43
The machines did the breathing for Ronan as he lay in the hospital bed with his parents on one side and Dad and me facing them on the other.
‘No communication, no,’ said Mrs McCoy in answer to Dad. ‘He does open his eyes a wee bit sometimes but it’s likely just a reflex.’
‘And that’s been the way of it since he was taken in?’
Dad was asking all the questions because my speech seemed to be stunted. My eyes fixed on Ronan, hardly believing that the boy who had been soaring so high had taken such a plummet.
‘More or less,’ said Mr McCoy. ‘Well,more, since he hasn’t come round at all but sure … but sure we’ll see. The machines are keeping him going at the minute so he’ll have to stay on them for the time being until we see what’s what.’ He took a slow inhale and rushed it out as if to blast away the uncertainty. ‘So that was your last exam today, Brendan, all over now?’
‘Aye, that was the last one today, yeah, so they’re all over now,’ I said in one tone, apparently only capable of formingan answer by recycling words from the question I’d just been asked.
‘I’m sure that’s some relief?’ said Mrs McCoy with an encouraging nod as if she was begging me to be normal, to tell them something good, something distracting.
‘Yeah, it was definitely a relief for a while,’ I said, ‘but Mum and Dad only just told me about Ronan when I got home so … so I don’t know … em … I don’t know about “relief” anymore.’
There was a smouldering feeling inside that was working itself into a blaze. Everyone had kept me in the dark about Ronan’s condition for so long. How could they have let me just go to school and pretend like nothing was happening? I couldn’t make sense of how the hell I could have been sitting in an exam hall that morning and now I was sitting in a hospital room looking at my best friend on a life support machine.
‘Why didn’t anyone tell me before now?’ I burst out.
Mr and Mrs McCoy jolted and it took a few seconds for Mrs McCoy to speak.
‘I know, Brendan, that must seem very …’
‘… because I can’t understand how with those times I was speaking to you last week you couldn’t have said to me …’
‘… we’d agreed, Brendan, we’d agreed that …’
‘… who agreed?’
‘… for your exams …’
‘…Ididn’t agree! Everybody else was making all the decisions for me! There’d have been nothing wrong with me spending the past weeks with Ronan, everything would have been OK,I’dhave been OK and Ronan would’ve been too, and maybe he wouldn’t be … we wouldn’t all be …’
I looked around at everyone and no one said a word.
‘It wasn’t fair!’ I said, hearing my voice crack slightly. ‘It wasn’t fair on us.’
When my eyes landed back on Ronan I could hardly bear it so I leaned over with my head practically between my knees.
‘We’re sorry, Brendan,’ came Mrs McCoy’s voice over the sound of my breath which seemed so loud, folded over the way I was. ‘We’re sorry … it felt like the right thing at the time.’
I slowly sat up and met the gaze of Mr and Mrs McCoy; faces full of pain, full of fear, full of too many things that probably don’t have a name.
‘Sorry,’ I said, ‘I think I’m just in shock, that’s all. I didn’t expect to see him like this.’
Dad leaned forward.
‘No,’ he said. ‘In all honesty, I wasn’t prepared for Ronan being on machines or anything so I hadn’t said that to Brendan.’
‘Sorry,’ said Mrs McCoy, putting her hand to her forehead and rubbing back and forth, ‘we weren’t thinking … you see, we’ve only had a couple of visitors so far and you’re the first outside the family.’
‘Although we absolutely regard you as family, Brendan,’ said Mr McCoy. ‘Whether you like or not.’
I felt my cheeks ache as a smile forged its way through the clenched muscles in my face.
‘So what happens now?’ I asked.
