Tess and Charlie pulled up out the front of the address Maryanne had provided. The street felt old, established, with narrow concrete paths covered in greenery and stone walls stretching up the street and the hills. Everything was green. The narrow street had limited parking, so Charlie pulled into the driveway. Another car was parked farther in — an old Ford Fiesta. It wasn’t what Charlie had pictured for an incredibly rich ex-philanthropist. Although the house was in one of the most expensive suburbs in the country, it wasn’t quite what she’d imagined. Houses all around it were being refurbished, even torn down and rebuilt, but this one looked like a snapshot from the 1950s.
“What are you thinking, ma chère?” Tess asked, also examining the house closely. “Are we going in?”
“Too late to turn back now,” Charlie said, opening the driver’s-side door.
Tess followed her as she made her way to the entry. She knocked tentatively, waiting patiently for an answer that didn’t come. She knocked again, louder. “I hear someone in there, do you?” Charlie asked Tess, who nodded. Charlie tried to look through the window to the right of the door, but it was too dark to see. She lifted her hand to knock again, and the door handle twisted.
“Hello?” said a quiet woman’s voice from inside, heavily accented — probably South or Central American, Charlie thought.
“Hi,” Charlie said, trying to peer around the door. “My name’s Charlie, and this is my friend, Tess. We were hoping to see Alexander Cooper.”
The woman was silent for a long time, shuffling behind the door. “Mr Cooper?” she asked, finally. “You know him?”
“Yes… Well, no. He’s a friend of a friend of ours. She asked us to come see him.” Charlie and Tess heard the woman mutter behind the door. The uncertainty Charlie had felt since seeing the house grew. “We won’t be long, I promise. His friend was quite insistent we see him.”
The door slowly opened fully, revealing a tiny woman in a pale-blue polo shirt and chinos. The woman looked them up and down curiously then stood to the side, nodding, and motioning them to come inside. “This way,” she motioned over her shoulder, leading the way inside the house. The entryway was clean and well maintained, but like the rest of the house, looked like something from a 1950s design magazine. Wood panelling graced every wall, flowing up to a deep-green painted ceiling. White and black tiles glistened cleanly underfoot, and each piece of furniture — also immaculate — was antique. “Mr Cooper’s in the last room, on the right.”
“We won’t be long,” Charlie promised again as they passed her and made their way to the room.
She shrugged back at them.
Charlie and Tess stared into each other’s eyes searchingly. Do we go in? Charlie thought. Tess gently nudged her shoulder, encouraging her towards the door. Charlie knocked, which caused the small woman behind them to raise her eyebrows in surprise. She motioned them forward again. Charlie pushed the door open and couldn’t help the gasp that followed.
Alexander Cooper lay in a large bed in the middle of the room, intubation tubes running from his mouth to a large medical display. The room had been redesigned to resemble a hospital room. The smell was much the same as that of a hospital as well. And on a day bed by the window was the all-too-familiar top hat. Charlie turned her back on Alexander in shock, staring directly at the small woman who’d let them into his house.
For the first time, Charlie read the logo on her polo shirt. She was from a home nursing service. “He’s been like this nearly twenty-five years this time,” the woman said.
“Twenty-five years?” she heard Tess whisper behind her, at the same time as Charlie said, “This time?”
The woman looked them up and down suspiciously. “I thought you’d know…” she said, trailing off.
“Our friend didn’t say…” Charlie also trailed off, turning back to look over her shoulder.
Tess, thinking on her feet, interjected perfectly. “Our friend said he was sick. Had been sick a long time. But she didn’t tell us…” She motioned her head. “Didn’t tell us the full extent. And…and…she asked us to deliver a message to him. A private message. So we assumed…”
The nurse, who obviously liked Tess, nodded after a moment. “This is the longest episode. When the seizures first started, he’d come in and out. The comas were only weeks at first, then months. Now…” She shrugged.
“Why?” Charlie asked, meaning many questions at once. Why is this happening? Why do you let this continue? Why won’t he wake up? Why doesn’t everyone know?
“We don’t know for sure. At first, we thought it was his diabetes. Then an infection. Then epilepsy. Then the diagnosis didn’t matter, just the treatment.”
“Why keep him like this?” Tess asked, appalled. “He’s a vegetable now, non?”
“Advanced care directive.” The nurse shrugged. “Lots of lawyers, lots of money, and a family who cares a little but not enough.”
“Can we have some time alone with him?” Charlie asked. “To…to relay our friend’s message?”
The nurse put her hands up in consent, backing out of the room. It wasn’t like they could do much worse to him. “But be quick please,” she said. “I have to do his exercises in half an hour.” Charlie nodded enthusiastically as Tess’s mouth fell open.
After the nurse left and Charlie closed the door, Tess blurted out, “How could they leave him like this? Putain de merde!”
“Fuck…” Charlie said, disgust and terror warring with her in equal measure. Will this happen to me? she wondered. She walked to the bedside, examining the old man. He’d clearly been well looked after, but his skin was pale and stretched, signs of bedsores and old catheter sites marring every visible part of him. As she got closer, she felt the air around her tingle — it was like he was a charged battery. “Can you feel that?” she asked Tess as she moved closer, the hairs on her arms standing straight. She lifted her arm to show Tess.
