A Question of Sanity:Chapter One A

Chapter One

Ellie was tired. Her head swam and her feet ached. No, she decided, to swim was too energetic a verb. Her brain floundered against a rock pool of inertia and she was just plum fucked.

It had been one of those long days that everybody moans about on a Wednesday but in her job, it didn’t matter much what day it was. Being her own boss was a juxtaposition of self-imposed perks and self-administered regimentation. She worked herself harder than any employer could, and had she been a sado-masochistic she would have the perfect case to take herself to a tribunal.  But today was different from the norm. She hadn’t been working on her book, instead she’d been on a date with her mortality. But the relationship had floundered when her mortality announced that her time was up—or at least the countdown had begun. ‘How long does it take to die? She’d asked him. And he replied that it only took a heartbeat. Today a man in crisp white coat had told her that she was going to die. She’d laughed—bitterly and cried—bitterly and had bitterly wanted to smash his face in—but it wasn’t his fault, she’d thought—bitterly. She was done being bitter.

 She locked the car and wondered who had called. The gate was open and she knew that she’d closed it properly on leaving.

A white envelope lay on the mat. She winced as she bent to pick it up, but forgot her pain as she turned the letter in her hands. It had no stamp, bore a printed address label and had been hand delivered.

Inside was a sheet of simple notepaper, folded once widthways. Centralised on it, was a single typed sentence.

It said, Better the devil you know.

Jake whined from behind the kitchen door. He’d been locked up since nine-thirty that morning. She felt guilty—there was too much to feel guilty about.

She went into the kitchen and struggled to make her way to the back door with the German shepherd dancing around her body and jumping up, his big paws knocked her off balance and she had to grab at the unit to steady herself. Ellie crooned and spoke to him softly telling him that it was all right, but it wasn’t all right. Soon she was going to leave him, forever. But Jake’s grasp on the world only extended as far as the next minute, he jumped and wagged and chuffed, happy to know that he was a ‘good boy’. Ellie managed to turn the key with stiff fingers and the excited dog shot to freedom.

She watched him and loved him and her emotions threatened to overthrow her composure until she lay on the ground beating her fists into the floor and howling like a child at the unfairness of it all. The unfairness of it all meant that she would struggle to get to the ground. And if she beat her fists they would shatter. And if she howled, there was a good chance that the blood vessels in her throat would rupture. That was the unfairness of it all.  Her phone rang and she went into the study to answer it. The day had broken her and her footsteps were faltering and uncooperative. Over the coming months she would need communication access in every room. She’d didn’t use voice reactor, which worked via Masternet without the need of a receiving device. She had it, but preferred to use a telephone, the way her parents had. She picked up on the eleventh ring but was too late to take the call, it terminated as she spoke into the receiver. Two steps back towards the kitchen and it rang again. This time she caught it on the second ring.

‘Hello?’

After a pause, she heard rapid breathing.

‘Hello?’ she repeated. The called disconnected.

‘Bloody hell,’ she swore aloud, ‘wouldn’t you think they’d have the manners to explain if it’s a wrong number?

While Ellie was making a cup of coffee, feeding the dog and fixing a sandwich for her, Jake came in from the garden and dropped his rubber ring. He looked up at her, wagging his tail, convinced that she was going to stop everything for an instant game of fetch. He smelled his food, and the ring game went out of his head in a heartbeat—the length of time it took for a life to end. The abandoned toy lay at Ellie’s feet, perfectly positioned to trip her—something else she was going to have to be more aware of in the future. Jake gave two curt barks. She grinned and put his food down, patting him on his head as his nose connected with the dish and he gorged.

So often these days she couldn’t be bothered to fix a proper meal. Tonight, she was enervated and couldn’t eat at all; the sandwich lay untouched even though her stomach reminded her that it hadn’t been fed since breakfast, some ten and a half hours earlier. The soaps would be starting after the early evening news. Her routine meant that the day’s work and household chores were finished by now and she and Jake would curl up together on the sofa while Ellie watched television to unravel. Tonight, the artificial lives of the soap stars held no interest for her. All she could concentrate on were the same three words, in the same order, which circled her mind in the same direction.

