-Bedsheets-

Sorry! Would you believe I forgot? lol..

Chapter Sixteen- Empty Palette

Daniel had avoided the hospital for a further week, convincing himself that the possible rejection was much worse than the uncertainty he now harboured. So he absorbed himself into his acting and bit through each monotonous day of his mother’s suggestions and began to appreciate Alan’s silence as his parents slowly balanced each other out.

His birthday was not much different. Marcia had begun to mellow a little after having Daniel around her for a solid week helping out occasionally and offered him warm birthday wishes as he left for the set, promising gifts when he returned. Alan slept.

Feeling pathetic, Daniel’s cell was eventually confiscated by the director after his lack of attention was noted early on. After a mere three hours work, the cast held a small party and Daniel returned home seething in bitterness.

Alan gave Daniel a groggy slap on the back, inviting Chris in for a birthday drink with his now adult son. Stepping into the lounge room, drinking glasses in hand, he spotted his mother sitting proudly next to an unfamiliar piece of furniture. He set the glasses down and approached the antique, rustic, heavyset bookshelf, and the unhappiness he thought would only be cured by a few stiff drinks with his father, quickly spread into a smile. The top two shelves held a variety of his favourite pieces of classic literature, plays and various film scripts. The next shelf displayed a heart-warming selection of family photos that he’d long forgotten; from when he was an infant, to right before his mother’s hospital trip. The last, deep shelf made Daniel’s smile widen. It was a careful selection of spirits, fine liqueurs and two new, silver alcohol flasks.

He stared to Marcia, clearly impressed but a little confused. ‘I’d been planning it for a good year.’ She gave a small smile. ‘I think I got quite a collection saved up for you.’

He pecked her on the cheek. ‘Thankyou mum, it was very thoughtful.’

After his first two scotches and more than a few stories later, Marcia wheeled back into the room.

‘I neglected to mention to you Daniel. Jhokai stopped by earlier to drop off.. A present..’

Daniel’s chest clenched. She was avoiding him. He nodded slowly, his senses a little distorted from the drink. ‘May I have it?’

Marcia glanced up the stairs. ‘I couldn’t possibly carry it. It’s in you room.’

Without a second thought he found himself in his bedroom doorway surveying the scene before him. All his furniture lay at one side of the room, the heavy smell of paint added to his confusion. A mural, or so it appeared was plastered across the wall next to his bed. Swirls of colours changed its appearance into something almost dimensional as the blurry forms meshed together to create almost-images.

He was a little confused as his eyes rested across the cryptic centrepiece, sprawled over the wall in curving, finite lines.

Morning Ignites Rays Reflecting Autumn’s Yellow

‘Happy birthday Daniel.’

Startled, he turned his head swiftly to the small, folded figure on the floor. Jhokai sat opposite her artwork with her legs pulled up to her chest.

‘Didn’t mean to scare you’ she whispered with a tiny smirk, and Daniel flushed as he remembered the instance of her own birthday.

Still trying to decipher the poetry on the wall, he muttered it a few times and turned to her critically as Jhokai watched him almost shyly.

‘I wish I understood. Because I know I can’t ask questions.’

Her tiny smile grew as she continued to watch him in a thoughtful haze. She would have appeared almost melancholy if it wasn’t for the brilliant mess of colours across her face. ‘That, Daniel, is my very last secret.’

When she said nothing more he turned to read the words once again, this time noting that each new word held an enlarged first letter.

He stared back to her. ‘Mirray?’

Jhokai’s small nod brought a smile of relief to his tired face. ‘Mirray-Bindy. The only thing I have left in this world.’

‘Mindy’ He whispered, his shoulders sagging before being overtaken with chills. The crib has held that fragile, suffering girl he’d so misunderstood.

