Junk - Melvin Burgess [99]
‘But why?’ I kept saying. ‘Why’s she in hospital?’ I assumed she was having a baby.
And then at last, ‘She’s a heroin addict. She’s having severe withdrawal symptoms, apparently.’
Three and a half years. She could have died. She still could.
We got to the hospital and asked for Gemma Brogan. They made us wait and there was a doctor who wanted to discuss her case with us before we saw her. He told us she was pregnant, after all. As well as. He gave me to understand there wasn’t a lot of sympathy for someone with her problem.
‘Hospital beds are for people who are sick,’ he said. In other words, she was going to be booted out. He clearly expected us to take care of her.
We walked towards the ward. Grel said, ‘A baby. She’s been taking that stuff with a baby…’ He sounded furious. We walked a bit further. He said, ‘I suppose she’ll expect us to bail her out.’
I couldn’t believe my ears. I just stopped and stared at him. She was our child. I was so angry with him, I was prepared to have a row right there in public, standing in the middle of the corridor. But when I turned on him, I saw that he wasn’t furious at all. He looked at me with big wet eyes – that’s how he cries, his eyes just get wet, and his hands hanging by his side, and his face as grey as winter rain. He looked like his whole world had been blown up.
I suppose we let Gemma down in many ways. But she let us down too. She destroyed our lives. The way Grel and I were with each other after she went. We blamed each other. The bitter, bitter arguments we’d had about what we’d said and done and what she’d said and done. It nearly wrecked our marriage. Perhaps it did wreck it. Perhaps we’re just together because we have nothing better to do.
But at least we are still together…
I took his arm and squeezed it. God knows, we’re none of us perfect. And he, God bless him, he hung his head and closed his eyes for a moment and a tear trickled down his cheek. Then we hurried on. I can take anything but Grel crying. It always makes me blub and I wanted to save any tears I had for Gemma.
At the ward I did a very selfish thing. I said to Grel, ‘I want to see her alone.’ I don’t defend it. He had as much right as me. I suppose I wanted that precious moment all to myself.
He just shook his head. I nearly said, ‘I’m a mother,’ but I bit it back just in time. Then we walked in…
My first thought was, My God, she looks like my mother. Despite everything I still thought of her as a fourteen-year-old girl. But she looked like my mother, my own mother. An old woman.
I went to sit next to her and put my hand on her hand. I wanted to make it as normal as possible for her sake, talk about home and ask her what she’d done, although how on earth we could talk about what she’d done in those years I don’t know. I didn’t want to cry, I knew I shouldn’t but I thought of all the things I’d missed and I couldn’t help it, I couldn’t get even a word of what I’d planned on saying out. I just started to weep. I tried but I couldn’t speak at all so I laid my head on her breast and I wept and I wept and I wept…
She was crying too. I knew it was all right when she started to cry. The tears said everything for us.
Then she said, ‘I want to come home, Mum, can I come home, Mum, please…?’ I nodded my head and tried to say yes, yes, and we just held one another and cried.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Tar
You keep your head down and you get on with it. That’s how you do your time. If you suck up to the screws you get trouble from the other lads. If you suck up to the other lads the screws think you’re becoming a hard man and start putting you down. It’s bad enough being locked up all day without the screws screaming at you.
I think I’m going to get through it. I’m steady. Just this past week I’ve been thinking like that. Maybe it can be an opportunity. Before that I was so depressed and before that I was ill, of course.
The first thing was coming down off the methadone. I’d been on a script for over a year. They put me on twenty-five mil