him, but the words still wouldn't come out. I also wanted to ask him if Debbie had really been there. I remembered falling asleep in her arms, I don't know, maybe a few days ago. I'd lost track. All I knew was that when I'd woken up, all the crazy stuff had gone. The numbness was sort of back, but it felt different. I felt a bit clearer, a bit lighter. That horrible feeling that I was going to explode at any point had gone and I was so glad.

‘Do you want some more?' David asked as I finished the last bite of my toast.

I shook my head.

He nodded. Then he pulled his chair a little bit closer. ‘You know that you were talking during your episode, don't you?'

I shrugged. I wasn't too surprised to hear him say that because things were pretty mental for a while.

David looked defeated. I was certain he was going to get up and walk away and I wouldn't have blamed him. I was a lost cause. I could have told him that right from the very start. If I could have spoken I would have told him not to bother, that it was hopeless.

‘I'm going to get Damian to come in and help you shower,' he said. ‘I'll see you a bit later on.'

At that point, I knew he'd given up on me. Maybe because he realised it was hopeless. Or maybe he hated me too, for running off and leaving my best friend to die.

When I was fresh out the shower, Damian took me straight to the visitors' room and sat me down with a pot of tea and two mugs.

Two mugs.

As soon as I sat on one of the leather sofas, the door opened. David was there. He held it open for her as she walked in.

She moved slowly across the room. I wanted to get up and fling myself into her arms but I didn't, I sat, and watched her. She moved differently from how I remembered. The spring in her step had gone. Her eyes didn't shine the way they used to.

She looked broken and worn out.

David gestured for her to take a seat on the sofa. She sat down slowly and David sat next to her. I could see she was shaking, and I was, too. I found it hard that someone I'd always been so comfortable around could make me so scared and so nervous but I didn't blame her, it was my fault. I'd left her son, my best friend, on his own to die. If I'd stayed with him and saved his life, we wouldn't have been here right now. We would have been at home, like normal, comfortable in each other's company, and laughing and joking like we always had.

She couldn't look at me as she helped herself to a cup of tea. Tea wasn't her thing, it was coffee, and I wanted to ask Damian to get her one, but I couldn't move or speak or tear my eyes away from her.

Her reaction to me now made me believe even more that she hadn't come the other day, and that her holding me tight and me falling asleep while she stroked my hair was just in my head. A fantasy. Wishful thinking.

She gave a big sigh, then she looked up at me, and I braced myself for what she was about to say. I didn't think it was going to be good.

She tucked her hair behind her ear. ‘You're not talking again?' she asked. Her voice shook. ‘You were talking the other day. You've stopped?'

So she had been there. I hadn't been imagining it.

‘Adam, how did it get like this?'

I put my head down.

‘I'd give anything to have you three boys back at my kitchen table, fighting over the best piece of chicken, or arguing over which flavour of Angel Delight we were having for pudding,' she said. She turned to David. ‘Did you know I used to have to make three different flavours, just to keep the peace?'

David smiled but said nothing.

‘I keep asking myself why it happened, Adam, how it happened. I can't understand it, none of it makes sense.' She picked up her cup, took a small sip and put it back on the table. She pushed mine closer towards me. ‘Drink it or it'll get cold,' she said but there was a flat tone to her voice: not the usual pushy, but loving. Not the whole fed up but full of affection thing she always used to do.

I did as I was told.

‘You know, Adam, I still go to talk to him, then I remember that he's gone, and
…
' she paused. ‘And I still go to talk to you, too. Some days, I make to go into the front room to check you're both OK, or if you want anything, but you're not there. The curtains are open, and it doesn't smell like boys, and the TV isn't blaring out some sort of crappy reality show or cartoons, and I wish so hard that it was.' She stopped to catch her breath.

I could feel the emotion circling in my stomach and I knew that I had to hold it in. I had no right to cry in front of her after what I'd done.

‘I read up on it on the internet, you know,' she said. She reached into her bag for a tissue, and dabbed her eyes even though there were no tears. ‘I read that if his artery was severed, he would have lost so much blood, that it wouldn't have taken long for him to die.'

‘Do you mind me speaking?' David asked Debbie.

‘No, of course,' she said.

‘Adam is under the impression that if he hadn't left Jake, he would have been able to save his life, but if what you're saying is true, then …'

I felt like I'd been punched in the stomach, I stood up and tried to catch my breath but I couldn't. I tried to stop the emotion, I tried to fight it, but I couldn't. I let go. I let go of everything that was inside me, and I hunched over, and this cry or scream or something just came flying out of me.

Debbie's hand went over her mouth, then she leant forward, reaching out to me. ‘Adam,' she cried. ‘No, Adam, you wouldn't have been able to save him.'

I was clutching my chest. I didn't know what it was that I was feeling. I couldn't compose myself, though, no matter how hard I tried.

David led me back to sit down. Debbie got up and sat next to me. She put her arms around me and I buried my face into the crook of her neck, and let my shaking body sink into the sofa.

I wouldn't have been able to save him. Even if I hadn't run off. ‘I wouldn't have been able to save him. I wouldn't have been able to save him.'

‘Adam?' Debbie pulled me away from her and looked at me. ‘What did you say? Tell me again.'