‘Echo went into labour with Mindy very early in the morning. We didn’t have a phone to call paramedics so my dad and I tried to help her over to our neighbour’s house who was a retired nurse. Unfortunately we ended up meeting them halfway because Mirray didn’t want to wait any longer. She gave birth on our front lawn, just as the sun came up. She had her eyes closed the whole time, I guess the sun rising through the trees was the first thing she saw when she finally opened them.’

Jhokai heaved a breath and rose, stepping over the floor quickly and falling onto the mess of Daniel’s bed. ‘Sometimes I wonder if I really even saved her. Perhaps I should have left her sleeping, unscarred and innocent in her tiny pink bed.’

Daniel collapsed beside her and they both lay, sheeted with the smell of paint and scotch, staring to the ceiling. ‘Well.. She’s going to grow up one day and she’s going to have you. And from what I’ve learnt, that seems to be all anyone could need.’ He smiled warmly, turning his head to face her. ‘Just remember you’re all she has in this world as well.’

As expected. Jhokai said nothing. Daniel had always hoped that silence was her way of dealing with the stirred emotion he once doubted she had.

Her fingers gently found his and she turned on her side to face him. She slid her hands through his arms and warmly up his back and neck, gripping his hair roughly and stared boldly into his wide, drifting eyes.

‘I love you Daniel. Run away with me.’

Daniel’s eyes only flickered with confusion in return. She wasn’t kidding.

Her grin spread and he remembered the flushed expression from many months ago when he had offered his arm to her as a ‘guest’.

‘At least tell me you love me..?’

His hand reached up behind his head mindlessly as he gripped her slim fingers protectively and brought them around, pressing them to his chest. ‘I love you Jhokai. So much. But I can’t leave here.’

In what seemed like a cruel act, tears glazed over her broad, green eyes. ‘Why?’ She whispered, ‘and don’t tell me you’re happy here.’

He fumbled for words, clutching her hands tighter in desperation. ‘Because my life is here, whether I like it or not.’ It pained him to offer rejection the first time she’d ever opened up.

He saw the internal fight that went on in her to keep the tears from spilling onto her paint-splattered porcelain. She brought her hands up to her face and fidgeted lightly before mirroring his gaze.

‘I ran away from the hospital today.’

She placed her hands flat on his chest and a tear escaped, unguarded. ‘And I’m not going back.’

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Chapter Seventeen- Wanting Out

Daniel sat silently for a long while, sliding his knuckles up and down the freshly dry, illuminated bedroom wall. He sat there long after rational thought had left his mind and dusty shadows had absorbed both Jhokai’s sleeping form, and his barely moving one. He simply sat, his head turned into her art work, his cheek pressed against where she has signed her name. Jhokai Yellow Le’isle.

‘The Island’ He mused at her surname. ‘No wonder she wants to run away.’

At first he had denied the idea completely. It was a childish, spontaneous suggestion that she’d thought up at the spur of the moment. Then he would gaze across the darkening room to her packed overnight bag containing everything she owned, and he would remember how her hands felt as she pressed them hesitantly against his skin and bore her all. He remembered how she could make him shudder under her touch, and how it was he she wanted to leave with, and trusted her life with. He thought about how she would barely have had time to blink in order to finished the precious gift he lay against, so he could see it when he got home

It took him an hour of sitting to decide that nothing else was worth it. That escaping from his happy-for-the-moment family and disappointing the world by deserting a globally anticipated film was barely a sacrifice. The only thing that troubled him was Mindy. He didn’t assume for a second that she would be staying behind and that swayed his decision at first. He was an adult now. He couldn’t walk out of a hospital with a seven-year old, long term patient and not expect to wind up in court for kidnapping. She’d also need further hospitalisation wherever they went.

More excuses flowed through his mind and he thrust his head back against the wall with a sickening thud. There wasn’t a place he could go where he wouldn’t be recognised either by name or face. He couldn’t book transport to leave, he couldn’t buy a house anonymously, and even though money was not an issue, he certainly couldn’t get a job immediately. Apart from his mother, he would have angry fans, film investors and disappointed co-stars whose life he’d leave in ruin, and would certainly not take accept it without a fight.

