Broken

He was sitting on his own when I arrived, at the back of the TV room in a green velvet armchair, biting the insides of his lips together. I stood looking through the glass panel of the door, holding the supermarket carrier bag filled with things I had bought on the way over: a couple of magazines and a chocolate bar, the pair of socks he had asked for plus a book he had left by his bed with the bookmark still in place. Nothing in the bag would fix this, but it would be a way to start a conversation, to try and push some reason through the paper-thin crack that still existed between him and the world outside. In the corridor, a young woman in a pink tracksuit was collecting leaflets from the shelves by the front porch and as she got nearer her eyes set themselves on the bag in my hand. I knew she would ask me. She had asked me yesterday.

‘That your bag?’ I smiled and nodded.

‘What’s in it?’

‘erm, some shopping and a book.’

‘I’ll have it’ and she held out a plump, chapped hand expecting the bag.

‘You can’t have it, Gina, it belongs to me. It’s my bag.’ And I held it close to me hoping that would be enough to dissuade her. It wasn’t.

‘I’ll have it’ she said again and held out the same hand towards me. I didn’t know what to say so we stood in that pose for a few seconds.

‘You like hot chocolate?’ she asked, narrowing her round brown eyes.

‘Yes, I like hot chocolate.’

‘I’ll make you one’ and she headed off towards the kitchen.

In the kitchen I could see John had settled himself at the table with a newly liberated plant from the garden clutched to his chest. He was only wearing a T-shirt and a pair of highly polished black leather shoes.

I wanted to leave, but my brother had seen me and for a second he was the old him as he smiled and waved at me to come in. The TV room was quiet, only my brother was sitting by the window at the far end of the room and nearer to the door two people were watching Coronation Street on an old Philips Widescreen with the volume muted. A middle-aged man in baggy corduroy trousers and a grubby knitted jumper was rocking on the edge of the sofa, his face craning towards the screen of the television. His carer was sitting in an armchair by the door and she looked up as I came in and smiled in that plain diffusing way they must have to practise. My brother was being checked every fifteen minutes.

I tried to start a conversation about something that wouldn’t remind us of why we were here, but all I could see were the purple marks around his neck. He hadn’t been allowed a mirror in the hospital, but he kept rubbing absently at the bruise and we were all numbly fixated by it. I told him about my day at work and he looked through the bag as I blathered on about anything I could remember doing since breakfast. He told me they’d confiscated his razor. I nodded and tried to smile, but I couldn’t manage it.

There were no words to say sorry for what he had done and he must have known that because he never tried to apologise.

Our family had exploded into shrapnel overnight. There wasn’t hope or faith or trust, just jagged edges of pain to be picked out and examined between ourselves. No one consulted Jesus, after all, where had he been when we needed him? Some might have said he was there when we needed him the most that he alone had saved. We saw it differently; we were of the school that wanted salvation before pain. I know now that it doesn’t work like that, but still I pressed my clammy palms together and made silent promises into the dark. I couldn’t close my eyes for too long as the nightmare was always rewound and ready to play over, but I prayed and prayed until I had to eventually give in to sleep, sleep that was a dark clawing beast to be battled until morning. I woke tearful and startled every day for weeks and always had to wipe my face on my pillow before I got up. Everyone was doing the same of course, but we’d never admit it for fear of knowing we were all as broken as each other.

He went to hospital for a week. To escape, to clear his head, to get him to admit to needing someone’s help. He was stubborn and morose, refused to talk. We were furious and tormented, but let the doctors do their work. My father was worst as he couldn’t admit there was anything wrong either and carried on in his bubble of denial, blaming my mother and me and aging ten years in a matter of weeks. His hair was white fluff and the beer belly we loved to pat had become nothing but baggy jumpers, his eyes sank on to his cheeks in large dark circles. I grieved for my Daddy, wished him back to the constant omnipotent force he had always been in my life.

Meanwhile, my mother dissolved into the house, diluted by this family trauma and the obvious decline of everyone around her. She became a ghost in the kitchen, tidying, cleaning, and preparing meals that were never eaten. Her nerves seemed to fall from her, scattering the house and showering the cats in jittery embraces. Her aging didn’t propel her to the same realms as Dad, but pulled her back to childhood with twisting crone-like fingers. Again she was small, frightened and on the brink of losing everything. Her voice wavered liltingly and her eyes dripped into hot black Earl Grey.

As for me, I was alright. Sworn to secrecy, I had to carry on and forget sympathy. This was not to be spoken about. To anyone. Do you understand? But why Dad? But why? We dissected everything amongst ourselves, cried and shouted at each other, pointed shaking fingers of blame and deceived ourselves with anything worth using as a cloak.

And I hated him for a time. How utterly selfish. I wanted to punch him right in the middle of his insolent unfeeling face. The defiant and self-righteous little bastard, what was he playing at? Hadn't he thought of us at all? Then one look at him and I wanted to carry him away, wrap him up and take him back to our childhood, to sunny days in the garden, Saturday morning television and our cosy little world of make believe. Can he remember that? Doesn’t he know who I am? Can’t he feel anything anymore? It’s the medication, it flat lines emotion, so he can only feel somewhere in the middle, somewhere safe and smooth.

I had always been one of those people that felt I could never forgive the selfishness of an act like that. Whenever there were news stories about someone jumping from a bridge or a cliff or swallowing down four tubs of sleeping tablets, I’d leap up from the sofa declaring the victim a self-obsessed c-word and raging at the stupidity of it. I also had absolute confidence that no one in my family would ever put me in the situation where I would have to test that non-forgiveness. I suppose no one expects it, not even the person doing it. I remember the policewoman standing with me in our hall at five that morning as I stood, teeth chattering in shock and indignation trying to understand why there were paramedics upstairs. I couldn’t cry to begin with, but later I couldn’t stop myself. Driving to the hospital I sobbed my heart out as Coldplay’s ‘Fix You’ started to play. And I didn’t want to speak to anyone. I felt breakable, as if the tiniest nudge would shatter me.