Wasted (23 page)

That Kelly deserved to die? But what does
deserve
have to do with it? The world would be a strange place if everyone got what they deserved.

Keep spinning the coin, Jess. It will help. Focus on the coin. Don't drop it. That's better.

Every time she thinks about Jack, her skin shrinks, goose-bumping. She wants to see him. He's still unconscious and no one knows how long that will be the case, what he'll be like when he wakes. He's lucky to be alive, the doctors say.

His dad is with him now. A nurse said she'd come to the waiting room and get Jess as soon as possible. It's earlier than official visiting hours – she'd slipped out of the house when her mum was still asleep. Left a note, fed Spike. Some things don't change.

Mind you, visiting hours don't really count for patients like Jack. This is a special waiting room. You don't get to be in here if you're waiting for someone with a broken finger.

Jess is trying to make a decision. Does she dare play the game? The sensible part of her knows that she shouldn't. After all, she'd managed to stop Jack taking it so seriously. But Jack's Game
is
serious and perhaps it's all she can do now. Maybe all the spirits and gods and everything else that has a say in the world watch when you play. She is confused and alone and needing him to take the decision away, but when she thinks back to the newspaper stories on his bedroom wall, she knows what
he
would do.

Maybe he was right all along. Maybe there's a risk in
not
doing it. But if so, there's an equal risk in doing it. Jess is more than confused and alone. She is barely holding herself together. If she breathes too hard, she may shatter into a million pieces.

She glances at the clock. Still spinning the coin. With remarkable skill, considering that she's only been practising for two weeks. It almost ripples across her fingers, weaving in and out, a life of its own. Left hand as good as the right. That'll be the piano-playing, and guitar. Someone comes through the door. A woman. Her eyes are puffy. She grips the hand of a bewildered child with chocolate on its face. Jess doesn't want to look at her, but she's drawn by her grief. She needs to know what it feels like and yet she is afraid of it. The woman picks up the dead doll and gives it to the child, who grins and grabs it by its remaining leg. Jess thinks that if she was the child's mother she'd make her daughter clean and dress it and learn how to love it in more ways than just holding on. The door clunks shut and the air settles again.

Jess rummages in her bag and gets out her iPod, plugs her ear-things in and retreats into her music. Their music. Her senses merge. She closes her eyes, keeps the outside out: the Kelly Gang, the smell, the being really scared. Yesterday. Saturday. Everything. Her mum should be here. Her dad. Someone. A girl shouldn't be here on her own. But then Jess hasn't told anyone she was coming so early, so you can hardly blame them. Her friends were here with her most of yesterday – Chloe, Farah, and others, all in a kind of rota as though they'd worked it out – and Jack's friends – Ella, Chris, Tommy, looking hellish. They all looked hellish. It doesn't matter. It's nothing compared to how they feel inside.

How do they feel? Numb. People say that nothing feels real when something terrible happens. They are wrong. This feels real. It sickens with its reality.

She opens her eyes suddenly, rips out the ear-things.
Breathe slowly, Jess. Almost lost it there. Maybe music is not such a good idea right now. Maybe you should read a magazine, something shallow that won't slice its way deeper than skin.

Actually, apart from the old sock colour, the room's not that bad. Soft chairs. Free tea and coffee. Plants. A fish tank. They've made an effort, just to stop you thinking. Box of tissues. Cushions. You can't hear sounds from outside, except when the door opens, though there's a buzzing of air-con. It's designed to help you forget where you are. So there's a magazine on sailing and one on houses. And some children's books and toys. She picks up a board book for babies or toddlers or whatever and looks at pictures of diggers and cranes and just does not allow herself to think of what's past that door and what will happen when she is told to walk through it.

Jess is not going to play the game, she decides, suddenly. It would be wrong. It would be falling into the trap of believing it will make a difference. After all, if he hadn't played with luck, or whatever it is, Jack wouldn't be here now.