He stood shakily, looking down at the innocent, slow-breathing form and prayed he could only be as carefree as her.

Marcia and Alan sat in the lounge room in silent argument. He was grateful no one had come to bother him in his absence, even long after Chris and Alan’s detailed, raucous stories had died down and one of Daniel’s bottom shelf-bottles had been emptied.

Marcia looked up to him lightly as he entered with his re-heated dinner plate.

‘Jhokai is staying.’

He was glad no disagreement followed and turned back to his parents once again with an after thought. ‘And thankyou.’

He took each step up to the top landing carefully, knowing that Marcia thought he had been merely thanking her for the gift once more, whereas he knew it was his last reflection of gratitude for everything, because there wouldn’t be another chance to tell them so.

He raised a blanket over Jhokai’s frozen form, kissing her lightly before turning to leave. A hand reached out to grip his before he stepped away, and she mumbled his name sleepily.

‘Jhocky-?’ He began to question, ‘Why did you paint me this if you knew you were only asking me to leave?’

Her hand fell away from his and slipped back close to her body. ‘You got to see it, didn’t you?’

He exhaled with a smile. ‘Goodnight’

He closed the door and turned down the hall to the room no one had entered since Rupert’s stay months back, succumbing to a heavy sleep the moment he’d set down his empty plate.

Jhokai awoke with dawn the next morning, surprised to find Marcia and Alan already eating a silent breakfast.

‘Morning’ she whispered stilly from the bottom step. ‘It’s early,’ she added.

Marcia smiled to her warmly and gestured for her to sit down, setting down a plate full of toast under her face, which was mostly hidden by tangles of bed hair. She pushed it back with a stiff hand and bit into the soft bread.

‘It is,’ Marcia agreed. ‘I like to get a head start on the day.’ She patted the side of her chair and gestured to the staircase. ‘And Alan has no choice.’

Jhokai chewed slowly, watching Alan curiously and nodding lightly at Marcia’s gentle pace of conversation.

‘Anyway!’ Marcia announced suddenly, jutting herself back from the table and collecting up a lap-full of clutter. ‘Help me will you?’ She looked blankly to Alan who stood dutifully, picking up the remaining dishes and following his wife to the kitchen.

‘Where is that boy?’ Marcia called, almost jovially. ‘He seems distant lately.’ She had a playful tone weaving through each word. ‘What are you doing to my son?’

Jhokai smiled to the empty room. ‘Stealing him away’ she called back, with an equally friendly tone, before stepping quickly back up the stairs.

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Chapter Eighteen- Only Sleeping

Jhokai watched Daniel demurely as he slept, and as he eventually forced his eyes open, resting them on the girl on the floor who was swarmed in a man’s collared shirt and running her fingers back and forth over the carpet.

He almost wept when he remembered how he’d stayed up late thinking about her, and how he so badly wanted to give her everything, but was having second thoughts.

She rose and dramatically pushed open the heavy-framed windows. ‘It’s a good day for running away.’

He laughed, sitting up and reaching for her hand. ‘How did you manage to let Mindy fall victim to all this?’

The usual glint in her eyes flickered away, leaving something almost so solemn that Daniel was afraid. ‘I hated that I knew you’d ask.’

He nodded, unsure but encouraging her to continue. ‘You’re right though.’ She smiled, stepping out of the room. ‘We should go visit her to say goodbye.’

~

Daniel felt her fingers clench inside his as they stepped in the sterile foyer. She hadn’t spoken about her sister in the car and he was at a loss as to why she would ever leave Mindy behind.

Finding the nurses’ desk empty, they stepped quickly across the tiles into a different room. ‘She was moved’ Jhokai explained, ‘she needed to be.’

They stood at her bedside a moment before he spoke. ‘She’s sleeping, we shouldn’t wake her.’

‘We couldn’t anyway.’ Jhokai stated with complete lack of emotion. ‘She’s comatose.’

