The Last Goodbye - short story (based on true events)

Within the room, there was an unmistakable foreboding of death.

It was a small room, set just off from a large ward in the Adelaide Children's Hospital.  A single bed sat in the centre.  And within the bed, under starched white sheets and a white cotton blanket, lay a child struggling to breathe.

The child was 12 years of age and the doctors anticipated she would probably die some time during the night. For this reason, and against the usual strict  hospital visiting-hours policy - the child's mother  had been permitted to stay with her daughter through the night.

The woman sat on a wooden chair beside the bed.  She was slim and aged in her early-forties. She wore a cotton frock, a woollen cardigan, silk stockings and  low-heeled shoes. Her auburn hair was pulled up into a loose bun. Her handbag lay abandoned on the floor at her feet.  She clutched a handkerchief in one hand and her daughter's damp hot fingers in the other.

The stillness of the room was disrupted only by the child’s regular gasps for air, the ticking of a clock on the wall, and the intermittent soft mutterings of the woman.  Her voice was low-pitched and pleading as she searched her daughter’s pale face. At intervals a nurse would appear in the room - expertly giving the child medication, through a line connected to her arm, or taking observations - and then, just as quietly she would disappear again, back into the bowels of the hospital.

The ticking of the clock marked the time intervals to an uncertain future.  Listening to the clock, the woman’s thoughts became consumed with the notion of time and change and sadness.  She thought back to the last time she could remember feeling happy.  She knew it immediately.  It was four years earlier in April of 1943.

Her memory settled on a scene from that time:

She recalled sitting in her kitchen drinking a cup of tea. It was late in the afternoon and the western sun flooded the room in a warm golden light. Through the white lace-curtains she could see the autumn leaves on the four giant almond trees in the rear-garden. Their leaves were like captured sunshine - startingly beautiful against the blue sky. The beauty of the trees humbled the little flower beds growing beneath their bowers. An Irish-stew bubbled away happily on the stove - infusing the room, and the entire house, with the delicious aromas of cooking vegetables, herbs, and meat. 

A click from the back door and happy voices in the hall-way heralded the arrival of her two children: Ronny, then 18 , and Anne, eight.  Anne liked to wait for her brother at the bus stop each evening after he came home from work. That way she could chat with him all the way home. Ronny entered the kitchen first. He marched across the room, wrapped his arm around his mother’s shoulders, and kissed her cheek.

‘How many cups of tea is that?’ he asked playfully, winking at her.

‘Only two, dear,’ she replied, smiling. ‘Did you have a nice day?’

‘Great ... until Nucoms here tackled me at the bus stop!’ He turned to point his finger accusingly at his giggling sister who was skipping into the room carrying a pretty woollen cardigan.

‘He bought me a present, again!  Isn’t it lovely!’

‘Ronny!  You spoil her.  Your wages are for your study books and your ration stamps are meant for you to buy clothes for yourself’.

‘Well the cardigan didn’t fit me mum,’ he was making himself a cup of tea to enjoy with his mother. ‘And the blue did nothing for my eyes.’ He laughed and winked at his sister.

The memory left a smile on the woman’s face for a fleeting moment before she began to softly cry.  She released the hand of her daughter - resting it gently on the blanket.  She then wiped furiously at her eyes with her handkerchief and walked over to the window.  Darkness shrouded the city like a peaceful blanket.  The world was asleep.  Only the woman and the child were living a nightmare on this long night.

The woman gazed out at the street lights creating geometric patterns beyond the glass. A few cars were still out and about, despite the fact it was well past midnight. 

As she watched the night, another memory from the past bubbled to surface of her consciousness. The memory was from two years earlier. It was a hot December night in 1944 during the blackout. She couldn’t sleep. She’d received a letter from Ronny that day.  And, despite his cheerful words and his happy banter, she always felt upset and unsettled after receiving his correspondence.

He’d enlisted with the Royal Australian Air Force, in May of the previous year, soon after he turned 18. He'd passed the Aircrew Navigator course locally before he'd been sent to Britain to join the Royal Air Force.

She recalled holding his letter as she walked into the darkness of the front verandah. She had quietly closed the front screen-door, so as not to wake Anne or her husband, Fred, and, sitting in a wicker chair  she'd looked out into the darkness of the sleeping street.  The stars were so much brighter without the city lights. She wondered whether her son would be flying at that very moment in the wintry skies of Europe. She shuddered at the thought.  Her mind was constantly filled with dread and her heart with loneliness while he was gone.

She thought about her son’s letter. She carried it in her hand - like it was an extension, somehow, of him. He spoke of his bike rides into the English country-side. He told her about the other young men in the RAF.  He asked her to hug Anne for him. He used his nickname for her: ‘Nucoms’. Anne and Ronny wrote their own letters to each other every week - but they usually sent extra love to each other in her letters. Finally, the letter was finished with a short PS: 'Say Hi to Dad'. 

Ronny had always hoped that his father would one day love him. Sadly, he’d eventually lost hope that that would ever happen. It was nothing personal. His cool and distant father simply seemed incapable of loving anyone much.

