Zo

by Leanne Owens

  The nurse at Ally’s side was shaking her head at those standing, her expression telling them what they could already see. Miss Lamore was not going to live. She had lost too much blood.

  ‘Pete, you know that’s too dangerous, and look at her, she’s too far gone…’ Dr John Yee gave his friend a pitying look. He knew that Peter and Alice went back to childhood, and that the woman was important to him.

  ‘She’s not too far gone!’ Peter said savagely, his eyes blazing with the purpose he now knew was his. ‘Do it. Get a line into me and give her my blood.’

  ‘It won’t be enough,’ John spoke gently, trying to make Peter understand that it was over. ‘Look at her, Pete, look at her. You don’t have enough for both of you.’

  ‘Í have enough,’ Peter insisted, his desperation to save Ally giving him the words to convince them to follow his instructions. ‘You’ll give her my blood, all of it if necessary. If I wake and she’s gone, I fire all of you and shut this hospital down. If she doesn’t live, I have no reason to live. Do you understand? Witness what I am saying, and save her, no matter what.’

  He stared at their faces and held out his right arm, his voice resolute, ‘There’s my best vein. Get to work. When I pass out, you keep going. Get some AB neg from the Gatton Hospital if they have it. Chopper some in from wherever you can get it, and keep pumping my blood into her. If my pressure gets too low, I don’t care – I’m ordering you to keep going. She is not going to die. You hear me? She is not going to die even if I have to in order to save her.’

  Despite their belief that there was nothing they could do to bring the woman back, the team set to work. A nurse placed an oxygen mask on Ally, while another began monitoring her failing vitals. John slid a needle into the large vein on Peter’s arm while the second doctor struggled with the more difficult task of finding a receiving vein in Ally’s drained and collapsing system. A doctor and nurse worked on a rough repair of her wrists, forcing small plastic tubes into the major veins and arteries to act as bridges in the circulation. They jacked Peter up on the gurney so that he was a metre higher than Ally, allowing gravity to help feed the blood from his system to hers. Once the blood was flowing into her, they set up bags of saline to try and keep his blood pressure up until the replacement blood arrived. The calm efficiency of their teamwork was peaceful to Peter, and he closed his eyes, feeling light-headed as his life-force poured into the woman he loved.

  His eyes closed. He wouldn’t let her die. Not today. Since that day in the school yard fifty years ago, he had wanted to find a way to repay her for all that she had done for him, and this was it. Fifty years ago, she had saved his life and now he would save hers.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Ally Meets Peter

  Geelong, Victoria. May, 1969

  Highton Primary School was a frightening place for ten-year-old Peter Barker who had moved to Geelong from the small mountain community of Halls Gap several hours’ drive away. His old school had one classroom with all the students in together, most of them related in one way or another. Highton had five classrooms filled with strangers who watched him with unfriendly eyes.

  A few of his classmates tried to make friends with him in his first weeks there, but he had difficulty talking to people because of a severe stutter. Embarrassed by his speech and frozen with shyness, he shrank in on himself when classmates tried to speak to him. Shyness only increased the stutter until it was impossible to move past the start of the first word he wanted to say, repeating it over and over. After some awkward, one-sided conversations about television shows, the space race, and the Geelong Cats football club, they left him alone.

  At little-lunch and big-lunch, a teacher could be relied on to come and talk to him and try to involve him with the schoolyard games, but he’d shake his head, tighten his lips, and stare at his shoes. The only thing worse than being the outsider was being the kid the teachers tried to force onto the other children. They meant well, he understood that, but it would be better if he could be alone without anyone ever noticing him.

  The teasing began in his third week. They called him Baa-Baa-Barker, and laughed at him when teachers asked him questions in class, demanding he speak up instead of mumbling. The other kids snickered and exchanged amused glances as he choked on the first word of his reply and went red as he tried to spit the word out. When he sat reading a book at lunchtime, some of the bigger boys would walk past and flip the book out of his hands and make stuttering comments, and the girls would laugh.

