Home Truths, page 11
•
I offered to push the trolley around the supermarket. Things were beckoning to me: packets of balloons and hair ties. I stayed close to Mum, keeping both hands very firmly on the trolley handle. Not one single solitary thing more. Mum stopped at the make-up section and insisted on buying me mascara and eyeliner, since she’d once noticed me wearing Maia’s. It melted my heart. She was trying so hard to make things happy again.
I was relieved when we made it to the checkout without me pinching anything. We’d loaded everything onto the moving belt when Mum did a last check of her shopping list.
‘Damn,’ she muttered. ‘Stock cubes. Heidi, could you run back and grab some? Vegetable, any brand. They’re next to the herbs and spices.’
Stock cubes, stock cubes, nothing but stock cubes, I whispered to myself as I shot along to the aisle and grabbed a box.
On my way back I passed a dumpbin full of matchbox-sized vehicles, three for the price of two. Noah already had a box full of cars and trucks, he didn’t need any more, but I stopped to look. Mum reckoned they put toys and sweets near the checkout to make it difficult for parents to say no when their children begged them. She called it the ‘nag factor’, a cruel trick because so many people can’t afford those things. Well, this time it backfired on whoever owned Tesco, because I walked out of the shop on a high, with a stolen ambulance in my pocket.
The buzz lasted about five minutes. By the time we’d left the car park, I wanted to wind down the window and chuck it into the ditch. Why had I taken it? Why?
As she drove, Mum kept glancing my way and asking questions. Were things okay at school? Why had I fallen out with my best friends?
I mumbled the shortest answers possible, hoping she’d give up.
‘It can be a difficult time, being thirteen,’ she said. ‘All those changes. You know.’
Oh God, no. Please. She was about to launch into one of those squirmy conversations about bras and sex and tampons. I turned on the radio, cranking up the volume. She had it tuned to Classic FM as usual, so we got a blast of opera. For a while this seemed to work. We drove in silence until we were nearly home. The stolen ambulance was digging into my hip.
‘I think something’s up with you, Heidi,’ she said suddenly. ‘Something more than sadness about Nicky. It’s okay, though; you don’t have to share it with me.’
‘Nothing’s up.’
She reached across, gave my hand a squeeze and held on to it. ‘Just … whatever it is, just remember that you can tell me. You always can. No matter what.’
I took my hand away, because it made me want to cry that she was being so kind. And because I could never, ever tell her.
•
Ten forty-four. My birthday. I was filling up our water bottles at the kitchen tap, in a stupid panic about leaving too late and missing out on lunch at the Thorgill Arms. As if it mattered.
I’d just screwed the lids back on the bottles when I heard that dreaded sound from the dresser. Dad’s phone, buzzing away. I took a look at who was calling and saw it was Nicky again. I loved my uncle to bits, I really did. I knew how much he worried about things. But this was his third call today. He’d only be fussing about when he and Dad were going to Tesco. He hated any change to his routine.
The phone was vibrating in my hand. I was going to answer it, I swear. My finger was on the screen, ready to swipe.
But then I changed my mind.
All year long I shared Dad with Mum and Noah, and Nicky, and Granny Denby, and hundreds of kids at school and their parents, and the other teachers, and his annoying cycling buddies. He was public property. But today was my day with him, and I’d been looking forward to it so much.
So instead of answering Nicky’s call, I ran into the sitting room and shoved the phone down the back of the armchair. We’ll call him later, I told myself, as I smothered the buzzing with a cushion. He’ll be fine.
I’d give anything to be able to turn back time.
THIRTEEN
Scott
‘Hello again,’ said Dr Jack. ‘Today’s story begins in the 1930s. I wish I could say it ends there.’
I was meant to be out cycling, battling across the hills on a damp and chilly November morning, alongside five other masochists. I’d cried off. ‘Noah’s not well, I’d rather stay close to home,’ I said, though I knew Livia would have been only too happy for me to go with them. It wasn’t a fib. Noah had a bug. He was on the sofa under a blanket, watching Saturday morning TV.
