Wake (36 page)

His door was open and in a little while there was a new smell, one that made him smile in his sleep. Kate had washed a big load of towels and bedding and put them in the dryer, so that the spa was filled with the scent of detergent and steam. It smelled good. Homely.

Sam got Myr to carry Jacob in to see Warren. Myr deposited Jacob in an armchair then wheeled the armchair up to the bed. Sam lifted the covers. Warren's hands and feet were white, his nail beds were blackish. Jacob took one look and identified peripheral circulatory failure. He told Sam to put the blanket back. He lifted Warren's eyelids. Warren's eyes were rolled up in his head, but the eye muscles weren't trembling. He was deeply unconscious. Jacob closed Warren's eyes again and gripped his shoulder and whispered, ‘Stay with me,
sole
.' He looked at Sam. ‘There are two things we can try.'

Warren was Curtis all over again, except this time Jacob was fighting gangrene, not septicaemia. And this time he dared to try something that would hasten death if it failed. Forget ‘first do no harm' and death with dignity. Jacob would gamble his friend's dignity and comfort for the smallest chance of life.

Jacob stayed with Warren to oversee treatment, but he couldn't remain upright. Sam expertly remade the bed under Warren, and Jacob climbed under the covers too. He held his friend's cold hand—the one beside him, the one not tied up with the cannula and line. He massaged it gently.

The cannula and line were from the insulin infusion pump kits. They were hooked up not to real intravenous fluids, but to a bottle of sterile saline—for contact lenses—into which Jacob had injected a measure of some atropine eye drops. Jacob wasn't sure it was absolutely sterile, and he didn't know what effect, if any, the solution's preservatives would have on his friend. But, if Warren revived enough to swallow, Jacob could give him some phenoxybenzamine pills, which would dilate his blood vessels, and some antibiotics, to fight any introduced infection.

Jacob's thinking was fuzzy. He wished he was watching a drip, not this jerry-built thing. And he wished he could think of something further to try. He attempted once more to summon his knowledge, but everything he'd learned since being trapped in Kahukura seemed vague and distant. Everything, but what he'd learned to
feel
—a crushing sense of anxiety and culpability. And what he'd learned to expect—the worst.

At around seven in the morning Jacob got up to check on the other survivors. Warren wasn't any worse and Jacob had begun to hope he'd pull through.

Jacob gave a further dose of orciprenaline to William, who was taking longer than the others to recover.

Once Myr and Sam had settled Jacob in his own bed, he caught Sam's eye and said, ‘You look exhausted.'

‘Once you're better I'll go,' she said.

‘You could catch a little sleep now. Kate's resting, isn't she?'

‘She's sitting with Holly.'

‘Holly was responsible for the poisoning,' Jacob said, to Myr. ‘I think she ground up oleander seeds and put them in our bread. If she'd been at the meeting where Sam passed on your bad news I'd be able to believe that she thought she was saving us by sparing us suffering. But she wasn't at the meeting. She didn't have any idea what we were facing. So—I think it was the monster. The monster made her crazy, right?'

Myr said, ‘Perhaps she had some trouble the monster just pushed farther along.'

‘What monster?' said Sam.

Sam made herself some instant soup and sat on a stool at the central bench in the kitchen. She ate, blowing on each spoonful. She was very tired, and for once her reflection in the kitchen window didn't look like her sister.

Sam knew that it all made perfect sense that she was the one who had been rushing from room to room, emptying buckets and wiping arses. Her job had fitted her for that kind of work. But she felt resentful. The other Sam had proved very good at avoiding trouble and effort. A few years ago the other had stopped trying to carry them off out of Kahukura, and then pretty much gave up putting in an appearance at all. She didn't have a job of her own and wouldn't share Sam's job at Mary Whitaker. (There had been a period in their mid-teens where she and the other had worked very profitably at two jobs, a daytime one stacking shelves in the supermarket, and a night-time cleaning job. Though being out wasn't as refreshing as sleep.)

