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‘It’s bloody madness, that’s what it is,’ my father bites back, hearing me.
‘It’s rush hour,’ my mother interjects, ‘everyone is on their way home from work. We just have to sit it out.’
‘Well, then all these country bumpkins are going the wrong way,’ Dad grumbles. ‘Someone should tell them home is the other direction.’
‘Not everyone is from Dublin, George,’ my mother grunts. ‘Plenty of people live here in Galway too, you know.’
My father was born and raised in Dublin, and he often forgets that places outside his favourite city exist.
My mother ignores my father’s ranting and pulls on her seat belt gently. She slackens it enough to turn almost completely around in the front seat. ‘We’ll be there soon, Mammy,’ she says, smiling at Nana.
‘Thank you,’ Nana mumbles. ‘Thank you all.’
I pull my eyes away from staring out the window, and I look around at the mix of people in the car. My father is driving, muttering swear words every so often at the drivers in front of him. Despite his frustration I can hear him humming along to ‘Mack the Knife’ as it plays on a loop in the CD player. My mother is in the front passenger’s seat. She’s fidgeting relentlessly and twisting around every couple of minutes to check on my grandmother. Nana is sandwiched between Marcy and me as we huddle in the back seat of my father’s midlife-crisis sports car, which definitely wasn’t designed to accommodate three adults. Nana has her slender fingers knitted between mine, clutching me, begging me not to let go. I’m horrendously uncomfortable pressed too close to the car door and sitting with my legs apart to allow room for Nana’s oxygen cylinder to rest on the ground between my feet, but I don’t dare move and disturb my grandmother’s head resting on my shoulder.
Traffic crawls forward. The tension in the car is palpable because we’ve barely gained a couple of metres in as many minutes. Everyone is overly aware of the time ticking by as we sit drowning in a sea of cars.
‘Are they still behind us?’ I whisper across Nana to Marcy.
Marcy turns and glances out the back window. She smiles and waves. ‘Yup. They’re right behind us.’
Nate and Ben are following in Nate’s car, and since neither of them are familiar with how to reach the orchard from this side of town, I’m worried we might lose them. It came as a shock to us all, but mostly me, that we would have to escort Nana to the orchard ourselves. The health services couldn’t assist in something so unorthodox, the hospital explained. I close my eyes and think about the journey that has led us here. I want to reminisce about childhood memories, but my mind seems to get stuck replaying the conversation that we had just before we left the hospital.
‘The ambulance isn’t a taxi,’ Marcy explained as we packed up Nana’s stuff. ‘Unfortunately, they can only offer a shuttle service between the hospital and the hospice. Any detours or stopovers would be outside protocol. I can pull a lot of strings, but unfortunately breaking protocol isn’t one of them. The paramedics could get in serious trouble. I’m so sorry.’
‘I understand,’ Mam said, with heavy sadness dragging her voice lower and more raspy than usual.
At first, I was worried that my mother would change her mind. I thought she would say it was too dangerous and we were taking too great a risk. If she had raised those concerns, I wouldn’t have argued because my gut was telling me all those things too. But my heart was telling me something else entirely. Thankfully, my mother’s heart was on the same page as mine.
‘George can drive,’ Mam said confidently.
‘Okay, great,’ Marcy said, smiling. ‘I’ll let the ambulance service know you won’t be needing them after all.’
‘You’ll come with us, Marcy, won’t you?’ I asked, anxiously.
‘Of course,’ Marcy replied without hesitation. ‘I’ll be right there the whole time.’
Marcy was as good as her word. She was with us when we helped Nana from her comfortable hospital bed into the wheelchair. She was there when we struggled to lift Nana into the back seat of my father’s car without hurting her, and she’s here now, holding Nana’s other hand as if she’s become part of our family. It hurts my heart to know that when we lose Nana, we’ll lose Marcy too.
Blue lights flash behind us, and I’m startled by the sudden blast of a siren as an ambulance races up the hard shoulder, whipping past all the traffic. A police car follows quickly behind and then another ambulance.
‘Maybe there has been an accident,’ my father says. ‘That must be what’s going on with the traffic. Google it there, Blair. See if there’s anything on the news about an accident in Galway City.’
My mother runs her finger up and down her phone screen. ‘There’s nothing on the news.’ She shakes her head. ‘Oh wait, hang on. There’s something on Twitter. Oh, Jesus.’ She grimaces. ‘Thereisa crash. A bad one, by the sounds of things. A truck and two cars collided on the docks. Hashtag pray for them,’ she reads aloud. ‘It says the tailbacks are miles long on both sides of the city.’
‘Oh, God,’ I say. ‘How awful. I hope no one is hurt badly.’
A third ambulance darts past us, and everyone in the car falls pensive and silent. We are all lost in our own thoughts. I think about the people in the accident and how afraid they must be, and that’s if they survive. And if they don’t, I wonder how their families will cope. Human mortality is cruel, I decide. I think about how we’ve had time to prepare for Nana’s passing. I’ve had time to process that the baby inside my belly isn’t well. Those poor people in the accident had no warning. When those drivers set out on their journey, their loved ones had no idea that they might never see them again. My free hand instinctively finds its way to my tummy as I feel the slight flutter inside me that hints that my baby is moving. For now, we still have time.
Nana’s fingers wriggle as she slowly takes her hand away from mine. She points out the window with a trembling finger.
‘I think she wants us to follow the ambulance,’ I say.
‘We can’t go up there and pass all these cars,’ Dad says, frustrated. ‘The cops will pull us over.’
‘There’s a shortcut,’ Nana rasps barely able to draw her breath.
I try to direct my gaze off the tip of Nana’s finger. I don’t see any turns off the main road.
