Page 40 of Watching You
Body Six of Eight
The Watcher
By the time Karl got home, he had to acknowledge that everything had changed.
His mother was hanging around almost all the time he was in the house now, his father’s carer was starting to side-eye him with a look that a freak-show audience might give a performer billed as half-man-half-slug, and he hadn’t been paying anything like as much attention as he should to his investments, so their money was dwindling.
On top of that, he was out so often that the carer bill was going up and up. Something had to give.
Two days earlier he’d called the doctor out to his now mostly unresponsive father and reported that his dad was increasingly refusing food, often inhaling soup or choking on tiny morsels of bread.
He’d also made it clear that there were multiple occasions when his father had seemed to stop breathing for periods of time.
Karl had sat dutifully and held his father’s hand, looking suitably sombre but hopefully also looking as if the doctor might have some solution to the problem.
The doctor had listened to his descriptions of each incident and kindly but firmly explained that it seemed likely that his father was reaching an end-of-life situation, and that strokes did take their toll long-term.
He was told not to be afraid to ask for a hospice place if everything was too much.
Karl had put on a suitably brave face (turning to dash away what he’d hoped the doctor had assumed were tears) and said he would look after his father at home, where they’d lived so happily as a family.
The doctor left telling him what a good son he was, and how he wished all his patients had such doting adult children.
Karl had seen the good doctor out, then sat down with his notebook and pen.
He had big plans and there was still much to do, but it all had to happen in the correct order.
The first two items on his agenda were complete: Cancel the carer (tick), Make it clear to the doctor that things are getting really very shaky (tick).
Next, it was time for soup. He tipped a can of chicken and vegetable broth into a pan and heated it up.
Not too hot. He didn’t want to burn his father’s tongue.
Then he took a slice of white bread from the loaf and carefully cut the crust off it.
He placed the meal on a tray with a glass of water, a napkin and a metal straw (better for the environment), taking it into the lounge where his father lay, watery-eyed, sort of staring at the television but mainly at the wall.
‘Lunchtime, Dad,’ he said. ‘Come on now, can’t have you getting too weak.’
Karl put the tray on the side table next to his father and stroked back the stray hairs that were hanging down his face.
He didn’t sit him up for lunch. That wasn’t going to work.
Instead, he made sure the curtains were fully closed, double-locked the front door, and put the TV up loud enough but not so loud that the neighbours would consider coming round to complain.
The first spoonful of soup he gave his father went down just fine, annoyingly so in fact, given that the old man was on his back.
Karl tried again with a fuller spoon. A little of that one rolled down his cheek and onto the pillow and that time his father coughed and spluttered, but managed to turn his head to one side to get control of it.
His father was looking at him now. He rarely made eye contact any more, so much so that some days Karl forgot he was alive at all. It was more like looking after a large and unwieldy houseplant.
‘All right, there, Dad?’ Karl asked. ‘Is the soup tasty? I made sure it wasn’t too hot. You just relax and let me do all the heavy lifting.’
Like I’ve done ever since Ma died, he thought, but he kept his smile in place and filled the spoon again.
He could have sworn his father was trying to say something as he approached with the next spoonful, but his father hadn’t spoken a word for at least a year so those vocal cords weren’t going to be any use to him at that particular moment.
‘Here you go, Dad, in comes the aeroplane.’
His father’s mouth was stubborn, but it couldn’t resist for long.
The soup went in, Karl wiped the dribble that escaped, and just like clockwork, his father began to choke.
Karl gently but firmly held his nostrils closed with one hand and pushed his chin up to keep his mouth mostly sealed with the other.
Not completely shut, because it helped to have his father pulling the soup down with some air, just as long as he couldn’t spit it back out.
On the television, a young couple was looking for a second home in Spain and were being shown a place that was more a hutch than an apartment, but nonetheless, they were playing their part and making all the right noises. His father was doing the same.
‘Oh no,’ Karl said softly. ‘Are you struggling with that, Dad? Try not to fight it. That would make it worse.’
He gave a bellowing sputter, then his stomach heaved and he swallowed. Karl released the pressure on his nose.
‘Got some of that one down the right hole, did you? Good for you. You’re not full yet though, surely.’
Karl got as much of the soup on the spoon as he could, pulled his father’s lips open and poured it in.
‘How would you feel about coming with me to see our mystery property?’ the presenter asked.
‘Yes please!’ Karl responded. He threw down the spoon, gripped his father’s cheeks with one hand and pinched his nose with the other and watched as he breathed in the life-threatening miniature chunks of carrot.
‘I’d like to see it. What do you think it’ll be like, Dad?
I’m guessing, access to a slightly shitty pool, with a kitchen you couldn’t swing a cat in and a bedroom that only needs a bit of TLC to make it their dream home! ’
His father’s body convulsed on the bed, heaving up and down, and Karl kept the liquid in his mouth.
