JONATHON - Book 1 [Watty Awards 2012]

Chapter 3

Bea continued with her household chores but stopped mid-afternoon and sat in the chair and took a short nap. When she awoke only a little refreshed she went to make his evening meal. He stirred when she opened the door and he looked more at ease.

‘Ready for something to eat?’ she asked.

‘Bea, I need to go…… and not just a pee this time. Can you get me to the lavatory?’ She doubted it but she was not about to let him know.

Leaning heavily on her and with the aid of the stolen crutch he made it to the bathroom and though he was near collapse with the effort, he determinedly pushed her outside and shut the door.

'Don’t lock it Jonathon.’ She pleaded. She waited until she heard the flush and then the running water as he washed. The door opened and he stood there ashen and slightly shaking. He leaned even more heavily on her on the journey back and almost fell into bed, exhausted with the effort. She brushed the hair from his sweating forehead and bathed his face. She rose to get his meal.

‘Not yet, Bea’ he begged. ‘I can’t eat anything just yet.’ He saw the concern in her face. ‘I will, in a little while.’ he promised. She sat and waited and did not press him. Five minutes. Ten. Then a little while later he nodded slowly and she rose. ‘Just a little, Bea. Just a little.’ He could not face a full plate.

She was disappointed at how few mouthfuls he managed before turning his face and holding up his hand. No more. But it would only distress him to coax him to try more. She wiped his lips for him and took the tray away.

He drifted in and out of sleep the rest of the evening and each time he woke she spooned some fluid between his lips. It was to be the last of peaceful moments for some considerable time to come.

Bea was wakened in the middle of the night by the violent shaking of the bed as the tremors tore and shuddered through his body. He was moaning and shouting and his body was a river of sweat. She turned up the light. His face was a rictus of pain, his head pressed far back into the pillow, the cords in his throat knotted and standing up like ropes, his mouth a rigid gape, his eyes staring but unseeing any earthly thing. His whole body was rigid yet shaking, his arms by his side, his hands clenched fists, his legs threshed or drew up like a foetus as the fire of his addiction ripped through every vein in his body and his demons clawed and gnawed at his belly.

‘Jonathon!’ she screamed in terror. ‘Jonathon.’

‘Get me a drink!’ the hoarse words ripped out of him. She grabbed the water and tried to force it through his chattering jaws. He thrust her hand aside and the glass of water with it. ‘I said a drink woman! Vodka for the love of Christ! Whisky. Gin. Rum. Anything! But get me a fucking drink!’ he roared.

‘There is none! And you might just as well ask me to give you poison.’ She told him and tried to hold still his bucking, threshing body. With an act borne of desperation he thrust her aside and flung himself over the edge of the bed to vomit voluminously on the floor. He continued to let himself fall and thankfully landed beyond the pool of noxious liquid. She scrambled out of bed after him, managed to get him to his feet, pulled the sodden garments from him and wrapped him in the sheet and blankets to sit in the chair while she stripped the bed and mopped up his puke.

‘You shouldn’t have to do this for me, Bea.’ he murmured fretfully, deeply mortified.

‘And who else is going to?’ she asked softly. ‘Now sit quietly while I change the bed.’

She sorted through drawers and cupboards and thankfully found the rubber sheet she had thought she might need when she had been so ill after leaving the convent. She put the rubber sheet on the mattress then covered it with several large bath sheet towels before putting on fresh cotton sheets. She took the blanket from Jonathon.