For years now it was Sam who'd had the job—the life—and the other Sam would only come sometimes to read her difficult books and listen to her hardcore miserable music, at night, at home. The other would keep the house tidy if she found it that way, and would tidy up if it wasn't. Sometimes she'd bake—a lemon loaf or banana bread—and would leave it for Sam, warm and steaming, with only one slice gone. She wouldn't leave notes, because she didn't go out and nothing happened to her. She checked the mail and might answer Sam's questions about some notice from their bank, or the tax department, or district council. She'd get the modem going again (when it broke Sam was always at a loss as to how to fix it and she hated to ring the helpdesk, and really, it was mostly the other Sam's computer). The other periodically appeared, but these days she had nothing to say for herself, nothing to share. Sam had written to ask why she didn't want to come out any more, and the other Sam had only answered, ‘You know why.' And she'd left the bathroom mirror sectioned by black tape so that when Sam looked into it she saw herself behind bars. Herself, and her sister.

William sat up and took a swig from the bottle of lemonade by his bed. It was flat but helped settle his stomach. He tried to get up—but once he had both feet on the floor he thought better of it and lay down once more. He opened a drawer in the bedside cabinet, found his phone, went straight to settings and sounds, turned up the volume, and pressed one field repeatedly. The airy wail of the theremin eventually brought Myr to his door. William flopped back onto the bed, laughing.

‘What is it?' Myr said.

‘My sci-fi ringtone,' said William.

Myr lifted William's legs back onto the bed and pulled off William's socks to inspect his feet. He pressed William's toenails. ‘The blood is flashing straight back into them,' he said. ‘You're going to recover.'

‘Okay,' said William, warily. ‘Who hasn't recovered?'

‘Holly and Warren.'

‘They're dead?'

‘Holly is dead. Warren might make it.'

‘And when did you arrive?'

‘I came before sunrise.'

William looked at the window, which was black. He laughed again and then said, ‘Why am I laughing?'

‘Are you amused?'

William shook his head. He tried to examine his feelings. It took a while but he finally figured it out. He wasn't losing his mind—like Holly—he was just upset.

Before, what upset him was what was immediately in front of him: the cruel spectacle of the daycare centre; the treacherous changes in Sam's behaviour; the whole idea of this man, a powerful and paternalistic warden. He'd be upset, and fine again the very next moment. He should have felt
more
. He should have felt what he knew everyone else had been feeling the whole time—guilt and gratitude. He'd survived. Holly was dead. Lily and Curtis were dead. Before now, none of the dead people had been his. Even his Kiwi colleagues weren't
his
. When Sam and Kate had wanted to bury the residents of Mary Whitaker, and Warren to bury his aunt, Oscar his classmate, and Bub his friend from the café—William had coldly decided that it would look odd if he failed to insist that they gather up the charred remains at the helicopter crash site and give them some kind of the ceremonial interment. It was the done thing, so he did it. The whole town was full of corpses; disposing of them had been, for him, a matter of hygiene, and a public relations exercise. They were doing it—the Kiwis—so he did it too.

So, here he was, still a gravedigger and not a corpse. He had survived. Again.

William had a job where he got to talk to people about their problems—specific problems, their talk on-topic—and he'd almost always be able to say how he could help them. It was satisfying work. And sociable, too; he often worked as part of a team, and dipped his oar in time with others. He was professionally competent and comfortable. He was witty and people would laugh. He was charming and they'd smile. But right now it seemed to him that he'd spent his life with his back to the sun and his face to a wall, writing on its white surface, working in his own shadow.

People had called William hardhearted, but they never asked him to account for it. He was always interested in other people's attempts to explain themselves. He'd listen with appreciation, if not empathy. But when it came to his own story he couldn't shape an explanation that didn't sound, to him, like an excuse. Even this: that he was the product of a final conscientious and caring foster home, but that, though the good things in his youth came in time to save his self-respect, they were too late for his heart.

So, he'd survived again, if only to dig graves and listen to eulogies. Meanwhile Bub and Belle would love one another; Kate and Jacob would mourn and still manage to tend to people; Sam would work her fingers to the bone, as dumbly faithful as a dog; Theresa would heroically soldier on; Dan would simply go on hoping; and Oscar would continue to chirp away like a lively bird, as entitled in his sweetness as the Gospels' lilies of the field. They'd all keep doing some kind of good, and he'd be left as lost as that formless soul, Warren. Only he wasn't formless, but badly-formed, armoured in ice, and no use to himself.

