Emergency Response (20 page)

After a week and a half of hanging aimlessly around the hospital, eating bland cafeteria food, drinking disgustingly bitter instant coffee and waiting for the doctors to come up with a plan, they moved their father from the ward to the nearby rehabilitation hospital. Only Cameron lived in Dubbo, so the other girls headed back to their respective homes and families, leaving Mackenzie with the lion’s share of the burden of visiting their father every day in rehab – as she assumed might be the case.

Mackenzie was staying with Cameron, Ned and their five kids, but her patience was wearing thin from playing “Aunty Mack” twenty-four seven. Cameron’s children were an active bunch – all home schooled – and there was never a moment when a child wasn’t constantly annoying Mackenzie, wanting her to do something with them. She loved her nieces and nephews, but was desperate for some peace and quiet. And space.

Her sister and brother-in-law remained polite and friendly, but as the days looked like they might turn into weeks, there was an increasing strain in the air. Mackenzie overheard Ned ask Cameron how much longer Mackenzie would be living with them and she had a sudden recollection of something her mum used to say:
“
Houseguests are like fish, Kenzie. They both go off after a few days
.”
Yes, it was definitely time to go. But where?

On the Sunday after they moved their father into the rehabilitation hospital, the six sisters gathered around Cameron’s dining table. Mackenzie soon realized the Sunday family lunch ritual was a weekly occurrence she’d never been part of. Finally, after they cleared the plates and the kids were sent to another room, the discussion, which had been brewing for over a week, finally occurred.

“So what’s the plan with Dad’s house?” Taylor asked. It was an innocent enough question but Mackenzie sensed there was more to it. She guessed they’d been talking about it together, without her.

“I think we’re going to have to sell it to pay for the nursing home,” Cameron said.

There were murmurings of agreement from around the table.

“Hang on a minute,” Mackenzie said. “Isn’t it a bit callous to be talking about selling his house and moving him into a nursing home? It’s not like he’s dead! Has anyone asked him what
he
wants?” Mackenzie didn’t care what happened to the house, but in her opinion, it wasn’t their decision to make.

“Mackenzie’s right. Does he need to go to a home?” Bailey asked. “He’ll hate it.”

“We shouldn’t make a decision yet. He’s got weeks of recovery ahead of him,” Mackenzie said.

“That’s
if
he ever fully recovers,” Jordan replied.

“Surely he will! He’s starting to walk again,” Bailey said, her face filled with concern.

“With a frame,” Jordan added.

“They said his speech should eventually return,” Bailey said.

There was further discussion and argument but it was clear nobody wanted to be the one to make a decision.

“He’s aged so much, hasn’t he?” Riley asked, changing tack.

“I know. He looks like an old man now.”

“Well he was forty-two when I was born, so he’s fast approaching eighty,” Mackenzie said.

“He didn’t seem that old before the stroke.”

“He must hate losing his independence. He won’t be able to drive again.”

“But at least his speech is returning. I know he’s still slurring his words but he doesn’t seem to be quite as confused now.”

The conversation flew around for another ten minutes.

Eventually Cameron got everyone’s attention. “Mack’s right. It’s too soon to be talking about selling his house, but we do need to talk about a nursing home. There is no way he can return home. Not unless someone stays with him.”

They turned as one to look at Mackenzie but she shook her head while screaming quietly inside.
No!
There was no way she was going to become her father’s personal nurse.

“So who’s going to break the news to him that he can’t return home? At least not yet,” Cameron asked, again looking at Mackenzie.

“No way, not me. I’m more than happy for one of you to tell him,” Mackenzie said.

“But you’re the oldest. It’s your duty,” Taylor said.

“Rubbish! As if he’s going to listen to me. We’ve barely spoken in eighteen years. I don’t think he’s going to want to hear anything from me.”

