Calling Major Tom: the laugh out loud feelgood comedy by David M. Barnett

Author:David M. Barnett [Barnett, David M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781409168140
Publisher: Orion Publishing Group
Published: 2017-01-19T08:00:00+00:00

38

MAYBE YOU’LL BE THE FIRST MAN ON MARS

When Thomas is sure his father isn’t coming home again, he goes to visit him in hospital. Frank Major is shrunken and wasted in his bed. The cancer had started in his lungs, born of thirty Woodbines a day and ripening over the years, colonising the rest of his body until he is more cancer than man.

Which is something that Thomas has thought for some time, in the dour, glowering, poetically bad way that only sixteen-year-olds can muster. Thomas has not brought flowers, or chocolates. He has simply brought himself, armoured in tatty jeans and an Army Surplus jacket, hunched on the plastic chair by the bed, turning his hooded gaze on his father. The hospital smells of disinfectant and toilets, death and fading hope.

‘I’m done for,’ wheezes Frank, every breath a trial, every word an Everest to climb. ‘This is it.’

‘Yes,’ says Thomas.

‘Is that it?’ says Frank. ‘Is that all?’

Mum took Peter to say goodbye this morning and they came home red-eyed and sobbing. She begged Thomas to go. It is his last chance to see him. ‘To sort things out,’ she says, though she has no idea what needs sorting out. Only that for the first half of his life, Thomas doted on his dad, loved him as though he was the only boy in the world with a daddy. And then, for the second half of his life, seemed to hate him.

Thomas pinches his bottom lip with his finger and thumb and stares at the green blanket covering his father’s stick-like frame. He would rather be anywhere else than here. Would rather it was tomorrow, next week, a year in the future. Would rather it was all over.

‘We … we used to be such good … pals.’

‘Did we?’ says Thomas carelessly. ‘I can’t remember.’

Anguish dulls the faint light in Frank’s eyes for a moment. He reaches for the mask lying loosely on his thin chest and puts it to his face, inhaling raggedly the oxygen it delivers. Thomas looks around the tiny room and for the first time realises the drip stands that feed a constant cocktail of drugs into his father’s system are absent.

Following his eyes, Frank takes away the oxygen mask and says, ‘I told them to stop giving me the medication.’

Thomas meets his gaze, finally. ‘Why?’

There’s the smallest of shrugs. ‘It was making me feel awful.’

‘But it was prolonging your life.’

Frank takes another blast from the mask. ‘Delaying … the inevitable. What’s the point of a few more days?’

Thomas thinks back to this morning, to what his mum said when she brought Peter home from the infirmary. He’s going, Thomas. Fast. If only we had a few more days with him. That’s all I’d want.

He says to his father, ‘It’s your decision.’

Frank lays a bony hand on Thomas’s jacket sleeve, and Thomas flinches. Frank says, ‘You have to tell me … while I’ve still got time. What happened between us?’

Thomas sneers. ‘Are you really asking me to believe you don’t know?’

‘Tell me,’ says Frank, his grip tightening slightly.

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