And yet – it's that word again:
if.
If I hadn't done that
… But that's a world that doesn't exist. Might as well imagine waking up as a cockroach – it's that unreal and pointless. So, Jess chooses not to play. She'll never know whether it will make any difference but that is what she must accept.

She continues to let the coin spin through the air though, because it's rhythmical and beautiful, because it takes her mind off everything else, and because she's not thinking. Just playing but not really
playing
.

The door opens. A nurse stands there. Looking at Jess. If there's a smile, it's an uncertain smile. She's just being friendly, not actually saying anything about Jack. Jess's eyes search the nurse's face, trying to scrape meaning out of what she sees there. She tries to listen to the woman's body language, to read her mind with every sense. It doesn't work.

“You can come and see him now. But don't be shocked when you get in there. It
will
seem shocking at first – everyone's the same. I'll help you – I'll explain everything I can. Come on.”

Jess's heart flips. It thumps. Her skin crawls cold. The coin spins through the air and she does not catch it. She stands up, quickly. The coin tumbles towards the ground.

“Don't be scared, love,” says the nurse, walking towards her. “I'll be with you.”

The coin lands. It rolls. Jess does not look at it. She is not thinking of it. It is nothing. She hurries towards the door, stuffing her iPod into her pocket.

“Is he…? How…?” Her mouth is dry, her voice perforated, the air coming out oddly.

“It's early days, love. But we're hopeful.”

Hopeful. Hopeful.
Full of hope.
It doesn't feel like being full of hope. It feels like something so fragile that it cannot be stronger than a thread of smoke.

Jess's knees feel like that too.

Behind her, the coin rolls. Unseen.

Jess walks through the door. The nurse lets her go first.

The coin rolls near the wall. It gently hits the skirting board at an angle. It wobbles. Stops. Upright, against the wall, wedged in the crevice where the thin carpet slopes slightly.

It stays there. Neither heads nor tails. What do the rules say about that? Jess isn't playing but, playing or not playing, the result will surely be the same.

JESS
is rigid as she walks through the glass doors. A small broken sound slips from her lips. The nurse squeezes her arm. Jack's dad looks up, smiles at her. He is holding one of his son's hands.

And everywhere there are tubes. They snake across the body, which is naked from the waist upwards. A bruise spreads from under a dressing. Other dressings patchwork the left side of the torso and that arm is fully bandaged. Bright white tapes spiral around the head and something protrudes from the throat, fixed with more tapes. There is blood, which Jess tries not to look at, and yellow stuff painted on carelessly.

The face is so swollen that she cannot see Jack in it. Bruises pool beneath the eyes.

With rhythmic clunking that seems too slow, a machine pushes air into his lungs through a tube the size of a fat finger. Screens by the bed show green zigzag lines. Jess will not look at them. Something beeps slowly. Between each beep is a silence that is fractionally too long for comfort. You can't not listen to it.

Jess cannot speak. She tries but the right bits are not working. If she speaks she will cry.
Please, Jack, Jack, oh, Jack, wake up.
She so needs him to speak to her. For everything to be as it was before. Before she spun the coin and Jack had to do the forfeit. It would be so simple. She would do something fractionally different – spin it differently, use a different coin, delay him, hold him back with a kiss. He only needed to be in a slightly different place.

It's easy to see the sequence of events that brought him here, the causes. But was there any point at which they could have known in advance? After all, if we can see afterwards that
a
caused
b
, then surely all we needed to do was know or guess that
a
would cause
b
and just stop it happening?

Jack's dad beckons her to sit by him. The nurse finds a chair. Another nurse is doing something, making notes, reading screens. Everything seems very controlled. Jess  sits.

The smell of antiseptic comforts her, and yet, something like a mask, it frightens her too.

Jack's dad takes her hand and puts it on Jack's.

“Jess is here,” he says to his son. He turns to Jess. His eyes are pink-rimmed and very tired-looking. “Talk to him. He might be able to hear. Hearing's the first sense to come back and we want Jack back now. I know he wants you here. You can help. By being here, talking to him. You OK, Jess? Come on, we can do this – we can.”