I had great intentions. Knock out some urgent lesson planning, fix the leaking cistern in the downstairs toilet, play with Noah. But Livia and Heidi had only just set off for the supermarket when I got a notification from YouTube. Dr Jack had posted a new video: Genocide in Plain Sight. The title sounded interesting, so I had a look. I only planned to watch the first couple of minutes.
There he was: the avatar doctor with his heavy-rimmed glasses and white coat, stethoscope around his neck.
‘Before we get underway,’ he began, ‘I’ve got to warn you that what I’m going to be talking about today is disturbing. Please don’t be surprised if you find you’re struggling with the implications. Feel free to make contact if you want to discuss any of this a bit more. Okay?’
The avatar shrank to miniature size as it flew into a corner of the screen, to be replaced by footage of Adolf Hitler among a group of men, walking with the high-speed, jerky movements of old newsreels. Evil, yet grotesquely comical.
‘To see the pattern here, we’re going back to Germany just before and during the war. You might already know this nightmarish piece of history, but please bear with me because the details matter. Adolf Hitler was building his power base when he ordered what came to be known as the T4 Euthanasia Program, or sometimes the T4 Program, named after the Berlin address from which it was all directed: Tiergartenstrasse 4.’
Black-and-white photographs of a stone building: shadowy, gothic, profoundly grim.
‘This wasn’t about the Jews. That came later. T4 targeted another innocent demographic—one which would have included many of us, many of those we love, wonderful folk I work with every day: people with disabilities or chronic illness. Propaganda labelled them “useless eaters” and “life unworthy of life”. Think about that. Life unworthy of life.’
I almost stopped watching. I’d rather be fixing the cistern. I knew of the existence of the T4 program, but few details. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. But that was the point, wasn’t it? People didn’t want to know.
‘This was about eugenics,’ continued Dr Jack. ‘Also about economics. A secret bureaucracy was set up to “euthanise” these people in purpose-built gas chambers. One of the most chilling aspects is that victims were allegedly being taken away for hospital treatment. The SS officers in charge used to put on white coats, to seem more trustworthy. Later, families would hear that their loved one had died of some made-up cause. They’d get a letter of condolence, a fake death certificate. Ashes in an urn. In this way, up to a quarter of a million children and adults were murdered.’
I was looking at a photo of a 1940s-style ambulance with its back doors open, a ramp lowered. Men in white coats, patients on stretchers, families standing nearby. A baby was being handed into the arms of someone dressed as a nurse.
‘I want you to think about that,’ said Dr Jack, ‘because it’s vital that we understand the power of these symbols. White coats. Studies show that people will do as they’re told if the instruction comes from someone in a white coat. Or—the modern equivalent—medical scrubs, a stethoscope around the neck. We will walk into that ambulance, lie down on that operating table. We will deliver up our child or our parent, our sister or brother.’
Something icy breathed on me, as I glimpsed where Dr Jack was going with all this. He was still alive … they faffed about.
‘How could doctors become systematic killers of the most vulnerable? Doctors, whose whole purpose is to do the opposite! I think the answer is that there are always a few truly evil individuals willing to kickstart the whole thing, and others who get dragged into these ideologies through propaganda, coercion and the subtle use of euphemisms. This wasn’t “murder”, it was euthanasia, it was kindness. And there is dehumanisation: the monstrous idea that some lives are not worth living.’
Wistful harp music accompanied one image after another: an old woman in an apron; a man with a kind smile, who reminded me of Nicky. An anxious girl, her hair neatly brushed to each side of her face. A toddler with wide eyes. Captions gave names and ages.
‘There was resistance,’ said Dr Jack. ‘Brave doctors tried to hide patients, smuggled them to safety. As a doctor myself I can only begin to imagine how hideous it must have been. The growing realisation of the truth. Horror, denial—no, no, no, this just cannot be happening. Then a terrible choice: collude and survive, or resist and die.’
