A nurse is a person with the power to cause pain and relieve it. Adderall, Clozapine, Ambien. Lactulose and Ativan, diuretics and Demerol. Hydrocodone, OxyContin, Percocet and Fentanyl. Of course it is controlled, of course they are meant to keep track of every pill, every patch, but there are always tricks. Sometimes a patient misses their dose. Sometimes a patient dies before the meds stop coming. It is those who count who know how to mask the truth.

The thing about the truth, though, is that if you decide to tell it you have to tell it all. You can’t hide some things and tell others. Because they’re all connected, the lies, like the scaffolding of a skyscraper. I imagine myself as the building inside, my structure rotten, only the lies holding me up. I’m not strong enough without them. I’d certainly tumble to the ground.

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 14

I wanted to hide from Roy how difficult things had been since Jack went MIA, because he was over there fighting himself, but I couldn’t keep some of my frustration from seeping into my letters.

I had come home to help Mum, but all the unresolved issues from the year before began to haunt me. I was hiding the truth from her, and it meant that I could never be completely myself. I was always on guard now, in case I let something slip. Sometimes I thought perhaps it would be easier just to tell her. She would forgive me. But would she forgive Dad? And was now the time, when she was so fragile, to destroy her idea of him? No matter what I did, I felt as though being in that house was living in a lie.

Mum let her grief pull her soft, worn out body into bed, her eyes distant and rubbed raw. While she floundered, Dad pretended that nothing had happened, that life just went on as it ever did, and when Mum started to talk about Jack he’d pound the table and shout, ‘Enough, woman! Let it rest.’

He drank as much as ever but it didn’t seem to give him the relief it once did. He treated going to the pub like a job: if he didn’t do it the world might stop, he might have to face his life in some unfamiliar way, and he was not prepared for that.