  During sports, when the appointed captains had to pick their teams, he would always be the last chosen and he would sit silently, head down, next to the overweight girl, Sandra Martin, who started crying as soon as they chose the first, favourite students. If he could have spoken clearly, he would have said something to comfort her, but his tongue knotted so firmly inside his mouth that he could not utter a word without cringing at the sound of the endlessly repeating first syllable. At least they chose her before him, so she was only next-to-last in the favourites’ game.

  Alice Lamore was almost always the first one chosen. She was tall, lithe, strong, and fast - the perfect athlete. She could outrun, outjump, and outplay the boys every day of the week, and they would have called her a tomboy if they weren’t scared of what she’d do to them if she didn’t like it. She was funny and made the teachers laugh with her quick wit and ready humour. There didn’t seem to be anything that Alice couldn’t do. She was the most perfect girl Peter had ever seen, and just the sight of her black pony tail across the schoolyard had his emotions tied up in knots that matched the tangle of his tongue. He never spoke to her, but he hugged the precious memories of her smiling at him, her deep violet eyes lighting up as though he was important and normal and likeable.

  Alice did not pick on him, or even give him pitying looks, and he wished he could be the sort of person who had a friend like her. At nights, he would curl up in his bed and imagine scenes where he would say something funny to Alice and she would laugh with him. He imagined helping her and telling her jokes, and proving to her that he was more than the tongue-tied idiot his father claimed. If only he could stop the bullying so that she would see him as a hero, not a victim, then she might be his friend. But he knew that girls like her did not befriend the losers of the world, like him. He felt powerless to stop the bullying, as that would have meant speaking up or fighting back, neither of which was possible.

  Of course, he could talk to someone about the bullying, but that was tantamount to admitting he was a scared little sissy, as his father repeatedly told him. He liked to imagine himself as resolutely silent - the quietly suffering hero in a book who would one day reveal his secret powers and stun his classmates with how wonderful he really was. His thoughts made him smile on the inside for a minute or two, before reality set back in with all the cruelty of the schoolyard jungle.

  Life was bleak for ten-year-old Peter. At home, his father didn’t bother hiding his contempt for the son who couldn’t speak properly, while his mother emptied bottles of cooking sherry into the void that consumed her existence. At school, the teachers assumed he had a low intelligence, and considered sending him to a special school because main-stream Australian schools in the sixties only dealt with normal children, and a withdrawn stutterer who may as well have been mute did not fit those parameters.

  He lived down to the expectations of those around him, and was failing at his school work. He faced the humiliation of staying down a grade because teachers judged him as slow for his age group.

  The main thing that he worked hard at during school hours was avoiding the bullies. They were closing in around him, day by day, tightening the noose that he knew would be the death of him. It wasn’t a case of them just harassing him - he knew they were going to kill him. They intended to kill him. Their smug looks haunted him in class and they intimidated him with their increasing violence in the schoolyard. He knew he had limited time. They were hunting him. They were forming packs and he was their quarry. />
  No one could understand his fear, so he didn’t bother trying to tell anyone. They would just dismiss him with meaningless words. ‘Oh, they’re just being kids,’ they’d say with that intolerant look in their eyes which they reserved for sooks and whingers, ‘that’s what they do. Toughen up and get used to it.’ But he knew. He knew they were going to kill him because he saw the bloodlust in their eyes when they spotted him in the schoolyard and came running, howling with delight at finding their prey caught in the open.

  It was a cool May morning when they finally caught him. His parents had dropped him off at school early and he tried to remain hidden behind the temporary school buildings near the oval until the teachers arrived. With teachers present, he could move up to the main buildings and find safety near them. He prayed that the bully-boys did not arrive until late, but some of them caught the bus from farms in the Barrabool Hills, and they often turned up before the teachers. He kept an eye out for them, peeking around the buildings like a rabbit looking for the hounds that were coming. He knew they were coming.

