Lisa McInerney - The Glorious Heresies

‘You’ll keep him in, then?’ he asked.

‘Oh God, yeah,’ said the doctor. ‘For observation, first of all. We’ve cleaned him out but, y’know, we’re still talking alcohol intoxication, cocaine intoxication…’ He squinted down at the chart. Tony flinched. ‘Preliminary bloods suggest he didn’t get as much paracetamol into him as we feared, but hepatotoxicity is still a concern. We’ll do bloods again in two, three hours. When he’s back with us I’d like someone from Psychiatry to speak to him.’

‘Psychiatry?’

‘Yes, Mr… ah. Cusack?’

‘Cusack,’ said Tony, miserably.

‘Combined drug intoxication is usually accidental but both you and his… ah, housemate have indicated that this was deliberate. Better safe than sorry, eh? We don’t want him in here again.’

‘No.’

‘So we’ll move him to the unit in a bit and you can see him then, all right? I’ll send a porter out to you.’

The doctor rose, and as he turned to hold the door open Tony took his hand and squeezed it. Jesus , he thought. I’m like those gobshites who clap when the plane lands .

‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘I know these young fellas must break your melt. I know you have better things to be doing.’

The doctor furrowed his brow and smiled. ‘It’s what we’re here for. Don’t worry about it.’ He allowed Tony to hold his hand for another second. ‘He’ll be fine,’ he said.

Tony went back out to the waiting room. Kelly, Joseph and Karine were where he had left them. Joseph had draped an arm around Karine, who’d folded herself into a ball. There had been a fight earlier, apparently. She’d left Ryan and had gone into town to her friends. He’d followed, and it had culminated in a screaming match on the Grand Parade, ‘… but there’s no way I thought he’d do something like this,’ she wept. ‘I’d never have fought with him if I’d have known… Oh God, this is all my fault.’

She’d confessed a variety of incidents and run-ins in the hours they’d sat in the waiting room. The past six months had exhausted her. She’d told Ryan three times that she couldn’t do it anymore and each warning had developed into nothing more than a short detox: they spent a week apart and faltered, and after the second time their friends stopped remarking on it. In the meantime there were parties. ‘He’s DJing more,’ she said and, almost as if it wasn’t his father she was talking to, blurted, ‘and you know what that means. Coke isn’t as forgiving as we are.’

She’d stopped crying. Tony stood in front of her and she looked up, red around the nose and panda-eyed. She was a beautiful thing, still, and he thought that Ryan must be fucked altogether if he could hurt her time and time over.

He relayed the doctor’s update. ‘He’ll be fine,’ he said. None of them believed it.

‘How could he be fine,’ Karine squeaked, ‘when I don’t know who he is anymore?’

Joseph squeezed her arm. ‘Hey,’ he said. ‘This is where it starts getting better, OK? You’ll see.’

Tony went outside for a cigarette. He curled his hand around the flame of the lighter; the wind got at it anyway. He turned to the wall and tried again. An ambulance pulled into the bay to his left and paramedics removed a creature on a stretcher. They were joking. Just another night for them. Just another fucking casualty.

Jimmy Phelan stepped up beside him and said, ‘Jesus, the whole of Cork City must be in A&E tonight.’

Tony’s cigarette caught. He had little mind for running.

‘What do you want?’ he asked.

J.P. scowled. ‘Is that any way to greet an old friend?’ he said.

It had been months. J.P. was as good as his word. It had been months between visits before, too, but this time was different, and Tony felt it in his son’s distance. The girl was gone and his association with Jimmy Phelan consigned once more to history, but the cost was all around him tonight, in white faces and Karine’s tears.

‘Probably not,’ he said, ‘but we haven’t been close in a while, have we, Jimmy?’

And yet the fucker had jumbled Tony into junk.

‘I suppose we haven’t,’ J.P. conceded. He lit his own cigarette and raised his eyebrows. Continue , he invited. Tony did.

‘You didn’t have to involve my young fella,’ he said. The cigarette smoke was noxious as his very first lungful; he was nauseated, dizzy. ‘Whatever he said to you. He’s only a boy.’

J.P. said, ‘He involved himself, Tony.’

‘Are you trying to tell me he knew what he was doing? He’s twenty years of age, Jimmy.’

J.P. took a drag and shook his head. ‘You’re dredging up some old shit there, Cusack,’ he warned.

‘So what?’ said Tony. ‘We’re old shit. Aren’t we?’

‘Meaning?’

‘Meaning we were buddies one time. Meaning you were the first person to buy me a drink when I found out he was on the way.’

Tony finished his cigarette and stood with the butt between his fingers. In front of them, the car park hosted a drowsy light show as vehicles inched in and out, swung around tight corners, searched for space in the cramped dark. Crises from one end of the county to another. What was Tony’s, only another one?

‘Who told you I was the sentimental type?’ said J.P., mildly.

‘Yeah. That’s a mistake I made, for thinking there was still a man in there underneath the bullshit.’

Phelan turned. He backed Tony up against the wall.

‘No one talks to me like that, Cusack.’

‘I fucking know that,’ Tony snapped. ‘I know it better than most! Bear that in mind, will you, boy? I know what you’re capable of. I’ve seen it and I’ve fucking felt it. You took my son from me. You’ve nothing left to take.’

‘I’m sure I could find something.’

‘Let me save you the trouble of looking — you couldn’t. If you’re going to kill me, fucking kill me. I’ve had enough. It’s all coming away under me.’

‘Why would I want to kill you, Cusack? You’re not dangerous.’

Tony thought, I didn’t used to be .

J.P. said, ‘Are you finished?’

Tony exhaled.

J.P. said, ‘Our friend Robbie… Well, it wasn’t you I was worried about talking, Cusack.’

The automatic doors opened to their right and a couple came out. They stood at the other side of the doors and lit up. J.P. looked over, gauged intent and spoke again, so quietly that Tony had to strain to hear him over the autumn wind and the car park hum and the living, breathing, dying moments playing out in the building behind them.

‘Consider yourself told only because we are old shit, Cusack, very old shit indeed. If it had come out about our friend Robbie, what d’you think would have happened? She’s an old woman. She keeps putting herself in harm’s way and it’s my job to keep pulling her back again. You do what you have to for family. Absorb that one, and let the old shit go.’

‘You ruined my family while you were saving your own.’

‘No,’ said J.P. ‘I didn’t. The state of you, Tony. I didn’t do that to you, and you know it. You can stand here in the dark harping on about your family and your boy and your badly faked innocence, but it’s just me and you here, and I see right through you. You can whinge about what needed doing, but it was nothing new to your young fella.’

‘You don’t know that,’ said Tony.

‘Yeah I do. Open your eyes, Cusack. Your young lad was well able for it. He’s already twice the man you are.’

‘Good news,’ said the doctor. ‘It’s just a sprain. You’ll be hurling again before you know it, Maureen.’

‘Oh, mighty,’ she sniffed. ‘And I here all night.’

The doctor brushed off the gibe. ‘Could be worse,’ he said, looking over his glasses at the waiting room. He presented her with a prescription. ‘Painkillers,’ he said. ‘Three a day, with food. Look after yourself.’