Haze (27 page)

Hannah’s face crumples. ‘Ah, love, I wish I hadn’t been the one to tell you.’

‘I didn’t come here to make you feel bad,’ I say. ‘I’m just trying to put the pieces together.’

Hannah digs in her handbag and pulls out another cigarette. She lights it, takes a long draw.

‘It was a woman. She probably told me her name but it’s long gone now.’ She turns her head and blows smoke away from me. ‘Youngish, early thirties maybe. Dark hair, pretty. A little anxious.’

‘Anxious how?’

‘She didn’t want to be there. And she had a bairn with her.’

I blink. ‘A child?’

‘Cute little thing with blonde curls. Can’t have been more than ten or eleven.’ Hannah ashes behind her. ‘From memory, they sounded American.’

My breath hitches. In the corner of my eye I see Jason put a hand on Maggie’s shoulder to steady himself.

‘I thought they were family.’ Hannah frowns at me. ‘Are you still not talking to your parents?’

‘No.’ I pull my hoodie tighter around me.

She takes another draw, studies me. ‘Love, life is too short. I know family can be tricky, but—’

‘Just out of curiosity,’ Rafa says, gesturing to Jason, ‘have you seen him before?’

Hannah’s sharp eyes register the strangeness of the question but she shakes her head. ‘He’s got curls like that sweet bairn, though.’ She checks her watch again, takes a final puff on the cigarette. ‘I’d better get inside. I hope that helps.’

She wraps me up in a smoky menthol hug as I thank her. ‘Gaby, love, look after yourself.’

She’s barely through the entrance when Rafa turns to Jason. ‘What the fuck?’

‘I don’t understand.’ Jason’s eyes are distant, confused.

‘No wonder they haven’t come out of the woodwork,’ Rafa says. ‘Any ideas on how they happened to know that Gabe was alive in this hospital?’

‘No…’ Jason is far away, his mind working.

‘They knew the story about Jude’s funeral was bullshit, so why were they there? Who sent them?’

‘I don’t
know,
Rafa. I have no idea how Maria and Dani could be involved.’

A man in a grey business suit gives us a dirty look as he leaves the footpath to get past us. I move closer to the road. Maggie puts a reassuring hand on Jason’s arm as a bus pulls up and passengers pile out. No one speaks until they disappear into the buildings and small streets around us.

‘Dani couldn’t remember what happened to you and Jude, but she remembered everything else. She knew who you were.’ Jason sounds like he’s trying to convince himself. ‘Something else must have happened.’

‘How long after Jude and I disappeared did they take off?’

‘About two days.’

I chew on my lip. There’s an answer to this, but it’s too far away.

Rafa leans back against the grey wall. His eyes are distant, his annoyance fading. He’s too busy thinking.

‘You know,’ he says to me, slowly, ‘if they came here to tell you Jude was dead, maybe they gave Jude a similar message. He must have been hurt too. Maybe not as bad as you, but he still might have ended up in hospital—’

‘Oh my god, that makes sense, doesn’t it?’ Maggie touches my arm. ‘Someone saved your life, gave you new memories and sent Maria and Dani to reinforce the lie. And if you and Jude each thought the other was dead, it wouldn’t matter if you were left in the same city.’

I wait for her say it.

‘Jude might have been here in Melbourne too.’

Is that even possible? Jude, living and breathing in the same city as me. A whole year ago. My breath shortens. I’m still close to the road, leaning against a sign post, vaguely aware of the lights changing at the intersection down the road and traffic moving quickly behind me. The air is thick with fumes.

Jason takes my arm, leads me over to the wall. ‘We need to check every hospital with an emergency ward. We can divide them between us, show around your photo of Jude, see if someone remembers him.’

‘It’s been twelve months,’ I say.

Maggie holds out her hand. ‘Give me your phone.’

I hand it over and she taps the screen until she finds what she’s looking for. She turns the phone to show me the photo of Jude on Patmos. ‘Look at him, Gaby. Anyone who laid eyes on your brother will remember him.’

‘What do you think?’ I ask Rafa.

He looks at Jason, Maggie and then me. Eyes shining with hope.

‘I think we have what some people might refer to as a plan.’

LIFE SUPPORT

Every hospital smells the same. It’s not only the antiseptic and disinfectant, it’s the worn carpet and plastic chairs in the waiting rooms, the limp flowers in the gift shop, the stench of stale nicotine near the entrance.

And the same people shuffle the corridors: the ill, the injured, the worried. The lost. There’s no hiding the reality. Lives end here; hopes are destroyed. And after two hours, the hope I felt on the street is borderline anaemic.

