The next morning, as he pulled on his trackies for an early morning walk, Darryl felt brighter somehow. And when Susannah came in with Max, he had the water bowl handy and whispered to Rosie – “Latte, extra strong.”
“How are you?”
She motioned to the empty chair beside her and began.
“What’s happening today?”
“Same old, same old.”
“I could help, Darryl. I did some waitressing, way back, when I was in uni, but really, I can’t stay on my feet for long. What I thought was, I could give you a hand in running the café behind the scenes. Doing the ordering, organising, that sort of thing.”
“That sounds wonderful. I couldn’t afford much though.”
“Shall we give it a try, then? I’m not doing much else.”
***
They were getting into quite a rhythm, the two of them. When the café closed, they would walk on the beach in the dusk, silently and companionably, as the screaming lorikeets in the Norfolk pines made taking impossible. Then have G and Ts on his deck. If sometimes she had three or four, Darryl put it down to numbing the pain she told him she still felt in her back and legs. She was a lot of fun to be around and he found himself caring about what he wore. He was actually ironing his shirts these days.
On the nights when he visited his son, Susannah went home, but there came a time when she asked whether she could accompany him to the hospital. He wasn’t quite sure how to respond, so he reluctantly agreed.
After the gleaming automatic doors closed behind them, the long walk down the corridor made Susannah flinch.
“Are you alright?”
“Just brings back memories, that’s all. I never wanted to see this place again.”
“You didn’t have to come.”
“But I wanted to. It’s fine.”
The bewildering array of buttons and the respirator kept labouring as usual, in, out, in, out, saw a cloud come over Darryl’s face as he took Mark’s pale hand and squeezed it, just like he always did. Susannah stood, unsure, near the wall.
“Take a seat.” He pulled across one of the chairs. They sat there for some minutes listening to the soft whirr of the machines.
“I usually sing.”
“Go on, Darryl.”
He started a Bon Jovi song, but couldn’t quite remember all the words.
“We’ve got to hold on…” Susannah filled in…”to what we’ve got…we’ve got each other and that’s a lot” …Whoah Oh…Livin on a Prayer”
“Darryl, I think we’ve missed our calling. We should have been in a band.”
They started laughing and then abruptly stopped, as though they were in church. The figure in the bed remained silent and motionless.
Theresa, the night nurse, popped her head around the door, smiling as always.
“Everything OK?”
Darryl nodded. She came in and checked his chart, looked briefly at Susannah, and left.
They sat there, watching over Mark, for what seemed to her a long time. Susannah cleared her throat.
“How long has he been here, I mean, like this?”
“Huh? Sorry, what did you say?”
“I said, how long…”
“Oh, sorry. Six months.”
She shivered.
“I must have been here at the same time, then.”
“And you were a bit luckier”.
He wasn’t sure what came over her face then – it almost looked like guilt. Or was it something else? Something he didn’t know about. Perhaps it would be too much of a coincidence they might have been victims of the same drunk driver. The last six gruelling months were still a blur still for Darryl. He had spent that time in a fog of incomprehension – one day just melted into another – anger, pain and a frenzy of hope that Mark would survive. He was surviving, but barely. And was it even survival?
