Whiskey & Charlie (20 page)

She was graceful. She had good posture, flawless skin. She looked as good to Charlie in jeans and an old T-shirt as she did in a cocktail dress. In public, men always looked twice. She was gracious when she rejected the men who offered to buy her drinks or asked for her phone number. She was thoughtful. She remembered birthdays, including Charlie's mother's, which he did not remember himself. She had passions for things, obsessions: a particular brand of rollerball pens with purple ink, which she bought in boxes of twelve; an oval eraser, like a rubber pebble, which she never used, because she didn't want to spoil its perfect shape.

She had discovered a website called Future Me, which allowed you to compose emails to be sent to yourself in the future. She wrote emails that would be returned to her in a month, a year, five years. When she received them, she printed them out and stuck them up on her pin-up board.

Dear
Future
Me
, one of them said.
It's two years today since you met Charlie. I hope you're not taking him for granted. Don't ever forget how lucky you are to have met someone like him. If you're ever in doubt, think about how desperate you felt with Ryan, always worrying about what he was going to do next; remember how you cried every day during that last year with Nathan. Charlie's everything you wished for. Be good to him.

Certainly, there were things about Juliet that Charlie was not mad about. She had, for example, more than forty pairs of shoes, which she insisted on storing in their original boxes and which consequently took up more than one third of their wardrobe. Though she had great enthusiasm for planting new herbs and flowers, it was Charlie who ended up watering them. She had unbearable PMS, for which she claimed the only cure was for Charlie to drive her across town to her favorite Thai restaurant in North Brunswick, a place with plastic chairs and tables, cutlery with a Lufthansa logo on the handles, which must have been bought in a fire sale; a place with bad service and no ambience whatsoever, but which happened to serve what Juliet described as the world's greatest chicken satay. She hated the news and would turn off the radio whenever it came on. Some of these things annoyed Charlie. Sometimes they even argued about them, as all couples do. But none of them were reasons not to marry her.

So what were the reasons? It wasn't that Charlie could think of someone else he would rather spend the rest of his life with. But that was exactly the problem. He didn't think he would spend the rest of his life with Juliet either. He still lived in fear that Juliet was going to leave him, and so he couldn't marry her. Because if break-ups were bad, divorces were ten times worse.

And yet, Charlie had sensed Juliet was getting impatient. He had begun to feel that if he didn't propose to Juliet soon, she would grow tired of waiting and end their relationship. And there was the conundrum. She would leave him if he didn't marry her, and she would probably leave him anyway, even if he did. It had gone round and round in Charlie's head, and though he knew Juliet was waiting, he could not bring himself to ask her.

x x x

A few months before Whiskey's accident, Charlie had arrived home from work one day, and Juliet had taken him outside to show him the hanging baskets in which the geraniums she had planted had started to bloom.

“I've been thinking,” she said, and Charlie thought she was going to say something about the garden: the agave might need repotting, what do you think about moving the camellia into that corner, is it still too early to plant some basil?

“How do you feel about getting married?” is what she actually said.

x x x

Afterward, Charlie had found another one of her emails, composed two years before.
Dear
Future
Me
, this one said.
Are
you
married
yet? Engaged, at least? If Charlie hasn't asked you by now, he probably never will, so why don't you go and ask him yourself? Now's as good a time as any—don't worry about the roses and violins, you know Charlie wouldn't be into that anyway. PS Don't be upset if he says no—he's probably just scared.

Charlie felt wretched when he read the email. It hurt him to think she'd already wanted to get married, two years ago, when she wrote the email, that she'd waited all this time, knowing he probably wouldn't ask her, and then she'd asked him herself, knowing he would probably say no.

x x x

It had been Marco's boyfriend, Guy, who started the Romeo and Juliet jokes.

“‘Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?'” he had quoted, bowing low when he and Juliet were first introduced.

Juliet had curtsied, thrilled, and offered her hand to be kissed. “And this must be your Romeo,” Guy said, shaking hands with Charlie.

“He's no Romeo,” Marco said.

“Why not?” Charlie asked, indignant. “I could be a Romeo.”

“You're not exactly renowned for your romantic gestures, mate.”

“I'm romantic, aren't I, Jules?” Charlie said uncertainly, looking at her for confirmation.

“Has he ever climbed up to your balcony to declare his undying love?” Guy asked her.

“I don't have a balcony.”

“What about drinking poison?” Marco asked.