After talking to Hannah, we ordered coffees at the hospital cafeteria and Jason went to work on his phone, scribbling down names and addresses on napkins. He and Maggie took half, Rafa and I the others.

Outside our fourth hospital, Rafa’s hand slides around my wrist. ‘Get that look off your face.’ He links his fingers through mine and for a second we’re back on the bench in the gardens, leaning into each other. Together. Right before we screwed everything up again.

The glass doors open. Close. We stay outside.

‘It’s too early to give up,’ he says.

‘I’m not giving up.’ I take back my hand so I can zip up my hoodie. I’m cold again.

‘But?’ He doesn’t move away. He’s going to make me say it. I take a slow breath.

‘There’s a chance Jude might have been in Melbourne a year ago. But there’s also a chance he was on the other side of the world.’

And there’s the other option: that he’s really dead.

‘Gaby…’ Rafa leans in close, his voice soft. ‘Harden the fuck up.’ He says it gently, kindly.

I laugh, I can’t help it. I turn my head so the breeze dries my eyes. I wasn’t crying, not really.

‘Come on,’ he says. ‘If this one’s a dead end, we’ll go to a bar and drown our sorrows. Find something to argue about.’

As we have at every other hospital, we head to the main desk. The young nurse on duty looks like he came to work straight off a huge night out. He’s still buzzing.

‘My brother was in a car accident a year ago,’ I say. ‘I’m trying to find out if he was brought here.’

The eyebrow ring goes up. ‘You don’t know?’

‘I’ve been away and my parents aren’t talking to me.’

His smile is rueful. ‘I hear you, babe.’ He turns to the computer next to him. ‘What’s his name?’

‘Jude Winters.’

He clicks and taps a few times. ‘This time last year?
Judah
Winters, that him?’

My heart forgets to beat. I grip the counter so hard my fingertips go numb. ‘Yes.’ I try to swallow. Can’t.

‘Your parents are missionaries or something, right? Who gives a kid a name like that?’ He keeps clicking through screens. Rafa takes my hand again, crushes my fingers with his. I can’t bear to look at him.

‘Yep. Here we go. Came in with broken ribs, lacerations to the neck and chest, punctured lung…ended up in the surgical ward.’ He smiles at me then scribbles down a ward number and directions on a scrap of paper and slides it across the counter. ‘Someone up there should be able to tell you more.’

Rafa takes the directions and steers me along a solid yellow line painted on the floor. Everything fades around us. There’s just the line and the sound of our boots on the too-shiny lino. Rafa’s arm is tight around me. I feel weightless, as if everything inside of me has dissolved.

Inside the lift, he holds me against him. My heart hammers, or maybe it’s his. Neither of us speaks. I don’t know that I could make a sound, even if I had the words. The lift jerks to a stop.

We navigate our way to the ward and find an older woman with heavy green eyeshadow at the nurse’s station.

I manage to get Jude’s name out, the words strange and thick in my mouth. She checks her computer. I fiddle with the plastic out-tray on her counter, stare at a poster about post-operative infection without taking in a single word. None of this feels real. Is this real?

‘Yes,’ she says, finally. ‘Judah Winters was in here for a few weeks last year.’

‘Do you remember him?’

‘Darling, I can’t remember who was here a week ago.’

I take out my phone and show her Jude’s photo. Maggie was right: the recognition is almost immediate. ‘Oh
that
sweetheart.’ She grins. ‘Hang on.’

She picks up the phone, dials. ‘Is Mandy with you? Tell her I need her.’

We wait an agonisingly long minute before a blonde nurse turns into the corridor. Her steps are confident, purposeful. She has a healthy, beachy glow, and the hair tied at her neck is sun-bleached.

‘Mandy,’ the desk nurse says when she’s closer. ‘I think you can help these two.’

Mandy stops. She checks out Rafa and smiles at me. Her face is open and friendly.

The older nurse repositions her out-tray. ‘They’re asking about your boyfriend.’

BUZZING

Mandy’s smile falters. ‘And by boyfriend you mean…?’

I hold out my phone, every nerve ending electrified.

Jude is alive. This woman knows him. He might still be here in Melbourne. Oh my god. Oh. My. God.

JUDE IS ALIVE—

I take a shaky breath, try to calm down. It’s no good: my heart still gallops and I can’t feel my legs.

Mandy looks at the photo, bites her lower lip. She turns away from the desk. ‘Let’s talk over here.’

She leads us down the corridor and into a waiting room with two couches, a stack of tattered magazines and a giant poster about heart disease.

