and see Anna on top of the bed and on the floor underneath it a heap of discarded medicine wrappers. Her pills. Her sleeping body. It’s those wrappers that made the crinkling noise I heard, an insistent scratching and rustling that has picked at my mind, bothering me. There has been something in the scene that isn’t right, something that I know without knowing, and when the realization arrives at last it’s like a coldness rising from my core that dispels the warm day outside. No, I say aloud, it can’t be. Yes, I think, she’s done it.
Now I’m watching myself move, like somebody who isn’t me. See him run around the bed and grab her by the arm and shake her. Hear him calling out her name. And when she doesn’t wake, when her eyelids flicker slightly and close again, the last doubt has gone. Now he understands that this has been coming all along, right from day one. How could you not have known, why did you not act weeks ago while there was still time, how could you have arrived at a moment like this when all the warnings were in place.
There are no words for what is happening now, for what he thinks and feels. His body is working by itself, trying to undo what is already accomplished, while his mind and spirit are elsewhere, having a high, disconnected dialogue. What will happen if, if what, if she, no, I don’t want to think about that. Act, act, do something. See him grab the woman in the bed and drag her into a sitting position and slap her hard across the face. Anna, wake up, you must wake up. And finally she does, her eyes open properly at last. Her expression is stunned. Listen to me, he says. You must tell me. What have you done.
She thinks for a little while, then whispers. I ate my medicine.
How many pills did you take.
All of them.
All of them. He knows, with some separate, rational part of his brain, what the mathematics are. About two hundred tranquillizers and fifty sleeping pills. A white cloud of terror drains the colour out of everything. See him run from the room and down the stairs, hear him shouting to the waiter in the restaurant, his voice something separate from him, is there a doctor in the village, call the doctor right now. There are a few diners at the tables, they stir with alarm and curiosity as they watch him turn and pound back up the stairs again. He drags her off the bed and onto her feet. You must move, Anna, you have to keep moving. Think, think. Vomit the pills. He takes her into the bathroom, bends her over the toilet, sticks his fingers down her throat. Her head lolls heavily on her neck. Vomit, Anna, bring them up. He takes his toothbrush, uses the handle to press her tongue down. She retches dryly, nothing comes up. I’m begging you, do it, Anna, do it. She is collapsing, sliding sideways against the wall. Got to keep moving. He walks her back into the other room and up and down the floor, stopping to stick his fingers into her mouth as if by force he can retrieve the seeds of death she’s taken into herself. Vomit, Anna, for Christ’s sake how could you do this to yourself and to me, and here of all places, where there is nobody to help.
He has never felt so alone. But in that moment somebody else is there. An older woman from England, who lives in a private house on the property for half of the year. He hardly knows her, bar a few brief conversations, but he feels overwhelmingly, desperately glad to see her.
Is everything all right here, she asks in a small voice.
He realizes now that he’s been shouting with all his force, signalling his distress in rings of sound that move outwards from the room. Caroline, he says, oh Caroline. You have to help me. What’s wrong, what has she done. She’s overdosed, she’s taken her medicine. Two hundred and fifty pills, he says, amazed at the figure all over again.
She is much calmer than he is and she brings an air of cool authority into the room. He remembers vaguely that she’s a nurse back in her other life in England, and he’s happy to defer to her when she takes charge. Salt water, she says, we must have salt water.