Bangkok Hospital Phuket, Thailand, 2004
I awoke with a start. A nurse’s hand gently stirring me. The look on her face told me that the news wasn’t good. I sat up, wiping sleep from my eyes, ready to sign a consent form for surgery, or perhaps a transfer to another ward.
But there was no consent form.
Mam had died. She was dead. My mam was gone. It was more than I could bear.
While I slept, she breathed her last. I couldn’t accept it, my mind froze from the torrent of emotions that hit me. She can’t be dead. Not my mam. She was invincible.
I was aware of arms around me, but I forced them away. I didn’t want anyone to touch me, comfort me. I wanted my mam.
I leaned in close to her and whispered in her ear, ‘Wake up. Please, I beg of you, wake up. Don’t leave me on my own here. I need you.’
But she didn’t open her eyes. She lay there, bloated and bloodied. I’d heard people say that when you died, you looked like you were sleeping. That wasn’t true. It so fucking wasn’t true. She looked in pain.
The loss made me want to scratch the skin from my arms. I wanted to pull my hair out into clumps onto the ground. I wanted to bleed. I wanted to end this torture.
I crawled up onto the small hospital bed and lay my head on her bosom, as I’d done so many times in my life, and I held her body close to mine. I breathed in her scent, but it was all wrong. She smelt of the sea, of death and decay. She didn’t smell like my mam.
I closed my eyes, wished with all my might that we were home again. We should never have come here. I don’t know how long I stayed there, but after a while a nurse pulled me down.
‘We must move your mother. I’m sorry.’ Her eyes were full of sympathy. ‘I will clean her for you. I will make her nice.’
No. My body and mind recoiled from this moment. How could this be happening? I wasn’t ready for it. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be.
Anna was hovering, crying into the arms of Corey and I wanted to scream at them. Why are you crying? You have your mam. You have each other. I have no one. NO ONE!!!
‘Daddy, where are you? I need you,’ I cried. ‘Eli, come find me, please. I’m so scared.’
Then the Thai nurse wheeled my mother away and I followed. Because I had nowhere else to go.
Anna ran after me, grabbing my hand, ‘We are taking Mum away later today. Come with us. You’re not on your own.’
‘I can’t leave. I need to find my family.’ My voice was unrecognisable. Flat. Dead.
Maybe I had died too and this was hell.
‘Take this.’ She passed a wad of notes into my hand. ‘You need some money. Find the Irish embassy.’
‘Tell Alice …’ I didn’t know what to say. ‘Tell her I said goodbye.’
She nodded and walked back to her mother, who was unconscious.
The Thai nurse sat me down on a wooden chair and took my mother into a room. Someone sat beside me, another nurse, who asked for details to complete the paperwork. I answered each question as best I could and all the time it felt like I was out of my body. I knew I was present, but it didn’t feel like that.
‘Now what?’ I said to her.
She didn’t have an answer for me.
Then I heard a voice asking, ‘Are there any Irish here?’
I whispered, ‘Me.’
But the man didn’t hear me, he walked past. So I put my hand up, as I used to do in class when I wanted my teacher’s attention. He stopped and asked me, ‘Are you Irish?’
I nodded.
He crouched onto his hunkers and held my hands for a moment. ‘I’m Dan Mulhall. I’m with the Irish Embassy. I’m here to help you.’
‘My mam just died.’
Sympathy flooded his face. ‘I’m so sorry. What was her name?’
‘Mary Madden.’
‘And what’s your name?’
‘Skye.’
‘That’s a pretty name.’
‘Mam and Dad said that they wanted extraordinary names for us. As they had ordinary Irish ones, they wanted to give us something unique.’
‘Well, they picked a great one for you.’
‘I don’t know what to do with mam. But I need to find my dad and brother.’ How many times had I said that? I lost count.
‘Will you let me help with that?’ He held out his hand. I took it.
Overnight, so much had changed outside the hospital. Trucks were constantly transporting families as they searched for their loved ones. Dan told me that my family could be in another hospital or in one of the refugee camps. They could be down on the beach, searching. The options were endless.
Photographs of loved ones were pinned to message boards, with notes begging for news. It was heartbreaking to look at these, these symbols of loss and grief.
The next few hours went by in a blur. A phone was provided so that I could call Aunty Paula. She answered on the first ring, desperate and terrified for us all, as news of the tsunami hit Ireland.
‘Is that you, Mary?’
I couldn’t speak. How could I say the words out loud? Tell her that Mary, her older sister, her best friend, was dead.
‘Who is it? John? Please …’ she sobbed.
‘It’s me,’ I whispered.
‘Oh Skye, my little darling, are you okay, pet? I’ve been so worried.’
‘I’m okay.’
‘How is everyone, put Mary on, darling, I’ve been out of my mind with worry.’