“It's Juliet who drinks the poison,” Guy said. “Romeo stabs himself.”

“Would you stab yourself for Juliet?” Marco demanded.

“Would you stab yourself for Guy?” Charlie retorted.

“He asked you first,” Juliet said.

Charlie pretended to consider the question. “Maybe if the sword was extremely sharp and I knew it would be over in a flash.”

Charlie's romantic ineptitude had become something of a running joke for the four of them. Juliet had always laughed along. Now Charlie wondered if she had ever really thought it funny, if all this time she had been secretly hoping for Charlie to surprise her, to prove Marco wrong. He knew she wasn't asking for much. He wasn't required to risk his life, renounce his family. He felt sick when he thought about what he'd said to her in the garden.
I
need
to
think
about
it.

Five years on, Charlie still regretted dropping out of his Diploma of Education because of a personality conflict with one of his tutors. When she failed his major essay, he could have applied for a reexamination; instead, he went to her office and called her names, resulting in a disciplinary letter from the dean of the school. He was too ashamed to appeal the mark and too proud to resubmit the essay, so instead of becoming a qualified teacher, he had had to be content working as a teacher's aide.

After Juliet's marriage proposal, Charlie felt pressure to make some changes in his life that would demonstrate he was growing up, making progress, moving in the right direction. He gave up his job at the primary school to take a “real job,” a full-time position with all the trimmings: a salary, paid sick leave and holidays (a privilege Charlie had never yet been afforded in his string of casual jobs), an esoteric title (content development officer), and a box of business cards with his name printed beneath a company logo.

The first surprise of Charlie's new life was that the phrase
working
nine
to
five
was inaccurate, that, in fact, his working hours were from 8:30 to 5:30, not to mention the hour it took him by tram and by train to reach the office and the hour home again. No more walking to work, coming home to have lunch with Juliet. Charlie had joined the drones, standing on a platform at Flinders Street Station at 8:00 a.m. with a glazed look in his eyes.

Charlie's employer was Sierra Education Incorporated, the brand-new Australian arm of a hugely successful European company that developed and distributed learning aids for geography and social studies. Charlie's job involved developing questions for computer-generated quizzes around key learning areas from the primary school social studies curriculum. It sounded good on paper. And according to the recruitment consultant who found Charlie the position, Sierra Education was
geared
for
success
, and Charlie was going to make an
integral
contribution
to a rate of growth
previously
unheard
of
in
Australia
.

So confident was the company in their growth that they took out a lease on an office designed for a hundred employees. When Charlie started, however, there were only ten employees, including himself, and their workstations were lost in the vast, bland space, like tiny islands floating in an unnamed ocean. Charlie had never had a workstation before. The partitions were arranged so when he was sitting at his desk, he couldn't see another soul. He was walled in on three sides, the only opening at his back, so whenever someone came to speak to him, they always took him by surprise. Occasionally people stood up from their ergonomic desk chairs (quality secondhand) to peer over their partitions, like meerkats emerging from their burrows.

Initially Charlie found it depressing to be cut off from the other people in the office, but once he got to know them, he discovered it to be a blessing. The graphic designer, who was the father of six children and called himself a Christian, told racist jokes and commented frequently on the number of
Vietmanese
[
sic
] moving into his area,
driving
decent
Aussie
families
out
. There was an obese IT consultant whose diet consisted solely of Coke, pot noodles, and fun-size chocolate bars, which he ate a bag at a time. Charlie's supervisor was a sexist ultracapitalist named Ray who was studying for his MBA, a qualification he described as a
passport
to
success
—by which he meant wealth. The only topic on which Charlie and Ray saw eye to eye was the utter ineptitude of the office manager, Elliott. After less than three weeks in the job, Charlie found himself at a team meeting making a mental list of all the things he found intolerable about his new boss:

• He spoke through his nose.

• He jingled the change in his pockets as he moved about the office.

• He bounced on the balls of his feet when he walked.

• He laughed like a girl.

In a rare moment of wit, Ray joked to Charlie that Elliott's management skills had come from a little-known text titled
The
Fascist's Guide to People Management
. Among his other managerial crimes, Elliott was notorious for sending emails to employees who were more than three minutes late, requesting an explanation for their tardiness. As a result, all the Sierrans—as they called themselves—clung desperately to the last minutes of their lunch breaks and left the office at five thirty on the dot. At first, Charlie was appalled by such pettiness, but after a while, he came to see his colleagues' behavior as an appropriate response to a manager who would send a memo complaining about the
excessive
quantity of toilet paper being purchased and asking employees to conserve their use only to what was
absolutely
necessary
.

