Lemon Twist

By TBD

At ten years old, Aaron loses his older brother to leukaemia. This profound loss creates tremendous instability in the family for years. The bereaved parents suffered from intense depression and eventually separate. After that, Aaron comes to believe that he is not the child his family looks to for leadership. This realisation fills him with bit

• Language: English
• Publisher: Anoir Ou-chad
• Release date: Sep 1, 2019
• ISBN: 9781916211919

TBD

Patsy Stanley is an artist, illustrator and author and a mother, grandmother and great grandmother. She has authored both nonfiction and fiction books including novels, children's books, energy books, art books, and more. She can reached at:[e-mail] for questions and comments.

Book preview

PART ONE

SOMEWHERE

1

A beeping sound pulled me from sleep. It was all dark except for a green light in the corner. My brain was disconnected from my body, though I could feel something weighty dragging me down. The beeping was familiar, but I couldn't place it. My phone alarm? I couldn't move. My throat was in absolute agony, something thick stuck in it. I closed my eyes again. Slowly, I realised the beeping was the sound of a life-support machine.

The next day, I woke up to the echoing of footsteps. I drifted in and out of consciousness, but eventually, I opened my eyes. There was no one in the hallway. My first thought was that I'd been kidnapped and put in a private clinic somewhere like Syria or Iran. The places where they rip out and sell your organs. A nurse in the room noticed me, and I imagined her saying something like, We're having your liver taken out. But, don't worry, your heart won't be for a bit longer.

Oh, hell, no! Please no, I writhed as I cried out.

I was hallucinating something terrible.

Hey, relax, the nurse said when she noticed I was panicking. You're here for a liver infection. The doctor will be in to speak with you later.

When I got a bit more stable, they told me I'd been in a coma for three weeks and that I'd had two shocks due to hypoglycaemia. The doctors said I woke up crying in pain. Although I was unconscious, I recalled asking them to stop throwing cold water at me. I remembered them telling me, You're going into shock. Calm down and breathe.

Three weeks? It felt like it was a good night's sleep. Death must be just like a coma. The only difference is that when someone dead decides to reopen his eyes to the material world, he cannot and remains caged within unutterable blackness forever.

I spent three days lying semi-conscious with profound feelings of serenity and warmth. I stared up at the ceiling and looked around whenever I could, but mostly slept. Just like a dog sitting around the house, I had no thoughts, no feelings. It didn't even occur to think about how I came to be in such a place. I couldn't remember my name, my home, or what it was like. I didn't know whether I had a wife or family. I couldn't even remember anything about who I was. If I'd been given a mirror, I wouldn't have recognised myself.

One day, the nurse told me, We need to shave your beard.

I didn't know I had a beard. I couldn't move to touch it. Yet, for some reason, I thought I was forty-two years old.

At times, I woke up at night and presumed I was dead. I couldn't tell where I was. I felt myself floating over my body, and it took more effort to reorient myself. In the darkness, I'd hear the heartbeat alarms and the artificial respiratory sound of the other coma patients. One was just a few feet from my bed. She had been in a car accident and had now been in a coma for more than a month. Her mind shut down in repetitive sharp sounds which recurred every forty-five seconds.

I shook with fear.

I heard the sounds of recitation or music playing loudly somewhere inside the clinic. I wanted to ask them to turn the volume down, but no one was looking at me, and I had no way of attracting anyone's attention. It was distressing. Eventually, a nurse appeared, but she didn't understand my mumbling. She checked my bed, the tubes, the catheter and the urine bag. Then she smiled at me and left.

During my stay in the ICU, I witnessed three deaths. I saw the nurses bag the bodies and wheel them off to the morgue. That terrified me, and I could not give any articulate expression of my emotions. Crying was my only relief.

After those deaths, only three patients remained with me in intensive care. The woman who had been in a car accident, another woman beaten by her husband, and a young man who police believed had been stabbed by a stranger. Then, one day, I woke up to find the woman who mumbled in her coma had passed away. The day after that, the young man died too.

In my time in that room, I suffered the most bitter loneliness. My habits, my life, the years past had flowed back over me. I knew I was sinking lower and lower. It took so many years for destiny to bring me here, to condemn me to suffer as a martyr—a poignant moment in a mediocre existence. I wished I had let myself be happy. I regretted what I'd done and hadn't done when the horizon of life was still boundless. I will die confined to a bed, just like my brother.

Even when I could fall asleep for a little while, I'd open my eyes again, frightened of the night. I'd see shadows of death hovering around my room, waiting for a sign of weakness to stealthily snatch away my life.

Ever since I was little, I'd feared the dark. In the evening, I'd secretly turn the light on after my mother went to bed. I feared the ghosts and witches that dwelt within the darkness. But, after Sean died, this new phobia evolved. I no longer feared the ghosts but rather death itself. The slightest hiccup in my health would lead to feelings of paranoia. If I had a sore throat, I'd run to the doctor to make sure it wasn't throat cancer. I tried to bury this fear, but it remained constant: fear of dying, of serious illness, of an accident.

Even as an adult, I still kept the lamp on when I slept.

I walked along a very dark corridor with soft carpeted ground. On the right, a light blue curtain with pink flowers billowed in the wind out of my room, just like when my mom used to open the shutters in the morning. I saw the green hills. It was the first days of autumn with all its scarlet and golden yellow tones. I could see the landscape from a distance, from up high. The rays of the rising sun shaved the ground and illuminated a single hillside. It felt peaceful.

Then, I saw two shadows approaching through the mass of lowland mist. I heard them whispering my name. I thought they were angels. That was when I opened my eyes wildly, spurred on by the thought I was dead.

I found two nurses in front of me, waking me up to test my blood sugar.

Can I go home? I said to one of them.

That depends on your blood sugar. We need to make sure you're stable. 