Daniel tasted something bitter. ‘But just last month..’

Jhokai shook her head before he continued with what he couldn’t finish. ‘I need a minute.’

He obediently left the room, closing the door, and heaving away the grip of pain he felt for Jhokai.

Jhokai climbed easily onto the bed beside the tiny girl, putting their faces together and tracing the lines of Mindy’s face as she slept. ‘Where are you?’ She whispered, laying a small hand on the girl’s stomach. ‘You’re in there somewhere.’

She watched her chest rise lightly, and with difficultly every few moments. In a state of near surrealism, she felt Echo’s hand on her shoulder and a surge of 8-year-old memories and wise words rushed through her, igniting emotion.

‘Mother didn’t want us living in bed sheets. She wanted us experiencing free life.’ Her tone choked, ‘or free death.’

She sat up, gripping the sleeping girl’s shoulders and spoke sternly to her. ‘Choose one Mirray! You can’t live in between!’

Daniel grasped at Jhokai’s arm viciously, dragging her from the bed as Mindy fell back to the sheets, just as conscious as before.

‘Why would you do that?!’

She pulled her restrained limb away half-heartedly. ‘Because I have a second chance at saving her, and I wanted to do the right thing this time.’

She shoved him softly out of her way and left the hospital. Daniel watched her go, figuring there were only a small number of places he would find her at.

Jhokai ran blindly down the streets, surprised that she actually made it to her house, but feeling just as lost anyway. Her bare feet were seeping blood and her hair was so windswept she could barely push it from her face.

She would not cry.

She stood on her forest of a front lawn and drew several sharp breaths. Wincing at the pain in her feet and legs, she pushed her way through the thigh-high grass; eyes focused on the small shed left standing behind the burnt shell of a home.

She stood in the doorway, dizzy. She had never felt rage before but instantaneously, memories consumed her. All the moment when a surgical knife was pressed to her skin, every moment when panic had taken her over, every moment when she had felt like throwing up at the thought of looking at her disfigured form and every shattering moment that she’d had to stare at the tiny piece of family she had left.

Her fingers found the bookshelf on the opposite wall, and she threw her weight across, brushing it clean and hearing the splintering of tiny ornaments at her feet. She raised the poorly-carved chair her father once made and shut her eyes, throwing it blindly at the wide, stained glass window. Flecks of dusted colour sprinkled her cheeks and arms as the chair made contact. Finding the small box of beads her mother had set in the playroom for them, she flung it at the doorway and watched it hit the side; a cleansing rain of plastic washed over her head and she stopped, still.

Stumbling back out into the yard, she leaned against the trunk of a tree, its overgrown branches catching at her hair and face, and promptly vomited.

She fell back to the grass, suffocating on the air with screaming breaths.

She was not surprised when Daniel found her just over an hour later, scooping up her ruined and exhausted body, taking her home, kissing her roughly and telling her, ‘Not much longer.’

That was so depressing! But good!

awsum...sad but sooooo awsum!!

Chapter Nineteen- I Know A Place

Daniel had been living out a permanent cold sweat. At a time when he thought Jhokai would offer some solitude and release, he found himself swallowing each word as it came to his mouth in her presence.

‘The hospital phoned this morning Daniel.’

He’d kept his eyes on the hastily prepared sandwich in front of him.

‘I can hardly tell them they have the wrong number when they’d phoned Alan so many times before on my behalf.’

He knew what was coming, but he still hadn’t thought of an excuse.

‘How long exactly, was Jhokai planning to stay?’

‘I don’t know’ he whispered urgently, scooping up his bag and storming out to the car where Chris was waiting.

Jhokai had had him terrified. He kept her happy, locked up in his silent room each day as he finished up the filming of his last movie. Her passive mourning had stopped within a few days and she greeted him with a dizzy show of happiness every afternoon, clinging to him until late in the evening when he left her lost under the covers in his oversized mahogany bed, retreating to the guest room.