Mackenzie had a sneaking suspicion her sisters’ reluctance to get involved had more to do with the fact they were busy with their own lives and couldn’t be bothered. After all, it wasn’t as though any of them had the perfect relationship with their father either. Once each of them had married and moved away, they’d only visited him on the odd occasion and every year at Christmas. Even now, they could all see how much time it was going to take to care for him, and it was apparent no one wanted to put up their hand to take on the challenge long term, least of all Mackenzie.

By the time everyone went their separate ways later that afternoon, they were no closer to a decision about who was going to tell him.

*

Years earlier Mackenzie had severed ties with Willandara, but something strong pulled her back. They decided Mackenzie would make the trip back to the family home to check out the house and search for any important documents that would help them come up with a plan for the future.

It was almost dusk the next day when Mackenzie turned off the street and pulled up in front of the modest brick house with a familiarity that shocked her. Although this was the first time she’d returned, it might as well have been yesterday.

She got out of the hire car, careful not to slam the door and alert any nosy neighbors of her silent homecoming. Mrs. Robbins knew her father was in hospital in Dubbo and was collecting the mail for him, but Mackenzie hadn’t contacted her to say she was coming back. She wanted to fly under the radar at least until she’d gathered her thoughts.

Seeing the house again caused an emotion to rise up inside her, but she didn’t know what it was. Fear? Nervousness? Sadness? Sudden tears pricked her eyes as memories crashed relentlessly over her like waves at the beach. Until that moment she’d forgotten that she’d actually had such a happy childhood until the day her world had upended itself.

The first thing Mackenzie noticed was the overgrown garden, full of weeds, behind the picket fence. It had once been her mum’s pride and joy – a garden full of fragrant rosebushes, some as old as the house they guarded. Mackenzie made a mental note to find some pruning shears in her father’s shed and cut them all back. Even though it was the wrong time of year to do so, she knew her mum would be pleased she was making an effort to tame the wild thorns.

Blinking away the tears that kept filling her eyes, she walked up the cracked concrete path to the veranda with a sense of familiarity. She pulled her father’s front door key from her pocket and inserted it into the lock. The door opened on squeaky hinges, and its sound instantly transported Mackenzie back in time.

She stepped over the threshold in amazement. Absolutely nothing had changed inside. It was as though time had stopped both inside and out. The old television stood in the same place on the varnished pine television unit. A video player sat beneath it, covered in dust, probably untouched for years. Brown couches sat on worn cream carpet and formed a semi-circle facing the television, as they had always done. An antique coffee table which had once belonged to a grandmother Mackenzie had never met sat in the center of the room, still looking as out of place as it always had alongside their cheaper, more functional furniture.

The large table which once seated the entire family still sat in the middle of the kitchen, but only six timber chairs remained pushed in around it. The house smelled stale and Mackenzie walked across to the kitchen window and yanked it up. She automatically opened the fridge, as she had done many times as a child, and then recoiled before slamming the door shut. Something had definitely died in there. She would have to deal with that later. Dishes were stacked neatly on the sink where her father had obviously washed them and let them air dry before the unexpected stroke.

The house felt suffocating. Mackenzie tiptoed around, knowing that she didn’t need to, yet it felt like she was trespassing. It bothered her to feel like a stranger in a place where she’d once felt so comfortable. The walls seemed to close in on her, memories threatening to crush her.

Bedrooms opened off a narrow dark hallway and she pushed open timber doors to rooms stuck in time. The creak of hinges sounded loud in the silence. The bedroom on the left held Riley and Jordan’s twin single beds, still made up with their faded floral bedspreads and matching curtains. Tay and Bailey’s room opposite was a mirror image. Further down the hallway was Mackenzie’s room. She’d once shared it with Cameron but now there was no sign there had ever been two sisters in the room. A new queen-sized bed sat alongside a modern and functional-looking office desk Mackenzie had never seen before.