‘Mam … she’s … Mam is.’ I couldn’t say the words.
Silence. Save for the sound of her breathing, as it quickened, then broke on a sob.
‘No. No. No.’ The shock rang loud in Aunty Paula’s voice down the phone line from Ireland to Thailand. I wanted to run. I couldn’t deal with her pain on top of my own.
I heard crying, uncontrollable sobbing, but then eventually she sniffed loudly and said in a steady voice, ‘My darling, it’s going to be okay. Tell me. Is your dad and Eli with you?’
‘I can’t find them.’ I tried my best not to cry, but it was too hard. ‘I’m so scared. I don’t know what to do.’
‘Listen here to me, darling. I’m going to get a flight out to you. You’re not on your own. Not any more.’
‘Okay’.
‘Ring me again, as soon as you can, on my mobile, okay? I’ll let you know then when I can get to you. It’s going to be okay. I bet by the time I get to you, your dad and Eli will be with you, you wait and see. Just hold on for a little longer, okay?’
I wanted to believe her. And I suppose I needed to believe her, so I did.
A guy called Tom from the Irish embassy was assigned to look after me. He took my details.
Skye Madden - Alive.
Mary Madden - Deceased. Patong Hospital Morgue.
John Madden - Missing.
Eli Madden - Missing.
A stark status report of my life.
‘We’ll check through all the lists we have of people identified in the hospitals and camps, okay?’ he reached and clasped my hand. It was a gesture that had happened many times over the past twenty-four hours and I would encounter many more times over the coming days. Sometimes I found it comforting. At other times, I wanted to slap it away. Like now.
‘What do I do?’ I asked.
‘You need to sleep. We’ll get a driver to take you to a hotel. Get something to eat and then call us first thing in the morning. We’ll have more news then. We’ll be in touch with your aunt, to tell her where you are.’
So I found myself being driven through Phuket town. As I looked out of the windows, it seemed incredible to me that it could look so normal now. Inland, away from the beach areas, it was far removed from the chaos. Except for the fact that it looked like a ghost town, with hardly a soul to be seen.
Tom told me about an informal headquarters that had been set up in the main town centre. The embassy staff would gather there every evening at 7pm to update the families of the missing. Plans were also being made to get us home.
The driver told me that some Irish had already been sent home via army flights. And some, like Alice, were lucky enough to have health insurance to cover their transportation. I had no idea what insurance we had. I’d never asked Mam and Dad that. But I suspected whatever we had wasn’t much.
I asked the driver to stop in the shopping centre so that I could buy some clothes, grateful for the money Anna had given me. Shorts, a couple of t-shirts and some underwear. And sandals. I’d been barefoot for so long, I’d forgotten what it felt like to wear them. The soles of my feet protested at first, blisters and cuts suddenly making their presence felt. I’d not noticed before, but now, every step felt like agony. I bought some plasters and antiseptic cream, so I could do some patch-up work later on.
The hotel lobby was full and the buzz of conversations overwhelmed me. People shoved photographs in my face. Have you seen her? Have you seen my wife? Have you seen my child?
I stopped and stood still, unmoving, listening to snatches of conversations around me.
‘If you were still missing, there’s no chance you were alive …’
‘Total devastation …’
‘Little hope left …’
I began to feel dizzy and the room went out of focus. ‘Are you okay, miss?’ someone asked. I shook away their concern.
I would never be okay again.
The embassy had booked me a room. It was pretty, with a balcony. I looked down at the beautiful flowers, in bright peaches and yellows, and the green palm trees and once again could not reconcile this reality with the one I was living. I showered and napped for an hour, but I couldn’t rest.
The pull to go back to the beach was too strong.
The closer I got to it, the more I realised that this chaos, this destruction, matched better how I felt inside. The hotel room I had just left was the fake part. It jarred, it poked, it prodded me. How could I ever allow myself to relax when Eli and Dad were not here?
This was my reality.
Huge machinery picked its way through destroyed buildings. They had to move slowly because there were bodies under that rubble. And perhaps, by some miracle, a survivor or two.
Everywhere I turned, there was more carnage and decay. The smell of rotting, water-logged flesh was overpowering. The thought that these bodies, lined up in makeshift morgues, wrapped in body bags, might be Dad or Eli, made me want to retch.
Weeping survivors clung to each other, as they stood in front of bulletin boards. So many snaps of smiling, tanned people, beads in the hair of the children, flowers behind ears of the women and bright shorts on men. Many with Santa hats on. Thai, European, Black, White. All smiling.
And probably all dead.
Tomorrow Aunty Paula would be here, with photographs to add to the collage. And I would write a message on them, begging the universe one last time to grant me a miracle.
We had lost enough. Let them be alive.
‘Skye!’ a voice shouted.