She lanced my fingertip with the sugar meter and waited for the result. She showed the meter to her colleague.

Your sugar's very low. It's 45mg\dl. You need to be at least 65. You'd better rest to get your strength back.

She replaced my sodium and glucose bags then palpitated the veins of both my arms at the elbows. They were all scarring blue from the IV infusions. She traced the path of a vein in the back of one hand. I turned my face to avoid looking as she punctured my skin. That was when I saw someone waving at me from the corridor. My blurred eyesight cleared after a few seconds.

It was Nesrine.

My heart leapt with joy and relief. Finally, someone cared enough to make sure I was alive. I tried to lift my other arm but in vain. I wanted to talk to her. I missed her.

Can she come in? I mumbled.

I'm afraid not.

Nesrine took a piece of paper and borrowed a pen from a doctor walking by. She wrote something and held it up to the glass window separating my room from the hallway. I couldn't read it from that far, so I asked the nurse to read it for me.

I'll visit you every day at one and six, the nurse said. She misses you.

Thank you. I miss you too, I mouthed from across the room.

I wanted to go home, have a cigarette and fall asleep in her arms. I felt imprisoned.

But a few seconds later, I was asleep without warning.

PART TWO

WALES

2

I was leaning against the window of my room, watching the patio. It was the month of May—the first puffs of spring, the clear sky over the mountain, the purple clumps of clematis growing up the walls of the neighbour's house. The pigeons cooing on the roof, the fresh perfume of the morning. It was a beautiful day. But none of this fitted well with the event. My aunt was holding me by the shoulders and wouldn't let me go anywhere. There were many people, and there was no sound in this crowd except the crunch of steps on the gravel path.

I didn't move.

Some faces turned and looked at me occasionally. Other windows from the street were open, people watching sombrely. At that moment, a bird flew from the roof and let its wings slip almost motionlessly, then rapidly swooped down like a fighter plane to catch a moth. It then flapped its wings to reach the Scots pine tree on the side of the driveway, where it devoured its prey. A sadistic part of me enjoyed the cruelty of the bird for ending that insect life, but I would've also admired the bug if it had escaped. Life is unkind.

There was a movement in the crowd waiting at the gate. I looked again to the patio. The priest went out, my uncle, then my father appeared, and finally, my mother. Quickly, four pallbearers carried the cherry wood casket on their shoulders out of the house.

Here's my lovely brother.

I wasn't feeling much but emptiness and numbness. I couldn't even cry. Yet, something inside me refused to acknowledge that I would never see his face again, feel the warmth of his smile, be surrounded by his protection and love.

I trembled, and someone took me in his arms and carried me.

My mother couldn't accept that he was gone. She spent most days in the corner of the living room gazing at the window in endless reverie, sobbing and whispering. Her eyes met no one else's, and she didn't seem to hear anything at all. No one dared approach or talk to her, for she could blow like an angry cat. Then one night, she woke up in terror, rushing down the stairs screaming, My son, my son!

My father shook as he tried to control her, but she took her anger out on him, pummelling him till she fainted. Occasionally, she looked at me with unrecognisable eyes. She would stare at me, and left me to get lost in the void.

One night she stood up violently, walked straight towards me, and, aggressively holding my face with one hand, pushed me against the wall and gave me two big kisses on the cheeks, then turned her head and giggled. I shook uncontrollably during those moments. Family members had to take turns watching her all night, just in case she played some kind of trick. We were worried she'd set fire to the house, strangle someone, or commit suicide. I thought she had lost her mind. I feared her.

I wanted things to be as they had been before. Several times when I woke up at night, I wondered if it had all been a bad dream. Then I'd go to the other room, look at the empty bed and realise that my brother was gone.

Visitors often focused on the grief that my parents must have been feeling. They took pity on Mom, but their sympathy didn't help much. My grief didn't seem to exist for others. I wept day and night and had no taste for anything. I screamed into my pillow, consumed with rage. I was drained by this state of things, and I longed for a little joy and happiness.

A few days after the funeral, all our friends and relatives had gone to their homes, and our house was plunged into sombre silence. At the living room table, we were reminded of him by the empty chair always there. Someone was still missing. My father tried to add a little joy, but no one answered him. The only sound that echoed was the clinking of plates and cutlery. I didn't venture to raise my head, fearing the mournful face of my mother.

It was the first summer without Sean. He was erased from the list of the living, swept away like dead leaves. The blow was so harsh it was as if we had been plunged into a nightmare. We had a feeling of collapse and abandonment, stronger than anything we had ever conceived. I felt intense anguish for a past that would never return.

In the morning, my father came to open the shutters. Wake up. It's beautiful outside.

What's the point? All the flora is brought back to life, but my brother will never be back again. Something inexplicable had escaped me. But I wanted to go out, scream, run in search of I didn't know what.

My parents separated two years later. My mother and I moved to Newtown, almost thirty miles from the farm. I was twelve. Our life changed, but it didn't get better. We were lonely. My mother worked as a taxi driver, and she often worked night shifts and slept during the day. She earned a small income, and it was challenging to make ends meet. I had to fend for myself, go to school, do some housework and make dinner at night.

Grief had followed us throughout our lives, and that vivid sense of permanent loss seemed to haunt us forever. We could not take action or see where the future might go. Mom isolated herself and sank into depression. I often heard her crying in the shower, but I didn't know how to help. Her only reason to live had disappeared.

I saw her sobbing in the kitchen once, and I threw myself in her arms, apologising for making her life more difficult.

Leave me alone… She gave me a little push, and as I hesitated, she said quietly, Please let me cry… because if I don't, I'll die.

As time flowed, a clump of hatred and disgust grew inside me. By the time I was seventeen, I couldn't stand it anymore. The wound wouldn't heal. Instead,