She sits on one of the couches. After a beat, Rafa and I join her.

‘You look like him.’ Her eyes flicker with sadness, and her fingers stray to a brooch on her uniform, a delicate silver dove.

‘They’re related,’ Rafa says.

Mandy nods, gathers herself. ‘I’m so sorry for your loss.’

The poster bleeds into the walls. My fingers dig into Rafa’s thigh. ‘He’s dead…?’

Mandy starts. ‘Jude? No. No, oh god, sorry, I meant his sister. His twin.’

Rafa puts his arm around me, keeps me upright.

‘Jude’s alive?’ I manage to get my lips to form the words. ‘He’s really alive?’

‘You didn’t know?’

‘I’ve been away.’

And it hits me then: this Jude—the one who was here—thinks I’m dead. My eyes sting with tears. Shit, don’t lose it now.

Rafa tightens his hold on me. ‘You and Jude, you’re together?’

‘No, not for a while.’ She pulls down the sleeves of her cardigan as if she’s cold. ‘We email occasionally.’

‘Do you know where he is?’

‘Still in Tassie as far as I know.’

‘Tasmania?’

No way is Rafa as calm as he sounds right now.

‘We hooked up while I was looking after him here. He was always talking about the sea and wanting to be on the water, so as soon as he was well enough we went to Hobart for a fortnight. I’ve got family down there who sail.’ She presses her palms together, places them between her knees. ‘It didn’t work out. He couldn’t cope with his sister being gone and he wouldn’t talk about it, or see anyone for help. In the end, he stayed there. Got a job as skipper on a charter boat—’

‘Is that where he is—Hobart?’ I don’t mean to cut her off but I need to know.

‘He was a month ago. He sent me a message for my birthday.’ Mandy’s fingers return to the brooch. ‘I think he’s doing better. It’s hard to tell with Jude.’

Rafa is very still. ‘Do you know where he is—exactly?’

‘I think he lives on the boat he works on. If they’re not out on a charter, it’ll be at Constitution Dock.’ She looks from me to Rafa and back to me again. ‘Are you going to go see him?’

We nod without looking at each other. Rafa’s hand twitches against my waist. He’s going to shift, right here in front of her.

‘Is Jude okay?’ she asks. ‘Someone else was here yesterday asking about him.’

Something cold and heavy settles in my stomach.

‘Who?’ Rafa asks.

‘I don’t know; I wasn’t working. I overheard a couple of nurses talking about it this morning.’ She sighs. ‘Everyone here knows Jude’s a bit of a sore point for me…’

‘What did they tell them?’

‘The only thing they could have known was that he was in Hobart. There’s nothing else to tell.’

Rafa helps me up.

‘Thanks,’ I say. And I mean it.

‘I need to get back to work.’ Mandy hesitates at the door. ‘Tell Jude I said hi, okay?’

When she’s gone, Rafa and I look at each other for a long moment. And then he picks me up and swings me around. The room spins: a rush of carpet, the cracked beige couch, the discoloured heart on the poster.

‘He’s alive,’ he says in my ear. His relief and joy flow into mine, fierce and intense. He sets me down, takes an uneven breath, his green eyes vivid.

‘Let’s go get your brother.’

WAKING

At the hotel, Maggie hugs me tightly.

‘Oh my god, Gaby…’

I couldn’t tell them; Rafa had to.

Jason sinks to the bed, drops his head. Maggie gives me one last squeeze and sits with him. She puts her arm around his waist, rests her head on his shoulder. Rafa stares out the window, his broad shoulders framed by the dull sky. A pigeon walks along the ledge outside. It cocks its head at its reflection, pecks at the glass. I sit on the other end of the bed, buzzing. Still incapable of forming a coherent sentence.

My thoughts crash over each other: he’s alive. Jude, living, breathing, grieving. We could shift and be with him in seconds. But which Jude? And which version of me has he been mourning?

Finally, Jason wipes his face. ‘So, we’re going to Constitution Dock?’

‘You know it?’ Rafa asks.

‘I was in Hobart ten years ago to meet with a priest who had some unorthodox theories on fallen angels.’

‘Think you can guide the shift?’

Jason stands up. ‘I’ll try.’

‘Then let’s go. We’re already a day behind whoever else is looking for him.’

I stand. It takes a second for feeling to come back into my legs.

‘It’s always cool in Hobart, even this time of year,’ Maggie says. She opens the wardrobe and pulls out a familiar cherry-coloured scarf from her suitcase. It takes me a second to place it: the last time I saw it, it was half-finished, hanging over the chair in her room the night Taya kidnapped her.