004

 I stood for the longest moment. Empty and motionless, the Earth and the Sun froze, the gears turning the whole galactic plane halted and I stood over her in thin moonlight, my dead sister and I.


Time resisted me. Pressure built within me, a cry rising from my heart and my will to stay in the present, a present filled with my sister’s touch and laugh, her twinkling laughter and her easy, simple habits, a present defined by our shared lives, snapped in two and fell away.


My blood froze. A white envelope stood between the candles. My name was hand-written in a curling, winged-letter. 


“Jesus Christ. What the fuck is this, Aoife? One of your fucking jokes?”


I leaned over, filled with sudden hope, and covered her hands with mine. The cold from her flesh was so intense it drew a shocked confirmation from my lips and I screamed. I shook her body and willed her eyes to open, her chest to rise, her voice to fill the air. 


I was dreaming. Please. Let this be a dream.


-- We do not live in the dream. The dream is real. Find Luke.


This thought was like a knife and I did not recognise it. I shook my head and this impossible reality - my twin sister was dead! - grew so intense in my mind that it splintered, fractured me, shards of disbelief and torment rushed like blood in my veins.


The Hard Me took over. That’s what Aoife called it. Sometimes, I could be hard. Like a stone. A black-hearted stone. She admired it, I knew. It was cold and deep and silent and she had nothing like it within her. Still sobbing, I rocked back on my heels and clawed my phone from the pocket of my nightdress. I swiped it open and dialled 999.


“Emergency Services. Which service do you need?”


“I need an ambulance.” My voice was as thin as treacherous ice. “My sister… I have a woman, aged twenty-two, unresponsive, no pulse. She’s not breathing. Upper Cliff Road, Howth Head.” I gave them the Eircode. “And we’re down the back, behind the apple trees. Hurry. She’s my sister.”


“Has she been in contact with water or electricity?” His voice was calm but I was darkness, the centre of space and time between the galaxies; I was ancient. 


“No, she’s in bed! She’s in bed!”


“Do you know CRP? Is there anything in her airway?”


What the fuck was wrong with me? Of course. I mashed the speaker button and dropped the phone onto the other bed. “Starting now! Get here as fast as you can!”


“I’ve a unit already on the way.”


I flung the blanket from her body - so slight a thing for such a cold night, I thought - and the up-draught blew out the candles. We plunged together into a black sea, all silver and cold. I lifted her chin higher into the moonlight. Even in that pale, baleful light I could see her lips were fucking blue. I suppressed a sob and leaned in close. I could smell the Lavanilla she loved to wear. 


“There’s nothing in her throat.”


“Get her somewhere flat and hard. The mattress won’t do.”


I pushed her shoes away, sweeping the shoes, books and candles out of the way to make a tiny space between the beds. I pulled her lifeless form onto the floor. I straightened her limbs and nightie.


-- What the fuck are you doing? Look at her. For fuck’s sake.


This furious thought was another unbidden thread and I screamed aloud. “No. No. No! It’s not too late.”


I started with a kiss, my tears streaming into her open mouth as I blew warm air from my own lungs past her blue, frozen lips and down into the ice of her own chest. Then I started compressions.


“OK. Go with fifteen compressions for each breath. The unit is six minutes away. They’ll be there very soon.”


I got to work. I remembered first-aid training from a sailing course, years before. I remembered to use sufficient pressure on her chest. I remembered how you should allow her chest to rise fully before repeating. I remembered that compressions were more important than pushing air into her. He talked to me the whole time; he was great. I was great. 


We kept at it until the caravan was filled with pulsing red lights. But it was no fucking use are all. It was all a total fucking waste of time. I sank to the grass outside as the paramedics bounded into the caravan.  

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