Into The Wolf's Den

Chapter 3 - Madeline

The next morning came and with it my discharge paperwork.

Without a moment to lose, I got dressed in the clothes Grandad had brought me from home. I didn’t want to be here a moment longer than I had to be.

I sat around fully dressed and waiting for my paperwork to come, tapping my foot nervously on the floor and only half sitting on the hospital bed. Grandad looked irritated by my fidgeting. He always said that my fidgeting was a bad habit, but no matter how hard my grandparents tried, I never got rid of it.

I was growing anxious rapidly, my fidgeting began to get worse and Grandad looked at me concerned, knowing how much I hated hospitals. It only made me worried that he was thinking I was having a mental breakdown, I wasn’t of course.

The doctor came strolling in and allowed me to sign my discharge papers, and within a few minutes, I was on my way home. Grandad had parked right outside and we walked together in silence. Once inside, I buckled myself and we took off towards home.

As the car drove to the outskirts of the city, I eyed the children riding their bikes up the footpaths. Women in gorgeous sundresses sat at little tables in the sunshine, laughing at something someone had said. This part of the city was so different from ours; the shops lined the main street, bright and colourful. People seemed happy here.

It was a bit of an odd concept for me, a stark contrast to the secrets they tried to hide at the outskirts.

We kept driving and crossed a small bridge over a river, sometimes the river got so high that you couldn’t even drive across it. The neighbourhood would just be stranded on the other side, completely cut off from the rest of the world.

Grandad drove in silence, maneuvering the car expertly. He never told me what he did for a job when my mum was little, but Maverick, my best friend, had joked that maybe he was in the mafia. I expertly played with the radio, trying to find something playing that wasn’t completely depressing. I may not be able to drive like he can but I am a pretty awesome car DJ.

Growing increasingly frustrated by the fact the radio seemed to just be playing sappy, sad songs I turned it off and looked out the window. The car moved to our part of town, that was tucked away right on the edge. Where most people didn’t even know we existed. It was dark on this edge of town, there was nobody walking on the sidewalks here, no children playing on their bikes in the streets.

Parents feared for their children’s lives here, this was the part of town where drive-by shootings happened weekly, where there were always vigils on sidewalks and in parks for victims. Victims of gang fights and people who were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

There were no street lights lining the roads and paths, there were barely any cars. You only left your house to go onto the main street, or to go to work, it was too dangerous otherwise.

But it was home.

I could hear the familiar humming of the powerlines looming above us, they probably hadn’t ever been replaced, not since they were first installed. They stood on rickety old wooden poles just like the street signs. Nobody came to fix stuff in this part of town unless they absolutely had to.

The car slowly turned into a small street that shot off from the road we’d been on. Grandad pulled the car into our little concrete driveway, and standing there was our house.

A little three bedroom weatherboard cottage, the wood had been painted a light grey at one point long ago, but now it was a darker grey. Missing paint at the edges of the board gave away it’s age, showing how the rain had beaten against it for its many years. There was a little veranda out the front, a little sloping roof awning it, so you could get into the front door without being drowned. It rained a lot here.

The gardens were pristinely maintained. It was something that Grandad and I always did together. We enjoyed gardening, that familiar silence just wafting between us as we made sure that the flowers always bloomed.

Both my grandparents had loved to work out in the garden together, but now it was just Grandad and I. I had filled my Grandmother’s spot within the household. We spent hours together making sure that our house was a little ray of sunshine in this horrible and? Or horribly? filthy place.

We got out of the car and walked inside. The inside of the house was deteriorating fast, the wallpaper was flaking off and sometimes we would just pull it off ourselves, but sometimes we were just too tired to do anything about it. Behind the crumbling wallpaper were just plain white walls, except that over time they had yellowed a little, nowhere near as clean as the white in the hospital.

The carpets had been a light grey colour once, but the years of mud and dirt being tracked over them again and again had permanently stained them. Landlords were supposed to be required to replace carpets at least every five years…as far I knew, these had been here at least as long as I had been alive.

Walking past the bathroom, my head hung low. The tiles were chipped, a whole bunch of them missing, the drain in the shower could be pulled out entirely. The bathroom cabinets hanging off of their hinges, the wood chipping and scarred.

I finally made my way into the kitchen and put the kettle on. I knew that we were going to have a very serious conversation, and we would both need tea to get through it with our sanity intact.

Grandad sat down at the table, thoughtfully putting his hands on the top of it and folding them together. That was his ‘we need to talk’ stance, I knew him well.

Pulling two mugs out of the cabinet I put tea bags in each and made them the way we both liked it. Two tea bags of Yorkshire with a teaspoon of honey. The same tea I’ve been drinking for at least ten years. I placed the hot cup in front of my grandfather and sat down next to him, dropping my eyes to the cup. I didn’t want to look up at him.

We were going to have to talk about his results, results that we knew were coming.

“Maddy, stage four cancer is unpredictable and we don’t know how much time I have left. The doctor thinks about six to twelve months.” He said bluntly, we sat in silence for a few moments, I wasn’t sure what I should say.

“I don’t want to lose you,” I finally said quietly, there was nothing else I could say.

“I know sweetheart. I know.” He placed a frail hand on top of my own and gave me a half hearted smile. “But one day you would’ve had to let me go anyway. It’s just happening a little quicker than we thought, but as a dying man, I have one thing that I want to see happen before I go.”

“What is it?”

“I want to see you settle down.”

My heart slowed and I could feel my blood pumping through my veins and time slowed around us. How was I meant to reply to this? I didn’t even have a boyfriend…I had never had a boyfriend.

What definition does ‘settle down’ he mean? There's a lot of room for interpretation there. I stared at the tea for a while as we sat in silence.

“By settling down you mean…” I started.

“At least seriously dating someone.” Grandpa quickly replied, I nodded. “You’re a beautiful girl, you just need to put yourself out there more.”

“I just…I’m happy. I’m happy just being here for you.” I explained.

“But what about when I am gone?” Those words hit like bricks before I even fully registered what he was saying.

Gone.