CHARLOTTE GONE

CHARLOTTE GONE

by Del Gibson

The birds are chirping right outside the window, though Sue doesn’t pay them any attention. She thinks about the day her life changed, altered for the worse, it will be forever immortalised in the painting that hangs above the fireplace – over the years she has looked at this painting, its beauty, the colours, the catastrophe that occurred, and she remembers…

The painting, her four-year-old daughter Charlotte had created eons ago. It’s a stark reminder of the day Sue lost it all. She has looked at the painting over the years and has often wondered if somehow her daughter knew it would be her last day alive? She had it framed after what happened to Charlotte.

On the day her world turned upside down, Sue had dropped Charlotte off at kindergarten as per usual. After that, Sue had a hair appointment as her wavy, thick brown hair was becoming unmanageable, so she could justify the treat, the added expense. Being a single parent always has its challenges, but Sue took every day and every bill as it came, and dealt with whatever surfaced, calmly and pragmatically.

With Charlotte being so young, Sue had decided to work part-time as a freelance editor, which allowed her to work from home. This gave her flexibility with work hours and the ability to be able to pick Charlotte up from kindergarten. On that day, Sue picked her bouncing and skipping four-year-old up from kindergarten at 2:30 p.m. Charlotte however began complaining of a sore tummy and a sore neck as soon as she entered the car. But she was happy she had managed to paint a beautiful picture for her mummy. When Sue asked Charlotte to explain more about the painting, her reply was – that’s how her tummy and body felt, she was sore and very tired. She had drawn a picture of a girl with a broken head.

Indeed, her head did feel hot when Sue collected her. She remembered the note at kindy, warning of a flu doing the rounds. So, Sue wasn’t at all concerned as she believed Charlotte probably caught the flu, she was sniffing a little in her car-seat in the back of the car.

But it all took a turn for the worse in an instant. One minute, Charlotte was talking about the colours she used for her painting she had rolled up in her kindy bag, then the next minute she started throwing up in the car. Horrified, Sue slammed on the brakes and pulled over to the side of the road. She grabbed the wet wipes from the floor, and in a panic, Sue desperately tried to clean-up the mess – when she noticed Charlotte had fallen asleep. This was new. Her usual energetic child had never fallen asleep so fast.

At that moment she didn’t freak out, though she was on the verge. Sue carried her sleeping child to bed; she must have had a full-on day. She gets on with the rest of her day, preparing dinner, and some mundane chores. She looks in on Charlotte and she is sleeping soundly, but she doesn’t want to wake her just yet, let her get some more sleep. An hour later, she decides it is time to wake her sleeping child. Slowly she enters the room, it is suddenly cold, she had left the window open. As she goes to close it, she whispers Charlotte’s name. Nothing. She shakes her but gets no response. Leaning over her, she checks her breathing, she can hardly hear it. Sue checks her pulse; it is too slow – something must be wrong.

Acting on instinct, she gathers her unresponsive child into her arms and carries her to the car. Through her tears, she rings the hospital to let them know she is on the way. It is a ten-minute drive to the hospital. She would have called for an ambulance, but they take too long. They took too long when her husband Trent had a fatal heart attack.

Sue drove them straight to the hospital. She didn’t know what going there would achieve, but her concern for her daughter outweighed any potential embarrassment - if there was nothing wrong. She would later congratulate herself on her maternal instincts. But that still couldn’t stop the natural flow of life from occurring and decimating her world. After a lumbar puncture and more invasive tests, they discovered that Charlotte had contracted the Meningococcal Virus, and by the time midnight came into the hospital, Charlotte was already in a deep coma from which she would never resurface. When the ventilators that controlled her breathing were turned off two days later, Sue grieved and screamed down the hallways of the hospital. Her beautiful blonde, blue-eyed daughter Charlotte, the love of her life, had died.

Now twenty-years-later, the painting still brings her to an abysmal mess of sobs, breaking her heart all over again. The girl she loved and lost, always the first thing Sue thinks about when she wakes and the last thought before she sleeps.

The pills have helped over the years to offer numbness and sleep. Whoever said time always heals is wrong. Time doesn’t heal – it only prolongs the agony and pain; broken hearts never heal. She looks again, one more time, minutely searching the painting for details she might have missed. She hadn’t noticed until now, its beauty is slowly fading, the colours muted and the pain too much to bear. Sue cannot contain her tears any longer. Today would have been Charlotte’s twenty fourth birthday. Sue thinks of all she has missed. Charlotte graduating from college, her first crush, she might have been married by now, with a child or two. Grandbabies, Sue will never have. Nor will she have the chance to walk her beautiful daughter down the aisle, or fold her into her arms if someone broke her heart. She will never have any of these, and it breaks her all over again.

She takes the painting off the wall in the lounge room. As she climbs the stairs to the attic, with the painting under her arm, the edges digging into flesh – she cries. And she cries some more as she covers it with a pristine white sheet from the linen cupboard. As she covers it, making it disappear, she says goodbye and exits the attic.

For the first time in years, she can actually hear the birds chirping outside the windows, in the trees which her and Trent had planted over twenty years ago. Autumn is coming and the leaves are red, gold and orange. For the first time in years, she sits in the garden, breathing in the scent – she can finally breathe again. The bird’s song makes her smile. She says goodbye to Charlotte and the breeze carries it away. A Fantail flits about in the tree above her. The same tree where they had planted Charlotte’s placenta. She cries some more, and sits there until the darkness comes, and she finally makes her way inside. Later that night as she drifts in and out of sleep, an owl hoots outside her bedroom window – it lulls her into a blissful, dreamless slumber.

THE END

Copyright © Gibson, Del 2021