But he didn’t have anywhere to take her. The fear came from letting her down, and taking away from her what they both needed.

The sky was flirting with dusk when his hand touched the car door handle again that day.

‘Daniel!’

Mike Newell puffed across Leavesden’s parking lot. ‘A word please.’

Daniel felt his shoulders sag, itching to get home to Jhokai, but smiled pleasantly.

Mike caught his breath a moment, then stood tall, eyeing Daniel and nodding his head conversationally. ‘What’s up?’

Daniel grinned. ‘Nothing much’

Instead of returning the smile Mike gave him a knowing look. ‘I’m not going to complain about your progress mate, you’re doing perfectly. But you haven’t stayed back more then a few minutes after the last take for over a fortnight. The cast are missing out on you.’

He didn’t hesitate to give him a few obvious excuses. ‘Is Marcia giving you trouble then?’

Daniel took the excuse gratefully. ‘She’s just needed me home a little earlier lately.’

Mike shot a sympathetic look and Daniel quickly shook his head. ‘It’s nothing bad.. Things are getting.. better.’

The director grinned and slapped his shoulder jovially. ‘Fantastic then. I thought you were getting a little distant for a while. We can’t get by if you’re not-all-here.’

Daniel held back a choke of guilt and stepped into the car. ‘See you tomorrow, Mike.’

Chris held out a lukewarm paper cup and Daniel gulped down the coffee in a state of near starvation.

They didn’t speak the whole drive home, they rarely did. But as Chris pulled into the dimming Radcliffe property, inched to a stop and pulled up the handbrake, Daniel didn’t make the slightest attempt to reach for the door or his bag.

‘How are things, Chris?’

The weathered face showed a mild, polite smile as aged hands brushed at his tired eyes.

‘Things are okay Daniel.’

Daniel nodded, eyes skimming the interior of the car and remembering the leather smell he’d once hated, but had now grown accustomed to.

‘My son-’ The driver cleared his throat, ‘My son is moving in with my wife and I this week. Marcia allowed me to have Wednesday off.’

Daniel had never heard of Chris asking for a day off. Even when he was permitted time away he was always over visiting the family, having dinner or a few drinks with Alan.

‘Why is that? You once told me he lived in Scotland. That’s a fair way to move.’

Chris nodded with his wry smile. ‘My daughter in law passed away, unfortunately. He is in quite a large amount of debt from paying hospital services and we decided it best that he move back with us.’

Chris waved his arm carelessly is response to Daniel’s despondent eyes. ‘There is no mourning. It was very much expected. He just needs somewhere to stay until his home is sold and he will buy a smaller place closer to the family.’

Daniel looked up to his bedroom window with its small glow and its familiar shadow pacing back and forth, distorted by the curtains.

‘I’ll buy it.’

Chris gave a quick chuckle and rested his hands heavily on the steering wheel. ‘You young lads are usually into cars before housing, or so I thought.’

Daniels heart thumped desperately. ‘Please Chris. I mean it. Let me buy your son’s house.’

Chris looked to him in confusion, his pupils devoid of light. ‘I gotta warn you Daniel, wealth does not run in the family. It won’t be much.’ He glanced up the driveway at the Radcliffe mansion grimly.

Daniel smiled broadly, tightening his bag strap on his shoulder. ‘Perfect.’

He stepped outside and heard Chris call his name before clicking the door closed. ‘Daniel.. if you are planning on going somewhere.. permanently, I can’t take you son. It’s not worth my job.’

Daniel stooped down to the window, dipping his head inside. ‘You’ve already done enough for me.’ He grinned boyishly, excited. ‘No one even has to know.’

Chris gave a knowing wink. ‘No one at all. It’s been a pleasure.’

Daniel fell inside his room, not remembering where his lips landed but know it was somewhere near Jhokai’s smile. He was unconscious with the thought of their own new place, their own secret, rundown house that they were going to colour with their new-found freedom.

YAY! It was great!