Colm Tóibín - The Blackwater Lightship

'There's no point in mincing words with me,' Helen's mother said.

'Declan's very sick. His T-cell count, which is how we measure the progress of the disease, is almost down to nil. Most people have more than a thousand. He's open to any number of opportunistic infections. He had a small operation this morning to put a line back into his chest, and that went all right. He could go on for a while, but he could also go very quickly. It depends on each individual. I should say about him that he's very brave and very resilient but he won't survive too many more onslaughts.'

'Are there any drugs you can use?'

'There's one drug, called AZT, but I'm afraid it isn't a cure, and we are developing better medicine for each infection as it arises.'

'And what are the chances of a cure?'

'There's nothing in the pipeline, although you never know; but I think that most doctors would agree that Declan's immune system has been destroyed and it would be hard to envisage a way for that to be restored.'

'Could anything be done for him in America?'

'Our systems here are just as advanced.'

'Is he in pain?'

'No, he was actually sitting up in bed half an hour ago when I saw him. He has a group of friends who make sure that he is well looked after. I'll take you down to him and we can talk afterwards, if you want.'

As Helen opened the door, her mother turned to the consultant. 'Could I speak to you alone for a minute, please?'

Helen waited outside and then walked down the corridor and stood looking out of the "window. She knew what her mother was asking: the question she had refrained from asking Helen in the car. She had always wondered if her mother knew about Declan being gay, and was not sure now whether the consultant would tell her or not. But as she watched her mother walking out of the consultant's office and coming with her down the corridor, she knew that she had received a reply. Her mother's shoulders were hunched and she kept her eyes on the ground. It was years since Helen had seen her look defeated like this.

When they walked into Declan's room, he was sitting up in bed listening to music on a Walkman. Paul, who was sitting on a chair beside the bed, stood up immediately, nodded at Helen and left the room.

'I've brought you a visitor,' Helen said.

'I knew the last time I saw you that you weren't looking well,' their mother said, approaching the bed and smiling at Declan. 'But you look much better now.' She held his hand.

'I didn't think you'd be up so soon,' he said.

'This room is a bit dark, isn't it? Are they treating you properly at all?' her mother asked.

'Oh, it's fine, it's fine,' he said.

'We're only here to make everything nice for you, isn't that right, Helen?'

'Yes, Mammy,' Helen said.

'Could you find out when I was getting out?' Declan asked.

'We met the consultant, but she didn't say anything about it,' his mother said. 'But I'll go down now and ask her if you like.'

'No, wait for a while,' he said.

'Have you any pain?' his mother asked.

'I don't feel great today. I had a local anaesthetic in my chest this morning, and it always leaves you feeling drowsy.'

A nurse came in with a small plastic cup with pills which Declan took with a glass of water.

'You know,' his mother said, 'if you wanted to come down to my house, everything would be set up for you. There's a great view, as you know, and we could have a nurse call around if there were any problems.'

'I don't know what I'll do,' Declan said.

'Whatever you want now,' his mother said. She put her hand on his forehead. 'Well, you don't have a temperature, anyway.'

Helen found Paul waiting in the corridor outside the room. Her mother stayed with Declan while they had lunch in a pub close to the hospital. Afterwards she drove across the city to her school. The previous week, letters had gone out to certain applicants for teaching jobs calling them for a second interview. She wanted to check dates and times for the interviews.

Anne, her secretary, read her a list of phone messages which she had, as instructed, taken verbatim in shorthand. Most of them were routine; one was from John Oakley in the Department of Education. Helen looked through the post. Anne told her that one of the teachers had phoned up to ask why they were doing a second interview since no other school had adopted this practice.

'What does she teach?' Helen asked.

'Irish and English.'

'Could you read me her message exactly?'

The secretary read her out the phone message. Helen thought for a minute and then said: 'We'd better write to her. Could you type out a note saying that the position has been filled, and thank her for her interest, and I'll sign it before I go. She sounds like a real nuisance.'

'Also,' Anne said, 'there's a problem with Ambrose. He was drunk, or at least he had a lot of drink on him on Monday. He implored me not to tell you.'

'When was the last time he was drunk?'

'The sixth of April,' Anne said.

'He's the most obliging handyman in Ireland,' Helen said.

'He's afraid of his life of you,' Anne said.

'But he was sober yesterday, and is he sober today?'

'Yes, and really sorry.'

'I'm going to do nothing about it,' Helen said. 'But tell him you told me, and I've gone off to think about it. Frighten him a bit.' She laughed, and Anne shook her head and smiled.

She walked around the empty, echoing corridors of the school, then went upstairs and sat on a bench opposite the staffroom. Suddenly, the whole weight of what had happened and what was going to happen hit her as though for the first time: her brother was going to die, and they were going to watch him sicken further, suffer and slowly fade. A vision came to her of his lifeless, inert body ready to be put in a coffin and consigned to darkness, closed away for all time. It was an unbearable idea.

She tried to put it out of her mind. She felt tired now, worried that if she stayed too long in one place she would fall asleep and be found by Anne. She walked slowly down to the office and signed the letter and then drove home, desperately wishing that she could lie down on the bed and sleep until the morning. She had a shower and changed her clothes. When she phoned Hugh in Donegal, there was no answer. At four o'clock, she drove back across the city to the hospital.

She met her mother and Paul in the corridor outside Declan's room.

'They're just doing a general check-up on him now,' her mother said. 'They're going to let him out for a few days.'

'Does he want to come to my house?' Helen asked.

'No, he wants to go to Cush, to his granny's house,' her mother said. T don't know why he wants to go there.'

'To Granny's house?'

'Of course, when I tried to phone her, she had the phone turned off,' her mother said.

'He's been talking a lot', Paul said, 'about Cush and the house by the sea.'

'If he wants to go there, then we'll take him there. I told him that.'

'When?' Helen asked.

'If he's going he'll have to go now, because he might have to be back here in a couple of days,' her mother said.

The consultant and the doctor came out of the room. 'He has the all-clear for a few days anyway,' Louise said. 'I'll make out a list of drugs and as soon as pharmacy has them ready he can go.'

'One day we waited here two hours for pharmacy,' Paul said.

'I'll take the prescription up there myself and if you come with me, Paul, and stand there looking at them, then they might do it now,' the consultant said.

Helen and her mother went into the room, where Declan was sitting on the side of the bed.

'I feel all dizzy when I sit up like this,' he said. 'But I'll be all right in a minute.'

'Declan, I stayed in Granny's house last night,' Helen said. 'The beds are really uncomfortable and the sheets are ancient.'