  The bus puffed out black smoke as it pulled up at the front of the school and disgorged the dozen or so farm children from the hills. The girls stayed on the front courts to play hopscotch and catchy on the tarmac, while the boys took off for the oval. Peter looked under the temporary building to see their legs running down the far side of the school as they went straight into pack behaviour chasing a football. His heart was racing as he pressed his back against the building and sidled along it to the point closest to the original brick section of the school. There was only about twenty metres to run, and he closed his eyes and tried to breathe in courage as he stood there, waiting for the perfect moment to make a run for it.

  It never came.

  ‘Hey, it’s Baa-Baa-Barker!’ one of the girls yelled as she came around the end of the old red-brick school building to collect a ball.

  She pointed at him and made stuttering sounds, then threw her head back and laughed at her humour.

  The pack that had been chasing the football fell silent. For a few seconds, there was no sound. No footsteps. No calling. No kicking of the ball. Peter pictured the boys standing there, staring up at the girl who was pointing at him. Then they came.

  He tried to run but the girl danced in front of him, laughing at him as she waved her arms around like a netball goal defence. With a cry dying in his throat, he heard the approaching footfalls and turned to see them almost upon him, their lips drawn back in wolf-like snarls, their eyes alight with hunting fever.

  Usually, he could hold them at bay for a few minutes by meeting their eyes and staring them down, but, this morning, their primal instinct to attack had consumed all restraint and they did not hesitate. Two boys rammed him at full pace, knocking him off his feet and throwing him back onto the dew-damp grass. He landed on his school bag and heard his lunch box break under him. Tears sprung instantly to his eyes as he realised the flogging he was going to get at home for destroying his lunch box. Maybe it would be better to just let the boys kill him now and end it all.

  They stood over him, laughing at his tear-filled eyes and taunting him with stuttering sounds. He tried to stand, but they pushed at him with their feet to hold him down. One boy moved beyond pushing him with his black school shoe, and dared to kick him. He struck Peter’s ribs with enough force to bruise, and the attacker laughed excitedly as he realised he’d kicked someone who was down and no one was stopping him. It was like the scent of blood to a shark. He kicked harder.

  Another boy kicked his leg, experimentally at first, to see what it was like, and then he, too, began to kick harder.

  Peter tried to scramble away from the attack, but they were no longer boys, they were predators. They wanted to kill him, and he couldn’t escape. The girls began to gather and laugh, escalating the violence with their approval. When someone kicked him in the face and his nose exploded in a spray of blood, the boys made sounds like hounds baying, as they danced around him, sending kick after kick into his body.

  ‘You stinking bastards!’ a female voice screamed, cutting through the action like a sword.

  It wasn’t just the rage that dripped from her voice that halted them, it was the swear word. No one swore. Occasionally, some of the worst kids might use the word ‘bloody’, but the word Alice used was a shocking word. The only word they knew that was more dreadful was the next one she used as she roared at them.

  ‘Fuck off, you fucking little creeps!’

  Peter, from his rolled-up position on the ground, looked up to see her launch at the boys with a length of wood in her hands which she swung at their heads. A savage expression contorted her face into a battle mask that was both terrifying and beautiful. She was a tigress, a whirlwind, a fury. A warrior dressed in brown slacks and a lime green skivvy with black hair in a long pony tail and her feet in cheap tennis shoes. She was his saviour.

  The girls screamed as one of the boys collapsed to the ground clutching his ear, blood pouring out between his fingers. Another boy turned to flee but Alice swiped him across the side of the head, knocking him sideways into unconsciousness. A third boy tripped and sprawled face down on the grass, squealing like a piglet as Alice jammed her foot down on the back of his neck to hold him there as she glared at the bolting pack.

  With the length of wood, she tapped him threateningly on the side of the head and hissed at him, ‘Roll over and look at me, and stop snivelling.’

  Whimpering, the boy rolled over and stared up at the young Amazon who stood over him, the lump of wood hovering a foot above his face, ready to smash down on his nose and teeth if he made a move to fight back.

  ‘You don’t ever touch him again,’ she said, her eyes burning with anger. ‘You don’t ever touch anyone again, you got that?’