Dr Jack’s avatar returned to its full size.
‘Why am I talking about something that happened eighty years ago? Because the ideology was driven underground, and there it quietly thrived, biding its time … until now. Many of us believe it is awakening. Right now, in 2019, forces are gathering. As the world dissolves into factionalism and hatred of “the other”, those with the real power—and by that I don’t mean governments—flex their muscles. End-of-life choices are made every day. The foot is already in the door, and that door’s being pushed open. Once again, doctors are turning a blind eye because this just cannot be happening.’
The slideshow paused on a stock photo of the entrance to a modern hospital, with a yellow-and-green ambulance parked outside.
‘I heard a story in a discussion forum this week from a nurse in a British hospital. They were dealing with a motorway pile-up: ambulances lining up, everyone being paged, theatres under pressure. One of the vehicles was a minibus carrying four residents from a home for people with intellectual disabilities. They’d been out on a day trip. All four had serious injuries, but none were life-threatening. The youngest was eighteen years old. She was conscious, she gripped the nurse’s hand, they had quite a chat. Before going home he promised he’d see her tomorrow. So he was devastated, when his next shift began, to learn that all four had died during the night. Now, of course, people sometimes die unexpectedly in hospital. But four of them?’
Dr Jack’s avatar blinked, disbelieving.
‘This nurse asked a lot of questions. But very soon it became clear that if he wanted to keep his job, he had to let this go. He was given a warning, accused of “undermining morale” and “spreading misinformation”. His social media was watched, his phone stolen from his locker. So he came to the forum—blowing the whistle in the only way he could. Were those four people smothered, was something slipped into their IV? He’d never know the answer. A month later, he was sacked on a trumped-up charge.’
My rational mind was rebelling. Fake story! Four people? That could never be swept under the carpet. I was on the verge of exiting the page.
But.
Nicky was fine when I spoke to him that morning. He was fine. Yet by two o’clock he was dead. It didn’t make sense.
‘Think the T4 program could never happen here?’ asked Dr Jack. ‘Think again. Because it already is.’
FOURTEEN
Heidi
‘What on earth do you mean?’
I’d never heard Mum’s voice like that before. It was quiet, but there was more anger in it than if she’d screamed. A kind of flatness. The opposite of love. Not hate.
We were just back from the supermarket. I’d already run upstairs and chucked the stolen ambulance under my cupboard with the rest of my hoard. Mum was zipping around the kitchen—not easy with Noah pushing a train across the floor, tripping everyone up—as we put away a whole week’s groceries. Dad helped us carry bags in from the car, but his mind wasn’t on the job. He kept talking and talking, telling us about a hospital where four people died in one night.
‘None of them had life-threatening injuries,’ he said.
Mum was rearranging the fridge, but for a moment she looked over and met my eye, like she was trying to share something with me. I got the feeling she wanted me to take sides. I didn’t want to do that.
‘Let me get this straight,’ she said, slamming the fridge door. ‘Your only evidence of mass murder is some anonymous “doctor”’—she drew sarcastic bunny ears in the air—‘with a channel on YouTube, quoting an anonymous “nurse”’—more bunny ears—‘from an online chatroom full of conspiracy theorists.’
‘That nurse has been fired for asking too many questions.’
‘I bet he has!’
‘Because he’s a whistleblower.’
Mum was laughing. ‘Nope, because he’s a malicious liar—if he exists. A motorway pile-up, four people dead from one residential community! Did you check it even happened?’
She grabbed her phone and started googling. Thirty seconds later, she was holding up the search results to show Dad.
‘Nothing. Nix. Nada. This nurse is fictional.’
‘Of course it’s not in the mainstream news,’ Dad protested. ‘That’s the point. These things get hushed up.’
Noah gave up on his train and wandered up to Mum, burying his face in her jersey. He was getting big now, nearly six, but when he wasn’t feeling well he became quite a baby again. She sat down in the rocking chair and lifted him onto her lap, stroking his hair back from his face.