There was an odd gargling noise at the back of his throat, like that coffee advert his mother had hated with a passion, something to do with people in a kitchen pretending to make posh coffee with one of those machines but really making all the noises themself.
That was it. His father was a posh coffee machine.
‘Won’t be a minute!’ Karl called in a falsetto, suitably posh English accent. ‘I’ll bring the coffee through in a jiffy!’
His father’s body was writhing now, moving more than it had for months. It was amazing what residual fight the human form could store. There was a time when it would all have been too much for him, too horrible and traumatic, but Karl wasn’t scared of dead bodies any more.
‘Did you not want to come and watch, Ma?’ he yelled in the general direction of the hallway. ‘This was your idea, after all! Bit squeamish, then. Not your usual cocky bitch self today!’
His father had stopped moving and Karl hadn’t even noticed. He released him gently, mindful that there couldn’t be any bruising or, God forbid, scratches. Nothing to arouse the suspicion of the paramedics.
‘You did ever so well,’ Karl told him. ‘Just one more little thing to do, then we’ll get you taken care of, and not by that monster, Waterfall. I won’t let anyone cut you open, don’t you worry. It just needs the cherry on the cake.’
Karl bit off a tiny section of bread and chewed it, making it both moist but claggy with his own saliva before inserting it into the end of the straw.
He opened his father’s mouth, slid the straw oh-so-carefully into his throat, took the deepest breath he could, and blew hard.
There was no way of knowing where the bread ball had ended up, but it was a nice touch.
‘Oh my God, we love it. It’s exactly what we’d dreamed of!’ the couple were exclaiming over the cockroach haven mystery property. ‘I just don’t know if we can afford it.’
‘You can’t, and you won’t,’ Karl said. ‘Right, let’s sit you up. Don’t want anyone thinking I fed you soup while you were on your back, do we?’
He got his father into a more seemly position, threw the soup and bread onto the floor as if they’d been spilled in the panic of the moment, then opened the curtains and unlocked the door once more. Finally, he turned down the television and made the call.
‘Please, it’s my father, he was choking and now he’s not breathing,’ he sobbed as the call handler asked him what his emergency was. ‘Ambulance. Please hurry. I’m all alone.’
He managed to actually cry as he gave out the address, which he hadn’t foreseen. Then an ambulance was on its way and he was to stay on the phone, as instructions were given to turn his father onto his side and so on and so forth.
Karl remembered to move the straw in the nick of time, shoving it into the dishwasher as the doorbell went. The paramedics hadn’t wasted any time, and he was glad he hadn’t called them earlier. Imagine if they actually managed to save the old man?
As they walked into the house and did all they could to revive his father, Karl noticed his mother plodding down the stairs and peering into the lounge with all the grace of a teenage boy trying to sneak a peek at his older brother’s porn stash.
It was just him then, he realised. No one else could see her.
Her dressing gown was flapping open to reveal a filthy nightie that might have come straight out of the grave with her, crusted in filth and crawling with insects.
No way could the paramedics have seen that and walked out of there with their sanity intact.
‘I’m so sorry,’ one of them said. ‘There’s nothing more we can do for your father. He died before we arrived and can’t be resuscitated. It looks like he’s been in physical decline for a while. Is that right?’
Karl nodded and pressed a shaking hand to his mouth. ‘Are you sure there’s nothing you can do?’
‘I’m afraid not. Do you have a family doctor?’
Karl nodded and slowly sank into a chair. ‘He was here just a couple of days ago. He warned me that things weren’t looking good, but I think I just didn’t really want to believe him.’
‘I see. In that case, we can arrange to have the body taken away, and we’ll speak to the doctor to confirm things. Is there someone we can call to come and be with you? There are some procedures we need to explain and it can be overwhelming.’
‘No,’ Karl said. ‘There’s no one. It was just my dad and me.
He was my world.’ In the midst of his award-winning performance, Karl realised that he’d left his to-do list out on the side in the kitchen.
‘Do you mind if I leave you to it for a minute? I’ll put the kettle on. I think I need some sweet tea.’
‘Great idea. We’ll start getting things sorted in here. It’s probably best if you leave this bit to us.’
Karl nodded sadly, shoulders down, head bowed. The paramedics shut the door respectfully behind him as they started the paperwork and made calls. In the kitchen, Karl turned on the gas and burned his list, keeping it in his head instead.
Get rid of Dad in a way that won’t raise any suspicion (tick).
Prepare to get rid of Beth Waterfall once and for all so that Ma will leave me alone too (tick).
Put the house on the market. Start again and leave all the death behind.
And if the worst happened, if by some chance it all went wrong and he got caught, at least now his father wouldn’t end up being abused or ignored in some awful home.
What he’d done had been a mercy, really.
Perhaps he should give Spain a try, Karl thought.
There were plenty of apartments going cheap, after all.
For now he needed to prepare for the worst and hope for the best. He went upstairs to pack some clothes, his laptop and his passport.
It was entirely possible that – much like his father – he would be leaving soon and never coming back.