“Non… Nothing…” Tess whispered, keeping a wide berth from Alexander anyway, as though he might sit up and grab her at any moment. “Nom de dieu de putain de bordel de merde de saloperie de connard d’enculé de ta mère… What the fuck was that crazy shrink thinking, sending us here? What is this?”
As Charlie got even closer to Alexander, she felt the energy coming off him. It felt similar to the sensation she always got whenever she was pulled into the Dream. “I think I might be able to talk to him…” she whispered to Tess, pulling a nearby chair to the bedside and sitting on its edge. She looked up at Tess, who was staring back at Charlie, terrified. “This is going to be a bit weird… Do you remember me explaining to you how I had dreams when I was awake?”
“Is this a good idea?” Tess asked, keeping her distance.
“I need some answers,” Charlie replied. “Alexander has something to do with the Dream. Something to do with me. This might be my only chance…”
Tess nodded briskly but didn’t come any closer. “What do you need me to do?” she asked hesitantly.
“Just stand watch. It might look a bit weird — like I’m actually asleep as well — but I’ll be okay, okay? I promise. Just give me a shake if I don’t wake up after ten minutes.” Tess nodded again, wrapping her arms around her chest.
“Just be careful. Putain de merde… Je ne peux pas croire ça…”
Charlie took a deep breath, trying to relax herself and banish her fear before reaching her hand out and placing it on Alexander’s cold, soft arm.
She lost her breath as she was sucked into the Dream more fiercely than ever. It was like she’d been dropped off the edge of a cliff, wind rushing across her body, making it hard to breathe, leaving her stomach far behind her. She felt as though she were floundering, trying to find her way, when just as suddenly she stood in a room she didn’t recognise. If she’d had a physical body, she wasn’t sure whether she should be panting, vomiting, shaking or crying. She tried to take everything in as quickly as she could.
An old woman lay in a bed by a window, breathing so shallowly it was as though she were already dead. Light filtered through her thin curtains, dancing across the sheets draped over her small body. As Charlie focussed, she heard trickling and bubbling from outside the window…a fountain — a familiar fountain. My mum’s nursing home, she thought. It’s Mum’s fountain… As she looked around the room again, she saw familiarities with her own mother’s old room.
She willed herself to the woman’s bedside, and looking down realised she knew this woman as well. It was the woman she’d seen the day she visited with Tess — the one she thought was glowing purple. Although she looked much older now it was definitely the same woman. Charlie reached out towards her, laying her hand on top of hers. With that contact she instantly knew this woman. Knew her life. Knew she’d been a feisty and independent woman who had travelled Europe with her girlfriends in the 1950s, before bowing to social pressures in her early thirties and marrying a man much older than her. Not because she loved him, but because society demanded it. Over time, she did grow to love him, but not romantically. Despite his gruffness, she grew to depend on him. And when he died, she lost a huge part of herself — what she thought had made her who she was.
But that’s not who you are, Charlie thought to her.
The purple glowed brighter around the woman, and Charlie again saw that younger side of her. The feminine side, the adventurer, the independence. She felt what had been buried for so long start to come to the fore again.
Aware it wasn’t just the two of them in the room, Charlie turned and saw him. Alexander Cooper — but as she’d first known him. The white man, glowing brightly, his top hat perched on his head. Once again, Charlie found it hard to see his facial features, and once again he stood silently. But she knew he was looking at her with more than curiosity. It was eagerness and purpose.
Alexander Cooper, she thought to him, unable to physically form the words.
Charlotte White, he mentally replied.
Charlie tried to form all the questions she wanted to ask but struggled. It was difficult to express it all the way she wanted to. Instead she reached out desperately. What? Why?
Alexander moved past her to take her place besides the old woman, holding the woman’s hand as well. The balance, he answered simply. As he answered, the woman breathed her last breath, her spirit bursting brightly in a beautiful purple glow. It was the most magnificent thing Charlie had ever seen. Had ever felt. So much so it took her own breath away. As both the woman and Alexander began to fade away, he sent her another message, My duty will be yours. The balance.
Charlie took a deep breath as she was suddenly back in Dover Heights, Sydney. Tess had her hands on her shoulders and was shaking her violently. The nurse stood behind Tess, eyes wide, frozen by the door. “Charlotte!” Tess yelled desperately.
“Tess, Tess, it’s okay,” Charlie answered, lifting her hands to hold on to Tess’s, to stop her from shaking her. “I’m okay, Tess.” Tess let out a loud whimper then wrapped Charlie in a tight hug.
“What…what was that?” the nurse asked. “What happened?”
Charlie looked between them, trying to figure out what had happened while she was in the Dream with Alexander. “I-I’m sorry…” Charlie said. “I’m okay, really. I-I think we should go.” She stood, wobbling slightly as Tess released her. Tess grabbed Charlie’s arm and held it tightly as they walked to the other side of the room, squeezing through the door together. “I’m sorry,” Charlie said again, the nurse staring after them in shock.