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“No talking. Save your breath. I’ve brought you a clean nightie from home. The nurses will help you with it later.”
She was so pale it was as though he could see every vein running beneath the surface of her face; every thread of her life winding over her features. The sunspots she detested were stripped of their pigment, and her wrinkles had fallen away into the pillow. She looked almost young, but so fragile she made it hard for him to breathe. He’d thought Jacinta was fragile, so slender, tiny compared to him, he’d had no idea what fragile was until he’d watched Buster loaded into the back of an ambulance. He looked across at Dillon. Not once since he’d arrived had he mentioned their deadline for Anderson Abbott.
Mace had every intention of meeting it. He could work from anywhere. He could stay with Buster, or if they booted him out, set up in the canteen or the local Maccas, if it came to it. He’d start as soon as she went back to sleep.
Dillon was telling Buster a story about the car he wanted to buy. He was blathering on; he was nervous too, filling the silence made big by Buster’s crackling breaths. She meant a lot to him as well. Her house had been his safe haven against careless parents and an older brother who beat up on him till Mace got big enough to suggest he stop, and mad enough to show him what was behind his suggestion.
They both sat in Buster’s kitchen, eating home baked cupcakes, bruised and bloody that day, but triumphant too. All she’d said was, “I hope the other fellow looks worse.”
They were fourteen. Dillon hadn’t yet conquered the asthma that made him scrawny and got him picked on and Mace was already more comfortable with his own company, working up his loner persona even then. But they stuck with each other, two misfits, two dreamers.
This time triumph needed brains, not brawn, and it would be all the sweeter after all the years they’d plotted, speculated and prodded each other to convert fantasy into capability.
Buster stayed awake until visiting hours were over, and when she slept they went to the canteen and sat amongst the boiled cabbage smells. Mace wrote. Dillon edited, which consisted of him rejecting every answer Mace crafted to the template Anderson had provided. They tried it the other way around. Mace talked and Dillon wrote and it was still no good.
Dillon pushed his laptop aside. “You’re fried.”
He was, there was no way around it. Mace couldn’t get his thoughts to settle. He needed sleep and a decent meal, and for Buster to be safely back at St Ags.
“We’ve got tomorrow. We’ll be fresher then. She’ll have been on the medication for longer, she’ll be better. It’ll be easier,” said Dillon.
They packed it in. Mace went back to sit with Buster and Dillon went home. But in the morning it was no easier. Buster had a bad night, not able to rest, her breath coming in wet, choked rattles. Mace was hypnotised by them, by the fear they’d stop. He didn’t sleep. He hung on each of her ragged inhales with his fists clenched.
He wasn’t ready to let Buster go. She wasn’t that old. His mother had been young when she’d had him, young still when she died. Buster’s body was broken, but her memory was intact, her thinking just as sharp as ever. It wasn’t time for her to go.
Was it cruel to want her to live for longer, locked in the prison of her Parkinson’s? Probably. What did she want? He had only the slimmest idea. He’d always managed to shut her down when she wanted to talk about the future. He’d been so good at ignoring it she’d made the arrangements to move to St Ags without him. She’d simply told him that’s what she wanted because it had become too hard for him to work his two jobs and care for her at home.
Was he being selfish wanting her to stay with him? She lived in one room in what was effectively a hospice. God’s freaking waiting room. No one at St Ags came home for good. She could do almost nothing for herself anymore except beat him at scrabble, every time.
But if she could hold on, they were developing new treatments. If he could get the finance, he could afford to renovate a little at home, hire a private nurse maybe, make her more comfortable, have her closer. She could at least live out her days in her own home. They’d talked about this before and ended up with St Ags. This time he’d insist.
Buster was in no state to talk, and when Dillon arrived, Mace was in no state to work. He did anyway, knowing what his brain was chucking on the page was worse than garbage. Dillon never said a word and that made it worse.
“Get me one more day.”
Dillon sucked on a chopstick dunked in leftover soy sauce from the dumplings they’d had for lunch. “Yep.”
“Seriously, I’ll make myself sleep tonight. I’ll ditch work. I’ve got all of Monday.”
“Okay.”
“What, just yep, okay?”
“What do you want me to say, dude? I don’t think good old AA will give us an extension. I don’t know if you’ll be any more with it tomorrow. Buster is dying, Mace. You know that, and—”
“She’s not fucking dying. They changed the medication this morning. She’ll be better.”
“She doesn’t want to get better.”
Mace shoved against the table and it barked on the floor. “You can’t fucking say that.”
“Shhh, keep your voice down.” Dillon pushed the table back into place. “You’re scaring the fish.”
“If you can’t wish the best for her you should go, man.”
“I love Buster, almost as much as you do. But she’s miserable. You have to be able to see that.”
“She’s not. She has her books and music, her favourite TV shows.”