Catching the train in the morning, Charlie dreaded the day ahead. He passed nine hours in a kind of numb stupor, returning home feeling sick about the decision he had made. The worst part was no one else seemed to appreciate the sacrifice he was making. His mother said, “Welcome to the real world, Charlie,” when he complained about the long days, and when he joked about the Sierrans to Juliet, she was unsympathetic.

“Don't be so superior, Charlie,” she said. “They can't be as bad as all that.”

“They're worse, Juliet. You can't even imagine it.”

“Well, what were you looking for, Charlie? I don't know what made you take this job in the first place. I thought you loved your job at the school.”

“I'm not a proper teacher, Juliet. I'm not even full time. I'm just a teacher's aide. I'm going nowhere. And I'm not getting any younger. I thought this would make you happy.”

“Why would your doing a job you hate make me happy?”

“I thought you'd be happy I was being responsible, getting my shit together, you know.” Charlie realized he couldn't begin to explain to Juliet the real reasons why he took the job. “I thought I could save some money so we could buy a house,” he said desperately.

“We've got a house already.”

“But it's your house, Juliet.”

“Don't say that. How can you say that? Just because it's in my name, I never think of it as mine; you know that. We've lived here together for five years—to me it's our house.”

“It's not the same,” Charlie said stubbornly.

Juliet sighed. “You've never talked about buying a house before, Charlie. Why don't you tell me what this is really about?”

“I feel like I can't do anything right for you.”

“Why are you saying that? I didn't ask you to take this job. I couldn't understand it at all, but you didn't even want to discuss it with me. You said you'd made up your mind.”

“I don't mean that. I don't know what you want anymore.”

“Oh, Charlie.” She sounded exhausted. “I think you know exactly what I want.”

* * *

It takes days for Charlie to accept what Magdalena has told him as the truth, days in which his reluctance to visit Whiskey is overcome by a new hope, in which he sits beside Rosa at Whiskey's bedside for hours at a stretch, watching for a further sign of arousal, allowing himself to imagine how different things are going to be when Whiskey wakes up. One after another, the members of the medical team tell Charlie the same thing, that Whiskey's vital signs are unchanged, his brain activity remains the same, he is still showing no response to the arousal therapy. Eventually Charlie has to admit to himself that he can see no change in Whiskey, that he does not blink or turn his head when people talk to him, that though his eyes are open, it is only a blank stare.

It depresses Charlie to see Whiskey staring into space. The hope that something had shifted, followed by the realization that everything is exactly the same, is more painful than when there was no change at all. Worse than that, there is no consensus among the medical staff about Whiskey's potential for recovery. Charlie knows the statistics. They are always in his mind, keeping him awake at night, like flashing neon signs he can't switch off: 50 percent of coma victims die; one-third are seriously injured for life.
Surely
by
now
, Charlie thinks,
the
medical
staff
must
have
worked
out
which
group
Whiskey
is
going
to
end
up
in.
But if they have, none of them want to say so.

The CT and MRI scans indicate too much damaged tissue for recovery to be possible. And yet, Angie and Fergal are still scratching Whiskey's feet, blowing whistles in his ears, holding pungent bottles of god knows what under his nose. Grant is still bending and stretching his elbows and knees, his fingers and toes.

Charlie still doesn't completely trust Angie and Fergal; he's never really gotten over their first coma-arousal session with Whiskey. But he likes Grant. He thinks Grant is more likely to give him a straight answer than the doctors are. Charlie has to wait a few days for a physiotherapy session where neither his mother nor Rosa are present to ask the question that has been tormenting him.

He watches Grant rotate Whiskey's good foot from the ankle, first clockwise, then counterclockwise. After a moment, he picks up Whiskey's other foot and begins massaging, working his thumbs into the arches.

“Can you explain to me,” Charlie says tentatively, “why you're working to keep Whiskey's body in shape if his brain isn't going to recover?”

“Who told you his brain isn't going to recover?” Grant asks, surprised.

“It's in the neurology reports. It's what the scans show.”

Grant nods thoughtfully.

“I'm not having a go at you,” Charlie says as Grant levers Whiskey's foot up and down. “I know it's not up to you. But what use is Whiskey's body to him without his brain?”