She squeezes Jack's hand. “Hi, Jack. It's me. Jess.” Her voice sounds silly. Jack's dad nods at her.

“Go on, just talk to him. Just about anything. I'm going to get a coffee. Do you want one?”

Jess shakes her head. She is still looking at Jack's face. Is he in there? “No, thanks.”

Jack.
I'm here. It's me. It's Jess.

She swallows. What can she say?

I hope you're not hurting in there. It looks … dramatic. Can you hear me?

Hey, everyone's thinking of you. Everyone.

You've got so many cards here. Do you want me to read them? There's even one from my mum. Pretty amazing, hey?

And this one's from Chris and Ella and Tommy. Tommy says he's sorry he drank too much. Didn't make any difference, did it?

Jack, I love you. Saturday night was … so amazing. I don't know a word for it. I felt so … happy. We played brilliantly, didn't we? Do you remember?

I've brought the recording Tommy made. It's on my iPod. Do you want to hear it?

Jess looks at the nurse. The nurse is frowning at the screen.
Can I let him listen?
The nurse nods.

Floating.
Warm. Fuzzy. Nice. Soft. Jess. Jesssssss.

Beep.

I feel her touch. Smile inside. Mouth woolly, not working. Try squeeze. Nothing. Never mind. Later. Jess. Lots time.

Beep.

Floating. Warm. Fuzzy. Nice. Soft. Mmmm.

Smile. Inside. Mouth. Not. Working. At. All.

Jess. Jess. Stay, Jess. I'm. Help. Help!

Beep.

Shiver. Heartbeat. Stuck. Slow. Slow. Sink.

Spinning. That coin where is? I'm spinning, Jess. I'm flying. I see there you down. What doing? Come me with, Jess.

Jess? Jess? Did you spin the coin? Again? Did you? And how did it land? Need to know.

Here.
We can listen to it together. Listen to the cheering, Jack.

It's my song, the one you liked. I remember the first time I sang it for you. How I felt when you told me it was beautiful. It's all I ever wanted to do, to sing, and singing with you is just the best. You have to get better so we can sing again.

Are you listening, Jack? Can you hear?

Squeeze my hand. Anything. Just, please, just show me. Blink. Or anything. Please, Jack.

I can't…

I need you back. You have to get better. You have to, Jack, please. You have to. Please! Please!

NO! What's happening?

Don't make me go! I'll get his dad.

It's Jack. Something's happening. Hurry!

NO!

Beep.

Any coin, Jess. Doesn't matter. Won't make any. Difference. Real. Was wrong. Or if … never know. Nothing else. Knowing. Living. Love. Wrong.

Help. Please, Jess, spin it. Can see two paths. One grey, one greyer. Can't choose.

Can't choose. Drifting, Jess. Help. Spinning. Don't … know … which … way … down. Dizzy. So dizzy. Cold.

So cold.

Can't hear you, Jess. Can't nothing. Dark.

Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

“STAND BACK.”
Aaagh
. “AGAIN.”
Aaaagh
. “COME ON, JACK!”

Spin.

Beautiful spin. So beautiful.

And now we can only watch as the medical staff try to hurl the life back into Jack's body. It is brutal, battering.

There is nothing to lose now, and yet there is everything. His heart has stopped. It may start again. Or it may not.

The doctors and nurses will do all they can. But in the end it will come down to tiny things that already exist – the state of Jack's being: where his cells are, the precise level of every chemical in his body, the position of every particle, every nano-watt of electricity in his brain, the salts and the ions, the genes and the electrons, the enzymes and the amino acids.

Jack's life is in the balance, such a fragile balance that perhaps simply by watching him we may move a particle.

With Jess and Jack's dad, we watch through the glass door now. We see Jack's poor body being shocked. And listen to him. He is asking us – anyone – to spin a coin, and Jess won't do it, partly because she doesn't know he's asking.

On such a small act of apparent chance does his life now rest.

It's not chance, of course. Jack was right about that. A coin will fall according to how it is spun. Good luck and bad luck are just what we call it.