What Came Before He Shot Her

            On the second floor, Joel stopped at another desk. A male nurse looked up from a computer terminal. He said, “Telly room, Joel,” and went back to work.

            They walked along a lino-floored corridor, where rooms opened to the left and windows ran along the right. Like those on the floors below, the windows were covered with bars. They had the same Venetian blinds as well, the sort that declared “Institution” by their width, their lopsided angles of repose, and the amount of dust gathered on them.

            Kendra took in everything as she followed her nephew. She’d never been inside this place. On the rare occasions when she’d come to see Carole, she’d met her outside because the weather had been fine. She wished the weather had been fine today: unseasonably warm and a good excuse for further avoidance.

            The television room was at the end of the corridor. When Joel opened the door, the smells assailed them. Someone had been playing with the radiators, and the blazing heat that resulted from this was melding together the odours of unwashed bodies, soiled nappies, and collective bad breath. Toby stopped just beyond the threshold, then his body stiffened as he backed into Kendra. The rank odour was acting like smelling salts on him, pulling him from the safety of his mind directly back to reality. It was present time and present place for him now, and Toby looked over his shoulder as if considering flight. Kendra pushed him gently into the room. “’S okay,” she told him. But she couldn’t blame him for his hesitation. She wanted to hesitate herself.

            No one looked their way. A golf tournament was on the television, and several people sat before it, eyes glued to the limited action provided by that sport. At one card table, four others worked upon a large jigsaw puzzle while at another, two ancient ladies were hanging over what looked like an old wedding album. Three other people—two men and one woman—were doing nothing more than shuffling along the wall, while in a corner a wheelchair-bound person of indeterminate sex was calling out weakly, “Gotta have a piss, God damn it,” and going ignored. On the wall above the wheelchair, a poster hung, printed with, “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.” On the floor next to it sat a long-haired girl, silently weeping.

            One person in the room was given to industry, on her hands and knees, scrubbing the floor. She was just beyond the jigsaw puzzle table, working from the corner of the room. She had no bucket, no broom, no mop, no sponge to assist her in her endeavour, just her bare knuckles, which she swept repeatedly in an arc on the lino floor. Joel recognised their mother from the ginger of her hair, which was similar to his own. He said to his aunt, “There she is,” and he tugged Toby in her direction.

            “She’s Cleanin’ Caro today,” one of the jigsaw ladies said as they approached. “Going to make things nice ’n’ tidy, she is. Caro! You got company, luv.”

            One of the jigsaw companions put in, “Wearing out the bloomin floor’s more like it. And tell her to do summick about your brother’s nose.”

            Joel inspected Toby. Kendra did the same. The little boy’s upper lip was slick and shiny. Kendra searched in her bag for the tissue or handkerchief that she did not have, while Joel looked round the room for something to clean Toby up with. There was nothing to hand, so he was reduced to using his shirttail, which he then tucked into his jeans. Kendra went to the kneeling figure of Carole Campbell and tried to remember when last she’d seen her. Months and months ago, it had to be. Or perhaps even longer, in spring the previous year because of the flowers, the weather, and the fact that they had met out of doors. Since then, Kendra had always been too busy. Scores of projects and dozens of obligations had sufficed to keep her away from this place. Joel squatted next to his mother. He said, “Mum? Brought you a magazine t’day. Me and Toby and Aunt Ken here. Mum?”

            Carole Campbell continued her useless swiping, making large semicircles against the dull green floor. Joel eased forward and laid the copy of Elle  before her. “Brought you this,” he said. “It’s brand new, Mum.”

            It was also a little the worse for wear, rolled up while they were walking from the station. Its edges curled upward as they headed towards dog-eared, and a handprint marred the cover girl’s face. But it was enough to make Carole stop her cleaning. She gazed at the magazine and her fingers went to her own face, touching those features that made her what she was: a mixture of Japanese, Irish, and Egyptian. She compared herself—uncared for, unclean—to the flawless creature who was pictured. Then she looked at Joel and from him to Kendra. Toby, sheltered at Joel’s side, tried to make himself small.