Myr was still there, watching him. ‘Are you in pain?'

‘What point would there be in that?'

‘Pain is a stimulus that encourages us to avoid it. That's its main point, I believe,' Myr said.

‘Fuck you,' William said. ‘It's fine for you—you have a job to do.'

‘Yes,' Myr said, quietly, ‘I have a job to do.'

‘Are you saying that it's
not
fine for you?'

‘I volunteered,' Myr said. ‘I'm supposed to be here.'

‘I'm not.'

‘None of you are,' Myr said, respectful, and sympathetic—and then he frowned, as though something had just occurred to him. ‘Sam is a resident of this settlement, isn't she?'

‘Yes.'

‘Yes,' Myr echoed, contemplative.

‘So is Oscar,' William added. He waited for Myr to tell him why this might be significant, but Myr didn't say anything further.

When Bub and Belle came downstairs, both were wan, and Bub was faintly yellow. They found Jacob and Sam—Jacob with his ear to the open top of one of the treatment room's ceramic tea-light holders. He had the wide end of the candleholder pressed to Sam's back. A number of funnels and jelly moulds were scattered on the bench. Jacob told Bub and Belle that he was trying to contrive a stethoscope. He said to Sam, of the tea-light holder, ‘I think this will have to do.'

‘Belle and I are going to inspect the kitchen from stem to stern and make sure anything left over is thrown out,' Bub said.

‘That's a good idea, but I'd feel happier if I could have a listen to your hearts before you exert yourselves.'

Sam got herself a drink of water. Belle saw that her hands were shaking. ‘You need to rest, honey,' Belle said.

‘I'll go when Jacob is free,' Sam said.

‘If everyone is in clean bedding there's nothing more you need do for now. You've been a trooper,' Jacob said.

Sam stared mournfully at the three of them.

‘Has anyone remembered to feed the dogs?' Bub asked.

‘It was the last thing Myr did before he took off,' Jacob told Bub.

‘I couldn't answer his questions. He needs answers,' Sam said. Then, ‘You'll have to take care of Sam.'

Belle's scalp prickled. She touched Bub's arm. He had stilled and stiffened.

‘Can you?' Sam said to Jacob, and, ‘Is it really all right for me to go now?'

‘Yes. Get some sleep,' Jacob said.

‘I should sit down,' Sam said to herself. She went out through the swing doors into the dining room. Belle leaned on the doors and looked out after her.

Sam shuffled to the couch by the coffee machine. She sat down and looked up at Belle. Even from across the room Belle could see that Sam was smiling and that the smile was one of trust, and relief. Sam lowered her head so that her face was hidden by her hair. Then some change came over her. She was still in the same position, head hung, but her long hair seemed to fatten with static, and she began to shake. Her hands flew up to snatch her hair back from her face, and she stooped and vomited between her feet.

Jacob heard the sound and rushed out past Belle.

Belle told Bub to get some damp cloths. ‘Or whatever.' She felt a little stupid. Sam and Kate had had a system. They'd been proficient: wiping faces and arses, bundling up bedding, sponging carpets, emptying basins.

Belle went to sit by Sam and took over holding her hair till the retching had tapered off. Bub appeared with a glass of water, and soaked, steaming dish towels.

Sam was trembling so violently she wasn't able to take the glass. Jacob held it to her lips and she sipped, and looked around at them, her eyes assessing. ‘You're all okay,' she said—it was a statement, not a question.

Bub passed a hot wet cloth across her face.

She looked down at the floor and said, ‘I've regurgitated the ipecac, Jacob. Does that matter?'

In the glistening mass on the floor lay the tablet, whole, its surface only a little furred by its time in stomach acid.

‘Jesus, Sam!' Jacob said. ‘Where did you get that? No wonder you're vomiting. How many have you taken?'

‘Vomiting is good though?' Sam said, and then writhed and clutched her stomach. Tears of pain sprang into her eyes. ‘This is rough,' she gasped. She clutched Jacob's arm. ‘Did you figure it out? Do you know what to do?'