Grant lays Whiskey's foot back down on the bed. “I can see it might seem pointless, what I'm doing. But as long as there's a chance of recovery, we keep up the therapy.”

“But that's exactly my point,” Charlie says. “According to the scans, there
is
no chance of recovery.”

“The scans don't have all the answers,” Grant says carefully. “Even the neurologists will admit as much. It's still anecdotal to suggest that the longer the coma lasts, the less the potential for improvement. At this stage, there's still no real proof of a finite therapeutic window. That's why we keep up the therapy until we know for sure.”

Charlie stands up and goes to the window. He doesn't want to lose his temper with Grant, but they are going around in circles.

“Have you got a brother, Grant?” he asks eventually.

“Not a brother, no. But I've got a little sister.”

Charlie nods. “I wouldn't wish this on you, not in a million years, but if your sister was in a coma, wouldn't you want someone to tell you where you stood?”

“I would, Charlie. And I wish I could tell you what you need to know. But coma is one of the least predictable medical conditions in the book. Even people with years of experience can still be surprised when it comes to coma patients.”

Charlie tries Magdalena next. Over time, he has come to like all the nurses, even those he had at first found brusque or standoffish. But Magdalena remains his favorite. He asks her about what Grant told him.

“Grant's right,” Magdalena says. “They won't stop the therapy unless they're absolutely certain Whiskey can't recover.”

“But isn't that what all those scans and things tell them?”

“It's not that cut-and-dried, Charlie. You could get a number of neurologists to look over Whiskey's case, and you might get a different diagnosis from each.”

“I don't understand that,” Charlie says. “They're specialists. It's supposed to be
science
.”

“The thing is, Charlie, it's virtually impossible to
prove
there's no potential for recovery, even in the most severe cases. They've done every test on Whiskey they possibly can. But there is no known diagnostic test that can scientifically demonstrate recovery of function will not occur.”

“Okay, so the tests can't prove it. But you've worked here a long time. You must have seen cases like this before.”

“Well, yes and no. We've had patients with supposedly ‘mild' brain injury, who have emerged from comas with substantial problems, which have permanently affected their lives. On the other side of the coin, I've seen patients who've been deemed to be severely injured, who have returned to more or less normal lives.”

Charlie sighs. “But someone will have to make a decision eventually, won't they? They can't leave Whiskey in a coma indefinitely.”

“I know this is hard for you, Charlie,” Magdalena says. “Maybe you should have another chat with one of our counselors.” She picks up the phone.

“I just want somebody to tell me the facts,” Charlie says, exasperated.

Magdalena balances the receiver on her shoulder, holds up one finger for Charlie to wait. But Charlie doesn't want to wait. He stalks away, up the corridor to Whiskey's room, is standing looking through the window when Magdalena comes to find him.

“Good news,” she says. “Thomas has a window between appointments. He's the one you saw when Whiskey started his arousal therapy. You remember him?”

“I remember,” Charlie says.

“I've paged him,” Magdalena says. “He'll be here in five minutes if you want to talk.”

“You didn't have to,” Charlie says, suddenly grateful, and sorry for making it her fault.

x x x

“Good to see you again, Charlie,” Thomas says, shaking his hand, sounding like he means it.

They go again into one of the little waiting rooms, sit again across from each other, over the same table stacked with the same magazines.

“Anyone would think I was the patient here,” Charlie says, embarrassed he has been identified as in need of counseling not once, but twice. As far as he knows, no one else has needed to have a counselor called—not his mother, or Rosa, certainly not Juliet or Audrey.

“If there's one thing I've learned in this job, Charlie, it's that life-threatening illness doesn't only affect the patients. We're here to talk to anyone who needs us, whether they're hospital inpatients or not. I talk to a lot of family members in these kinds of circumstances.”

“I'm not the only basket case you get called out for, then?”

Thomas laughs. “Far from it. I've had people punching holes through walls, you name it. I've seen it all here, and you're holding up pretty well under the circumstances, believe me. So how can I help you today, Charlie?”

Charlie sighs. “I never dreamed it could go on for this long. I need to know now, one way or the other. At least then I could prepare myself.”

“Okay,” Thomas says. “First, I should tell you it's normal to feel the way you do. It's a very common reaction for anyone who has to deal with a coma that lasts more than a few weeks. I understand you want the truth, that you think someone knows it and is hiding it from you. Unfortunately, the only fact here is no one can tell you, one way or the other, because no one actually knows. The best anyone can do is make an educated guess. And no one wants to do that, because these days, a doctor can't afford to make a mistake.”

