Chapter 17: Week 3 / Mon – Thurs

They made a new routine for this week. They’d all get up and do yoga in the morning, stretching and talking about their mental health, how they were coping. Each of them had their own challenges with what they were doing, and some tears were not unusual. Then they’d go off to work. Larissa would ride up to her work, letting the bike to most of the work, and then she’d armour up and head off in her van for her crazy covid work mix. At least they had good PPE stocks, though RAT tests were simply not available still. She was sitting on one, with instructions from her work: if she had symptoms, she would use the test. If it wasn’t positive, she was to come to work anyway. And they’d upgraded their PPE, it wasn’t quite so weak and easily torn by animals now, though it was still utterly useless if it got wet. Quite how Fiona could wear PPE and shower someone was a mystery to them both; her training hadn’t covered that.

Then she’d finish work, get on her bike, and cycle home, on the phone most of the trip. Each day she’d have a series of phone calls with kids and people with covid, following up concerns kids had about the pets. Mostly, she’d tell the kid that they’d just have live with it, or the pet had to, but sometimes she’d recommend taking the animal to a vet or calling the rescue vet service. If she ever handled one of those calls, she didn’t hear about it. Sometimes she’d decide to visit the pet herself to see, and maybe fix whatever if it was simple. The other calls she had were people stuck at home with Covid, and doing it tough. As Vicki had said, the calls that got sent to her were young women, teenagers usually, stuck at home and struggling, and possibly unsafe. They might be living with a boyfriend in an abusive relationship, or in a relationship that they thought was fine until they were locked up with covid, or it might be a daughter struggling with her family. Initially she started with a back log, and did four calls a night, but then it scaled back to one or two.

During that time, Julian or Alan would feed her, along with Fiona who was home doing paperwork after her day. Then, mid evening, they’d get pampered – massages, face masks, or something, and they’d sit around as a group and play a game or watch some video, just chilling. And then they’d go to bed, have sex, and then shower and sleep.

The project released their wedding video on Tuesday afternoon, as Julian had said. Larissa didn’t really even notice; she was barely paying any attention to social media, given her schedule. Steph messaged her to say the attention was as insane as predicted, and Larissa was curiously disconnected from it, though she got lots of messages. Did it really matter what anyone not in her families thought? She did wonder how Citra was going to go; Larissa tried to imagine what school would’ve been like the next day for her if she’d made a video like that and failed. How on earth?

But otherwise, she felt like her life had just been squeezed, as if she was in a pressure cooker, and someone was gradually increasing the pressure. Something had to give. On Wednesday, she did.

The calls with the young woman were the most difficult part of the day. Sometimes, she just listened and made helpful noises as they figured out for themselves what they should do, whether that was to calm down and wait for expert help on one of the helplines, or find somewhere else to isolate. Larissa had list of covid homes from the church were that might be possible, and once she organised a young woman into one of them. Astonishing, from her point of view, that a family in the church who already had covid also let a young woman they didn’t know move in with them, just on her say so.

Another call, the young woman had moved out of home to move in with her lover against the advice and wishes of her parents. They’d even begged her not to. It hadn’t taken her long to figure out that her parents were right too, the man was not a good partner – taking her for granted, absent without explanation, and an increasingly selfish lover, but she’d been too proud to go home to her parents, even though it meant she was dropping school more and more. School? This girl really needed to go home, Larissa knew. Then they’d both got covid, and she felt like shit, and the guy had still been going out anyway. Probably for sex, though she was still letting him do her, no matter how shit she felt, but it was starting to hurt down there; that was the point she called the local church for help, since the supermarket had started handing out leaflets with home deliveries. Larissa called her back that evening, and she was at her low point. More sex, more pain, the guy drinking. Larissa knew what to do for this one and coached her into being ready to talk to her mum for the first time in weeks, and then got her mum on the phone. She explained who she was, and why she was calling, and dropped them into a group call together. Five minutes later the girl’s parents were on the road to rescue their daughter, and Larissa dropped out of the call. Her own prodigal son moment, and damn that felt good.

Then she’d been speaking to a young woman who was home in isolation with her lover, and he’d hit her in the afternoon. Everything she’d suggested to the woman to do had been too hard, there’d been some excuse why she couldn’t do it. It didn’t matter whether it was moving out, changing her behaviour, calling the police: nothing was workable. Then her lover had busted into the room, and the woman had put the phone down without hanging up, and Larissa got to listen to a short vicious argument, the cause of which was that the woman hadn’t made dinner because she felt like shit. The woman gave her lover plenty of lip and blamed him for everything under the sun, and then she heard the gasps and grunts as it turned physical. She felt sick, could hardly breathe. Then the lover gave a final grunt of pure frustration, and it all stopped. Larissa listened in to silence for a minute, wondering whether the woman was even alive, and what to do, and suddenly the woman was back on the phone. “Look what you did,” the woman said to Larissa. “I hope you’re happy with yourself!” Then she hung up on Larissa.

