Bright Air - Barry Maitland [4]
‘Something bad?’
‘Maybe I should leave it for now. You seem pretty shaken up.’
‘No.’ My voice was off-key. ‘No. You’d better tell me. What on earth is it?’
‘It’s about Luce, Josh.’
‘Luce?’
‘Yes.’ She shifted uncomfortably in her chair. The light was fading and the evening air had suddenly lost its warmth. ‘You have to imagine what it was like, when I arrived in Christchurch. I caught a taxi straight to the hospital as soon as we landed. It was dark, and there was a lot of activity outside—TV crews, reporters. At first the staff wouldn’t let me see Owen, but eventually I persuaded them that I was representing his family, who couldn’t get there for a day or two. From their reaction I gathered that that would be too late.
‘It was hard to make him out at first among all the tubes and dressings, just a few pink and purple bits of his face visible. He was so still, eyes shut, as if he was completely absorbed in what the machines were doing to him, pumping, dripping, measuring. The nurse said they were amazed that he’d survived the flight to the hospital, and didn’t expect him to last the night.
‘The room was warm and after a while my attention drifted. I felt exhausted by it all, the journey, the emotion, and the knowledge of how it was going to end. It was almost like a physical thing, like gravity, the drag of death on life.’
Anna hesitated, glancing at me, and I nodded encouragingly.
‘Anyway, I got up and stretched and walked around, and when I glanced at him again I was amazed to see that his eyes were open, looking straight up at me. I spoke to him, told him who I was, and how Suzi would be there to see him soon, and he listened and seemed to understand. His mouth made a smile and then he said in a whisper, Tell her I love her.
‘I wanted to hold his hand or something, but there was nothing of him that I could touch. Tears filled my eyes. He must have registered this because his lips moved again. He said, No regrets. You remember how we used to say that?’
‘I remember.’
‘I repeated it back to him, No regrets. They felt pretty hollow now, those stupid words. He closed his eyes and I thought he was gone, but the machines were still pumping away. Then, after a long while, his lids flicked open again and his eyes were wide and bright. Only one, he said. I asked him what that was, thinking he’d say something about his children, but instead he said, Luce.
‘I wasn’t sure if I’d misheard, and I repeated, Luce? Yes, he said. I thought I saw her on the mountain, just before I fell. Snow dazzle … But what if I do meet her again? What can I say? I didn’t know how to answer. He gave a sigh and said, We killed her, you know.
‘I thought he was getting confused, and I said, No, Owen, it was an accident, like this, the same as you. No, no, he said. That’s what we told everyone, but it wasn’t true. He was staring straight into my eyes and he seemed quite coherent. It didn’t happen that way, Anna. You see, he knew my name, he knew who I was.’
‘He actually said “We killed her”?’ I asked, incredulous. The story made my skin creep, even though I simply couldn’t believe it. I sensed myself edging away from it, something that I really didn’t want to hear.
‘Yes, exactly as I’ve told you. I started to tell him he was wrong, but he just closed his eyes and gave another big sigh and said, Forgive me, Luce. He didn’t speak or open his eyes again. At about two in the morning the machines let off an alarm, and the nurses made me leave. He died soon after.’
We sat in silence for a while. Lights were coming on in the windows across the bay, and I said, feeling how incongruous the words were, ‘I have to switch on the hotel lights, Anna. Hang on, I’ll be back in a minute.’
As I went around the house I thought about what she’d said. It was awful, surely too awful to be taken seriously. Yet Anna clearly did. I tried to imagine what it must have been like to listen to Owen’s words, and then to dwell on them all through the following traumatic days. No, Anna wasn’t now the same girl I’d known as a student. Thinking about the way she’d handled