As she stood in the doorway of her old bedroom and flicked on the light, nostalgia hit hard and tears threatened to flow
.
Damn, this isn’t fair
. She simply wanted to get in, find any paperwork that might be useful and get out of there again. Flinging open the heavy curtains, dust floated around her, causing her to sneeze. It was obvious her father didn’t spend much time in this room. She pulled up the blind and opened the window. The familiar jasmine scent from the vine her mother had planted when Mackenzie was a child wafted into the room. Mackenzie peeked out the window. The vine had completely overtaken the whole back veranda, filling Mackenzie with a further sense of loss. Like the rest of the house, it was out of control. Her mum would be devastated if she knew the terrible state of her garden. If she had time, after cutting back the rosebushes, she would attack the jasmine.

Approaching the desk she discovered the two drawers on the right-hand side were filing cabinet drawers. Crammed inside were folders of all different shades of cream, some yellowed with age, others brand new. Her father was an organized man and Mackenzie was confident his filing system would make her job easy. She reached in, yanked a pile of folders from the drawer, and dumped them on the desk. As she had expected, each folder was labeled in her father’s meticulous cursive handwriting.

The folder marked “house” seemed like a good place to start. Sitting down on the floor cross-legged, Mackenzie rifled through the paperwork until she found the bank documents and the mortgage deed to the property. She wasn’t a hundred percent sure, but after having a quick scan, everything looked to be in order. Her father owned the house outright. Going through more folders, she found hundreds of old invoices, all marked “paid.” Another folder was labeled with each of her sisters’ names, and Mackenzie was stunned there was even one for her. Inside she was further surprised to find all her old school reports, awards and certificates. Why had he kept all this stuff? Mackenzie didn’t feel like a trip down
that
particular memory lane, so she stuffed the contents back inside and made separate piles, one for each of her sisters. She would take their folders to them when she returned to Dubbo and they could decide what they wanted to do with them.

She searched for his will, certain he would have had one. Not that Mackenzie wanted anything from him, but she needed to be certain things were set in place in case anything happened to him. While her father was expected to live, he certainly wasn’t going to make a full recovery. Mackenzie still didn’t think it was their decision to make, but Cameron was probably right, they would need to sell the house in order to pay for the nursing care he’d need for the rest of his life.

The next folder she extracted from the drawer looked promising. Titled “wills and important documentation,” she opened it and spread the contents out on the floor in front of her. The will sat on top, staring at her, almost mocking her to open the front page. The paper was smooth as though it hadn’t been touched since the day it was placed in the filing cabinet, six months earlier. Turning the first page, she read the words in disbelief. Without asking, her father had made her executor of the will. She certainly hadn’t expected that. Why wasn’t it Cameron? She scanned the rest of the will but nothing seemed unusual about the wording as far as she could tell. He wanted everything divided equally among his surviving children if he died. Easy. He wasn’t dead, so the contents of the will were irrelevant at that point in time, but it was worth knowing anyway. She put the will to one side.

As she stuffed the folders back into the filing drawer, she noticed one file had fallen to the back. She pulled it out and the heading “private and confidential” caught her eye. Should she open it? Of course, she argued with herself. She
was
the executor. What if there was something in the document they needed to know? Perhaps he didn’t want any medical treatment or interventions. They certainly had no idea of his end of life wishes, they were merely making an assumption about what he would want. Mackenzie had looked after enough patients over the years to know their families always wished their loved ones had made their wishes better known. She felt guilty for prying through her father’s personal items, but in the end, curiosity won out.

The folder was thin and inside was a pile of what appeared to be letters, all written on various sizes and types of writing paper. Mackenzie stifled a sudden sob as soon as she recognized her mum’s handwriting – she would have known it anywhere – the neat printed letters of a well-trained primary school teacher. Flicking through the pages, she realized each one was addressed to her father. She frowned. Were they love letters?

She still felt like she was snooping, but she was strangely desperate to know their contents. She briefly scanned the letters. Each one was dated the fourteenth of February – Valentine’s Day, also the anniversary of her parents’ wedding. Mackenzie counted nineteen letters – one for each year of marriage up until the day her mum died. She set them aside to read later, and scooped up all the other papers and shoved them back in the drawer. As she did, a thought occurred to her. Her parents were married for eighteen years when her mother died. Something about the maths wasn’t adding up in her head. Why were there nineteen letters?