ALWAYS
THERE’S OMENS
Kate Walker
First
published by Lake Macquarie City Library
in the Roland Robinson Literary Award
for Short
Stories 1999
Smashwords edition published
by Kate Walker
2011
ISBN: 978-1-4661-1383-1
Copyright
Kate Walker 1999
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without the prior written permission of the author or subsequent copyright holder. All characters are fictitious and any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
Table of
Contents
Beginning
Midpoint
About
the Author & this Story
Cover
Details
______ ~ ______
Always There’s Omens
by Kate
Walker
“The reality is, Ms. Hudson ...” If anyone should have known what reality was, it should have been this serious young doctor dressed in Godly white. He’d sacrificed his youth to the study of it, or so Alison Hudson assumed from his tired young face and prematurely receding hair. “… Only life support is keeping him alive now,” he said.
The rest of the team – four young doctors in all – gravely concurred. Each gave an opinion according to their particular specialty, all agreeing with the white-coated registrar. Though unlike him, they attempted to leave a modicum of hope.
Alison Hudson wondered was it usual for so many of them to stay so late in the ward? They were all weary and grey-skinned. She made her decision quickly, as mindful of saving them now, as they’d been of trying to save the life of her son.
They could switch off their machines now.
“You’re sure?” they asked. It was one of those decisions you couldn’t go back on.
“Yes.” She was sure.
They told her it was for the best.
She knew it was for the best.
They told her she was brave.
No, it wasn’t bravery, it was something else.
The Godly registrar left for another part of the hospital and another patient. Those who remained pointed out that she didn’t have to go home, she could wait in the chapel or the waiting room. Even the twenty-four hour canteen if she didn’t want to be alone. There were plenty of places to wait in a hospital this size.
Her voice was serene, “No, I should be home.” Her amazing composure still sustained her, which in no way explained how she could leave at such a time. This was the hour when even the tardiest of relatives accepted their duty, bunkered down and stayed. She’d been at her boy’s bedside every day for three weeks. She was sure to regret it if she left now, but she seemed intent.
“We’ll phone as soon as …” one of the young doctors commenced and found to his horror he didn’t know how to go on.
“… As soon as there’s any change.” Graciously she completed his sentence for him, and he’d never been more grateful for anything in his life.
She walked to the lift. Whether Alison Hudson’s unfathomable acceptance of the inevitable failed her on the threshold of leaving, they never saw. All their beepers sounded at once and another emergency had them hurrying off. And after that there was not time to wonder about her in particular – just another. She was just another embattled mother. They dealt with dozens every day.
______
~ ______
The night was quiet and the traffic sparse as Alison drove through suburb after suburb, all seeming to slumber as if under a doona of feathers and down. In her own street, all the houses were cocooned in darkness, except her own. The outside light burned steadfast and bright. That was because she’d left it on again. She’d left it on now several nights in a row. Oh well, she thought, might as well leave it that way. It felt right that her house give off a beacon of light. It might be needed by someone trying to find their way.
She turned into the drive and parked her car under the cottonwood tree. It was too late to open the garage door. Noisy thing! Mindlessly mechanical, it made such a fuss about simply going up and down. She slipped her front-door key into the lock and the tumblers turned without a click. The door opened almost of itself. That was a nice ‘welcome home’. One that affirmed she’d come to the right place. She’d learned to notice such messages now.
The house smelt musty from being so long neglected and closed up. Soon she’d have to vacuum the carpet, wash the dishes, put the unread newspapers in the recycling bin and take up normal living again. Go back to work, re-establish contact with clients, think about money, adhere to clock-time. The mere thought of needing to think about mundane things again had her reaching for the light switch, and she almost turned it on. Just in time she stopped herself. It wasn’t time to return to mundanity yet. The journey wasn’t over yet. And there was plenty of moonlight anyway.
Standing inside her front door she marveled at the amount of moonlight pouring through the skylight in the hall. And moonlight really was the best light there could be – the light by which you saw less of what mattered least. So by moonlight she made her way forward, stepping softly like a ghost along the length of her hallway, disturbing the quiet of the house not at all.
Should she lie down and wait? Make herself a cup of tea? Or just sit? She kept on moving slowly forward, waiting to see what would be best. As she passed the living room door, she spotted an even brighter beam of moonlight slanting in between the curtains. It laid a path for her, from the very spot where she stood, right across the carpet to the winged armchair on the other side, beside which sat the telephone. Nothing could have been clearer. Her place was in that chair and her only job now was to wait. It wasn’t hard to know what to do any more. She’d learned to read the signs.
She’d had this chair for years and never appreciated how cozy it was. Dear old accommodating thing, once settled in its plump, dimpled upholstery she gazed back across the room and waited patiently for her own next thought to occur. As she watched, she saw reality – the reality of things – begin to change. Slowly the walls and tables began to give up their solidity; their firmness softened, their substance grew smoky and ill-defined, at length becoming only temporarily firm. Only solid in so far as they were held that way for a little while. Rather like a held breath, they assumed a solidity that might be exhaled any moment and revert back to whatever essential thing they once had been.
As the reality of solid objects receded, so noises began to put themselves forward to take their place. Like a lot of children who’d been hiding and quiet too long, they verily burst upon the scene. She couldn’t help but smile at their seizing the moment to be important and fill the void. These noises consisted of groaning roof joists, crackling walls, and nearer at hand the panels of the old sideboard creaking and sighing like an old ship heaving its way across an antique sea. And from the back of the house, some grunts and scrapings. Possums? Or a neighbor’s dog? Then some bumps. Then a thump. And then ...