‘I wouldn't have been able to save him,' I said, then I pushed her off me and I was up and out of the chair and pacing like there was so much energy inside my body.

‘I thought, I thought that because they said they'd tried to save him that he was still alive when he got to the hospital; and that if I'd stayed and stemmed the bleeding or something then …' I was talking so fast and I couldn't stop. ‘Then I could have saved him and he'd still be here–'

‘Deep breaths, Adam,' David said. ‘Damian, can you get him some water, please?'

Debbie got up and took my hand tightly in hers. ‘Amy, the girl who found him, she was at the hospital with us, do you remember?' She asked.

I nodded.

‘She said afterwards that she couldn't find a pulse, and that they tried to restart his heart in the ambulance. She didn't want to say at the time because she didn't want us to worry. I don't know what happened when he got to the hospital, if they carried on trying or what, all I know is that if his artery was cut, it wouldn't have taken him long to die,' she said.

I thought back to the fight and tried to work out how long it was between Nathan stabbing Jake, and me running and it would have been a minute, two at the most. Jake had already stumbled to the bench and couldn't talk.

‘He must have lost consciousness as soon as I'd run off,' I said. I wiped my eyes with my hands and let the thought sit in my head. ‘But I shouldn't have left him,' I said. ‘I still shouldn't have left him.'

Debbie let go of my hand. She reached into her handbag and handed me some tissues. ‘I'm not sure I should say this, but I'm going to anyway,' she said. She took a deep breath. ‘Every day I wish you hadn't. Every day I wish he hadn't died on his own, that you were there holding his hand and pretending to him that everything was going to be OK.' She stopped to compose herself. ‘He was my baby, and he shouldn't have died alone on that cold, wet bench, Adam, he shouldn't have died alone.' She couldn't hold her sobs in anymore and neither could I.

‘I'd go back if I could,' I said desperately. ‘I'd go back, and I'd stay with him, and I'd talk to him about anything I could to distract him,' I said. I walked away from the sofa. It was too much to take in.

‘You OK?' David asked. Damian handed me a cup of water but I pushed it away.

I shook my head. I tried to push the image of Jake collapsed on the bench, our bench, the place we'd shared so many happy times. I wished so hard I could go back there, to that day. If there was nothing I could have done to stop it happening, at least I would have been with him when he took his last breath.

‘Why did I have to be so weak?' I said. ‘Why did I have to run off with Nathan? Why couldn't I have stayed? Why?' I cried, but I knew that nobody had the answer to that question, not even me.

‘You know what I ask myself?' Debbie looked up at me. ‘I ask myself why I didn't stop you two going to that bloody party. I knew how anxious you were about it. I knew that as we ate dinner because you were both so quiet. Every day I sit and ask myself why I didn't stop you. Why I didn't suggest that we rent a movie, and why I didn't lure you into staying with all your favourite sweets and massive hot chocolates with whipped cream and marshmallows.'

‘But it's not your fault,' I said.

‘I was his mother, Adam,' she said with so much force. ‘I was meant to protect him. I should have done more. I should have listened to you when you sat and told me how worried you were about Nathan changing. I should have known there was something wrong and I should have helped you both, talked to you so you knew how to handle it, but I didn't. I brushed it off. I didn't think anything like this would happen.'

‘Neither did I,' I said.

‘And that's the problem, isn't it?' She said. ‘We never think something like this will happen to
us
, not to us.'

Debbie sat back down, defeated, and David guided me to sit next to her. She took my hand.

‘It's all well and good us both sitting here, saying that we would have done this or that to stop it and we can blame ourselves for it all day long, but it's not going to change anything, is it?'

I shook my head.

‘Do you think Jake would blame you, really? Because if you do, you don't know him as well as you think you did,' she said. ‘He worshipped the ground you walked on, Adam.'

I screwed up my face to try and stop the tears escaping, but I couldn't stop them.

‘You have a choice, Adam,' she said. ‘You can sink or you can swim. You can get up, every morning, even though you don't want to, and you can carry on. You can do it for Jake, because that's what he would have wanted, or you can give up. You can go home and take all those tablets and you can give up on life.' She was cross with me now.

I sat back, put my hands over my face, and cried.

‘You want to get out of here and take all those tablets? Well, that's your choice, but I think it's selfish. Jake's life was taken away from him. He didn't have a choice in the matter.'

She pulled my hands away and turned my head to face her, so I couldn't avoid her eyes. ‘You do have a choice Adam, so what are you going to do? What are you going to decide?'

I collapsed into her shoulder and cried more. She pulled me closer and held me tight. ‘There's no way he'd have wanted you to give up, Adam,' she whispered in my ear.

I knew she was right and even though the pain flooding out of me was overwhelming, I knew I had to find some fight from somewhere. I had to carry on.

Fourteen

I was lost without my pad and with nothing else to write. I asked the nurse what she was doing. She smiled and handed me her puzzle book and pen. When I saw it was Sudoku, I handed it back.

‘I'm bored, not desperate,' I said, and she laughed.

‘You know how good it is to hear that beautiful voice of yours.'

Right on cue, Josie appeared in the doorway with a huge smile on her face. She was hopping from one foot to the other. She looked like she was going to explode with excitement.