The woman looked down at her watch.  It was now three in the morning.  She felt tired. So deeply tired. Anne had developed pneumonia only a few days earlier. Her decent towards death had been so terribly rapid.  The woman had barely slept since it began.

She sat down again beside her daughter.  She lifted the child’s limp hand and held it firmly.  It remained hot and clammy.  A shallow racing pulse was just palpable below the surface of the skin: the only sign of the furious war being fought within the child’s body.  As she lay so still, gasping for air, her immune system was fighting the invisible foe: billions of microscopic bacteria.  The doctors had told her that they were treating Anne with a new medicine called 'penicillin'.  It had been developed during the war by a team in Oxford University. Although, the leader of the team was a man born in Adelaide and a similar age to herself:  Howard Florey. 

The problem for Anne, however, was that her body had been almost completely overwhelmed by the infection before the penicillin was started:  She had both septicemia and pneumonia, and her organs had started to shut down.  If she survived until the morning, the doctors had explained, she would live.  However, the chance of her surviving the night was determined to be less than 30%.

The woman prayed.  She muttered the words of every prayer she knew - and some she made up.  She begged God, whatever and whoever God was, to save her daughter. Please... Please...  The last word she repeated like a mantra - tears dripping from her jaw.

Again she recalled a moment from her past.  It was the moment that the world had stopped turning, the sun had stopped shining, and she had wished the earth could swallow her and bury her forever.  The memory was seared into her mind like a third-degree burn.  The wound wouldn't heal. She wouldn't let it. Instead it festered and tortured her every single day. Clutching her daughter’s hand, the woman dragged the details of the horrible memory to the surface of her consciousness: 

It was a Thursday morning on January 11th 1945. Almost two years earlier. She had just finished writing a long letter to her son and begun making  preserves in the kitchen. A knock at the front door interrupted her domestic activities.  Fred was at home, although he was sick in bed with a cold. So, removing her apron, she had answered the door. A thin young man in a grey suit stood on the verandah holding a telegram.  He held his hat in his hands and he pushed the folded paper towards her.  He said only one word:  ‘Sorry.’

Reluctantly, she had accepted it. She unfolded it and attempted to read the words which swam across the page in her shaking hands. She wiped the tears from her eyes with her sleeve - and tried again. She became aware that her husband was now standing beside her - reading as well.

442280  FLYING OFFICER R MITCHELL MISSING  STOP  REGRET TO INFORM YOU THAT YOUR SON FLYING OFFICER RONALD MITCHELL IS MISSING AS A RESULT OF AIR OPERATIONS ...

Fred dropped to the floor sobbing.  She had never seen her husband shed a single tear in his life. But now. .. he rocked on the spot, his face buried in his hands. Sobbing. ‘I’m sorry, Ronny.  I'm so sorry.  I loved you ... '

She woke in hospital some hours later. The doctors told her that she had suffered a stroke.

The woman was now sobbing.  She looked into the face of her only surviving child and muttered desperate words again - although still only audible to herself and possibly the child: God, please let my child live.  I forgot ... I forgot that I lost one child not two.  I forgot to live for Anne.  I thought I had died with Ronnie. I am so sorry.  Please, God. Please don't take Anne from me ...

The woman fell asleep just before dawn. She hadn’t been asleep for long when she experienced the most vivid dream she’d ever had:

She found herself sitting in her kitchen having a cup of tea.  She was admiring the autumn leaves on the almond trees in the rear yard when her son, Ronny, walked into the room. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and he kissed her cheek. He then sat next to her and smiled. She felt the warmth of his love and she felt that he was at peace. He then spoke briefly: 

‘Nucoms will be alright. She'll recover. But Mum, you need to recover as well ... from your grief. It's not only Anne who's been so ill. You cannot live your life if you continue to mourn my death.  Crying for hours everyday changes nothing.  The past is over.  You must live in the present and be happy again - for Anne, as well as for yourself. I will love you forever.  I want you to remember the happy times we had. We can be thankful for all those happy years we got to be together.  There's no point being bitter and sad for the times we didn't get.  We can't change that. But we need to say goodbye.  Two years of suffering is more than enough, Mum.  Be happy now.  Anne is with you.  I'll be waiting for you.  And my love for you will never die.  Goodbye Mum.'

She reached out to him and hugged him and ,before he left her for the last time, she whispered to him: ‘Goodbye, my dear. I love you too.’

The dream finished and the woman woke.  As she opened her eyes she became aware that it was now morning.  Sunshine streamed through the window flooding the room with a warm golden light. She remembered the situation of her daughter and jerked her head up off the bed.  The doctors and nurses were standing at the end of the bed smiling and holding her daughter’s chart. 

‘Mum, you woke up!  Finally!’

The woman turned to see her daughter sitting up in bed smiling at her.  She reached for her hand. It was now cool and her daughter's pulse was slow and strong. She stood and hugged her daughter.  Tears of joy streaking her face and she remembered, for the first time in so many years, what it felt like to be truly happy.

‘Yes, I woke up dear.  I love you so much.  And, look what a beautiful morning this is.’