Just in Case (20 page)
Authors: Meg Rosoff
At the hospital there were other noises: muffled voices, the clanking of trolleys, the ringing of bells – all refined into something neutral and reassuring, a gentle bubbling as pleasant as the sound of water over stones.
Only occasionally did the voices disturb him. His mother was the worst, always pushing him to respond. It seemed to mean so much to her. Why couldn’t she just leave him alone? Couldn’t she see how happy he was? He didn’t want to come out and play.
Justin.
The voice again. It hurt his head to listen, and he lapsed back into the warm drift of the turquoise sea.
Justin?
Go away.
You seem perkier today. Perhaps you’d like to consider a special offer? One day only: clouds, pearly gates, vestal virgins, soft music, eternal happiness.
LA-LA-LA-LA-LA. I’m not listening.
You don’t fool me. I can hear you think.
Who are you?
That’s better.
I
asked a question.
You know who I am. I’m the source of all your misery and all your delight, your choreographer, your master of ceremonies. I’ve waltzed you in and out of danger, but now I’m afraid we’ve run out of entertainments. It’s time to finish the job.
I don’t want to be finished and I’m not a job.
What’s wrong with a little closure? You might enjoy getting to the end.
By ‘the end’, I presume you mean dead?
Aren’t you curious?
No.
Perhaps you’re enjoying yourself too much as you are?
I’ve been in worse places.
You certainly have.
Whose fault is that?
Now there’s an interesting question, whose fault indeed?
Let me guess.
I do broad strokes, Justin. The detail is your department.
Broad strokes, how? Like crashing a DC-
IO
on to a sixpence where I’m supposed to be standing?
Yes. You extricated yourself admirably, I thought.
Oh did I? An admirable gibbering wreck, am I?
Shit happens, as they say in America. What about all the nice things I’ve done for you?
Like?
Like Peter and Dorothea. Where would you be without them?
You did that for me, did you?
In a manner of speaking. Let’s just say certain relationships would not have occurred had you not found yourself in this predicament.
Great trade-off. How can I ever thank you?
What about Agnes?
What about her?
She did quite nicely with your rites of passage.
Nicely for whom? It was a disaster.
I see. So the good things are all your own device, the bad all mine?
Sounds about right.
I don’t think you understand me at all.
Ditto. I’m going to sleep.
You are asleep. But before you go, I need your signature on this simple form. There is absolutely no risk, you pay nothing up front, and if you are not totally satisfied –
Yes, what if I’m not?
Ah, but you will be.
Justin?
Justin?
Pleasant dreams.
56
On Christmas Eve, Justin was settled into a busy ward. It was hoped that the increased activity might encourage his return to consciousness. Peter and Dorothea arrived by train at mid-afternoon and walked the ten minutes from station to hospital through dirty grey streets. All around them people bustled with last-minute shopping, bad-tempered and resentful at the exigencies of the giving season.
At the hospital, Peter’s talent for invisibility proved more useful than ever. He had a way of slipping in quietly to sit with his friend when everyone else had gone home, or gone to lunch, or simply become bored and wandered off. Sometimes he brought a book. Other times he just stared into space thinking, or talked quietly to Justin, or to himself.
He wondered about Boy, searched for him every night when he went home. Dorothea hadn’t seen him either.
‘Your dog’s missing again, Justin. I don’t want you to worry, that’s not why I’m telling you. It’s just that I get the feeling he needs you to exist. Needs you conscious, that
is.’ Peter paused. ‘I wish you could see Dorothea’s portrait of you. She’s drawn you and Boy and Alice like some kind of secular holy family. It’s a very beautiful picture.’
And then, later, he whispered to his friend, ‘Try to remember what I said about bad science, Justin. Try to be careful.’
Dorothea arrived, bearing two cups of tea from the ward’s galley kitchen. She handed one to Peter and sat down, her face dark with frustration. ‘He doesn’t look any different,’ she said.
Peter nodded. ‘Maybe he’s thinking it all through.’
‘All
what?’
‘Who knows? Life and death, probably. Himself.’
‘This is no place to think. If he hangs around too long looking like that they’ll cart him off to the morgue. And it’ll serve him right too.’
Peter looked at his sister, at the stormy eyes and the querulous curve of her mouth. ‘I know,’ he said.
He rose to his feet and left her while he went outside to phone his mother. Dorothea sat gingerly on the edge of the chair beside Justin’s bed. She didn’t like to look at him. She didn’t like seeing him this way, his face drained of colour, his mouth slack. She tried to marshal the proper feelings of sympathy and compassion, but the longer she sat, the angrier she felt.
‘Justin?’ She poked his shoulder, not gently. ‘Stop thinking about yourself for a change. The answer isn’t in your head, it’s out here, with us.’
Dorothea?
She paused.
Dorothea?