“Well, they don't have to worry about that with me,” Charlie says. “I'm not the litigious type.”

“You say that now,” Thomas says wryly, “but you never know. You might surprise yourself. So if you want answers in the medical sense, I can't help you with that. But if what you need is to try to prepare yourself for what comes next with Whiskey, whichever way it goes, well then, that's something I can probably help you with.”

Charlie thinks for a minute. What Thomas is offering is not exactly what he wanted, but it is better than nothing. “Okay,” he says.

“Great,” Thomas says. “And you're ready to talk about this right now?”

Charlie nods.

“All right. So we'll talk through the potential outcomes for Whiskey and the ways you might cope with those. And we can do that at whatever pace suits you. We can go through everything today, if you'd rather get it over and done with, or we can take it one piece at a time, if that makes it easier. What I need to know now is, do you want to start with the good news or the bad news?”

Charlie closes his eyes. He knows he should ask for the bad news first; that's the way you always do it. That way the good news helps you get over the bad news. But this is different. Because the bad news has never been so bad. The bad news is his brother will die. And no amount of good news can help him get over that. And though he thought he was ready to consider that possibility, once it was offered to him, he knew he was not.

“I need the good news first, if that's okay.”

“Whatever you need is okay, Charlie. It's your call. We'll start with the best-case scenario, and when you're ready—if you're ready—we'll talk about the other possibilities.”

Charlie swallows, leans forward in his chair.

“So let's begin by imagining the best possible outcome for Whiskey. What do you think that might be?”

Charlie takes a breath. “I think I told you last time that Whiskey and I didn't get on.
Don't
get on,” Charlie corrects himself.

“You mentioned it.”

Charlie closes his eyes. He thinks it will be easier to say what he has to say if he isn't looking at Thomas. “I've spent most of the last ten years wishing I had a different kind of brother or wishing Whiskey would change, become the kind of person I could like.” He opens his eyes, exhales. “After what's happened, I don't want Whiskey to change,” he goes on after a moment. “What I want now is for him to wake up and be exactly the same as he always was, to be able to go back to the life he had, do all the things he used to do. Even if it means we still don't get on, I don't care now. As long as he can do what matters to him.”

“What kinds of things matter to him?”

Charlie shrugs. “The sad part is, I don't even know the answer to that.” He takes another deep breath, looks away from Thomas. “That's one of the things that's been driving me nuts since the accident, how much I don't know about him. I thought I didn't care.”

“But you do.”

Charlie nods.

“If you had to guess then,” Thomas says, “what do you think might be important to Whiskey?”

“Rosa,” Charlie says after a while. “Rosa's important to him.”

“Rosa?”

“His wife. I know he loves her—they love each other.”

“How do you know that?”

“You can see it.”

“How, though?” Thomas persists.

Charlie thinks for a minute. “The way he treats her…the way he is when he's around her. He seems…”

“What?”

“Happy. He seems happy.”

“You can tell when he's happy?”

“I guess I can.”

“You seem surprised.”

Charlie doesn't know what to say. He is surprised.

“It sounds like you know a bit more about him than you thought.”

Charlie nods.

“What about you?” Thomas asks. “How do you get on with Rosa?”

“I like her. It took me a while, but I like her a lot.”

“Why did it take you a while?”

“They got married on a whim. They hardly knew each other,” Charlie says, hating how judgmental it sounds, even as the words come out. “I didn't think it would last. I didn't see the point of getting attached.”

“Have you ever acted on a whim, Charlie?” Thomas asks after a moment.

“Of course.”

“You don't believe in love at first sight though?”

Charlie sniffs. “I'd like to say no. In theory, I don't. But that's pretty much the way it happened for Juliet and me.”

“You knew straightaway?”

“More or less.”

Thomas looks at Charlie, says nothing.

“Okay, I get the point.” Charlie shifts in his chair. “If it could happen for me, why couldn't I accept that it could happen for Whiskey too?”

“It's worth pondering, don't you think?”

“I guess I didn't cut Whiskey much slack,” Charlie says eventually.

“Were you aware of that at the time?”

“I didn't think of it like that before.”

“How did you think of it?”

Charlie frowns. “It's hard to remember exactly now. But I think I thought
everyone
cut him too much slack. I thought he could do with a bit of criticism from somewhere.”