  The boy nodded frantically, his eyes darting back and forth between the menacing length of wood above his face and the eyes of the girl who threatened him.

  ‘And you shut your trap about what went on here. All of you,’ she glared around at the girls who remained frozen together, shocked as much from their own blood-lust reactions to the attack on Peter, as by the sight of this tall, slender girl who had just beaten three of the school’s toughest boys and sent the rest running like rabbits. ‘Tell your cowardly friends that if anyone names me or Peter, I’ll come after them and I’ll fucking kill them. And don’t think I won’t. I’ll fucking kill them.’

  The girls began crying. They had no doubt that this wild creature would hunt them down, only not with the wild hunting pack noise of the boys who had been attacking Peter. She would hunt with the lethal stealth of a tiger who came for them in the night.

  ‘Tell the teachers you were all climbing the tree,’ she tilted her head to indicate a big Moreton Bay fig at the front of the schoolgrounds and tapped the boy at her feet with her shoe to make sure he understood, ‘and you fell out. Got that? If you tell them anything else, then they’ll find out the truth - a heap of you were beating up on one boy, and the lot of you had the shit beaten out of you by a girl.’

  The boys who sat in the dirt near her nodded and wiped their noses on their sleeves, adding to the mess of blood that was staining their clothes. The one she had knocked out cold wore a dazed look on his face as though he only understood half of what was going on. Generally, no one swore within their hearing, and the savage words spewing from this girl’s mouth had them stunned. She frightened them.

  Alice turned to look at the girls, a sneer of distaste twisting her mouth, ‘And you lot - think what will happen to you if we tell your teachers and parents that you stood there laughing as the bullies tried to kill him. Laughing,’ she repeated, her lips curling back, ‘like the nasty little cows you are.’

  The girls tried to apologise making blubbering sounds, but Alice ignored them. She threw the length of wood away, stepped back from the boy at her feet, and reached a hand down to help Peter up. He clasped her hand in his own, and felt her sinewy strength as she pulled, drawing him to his f
eet.

  ‘Can you walk?’ she asked him kindly, her violet eyes soft.

  He nodded, not daring to talk because he knew words would break the delicate weir that held back his tears.

  ‘We’re going fishing,’ she smiled at him gently, as though nothing was amiss with the morning, and handed him a hankie with yellow flowers on it for his nose. ‘These girls will cover for us. They can tell the teachers that they heard we’re home sick with the flu. Right girls?’

  The girls could not deny the flashing violet eyes. They nodded.

  The shortest one sniffed, ‘We’ll tell them you’re sick. They never check.’

  Alice grinned at him, ‘And I’ll write a note from our parents tomorrow, or the next day, saying why we’ve been absent. I can do anyone’s writing.’ She winked at him, sharing the secret of her forgery skills.

  It occurred to Peter that Alice had frequently been absent from school, and he wondered if she made a habit of going fishing and forging a note from her parents.

  ‘Come on, let’s go before the teachers start to arrive.’ She clasped his hand tighter and dragged him away, pausing to pick up his school bag before ducking behind the buildings and breaking into a run across the oval.

  Despite the pain in his side and legs from the kicks, he ran with her, limping. His hand tingled from her grip as she led him across the oval and through the line of pine trees on the other side. Once hidden by the trees, she paused, and released his hand. He bent over and caught his breath, trying to control his breathing so that he didn’t sound like a wheezing sissy, words his father often used to describe him.

  ‘Ever wagged school before?’ Alice asked him as though he were her equal and not a stuttering, bullied, short nothing.

  He shook his head, ‘Na…na…na…na…no.’

  He stopped, embarrassed by his stuttering. Retard. That’s another word his father used to describe him. With eyes downcast so as not to see the disappointment in her expression, he waited for her to make fun of him or say something pitying. Girls like Alice Lamore did not like weaklings with speech impediments. She would remember that she had to be at school, or she would tell him he should get back to school, and she would leave him, thankful to be free of the burden of his company. And she would be right, he thought miserably. Who would want to spend any time with him?