Page 70 of If I Could Say Goodbye
I blink.
Kerry has gone and a skin has formed inside the gravy boat. Mum reaches her hand towards mine and holds it tightly.
‘What is she doing?’ Mum’s face is full of hope, for a snippet of ‘the afterlife’.
‘Dipping a chip into the gravy boat.’
Mum grins but Dad’s cutlery clatters beside the plate. ‘There is nothing to smile about, Judith, what Jen is seeing is a hallucination, she is—’
‘But what if Jen isn’t sick? What if it really is her? We had the girls baptised, we—’
‘Enough.’ His tone is serious.
‘It’s not her, Mum.’
‘How do you know? How do you know that she hasn’t come back, that she doesn’t want to, you know, move on?’
‘Because she was vegetarian and would never have dipped her chip into the gravy. She never saw half of the movies that I hear her quoting from. Because she would never have come back and have me talking to thin air and be the cause of me losing my family.’
I push back my chair and scrape the food into the bin and go back to bed.
Ed’s fingers land on top of mine and I realise they are tapping nervously on the tops of my thighs. Dr Faulkner leans back, tips her head to one side and pushes her large, fashionable glasses further up her nose.
‘What I think we ought not to do is jump to conclusions. Mr Jones, I’ve no doubt that you’ve been Googling?’ She smiles kindly and Ed nods guiltily. ‘The internet is an incredible thing, but it can make hypochondriacs out of us all. I’m guessing the internet threw up some pretty scary diagnoses?’ Ed nods.
‘He thinks I’m schizophrenic,’ I clarify as she gets up and fetches her water bottle, taking a few sips as she sits back down.
‘I don’t, I’m just saying that is one of the things it could be.’
‘Is there any family history of schizophrenia? Mrs Jones?’
‘Jen is adopted,’ Ed interrupts.
‘I see.’ She swivels on her seat and taps this information into her computer. ‘Have you ever had any hallucinations like this before your sister died?’ She spins the seat back to face us.
I shake my head.
‘Can you see your sister now?’
My eyes flick over to Kerry, who is sitting on the examination table, raising her hand like she’s in school and saying ‘Here’. I nod.
‘Do you believe your sister is actually there?’
I clear my throat. ‘No. I mean . . . I know she’s not actually here, but I also know that I can see her, if that makes sense?’
‘How do you know she’s not really there?’
‘Because the top she is wearing is hanging up in my wardrobe at home. She shrank it and gave it to me over a year ago.’
‘Oh yeah!’ Kerry pulls at the black sleeves.
‘People with schizophrenia are usually convinced that what they can see is actually there. I’m not saying that it isn’t the case here, but . . . I think it is probable that your hallucinations are being caused by something else. Grief is a powerful emotion, Jennifer . . . tell me about how your sister died?’
‘She was hit by a car . . . saving me. It should have been me, I should be the one who is dead. It was my fault.’
Her head tilts to the side; her sympathy for me is palpable.
‘Jennifer, deep grief can make the most rational of people become irrational and guilt . . .’ her head nods towards me, ‘guilt can eat you alive if you let it.’ She returns her attention to Ed. ‘Now before we can go any further with a diagnosis, we need to rule out any medical reasons for your wife’s hallucinations.
