Chain of Evidence

43

Challis completed his call to Ellen Destry feeling a little frustrated. He’d wanted to tell her that his father had been taken to hospital that morning. He’d wanted to tell her that it was maybe his fault.

It started after Gavin’s funeral, when he’d argued with Meg, the argument continuing all weekend.

‘Can’t you see?’ she said. ‘Dad’s worse.’

‘He seems the same to me,’ Challis had said.

‘It’s subtle, but he’s definitely worse. He should go back into hospital.’

‘What can they do, except observe? All that to-ing and fro-ing will do more harm than good. He needs rest.’

Saturday passed, Sunday, some bad old history informing their arguments. Eve forced them to apologise, but they were wrung out and could not do more than that. They were stubborn; it was a standoff.

And then, as if to underscore the fact that Meg knew what she was talking about because she’d stayed close to her family and Challis hadn’t, the old man had collapsed after breakfast and been rushed to hospital. Challis had just come home from spending the day there.

His conversation with Ellen cut short, he felt restless and incomplete. The house oppressed him at night, and he didn’t want to sit for hours in the hospital again.

Then the kitchen phone rang and he looked at it with dread. Meg’s voice was low and ragged. ‘It’s Dad.’

At once Challis pictured it: their father in the grip of another stroke or one of the weeping fits that seized him from time to time, as though life was desolate now. He asked foolishly, ‘Is he okay?’

The raggedness became tears. ‘Oh, Hal.’

Challis understood. ‘I’ll be right there.’

He fishtailed the Triumph out of his father’s driveway and sped across town to the hospital. There was a scattering of cars parked around it, but otherwise the place seemed benign, even deserted, as though illness and grief had taken a rest for the day. He parked beside a dusty ambulance and barged through the doors. Here at last were people, but no sense of urgency or of lives unravelling.

‘Hal!’

He wheeled around. A dim corridor, smelling of disinfectant, the linoleum floors scuffed here and there by black rubber wheels. Meg and Eve were sitting outside one of the single rooms with Rob Minchin, who patted Meg and got to his feet as Challis approached.

‘So sorry, Hal.’

The two men embraced briefly. ‘I’ll be back soon,’ Minchin said. ‘Couple of babies due some time tonight.’

Challis turned to Meg and Eve. Their faces were full of dampish misery, but uplifted a little to see him, as though he were their rock. He didn’t feel like a rock. It was a lie. He was quiet and thoughtful, and people mistook that for strength. In fact, all he wanted to do was join Meg and Eve in weeping.

Meg drew him onto a chair beside her. Eve gave him a wobbly smile.

He said gently, ‘What happened?’

‘Massive cerebral haemorrhage.’

He found that he couldn’t bear to think of it. There would have been suffering, brief, but intense. There would have been a moment of extreme fear. He didn’t like to think of his father’s last moments.

Meg held his hand in her left and Eve’s in her right. ‘It could have been worse,’ she said.

They sat quietly. ‘Can I see him?’

Meg released his hand and pointed. ‘In there.’

The room was ablaze, a nurse and an orderly bustling and joking as they worked. They sobered when they saw him. ‘Hal,’ said the nurse.

He peered at her. ‘Nance?’

She nodded. Another one he’d gone to school with, the younger sister of…

‘How’s…’ He couldn’t remember her husband’s name.

‘Oh, he’s history. Good riddance.’

She took Challis by the elbow and gently ushered him to the bedside. ‘We have to move him soon, but I can give you a few minutes.’ She patted him and he was aware of the lights dimming and of Nance leaving with the orderly.

His father’s mouth hung open, and that, with his scrawny neck and tight cheekbones, seemed to configure despair, as though the old man wasn’t dead but imploring someone to help him. Challis began to weep. He tried to close his father’s mouth but nothing was malleable. Maybe the old guy had never been malleable. Challis pulled up a chair, sat, and held a light, papery hand. He let the tears run until Meg joined him and he found the strength to say to himself, Enough. Enough for now, at any rate.