‘What am I supposed to do? I won’t sit by your bed being all lovey-dovey trying to convince you not to be dead. It’s cheap, and it’s cowardly. And you’re better than that, at least I thought you were.’
Please don’t go.
‘You’re not even thinking about the rest of us, how we might feel. We need you to be alive, your dog needs you to be alive, you’ve got a brother. Your family’s distraught and it’s all your fault.’ Dorothea glowered, as a doctor with his band of registrars arrived for ward rounds. She stood up to go, then leant in close, fuming. ‘If you want to be dead so much, then bloody well be dead,’ she hissed. ‘But don’t expect me to cry at your funeral.’
She turned and stalked off.
57
Justin’s family celebrated Christmas morning in a hotel room near the hospital. It was a short celebration involving a hastily purchased plastic tree and a box full of gifts transported from Luton. Charlie unwrapped each present with careful deliberation, saving the large lumpy one with reindeer wrapping for last.
The hospital canteen featured a festive menu of turkey or ham, cranberry or bread sauce, sprouts or peas, chestnut or sage stuffing, and Christmas pudding with brandy butter or cream. Pushing trays around the low-ceilinged, tinsel-strung room were a mix of relatives and patients, junior staff, nurses, cleaners, and doctors without sufficient seniority to invoke holiday leave.
Charlie attracted a disproportionate amount of attention, in part because he was the only child in the canteen, and in part because of the oversized stuffed dog clamped firmly under one arm. His parents let him cruise from table to table, secure in the knowledge that eventually someone would send him back in their direction. He took
advantage of his freedom, accepting kind words and treats from around the room, then setting off to explore the kitchens, the loos, the supply cupboards, and finally the wards, where he graciously accepted chocolates from bored patients and other children’s grandparents, many of whom were happy to celebrate Christmas by feeding him sweets and engaging in predominantly one-sided conversations.
When he had eaten his fill, the little boy tottered off down the corridor to find his brother. He hadn’t been allowed to see him alone, but today he was determined. He wanted to thank him for his beautiful greyhound, and had something important to say to him as well.
It took some time to orientate himself in the maze of wards, but at last he found a familiar landmark, and another, and another. He launched himself rapidly along, lurching side-to-side as he ran.
He found his brother’s unresponsive figure at last, and though he was too young to understand about meningitis and comas, he had his own ideas of what was going on.
‘He’s just sleeping,’ his mother had said, ‘gone bye-byes.’
But the child thought,
Nobody sleeps through Christmas.
He stood staring for a long moment, then pressed his sticky mouth against Justin’s face. He stood that way for some time, breathing his soft child’s breath into his brother’s ear, and breathing, too, the thoughts he’d been forming, slowly and carefully, over the past week.
I like being in London, he whispered, I like the big red buses and the bouncy bed in the hotel and the big window I can look out of, but I don’t like the hospital because everyone here seems sick or sad and most of all I don’t like you lying here looking dead.
Justin’s foot twitched.
I’m sorry I started all this off by trying to fly and I’d take it back if I could but I can’t. So please think of it from my point of view: if you die I will have a dead brother and it will be me instead of you who suffers.
Justin thought of his brother on that warm summer day, standing on the window holding both their futures, light and changeable as air, in his outstretched arms.
Of course, he thought, I’m part of his fate just as he’s part of mine. I hadn’t considered it from his point of view. Or from the point of view of the universe, either. It’s just a playing held crammed with cause and effect, filled with billions of dominoes, each knocking over billions more, setting off trillions of actions every second. A butterfly flaps its wings in Africa and my brother in Luton thinks he can fly.
The child nodded. A piano might fall on your head, he said, but it also might not. And in the meantime you never know. Something nice might happen.
He put his warm hand on his brother’s cool, motionless one. I’m going now, said Charlie, they’ll be looking for me soon. But I’ll leave you my dog for company.
He’s your dog.
I know he is, but you can have him for now.
‘See you later,’ murmured the child, pressing his lips to his brother’s ear before setting off.
‘OK,’ Justin replied, weakly but distinctly. And then, with a good deal of effort, he opened his eyes to meet the deep black ones of his brother’s Christmas dog, soft wise eyes that blinked slowly back at him.
58
I feel a little sad, now it’s over. I enjoyed our game. It hardly ever fails.
Except, of course, when it does.
And that can be interesting too.
59
So what happened in the end?
This much we know: Justin and Agnes lived happily ever after. And sadly ever after. Sometimes at the same time. And not necessarily with each other. Till the very end of time.
Whenever that was.
In the meantime, Charlie learnt to fly. Dorothea fell in love. Peter discovered a new star. And a great number of things happened to Justin. Hundreds of millions of ordinary, unexpected, and occasionally quite astonishing things.
And that was his fate.
60
The view is fine from here. I can look down across the world and see everything.
For instance I can see you.
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