            “Where’s my Aero?” Carole asked. “I’m meant to have an orange Aero, Joel.”

            “Here it is, Carole.” Hastily, Kendra brought it out of the bag. “The boys got it for you at WH Smith when they picked out the Elle.”

            Carole ignored her, the chocolate forgotten, lost in another thought.

            “Where’s Ness?” she asked, and she looked around the room. Her eyes were grey-green and they appeared unfocused. She seemed caught somewhere in the netherland, between complete sedation and incurable ennui.

            “She di’n’t want to come,” Toby said. “She bought a Hello!  with Aunt Ken’s money, so I di’n’t get a chocolate bar, Mum. If you don’ want the Aero, c’n—”

            “They keep asking me,” Carole cut in. “But I won’t.”

            “Won’t what?” Joel asked.

            “Do their bloody puzzles.” She jerked her head at the table where the jigsaw puzzle was being assembled, and she added slyly, “It’s a test. They think I don’t realise that, but I do. They want to know what’s going on in my sub . . . my sub con scious, and that’s how they intend to find out, so I won’t work on the puzzles. I say that if they want to know what’s in my head, why don’t they ask me directly? Why don’t I get to see a doctor? Joel, I’m meant to see the doctor once a week. Why don’t I get to see  him?” Her voice had grown louder and she clutched her magazine to her chest. Next to him, Joel felt Toby start to tremble. He looked to Kendra for some sort of rescue, but she was gazing at his mother as if she were a laboratory specimen.

            “I want to see the doctor,” Carole cried. “I’m meant  to see him. I know my rights.”

            “You saw him yesterday, Caro,” the first jigsaw lady informed her.

            “Just like you always do. Once a week.”

            Carole’s face clouded. On it flickered an expression so like Toby’s when he was gone from them that both Kendra and Joel drew an unsteady breath. Carole said, “Then I want to go home. Joel, I want you to speak to your father. You must do it straightaway. He’ll listen to you and you must tell him—”

            “Gavin’s dead, Carole,” Kendra told her sister-in-law. “You understand that, don’t you? He’s been dead four years.”

            “Ask him may I come home, Joel. It won’t happen again. I understand things now. I didn’t then. There was just too much. . . up here. . . Too much. . . Too much. . . Too much...” She had taken the magazine and was tapping it against her forehead. Once, twice. And then harder each time she said “Too much.”

            Joel looked to Kendra for some kind of rescue, but Kendra was out too far beyond her depth. The only rescue she could come up with was getting clear of this place as soon as possible before irreparable damage was done. Not that irreparable damage hadn’t already been done. But she suddenly wanted no more of it, no further visitation on either her or the children from fate, karma, predestination, or whatever else you wanted to call it.

            Although he couldn’t have expressed it in words, Joel understood from his aunt’s expression, her posture, and her silence that he would have to go this visit with his mother alone. There wasn’t a single nurse or orderly in the room to come to their aid, and even if there had been, Carole wasn’t harming herself. And it had been made clear from the very first time she’d ended up in this place that unless a patient meant to do harm to her body, there was no one to save her from the worst of herself.

            He sought a distraction. “Toby’s birthday’s comin, Mum. He’ll be eight years old. I haven’t worked out what to get him yet cos I don’t have much money, but I got a little. Summick like eight quid dat I been saving. I ’as thinkin maybe Gran would send money, an’ I’d be able to—”

            His mother grabbed his arm. “Speak to your father,” she hissed.

            “Swear you’ll speak to your father. I’m meant to come home. Do you understand me?” She pulled Joel closer to her and he caught her smell: unwashed woman and unwashed hair. He tried very hard not to jerk away.

            Toby, on the other hand, felt no such compunction. He backed away from Joel and into his aunt,