I shook my head. I wasn’t used to lying to him, not even when I was a moody teenager. It was a miracle I even made it this far without telling him about the cancer, being introduced to The Collective, and releasing the plague.
Sooner or later he would have found my letters and discovered the truth.
I wiped my face with a tissue, blew my nose and tried to look as normal as possible, when Ruby entered my sphere of vision.
“Your dinner’s on the table, sweetie. Could you bring your plate over here?”
Walking with her all the way to the dining room was another impossible challenge for my weakening body. I was hoping that Darlene would forgive me for the sandy footsteps Ruby was leaving behind. But it wouldn’t take that long for Darlene to stop caring about the house being tidy.
“Where’s Grampa?” Ruby asked as soon as she sat down next to me, a plate of spaghetti Bolognese balanced on her knees.
“Lying down, he wasn’t feeling well. He’ll be ok tomorrow.”
“We named you Constance, because you’ve become the constant of our lives.”
I don’t know why Dad’s words came back to me. It could have been because soon I wouldn’t be anybody’s constant anymore. Dad would become the safe harbour and loyal companion to Ruby and to others. I envied them. I’d had him all to myself for almost twenty seven years, but it wasn’t enough. I wanted at least twice as much. More, even.
I focused on reading aloud Ruby’s favourite books. She was ecstatic that she didn’t have to take a bath even though she’d spent the day running around outside, and put a finger to her lips in a conspiratory gesture, promising to keep the secret from Grampa, who would have definitely chased her into the bathroom. Her laughter rang through the house like a bell and I laughed with her, not out of happiness, but to hide just how much I longed to succumb to the despair eating me from the inside.
By some miracle I crawled to the bed on all four and turned it into a game of sloths, which Ruby awarded with another round of laughter. She changed into her pyjamas while I drank an enormous dosage of cough syrup. Then she settled next to me and I was thanking the heavens that, despite being robbed of so many things, I was blessed with another evening when I could watch my daughter fall asleep.
I could have looked at the calm little face and two half-moons of long thick eye lashes until dawn, but sleep took me.
Frank
The door closed behind me, but I still couldn’t block out the voices coming from the living room. Connie was somehow keeping it together and talking to Ruby. I had to cover my ears to block their voices out, because listening to the two talking to each other was unbearably crushing.
The current nightmare was suddenly replaced by a twenty-three year old memory of picking up my inconsolable four year old daughter from the police after my wife had died. I could still remember the helplessness I felt, looking into Connie’s broken face. I couldn’t bear to see her suffering and wondered desperately how to explain to her that she wouldn’t see her Mum again.
I put together an explanation that only a small child would believe. Connie nodded, her eyes were huge and glinting with tears. She promised she understood what I was saying. And yet, every half an hour she would ask: Where’s Mummy? Evenings had been the worst. For months on end she would wake up in tears. I wasn’t any better. We’d started falling asleep in the same bed, and staying in it until morning, despite child psychologists’ advice not to. Didn’t they understand the need for another person’s presence, the solace it could bring when words simply weren’t enough?
Who could have known that I’d have to go through the same thing again with my granddaughter while my daughter was on her deathbed?
I couldn’t stay in the bedroom all by myself. Not after I’d just found out that my time with Connie is so limited. I took one of the various armchairs from the living room that fit through the door frame and pushed it all the way to my daughter’s bedroom. It creaked but neither of them woke up.
I sat with them the whole night, like a guardian watching over his wards. I was falling asleep just to be woken by my own dreams, Ruby shifting on the bed, or Connie coughing. The cough was getting weaker and weaker, turning into a quiet crackle.
How long would she be able to breathe effectively? What if she didn’t make it to the morning? The thought terrified me so much that I let out an involuntary howl.
Connie opened her eyes. “Dad?” she said, which I only knew because of her moving lips. There was no sound coming out of her besides a small hiss.
She coughed and I flinched, but not as much as she did. Even just listening to the sound, it was clear that this simple action caused her a lot of pain.
“Do you remember what it was like when your Mum died? How unhappy you were, crying all the time?”
She nodded.
“When you’re not here, your daughter will suffer just as much as you did. Is there a way to change it?” I pleaded. “Can’t you do something? Get these people to give you a vaccine?”
“I can’t, Dad,” she wheezed; her voice totally destroyed by the incessant coughing. “This was the only way… to save you both.”
I didn’t want to torture her anymore, I knew there was no point in rebuking her for anything. But desperate times call for desperate
