Absolution(53)

Callum choked on his words and had to stop for a moment, taking a swig from his beer bottle with a trembling hand. Jack winced as he slammed it back down on the table.

“So do I think you can make a difference here, now? No, I don’t. I think it’s too late for that. We’ve all moved on, Ally included. We’ve adjusted, we’re handling it. We don’t need you. God knows what it is you think you can do to change anything, but go ahead, knock yourself out.” Callum made a sweeping gesture with his hand. “The floor is yours.”

Jack stared at him, dumbfounded.

“One more thing, and I want an honest answer – no bullshit,” Callum continued, sitting forward. “Why’d you leave?”

Too tired to think, Jack obliged, direct from his heart. “I was scared.”

Callum nodded, staring at Jack’s beer bottle for a moment. Then he lifted his gaze to stare directly into Jack’s soul. “You still scared?”

“Terrified.”

“Yet you say you’re gonna stick around. How do you know?” he prodded. “How do you know you’re not just gonna bail again? Tomorrow, or next week, or next month?”

“I won’t.” The words squeezed out from behind clenched teeth, his jaw locked up to try and retain some semblance of control over his emotions.

“Not exactly an Oscar-winning performance.”

Callum took a long pull on the remainder of his beer and stood up, grabbing his jacket from the seat. Jack stared up at him in surprise, watching as he walked out of the bar, the door swinging closed behind him.

Jack stared at the empty seat across from him for several moments. Then he abandoned his beer, got up and followed him.





CHAPTER 10




“There is a space between man’s imagination and man’s attainment that may only be traversed by his longing.”

- Khalil Gibran




Four Years Earlier



Jack followed his Dad and Callum as a nurse led them down the hospital corridor to the ICU. Curtains were drawn around a dozen or so beds, and the whole place smelt like disinfectant. It brought back vivid memories, making Jack sick to his stomach. Ever since his mother’s battle with cancer, he had associated hospitals with death and misery. And from what he could see here, he was perfectly within his rights to do so.

He was an intruder, trespassing in another world. He was stuck in some alternate reality. Back in the real world, he had already dropped Callum off at his place and was down at the river, proposing to Ally. He desperately wanted to get back there, where he felt he belonged.

He didn’t belong here. None of them did, and yet they were trapped.

The room was busy. A doctor and nurse, heads bent over a clipboard, spoke in conversational tones at the entrance to one cubicle. Another nurse consulted a chart at the foot of the bed next door. She looked up and smiled encouragingly at him as they passed. He felt like screaming at her. Ally’s life was being ripped apart somewhere in this very room. There was nothing to smile about.

The nurse who had ushered them up to the ICU disappeared into a cubicle, Callum close behind. Jack watched in silence as the loose, hospital-issue, open-backed gown that Callum wore over the blue, hospital-issue pants (“I’m not flashing my ass to the entire hospital”) vanished.

Guilt ate away at his insides. The only good thing he could see right at this moment, was that Ally was unconscious. She didn’t know yet. When she woke up, everything would change. For the second time tonight, he wished he didn’t have to be there for that. He didn’t want to see the look of realisation when she finally understood what had happened.

“Jack? Are you with us, son?"

His father gently squeezed his good arm. He took a few hesitant steps into the cubicle where Ally lay, acutely aware of his father right beside him. Strangely, it did not comfort him. The crushing weight of guilt bore down on him instead.

She lay on her back, dark hair pooling on the pillow beside her. A rigid white plastic collar encircled her neck and her ghostly complexion blended into the white sheets. Her entire body was bathed in an ethereal light cast by the fluorescent bulb on the wall above her head.

The nurse began talking, explaining to them what all the tubes and machines were for, but Jack couldn’t concentrate on anything she said. His attention was focused on Ally, lying there, so still, so pale. He willed her to understand how sorry he was.

He wasn't to know it, but this picture of her would haunt him over the lost years that followed.