Fortunately Julian was close at hand, and he held her as she sobbed, along with Fiona who was there. She didn’t need a bucket, but it was a close thing. This was too hard, all too hard, and there was no way she could keep doing this. It was obvious just how impossibly toxic that relationship was, that woman was, and she explained to Julian and Fiona what had happened. They told her what she already knew: it definitely wasn’t her fault. But that didn’t make it any easier to deal with the fact she’d just had to listen to an assault. Should she call the police? None of them had any idea, they had no training for this. Why were they even doing this? But even as she asked that question, she knew the answer: every system that the community had was being totally overwhelmed right now. People who could do things just weren’t available. Vicki had sent a message out to the church group last night – 40% of the volunteers were only able to do virtual helping right now. That meant 40% of them or close family had covid. 40%? They were really in trouble.

But so was Larissa, she was still feeling sick, and maybe it was time to call Vicki and bow out. Julian said that she should stick with it, she was doing good, and he would still support her, but he was 100% behind her, and she should call Vicki anyway, and talk to her about it.

Yes, Vicki said, I know how you feel. All of us feel the same way, personally overwhelmed, and in a community that’s overwhelmed, that nearly can’t function anymore. She told Vicki about the call, and Vicki said that one was worth escalating, she had a way to refer people to the professional helpline urgently and she would. Larissa gave the Vicki the details, happy again that her phone number wasn’t visible when she called these women – she called through a church redirect service one of the members had set up. Knowing that was happening, that there was something that could be done to help those two poor lovers ... she felt better. I’ll guess I’ll keep doing it, she said, and told Vicki about her wins, because she could tell that Vicki needed cheering up too.

She hadn’t realised that it was her powerlessness that was the root cause of her despair and she talked to Julian about that when she was done with Vicki. Yup, he said, you’re a totally empowered woman, so you didn’t like that feeling at all. But if they don’t want a solution, you can’t get them one.

The next night, though, she needed a solution. Larissa knew right away that this was another bad one. The message she had simply said, ‘Analiese, 16, home with family, all have covid, worried about safety.’

She called, and found herself speaking to a softly spoken young woman who told Larissa that her family had covid, parents, her and her older brother. Her mum was really sick, a bad flu, raging fever and all the symptoms, but the rest of them weren’t too bad. Her parent’s relationship wasn’t good, plenty of shouting and silences, and she thought they were staying together for the kids, only a couple of years of hell to go. Her older brother was a gamer and an idiot, good for nothing. Her father was just angry, angry with everything. Losing money because he was home sick, but he really was sick. He’d tried to go to work anyway, and his boss had threatened to report him for being so stupid, so now he really was stuck at home for seven days. And probably out of work altogether. And being home for seven days with his family ... this was day three and he was out of his mind with boredom. And alcohol. Larissa knew that part was coming, it was almost always part of the story. As a girl, it fell to Analiese to do all the housework, with her mum sick, and do all the meal preparation. But she still had remote school, and homework, and she was feeling a bit shit herself, coughing, dry throat, and fevers.

Tough, Larissa knew, but she’d spoken to some of her own friends doing it tougher who just wanted some reassurance that these few hard days would pass, and their family would love them for what they’d done. So she was waiting for the bomb to drop, and then it did. Earlier that day, Analiese had gone into her parent’s room to clean their bathroom, and found her father kneeling on their bed with his dick in her mum’s mouth. She’d gone back in there as soon as she heard him stomp out to their garage, and found her mum in tears, retching and struggling to breathe, with her dad’s come leaking out of her mouth. Listening to this, Larissa wondered whether he was actively trying to murder the woman. Analiese had cleaned her up and demanded her mum tell the police, or let her, but her mum had refused. Larissa asked was she capable of making a rational decision? No, Analiese didn’t know, but she wasn’t surprised anyway. Then she’d got a shopping delivery with the church help number on it, so she called her only hope. What should she do?

What she should do is get her mum out of that house. Larissa consulted her list, and there was a hotel room she could put them in, though no cover for its cost. Well, she had cover, this was definitely something Bob’s fund would cover. First she put it to Analiese: can you talk to your mum right now? If you can, ask her, how about they both move to a hotel room for a few days, and pick up the pieces later. The relief in Analiese’s voice for that idea ... she got back on the phone after a minute and said, “yes, please.” She told Analiese to get packed, both her and her mum, and she’d call back.