Page 18 of The Chemistry Test

Cam

Tabby is such a good big sister. I watch as she sits and grooms Callie for a while before I pick up a wand toy and wriggle it in front of her.

It blows my mind that she’s the same kitten who was bottle-fed and could barely walk just three weeks ago.

Now, she’s fully weaned, litter trained and, to some extent, even helps me take care of Callie.

I throw a scrunched-up ball of tin foil to the much smaller kitten now I have her attention.

She may be wobbly on her feet, but she has no problem fetching it from under the coffee table and bringing it back to me, meowing loudly the whole time it’s in her mouth.

She drops it by my hand and cocks her head, ready for me to throw it to her again.

Callie’s smart. There’s no question about that.

But because of her cerebellar hypoplasia (which makes her look like she has the cat version of cerebral palsy), she’s completely uncoordinated and can’t do the usual cat things like jumping around and covering over the litter tray.

But with Tabby as chief litter-tray-coverer for the both of them, and a bit of extra care on my part, the three of us make it work.

I pick up the ball and a mouse toy and throw them towards the kitchen, making the cats both tumble after them.

Then, since I’m about to leave, I put a bowl of wet food out for Tabby and grab what I need for Callie.

At six weeks old, she really should be eating by herself too, but I still can’t get her to eat anything except chicken-flavour baby food straight from a spoon.

And honestly, even though we knew Callie might need a bit of time to play catch up because of her condition, we didn’t expect her to need as much help as this.

There’s no way Mum would’ve agreed to let me foster her by myself if we’d known.

But she’ll get there eventually. I just know she will.

It’s my third week back at the community centre and Julia’s standing at the front of the room waiting for everyone. Now that the introductions are over, she’s been using PowerPoint presentations to help guide the sessions.

Once everyone’s ready, she clicks the space bar and tonight’s topic, Guilt and Regret, spins on to the screen in bold navy letters.

We go around the room in no particular order, just following the natural pattern of whoever wants to speak next.

As always, there’s no obligation to share anything if you don’t want to, but so far everyone has always had at least one thing they’ve wanted to say.

Blake, who’s only a few years older than me, is the fourth person to speak and he tells us about how he always blamed himself for what happened to his sister, who had really bad anxiety and depression.

He tells us about how she was too anxious to make her own friends, and how he would invite her out with him whenever he could.

Except for Sundays, which he saved for himself and his wife.

His voice starts to crack then, as he explains how one Sunday, around three months ago, his mother arrived on his doorstep and told him the news.

And I’m so wrapped up in hearing his story that I can’t quite process what’s happening until he suddenly apologises, scrapes back his chair, and bolts out.

‘It’s alright, everyone,’ Julia says, stepping away from her desk. ‘We’ll give him a minute and then I’ll see if he wants me to bring him his bag.’

The room falls silent. We’ve all got dangerously close to breaking point at one time or another, but this has never happened before. And I feel so bad for Blake. I know what it feels like to be so upset, all you want to do is escape.

I didn’t even realise she was wearing make-up before, but the girl across from me now has chalky, beige specks around her eyes where it’s smudged and separated.

She dabbed away a couple of black splotches already, but she completely missed the skin-colour stuff that doesn’t look like her skin colour at all anymore.

I don’t think I should be the one to mention it, but I wonder if one of the other girls will. Ten-second rule and all that.

Can’t lie, there’s a bit of a lump in my own throat too. I take a sip of water, trying to swallow it away.

I know it’s natural for him to feel that way, but I wish I could crawl inside his brain and plant a seed that would let him know he wasn’t to blame.

That even if he’d given his sister all his Sundays, it would have happened on another day.

But the reality is there aren’t any words that can penetrate deep enough for him to believe them.

And I can’t even imagine how horrible that must be.

I feel my perception of my own situation shift slightly.

Because I was lucky. Lucky that as awful and as tragic as my situation was, at least I didn’t really have any guilt to tear away at me and eat my heart from the inside out.

And lucky because even before the paramedics said it, I already knew I’d done all I could possibly do.

I hadn’t noticed her leave, but Julia walks back in and quietly shuts the door behind her.

‘Blake’s going to call it a night,’ she says softly.

‘He’s going to his mother’s house for now, but he’ll be back with us next week.

’ She looks around the table for his satchel.

‘I’m just going to give him this, and I’ll be right back. ’

I stand up. ‘Can I do it?’ My voice sounds loud and abrupt compared to Julia’s. Everyone’s heads turn towards me.

She thinks about it for a second and then gives me a subtle nod. ‘Of course you can, CJ. We’ll wait for you.’

I call out to him before I reach the room he’s in, giving him enough time to dry his eyes and compose himself if he wants to. ‘Blake, it’s me, CJ,’ I say. ‘I’ve got your bag, mate.’

The door’s wide open and I can see a ping-pong table on the back wall, but I can’t see anyone inside from where I’m standing.