Tay-Sachs disease.

TSD had been around for a long time and was traced back to East European fur traders, way back in seventy AD. It wasn’t a new condition. She deserved top marks for originality, typical writer, she thought, always going for the dramatic angle. She couldn’t have a normal bout of bloody terminal cancer, oh no, she had to go for Tay-bloody-Sachs disease, which is not only extremely bloody rare, but virtually bloody unheard of in adults. Although TSD in children is a rare disorder, it’s well documented and there are guidelines and procedures to follow. Her consultant told her that adult onset TSD is obscure and difficult to treat. ‘Well fuck me sideways for being a Diva,’ she said into the emptiness of the room and felt guilty for swearing, but at least she’d behaved at the hospital. In her own home she could meltdown if she chose to, and even if she didn’t.

If her thoughts were audible, the bitterness and anger would’ve singed the atmosphere leaving the acrid smell of burning fury. The test results were only for the purpose of formally making an appointment for death to take her dancing. The consultants had been almost certain of the diagnosis at her previous appointment. Ellie had done all of her crying in the three weeks previously. She had lamented with the traditional ‘Why me?’ and had pouted at the unfairness of it. But although she’d bitterly grieved the loss of her right to the menopause, senility and toothless old-age dotage, she hadn’t come to terms with her condition. And she hadn’t accepted that she was going to die. She hadn’t run out of fucking swear words to fit her mood, and she was not about to give up and become a case study in the first textbook.

Her mind took her past the people she would leave. It went beyond the fact that she had between six months and five years left to live. It skimmed over the painful treatments and changes that she was going to have to accept and endure. It took her to a place that she scurried to in a compulsion to make sense of it. Whenever she thought of her illness, she focused her thoughts on writing. The formation of the recurring thoughts was irrational and she laughed at herself as she analysed them. She felt tears threatening as she thought of all the words that she wouldn’t have time to write. She had six novels in rough synopsis waiting, scraps of jotted notes outlining the stories that she had to give birth to, characters and plots, twists and one-liners. Six books, which may never be written, and may never be read. She worried about her last book, the one that would be left incomplete. The only way to avoid that part-written book would be to finish the current one while she was fit enough, and not begin another. She had to write. Not writing was another way to die. As the thought that she might be too sick to write crept in among all the other thoughts, she swore. She would always be able to write, and if she couldn’t she’d hire somebody to write for her. And if she couldn’t tell them what to write, then she’d be ready to die.

Ellie concentrated on thoughts of her writing because thinking about life would hurt too much. She couldn’t let herself worry about the day that she’d leave Jake and her boyfriend, Matthew High, or indeed her mother. Those were things that would hurt too much to think about. So, for now, until her nightmares forced her to think those thoughts, she concentrated on how much the loss of her writing would mean. That was good, that was safe, it was very nearly bearable.

Ellie hadn’t told her mother. The greatest blight in Esther Erikson’s life was the fact that her clematis was smothering the honeysuckle, and that laxatives were up five Bitcoins at Mark’s and Spencer Online. Esther was unfathomable, she lived in a world that Ellie didn’t like to intrude on very often. It was best left.

Although her boyfriend, Matt, knew about her condition, she hadn’t been honest with him about the result date. She hadn’t lied to him, but when he thought that she wasn’t at the hospital until the day after her appointment, she never bothered to correct him. The guilt she felt was an extra encumbrance. She’d never deceived him until now and the act sickened her. Matt’s anguish was smothering and this day was always going to be hard without having to cope with his pain.

The phone rang. As she was sitting right next to the lounge extension she picked it up before it had finished its first ring. Her thoughts must have been guilty of tweaking Matt’s concern.

‘Hello, gorgeous. How’s you?’