‘Real conspiracies happen,’ Dad insisted. ‘What was Watergate? What was the Tuskegee experiment?’
‘Yes, Watergate and Tuskegee were real. But they’ve got nothing to do—’
‘How about MK-Ultra and those mind control experiments back in the sixties and seventies? That was the CIA! It was horrible—horrible—and the state colluded in it.’
‘I know about that. Also real. I don’t see how it’s relevant.’
‘It’s relevant because the people asking questions were ridiculed or silenced. Cases like those are the tip of the iceberg. They lie to us. They never stop lying to us.’
Mum hugged Noah closer as she made the chair rock.
‘Scott … I know you’re looking for answers, but these are not answers. None of this will bring Nicky back. The world is not being run by shadowy monsters. Hospitals aren’t teeming with murderers.’
‘You think I’m deluded.’
‘I think you’re grieving. I think you need help with that.’
He stood with his arms folded, just staring at her. It was awful, the anger and coldness between them. I kept quiet, just watching.
‘I knew you’d do this,’ he said.
‘Knew I’d do what? Use logic?’
‘Mock. You always ridicule things you don’t understand. Anything that frightens you. You close your mind.’
Noah said he was thirsty, so I filled a glass for him at the tap. When I next looked around, Dad had left the room.
I was pissed off on his behalf. I gave Noah his water and Mum a telling-off.
‘Dad’s been researching this stuff for weeks and you haven’t,’ I said. ‘He’s not stupid.’
She sighed. ‘You think it’s me who’s delusional? Maybe I am.’
‘I think you didn’t need to laugh in his face. You say it’s all rubbish, but you don’t know anything about it. You might at least watch that video.’
She set Noah down and went to stash the reusable shopping bags in the pantry. When she came out, she was rubbing her eyes like you do when hay fever makes them itch. They looked red and sore.
‘Let’s get the kettle on,’ she said. ‘Cup of tea.’
It was her answer to everything. She got that from her own mum.
‘No, thanks,’ I said, and went to find Dad.
He was back at the desk in the office with his face cupped between the palms of his hands, but he looked around and smiled as I sat down on the futon. On his screen, a cartoon doctor was pointing at a graph.
‘What’s he saying?’ I asked.
‘He’s explaining some statistics.’ Dad paused the video and turned around in his chair, resting his arm on the back. ‘What proportion of people get well after being admitted to hospital needing emergency care. He’s explaining that if you’ve got a chronic condition, or if you have a disability, you’re much less likely to come out alive. It’s all here. The stats don’t lie.’
‘Nicky had both. A chronic condition and a disability.’
‘He did.’
He started the video again. The graph was replaced by an operating theatre with bright lights. People in masks and gloves and gowns, stooping over a patient. You couldn’t see their faces. They might not even have been human beings. There was blood. A lot of blood.
The avatar doctor spoke with a Scottish accent.
‘Imagine the power of a megalithic health system turned against a blindly trusting population. Imagine that power weaponised and malevolent. It can section troublemakers, it can restrain and imprison. Don’t believe me? Ever been in a dementia unit or psychiatric ward?’
It was like a horror film. The photos flicked between modern-day hospital scenes and old-fashioned ones. The last picture was of a modern yellow ambulance shown side by side with a black- and-white photo: a kind of van with a ramp at the back, patients on stretchers, nurses with white headdresses. Something about it made me feel shivery.
‘The system has the power to sedate, paralyse, sterilise, anaesthetise. Morphine, propanol, fentanyl, withdrawal of life support … so many ways to subdue. It can inject mind-altering or life-ending drugs. It can remove organs, plant devices in people’s bodies. All under the guise of care and cure. And of course, it can kill.’
Mum’s voice made me jump. She’d come in quietly and was standing close behind me.
‘Turn it off, Scott. Right now.’
FIFTEEN
Livia
‘No more,’ I said that night, once we were alone.
