Please Don't Leave Me Here by Tania Chandler

Brigitte, but why don’t you just let me help out a bit? With the twins. While I’m still around. While you’re sorting stuff out.’
    She’s about to tell him to fuck off, but a thick, heavy tiredness blankets her, and any help would be appreciated — even his. She looks at a crack in the concrete, and says softly, ‘OK.’
    He bounces the ball again and throws it to her. She misses.
    â€˜See you tonight then,’ he says.
    How about a kiss goodbye? Have a good day, honey? Happy families. When he leaves, she leans against the fence and allows herself to indulge in self-pity for a minute or two — to imagine the bleak days ahead, a flat line of loneliness and pain. No leaving the porch light on at the end of the day; no partner to help, to break the monotony. Her limbs feel heavy, as if they’re filled with cement. What if it’s always going to be like this? What if it never gets any better?
    â€˜Let’s go to kinder, Mummy!’ Finn calls.
    Aidan’s right: she has to be strong, keep going for the twins. Sam never helped anyway. Wallowing time is over. She sighs and, with a huge effort, pushes herself off the fence.
    ***
    She takes sharp, panicky breaths, and sweat beads on her skin as she paces the living room, grasping the Di-Gesic packet. She turns it over and over in her hands. Her back pain has gone up a degree: it’s hard to sit; she can only stand or lie flat. If she sticks to the recommended dose, she’ll be OK. It has to be better than the pain, better than going back to the hospital. Fear floods her body at the thought of it. Stupid tears fill her eyes, and she rubs them away. Anything is better than the hospital. Finally, she opens the packet — breaks the seal — pops two painkillers from the blister pack inside, and washes them down with a glass of water.
    She sits on the couch with her laptop ready to work on an article but, instead, googles Kurt Cobain. His eyes were very blue. He committed suicide in 1994 — the year Eric Tucker was murdered, the year of the accident.
    She has a memory from the start of that year: furniture removalists carrying the last of Joan’s furniture out of the old pink house in Brunswick. They’d left Ratsak, mice droppings, crumbs of rotten food, and a dried-out mouse in the square stain where the fridge had stood. ‘Don’t look so sad,’ Joan said. ‘This is a new beginning, not an ending.’ Joan’s car was packed to the roof. She drove Brigitte to Jennifer’s share house in Fitzroy. Jennifer was a high school dropout — not even a real friend, just somebody whose father Joan knew. ‘I need to see the stars again, Brigitte,’ Joan said as she dropped her off with a cold kiss on the cheek. Jennifer’s house smelled of bong water, dirty laundry, and spaghetti Bolognese. Brigitte had sat on the worn, flesh-coloured couch, and looked through The Age for job ads and flats to rent.
    A memory from the end of that year (or is it from the start of the next?) bubbles up: in hospital, Sam had a partner with him, and was asking questions that made no sense, at first. Their words ran together, exhausting her. Her brain seemed to wobble inside her head. And Papa was there, telling them to bugger off and look for the bloody bastard in the blue Camry that had run her over. She slept and woke, and Sam was still there, or there again.
    She follows a link to a conspiracy-theory website dedicated to how Kurt Cobain was murdered. It speculates that Courtney Love was involved. Among other inconsistencies in the Cobain case, it says that Kurt had injected far too much heroin to have been capable of pulling the trigger. His fingerprints weren’t on the shotgun. And his suicide note was really a letter written to Courtney announcing he was leaving her.
    What is she doing? She doesn’t have time for dead rock stars. She closes the webpage and opens a Word document, but