‘You need help with the door?’ Sharon asked.

He shook his head.

‘Look,’ she said. Then, ‘I had to do it. I was told to do it.’

‘What, beat me up? I don’t give a damn if you were told.’

‘You shouldn’t have said what you did.’

‘Was true, wasn’t it?’

A few breaths from her, still angry. He struggled with his own. Each one felt as though he’d swallowed something sharp, which jabbed him in the lungs as he breathed out.

‘You want to go to the doctor?’

‘You want to take me?’ He fumbled with the handle, managed to lever it inwards and the door fell open. His arm still throbbed. He threw his legs out, wincing, and heaved himself upright. Shuffled slowly to his front door, neglecting to close the passenger door. He heard it shut behind him. Then the sound of the car pulling down the driveway, driving down the road.

At the door, shaking, fumbling his keys. Cursing as he dropped them. Bloody piece of shit. Bending down. He finally managed to twist the deadlock, and wobbled inside.

Nobody had been home since he’d left earlier that day. The toaster was still out on the bench where he’d left it. He felt an enormous need to see his wife. A desperation.

Instead he sat on his couch. Studied the void of the television screen, the empty blackness that reflected the same in him. He sank back, lifted his legs, swung them up––a quick drawing in of breath. Something in there was bad for sure. With one arm holding his chest, his face an unknown, bloodied disaster, he closed his eyes and drifted off. The last thought before he went to sleep was of his wife. A memory of the two of them driving someplace, Penelope laughing. When they had been young.

He woke to a knocking on the door. He struggled with his eyes and feared for a moment he had died, that this inability was what death was: an immobile, terrifying, eternal inaction. Soon, though, he managed to focus. He rubbed a swollen hand against his forehead and sat up, felt the pain in his chest blossom and spread, seep into all his parts. He groaned loudly.

From outside, shouting. ‘You alright in there?’ It was William Kelly.

‘Yeah, yeah. I’m coming.’

He crept upward, found his footing, walked to the door, his breathing a pain. It was a new light outside, but hazy and dim. Morning. As Vernon passed the kitchen he looked out at his favourite chair on the verandah, and the mudflats beyond. The haze had descended over all of it. If the pelican had been there this day he would not have seen it flapping.

On the front doorstep William Kelly appeared more haggard than usual. His face fell as he beheld Vernon. ‘Bloody hell, mate.’ He stepped inside, put his arm around his friend’s waist and helped him back to the couch. Vernon’s first instinct was to shrug him off but he refused to follow it.