It’s only now I’m here that I’m starting to wonder if I’m the last person he’d want to see at a time like this because of the whole acting thing.

But I don’t have to wonder for long, because suddenly he’s there – walking towards me before he even has time to wipe his eyes.

And then, when he’s close enough, I reach out and hug him.

Not looking or caring if there’s anyone around who could see us in such a vulnerable state.

I just hold him and let him know that he did everything he could, and that he doesn’t have to worry anymore.

And I want him to feel, through pure human touch – the universal language that binds us – that even though I don’t really know him, I care.

We stay like that for a few moments longer than socially acceptable because maybe there aren’t any words that can plant a seed to protect him from himself, but maybe the electrical impulses that spread from my body to his can.

Back in the room, I listen to a few of the others speak while I try to stop thinking about Blake.

Like me, there’s nothing major they regret or feel guilty about, but we do start noticing some common patterns.

A couple of people mention things like not telling their loved ones they loved them enough and not popping in to see them more often.

And the thing is, I can’t even relate to that.

I used to see my gran twice a week and I was raised in a family that says ‘I love you’ every time we say goodbye. So, I’d definitely said it enough.

The room falls silent after that, and I realise it’s my turn if I want it to be.

And I do, but I have to think for a while before something comes to me.

‘The only thing that sometimes keeps me awake at night,’ I say, feeling my blood run cold as I think back to it, ‘is how numb I went when she died.’ I’m aware of how harsh the D-word sounds when it comes out of my mouth and I realise I’ve never worded it like that before.

But now isn’t the time for euphemisms. At least I don’t think it is.

‘And I know that’s normal to some extent,’ I continue.

‘But my mind wouldn’t let me properly live my last few moments with my gran.

It shut off too soon and I felt detached from it all.

And even though they were my hands pumping her chest and my mouth giving her CPR, I felt like an observer watching it all from outside my body.

’ I clear my throat. ‘And then, when her pulse stopped – seconds before help arrived – I listened to the ambulance scream the screams I couldn’t.

’ I clear my throat again. ‘I feel guilty that my body was there but my mind wasn’t.

And I feel guilty because she couldn’t say goodbye to all of me because a part of me went with her.

And I know she really wouldn’t want that,’ I say, pushing my glasses up my nose and giving myself a second to breathe.

‘She’d want me to be exactly the same. Happy and carefree.

But almost every day since she went, I’ve continued to act in ways she wouldn’t want me to.

And I regret it.’ I ignore my voice, which keeps catching in my throat no matter how many times I try to clear it. ‘But I can’t stop doing it.’

Everyone around the table seems to relate to this too. Which in itself makes me feel a bit better. One person has gotten angrier since their partner left, while another has stopped taking care of the garden her husband used to take so much pride in.

It feels oddly good to hear I’m not the only one who’s reacted the way I have, and so I end up telling them a bit more. Like how I’ve been scared to make new memories. Or friends, even. And that my self-confidence has plummeted.

This week is my third week back at uni, and even though I go and sit at the back during lectures, I haven’t turned up to a single seminar yet.

Or really done anything besides caring for the kittens, even though one of them barely even needs my help anymore.

And it turns out that quite a lot of us are living much more empty lives than we were before, with holes even bigger than the person we’ve lost.

Julia looks around at us all as we each share our stories, and I can tell this isn’t news to her. This, it turns out, is often just what grieving people do. It’s an oddly comforting realisation.

‘You know,’ Julia says, ‘I’d be surprised if you guys weren’t acting this way. You’ve all suffered a huge loss. But while some change is inevitable, not all of it has to be.’ She picks up a biscuit but doesn’t take a bite. ‘Sometimes it’s worth intervening with it.’

She goes on to say how it’s possible to reject or change change itself in some ways, and that while these behaviours have protected us until now, we can slowly start to change them if we want to.

They gave us comfort when we needed it most, so of course it’s going to be uncomfortable and even scary letting them go.

‘But you know what might be even more terrifying?’ she says tenderly. ‘Staying the same.’

Well, shit. None of us can argue with that.

We wouldn’t be here if we could. And so, with each other’s help, we go around the table and set ourselves some goals for the upcoming months, which will undoubtedly be a difficult time for all of us as we head into October, and then the dreaded festive season.

I tuck my chair in behind me as Julia wraps up the evening, noticing how hopeful I feel for once – which is especially surprising after what I thought would be a pretty dark topic.

I haven’t even left the room yet and I’m already thinking about what sort of stuff I can do to reach my goal.

I probably wouldn’t have bothered with it if it was something like journalling or meditating, but Julia and the others seemed to know exactly the sort of things I would and wouldn’t want to do.

So, together, we came up with the idea of doing one thing every day that the old me would do without hesitation.

No thinking, just doing. Whether I want to or not.

To fake it until I make it, until I (at least, in theory) start to come back to myself.

It makes so much sense that I wonder why I hadn’t thought of it sooner. And if anything, I’m actually looking forward to it. Challenge accepted.