The Aftermath by Gail Schimmel (books to read in a lifetime txt) 📗

if I really didn’t remember anything, I’d be a lot better. And my mother must’ve answered my questions because I know the answers – I know what happened and I know where that left us. Or I think I do. And there were some things she’d have to have told me, like about my dad.

When I was about thirteen I got very depressed, and I started binge eating and vomiting. My mother sat me down one morning and said that she knew I was unhappy, and she knew it was probably her fault. She said that maybe I needed to talk to someone ‘more present’ than she was, and obviously more present than my dad was. Those were her words. And then she found me my first therapist, and she came to the first session with me. In the first session she said, ‘Julia is unhappy and I can’t help her,’ and she told the therapist about The Accident as if it was something she’d read about in a magazine.

The therapist (who was very good – my mother had done her research and found the best) said, ‘Why do you feel that you can’t help Julia, Helen?’

And my mother said, in this flat, bored voice, ‘Because I am profoundly, pathologically depressed. There’s nothing anyone can do for me, but maybe you can stop me from damaging Julia.’ And then she stood up and walked out as if she’d just mentioned what she was making for supper.

For a moment the therapist looked at the door. Then she turned to me.

‘How does hearing that make you feel, Julia?’ she said, and we were away.

But since then we haven’t talked about it. Not about The Accident and certainly not about my mother’s so-called depression. And not about the fact that she loves me enough to protect me from herself. Not about that either.

‘Did you tell him about Dad?’ she says now.

‘I told him,’ I say.

She nods, as if ticking something off a list. Then she really throws a curveball. No, two.

‘Why don’t you bring Daniel to lunch on Sunday?’ she says. ‘The sooner I meet him, the better.’

And as I’m reeling from that – probably the most proactive thing she’s done since I moved out – she adds the punch.

‘I’m going to see Dad tomorrow and I’ll tell him your news . . . but maybe we can go back together on Sunday after lunch, and Daniel can meet him too.’

Helen

After The Accident, after that terrible, endless, nightmarish time while we were trapped in the car – a time I can never forget as hard as I try, a time that used to make me wake several times a week with tears streaming down my cheeks – after that time, they took me to hospital and they sedated me. I don’t blame them: I was hysterical.

When I came around, they explained to me what had happened – like I could ever forget, like I didn’t know. And they told me that Mike was paralysed and brain damaged and that while he might survive and could possibly live without life support he was, to all intents and purposes, brain dead.

I was barely injured – only superficially. The truck had hit the car from the front, on the driver’s side. It somehow missed me. I was badly bruised and scraped all over my body, and I had a cut on my head that necessitated shaving part of my hair and stitching me, and my muscles were very stiff from straining and not being able to move for so long. My right ankle was swollen and it would be some time before I could easily put weight on it. So they wheeled me – at my insistence – to where Mike was. And then they left me there, the nurse saying that she would be right outside the door, but maybe I needed time alone with him.

I took his hand in mine. It was completely limp, and I held it in both my hands, leaning forward in my wheelchair. And I told him what had happened – everything the doctors had told me when I’d woken up, everything I remembered, every terrible thing inside me. And then I leant my head against his side, and I wept. And while I was crying, drenching the sheets so badly they would have to change them, I felt Mike’s hand squeeze mine. And when I looked up, his eyes were closed and his face was immobile, but his cheeks were wet with tears.

That’s how I know Mike is alive inside that body. That’s why I insisted he be kept on life support at the beginning – despite all sorts of people telling me it might be kinder to turn it off – and that’s why, when he was finally able to live without the support, I tried to nurse him at home.

It didn’t work though. Even though I’m a nurse, and a good one. It was too hard. Mike needed twenty-four-hour nursing, and I had to work. And Julia was upset and frightened by Mike. I tried to help her see him as her dad, just different, but she wouldn’t go near him. She’d been through so much, lost so much – and I wasn’t looking after Mike well. Eventually I conceded defeat and we moved him to the best long-term care facility that I could find. I sold our house, and Julia and I moved into a smaller house, so between that and our insurance, we could afford the care. In the beginning, I visited daily, and took Julia once a week. But even that was too hard, and eventually I started visiting less, although I always took Julia once a week. I never again spoke to Mike about those terrible hours trapped in the car on a dark abandoned highway. I never spoke to anyone about it. So there are things Julia doesn’t know, things she can never understand about me.

But I still speak to