Is that thing diesel?

by Paul Carter

  The morphine kicked in eventually; I could feel it creeping around in my head with a pillow, smothering the screams.

  The morning arrived with a gentle voice and a wheeled table gliding across the floor, pulling up over my waist. ‘Breakfast,’ the voice said, and a finger pressed the button to raise the back half of my bed. Someone opened the curtains to another hot sunny Queensland day. I looked up to see a homely-looking middle-aged woman; she smiled and slid a plastic tray onto my table with various round plastic containers no doubt housing a feast. But no: there was cold toast, fruit, corn flakes and yes, a big bowl of prunes. The doctor had said I would feel worse today and he was right. I couldn’t see it but there was definitely an invisible elephant sitting on my chest, I was sore and felt completely crippled. My muscles just didn’t want to work, I had no power; I was in a blackout on the left side of my body from my shoulder to my toes.

  The hot nurse appeared. I could make out her underwear through her whites when she crossed the big round windows. ‘How are you today, Mr Carter?’ I was conscious of the fact that I looked and smelled like a bum. ‘Enjoying the prunes?’ she asked. I watched her young professional disinfected veneer closely. Where are you hiding those pills? She crossed the room again to refill my water cup, and I automatically checked again for the VPL. It’s not that I’m a complete perv or anything, it’s just what men do. Cleavage has the same effect, like looking at the sun or pulling on that little bit of skin next to a fingernail; every shred of your body says, ‘Don’t do it,’ but you just can’t help yourself.

  She took my blood pressure and temperature, and brought in a huge purple Zimmer frame with retractable wheels which she parked beside the bed on my stronger right side. ‘When you’re ready, Mr Carter, use this to get yourself to the shower, it’s just outside the door to your room. The toilet is next door.’ I smiled, and yes, finally, there it was, the magic pill. ‘The doctor will be starting his rounds soon, he’ll be here by the time you’ve finished breakfast.’ With a big smile and a quick retucking of bed sheets, she turned on her heel and squeaked out of the room. I could hear some loony shouting down the hallway.

  God, I wanted to shower, shave and hopefully shit, thereby getting my departure ticket. But to what, a bike that I couldn’t ride? I needed a plan. I had to call Clare; it had been twelve hours since the crash and I knew the boys hadn’t made the call. This was on Dan’s request—he wanted to film it. It’s the call I never wanted to make, to tell her I’ve dropped it, to tell her to come to Longreach with Lola. The thought of my girls pulled hard at my gut, the morphine helping to produce crystal-clear images of Clare holding Lola, their faces happy, full of love, big as the sky.

  Dan and Matt arrived with junk food, DVDs and real coffee. Dan did an about-face and walked out again, clearly having forgotten something. Matt’s stocky purposeful stride stopped level with my head; he knew the first thing I would ask and he beat me to it.

  ‘The bike’s OK, mate; the front end’s a little bashed in, the bars and the left foot peg are bent, the mirrors, tail-light and rear indicators are broken, but the frame is sweet.’ He sat down and took off his hat.

  ‘Where is it?’ I asked.

  ‘One of the fireys dropped it off in a ute at the motel this morning. How are you feeling? How are the drugs workin’?’

  On any given day, all I have to do is look at Mathew and I’ll smile, but on morphine I was grinning widely.

  ‘Good stuff morphine, you look pain-free. That nurse is cute, she washed your balls yet?’ He reached into a plastic bag and produced half a dozen DVDs. ‘Now, the choices were limited, mate, this is the best they had.’ I picked up the pile and in the process shifted my bum three inches to the right, causing me to wince in pain.

  Dan reappeared. ‘Where’s my tripod?’

  Matt looked at him and placed his index finger against his pursed lips. ‘Hmmmm.’ His other hand burrowed wildly into the back of his pants. ‘Well, it’s not up my arse—have you had a good look in yours?’

  Dan smiled and put his camera bag down in the corner. ‘Mate, local ABC Radio want to come by tomorrow and do an interview, is that cool?’ I nodded. ‘OK, I’ll set that up.’

  Matt’s DVD choices were good considering he got them in a petrol station. Hitchcock’s classic The Birds, Ghostbusters, an old Sean Connery sci-fi movie from the eighties called Outland and, God love him, Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman’s Long Way Round—just what I wanted to see. I’d rather rub Deep Heat on my balls and staple my tongue to a burning building.

  Dan handed me my phone. ‘Thanks for waiting, mate, I’ll just roll.’

  I called Clare. I didn’t want to tell her I was in a hospital, that I’d dropped the ball. So I lied, telling her we’d decided to stay a couple of extra days in Longreach. She saw through my lie in a second, though, even over the phone. She was straight onto me, and got all the facts. She wanted to fly up straightaway, but in the few days since we’d last talked my daughter had developed a bad inner-ear infection that had just ruptured her eardrum, so they were temporarily grounded. Clare talked to her brother for a while, then Matt handed the phone back to me. ‘Honey, I’ll see what flights are available and call you back,’ she said.

  ‘Have you had a shit yet?’ Matt didn’t look up from his newspaper as he asked.

  ‘No,’ I said.

  He shook the paper so the TV guide fell into his lap. ‘Pity, this place sucks.’ He put his feet up on the end of my bed. ‘When did you have your last shit then?’ He turned a page.

  ‘Yesterday morning.’

  ‘Right, that’s 24 hours; you’d better punch one out for the team, champ, or we’re all going to Darwin to get you scanned.’ He tossed the TV guide onto the bed.

  ‘What?’ I looked at him and threw it back.

  ‘Dr Feelgood and Nurse Ratched said yesterday you need to drop one within 48 hours or you’re flying to Darwin to have an MRI.’

  ‘Really?’ I didn’t remember that.

  ‘Pay attention, 007,’ said Matt, getting up. ‘Now get your arse out of bed, have a shower, eat another prune-fuckin-McMuffin and poop for Uncle Matty or I’ll wait till you’re drug-fucked, get that crazy old cunt from down the hall, take out his teeth and make Dan film him with your cock in his mouth.’

  That galvanised me into action, though I waited until they were gone to get to it. It took me twenty minutes to get out of bed and on to the Zimmer frame thing; the 50 feet to the shower was agonising. Hot nurse’s voice came at me through the door: ‘Everything OK, Mr Carter?’ I must have been in there too long. I prayed she wouldn’t poke her head round the door and see my pale, pathetic Zimmer-frame shower scene. I’d been trying to reach the back of my legs, and of course I dropped the soap.

  ‘Fine, everything’s fine, no problem, be out soon.’ I overdid it; now she probably thought I was wanking. I brushed the socks off my teeth, shaved, and spent the rest of the morning pushing my pain threshold.

  Dan arrived in the afternoon with Miss ABC Radio, and filmed her interviewing me in a wheelchair on the grass in front of the hospital. That was the first time I saw Dan film with his free eye open. Usually Danny keeps the eye not peering through the lens clamped shut, but now his free eye was wide open and wandering all over the ABC Radio journalist’s gentle curves and blonde hair. Dan can do a great job of capturing the moment on film while having a good perv at the same time.

  Later that night, while waiting for Skeletor to pill me out, I could ignore Ewan and Charley no longer. I could see the DVD cover on the chair next to the bed, the two of them sitting on their BMWs looking like a million bucks. I thought about my one bike, smashed up and stowed in a motel car park, and my leaky ten-year-old second-hand ex-council support truck. And then there was my support crew. Matt, well, he wasn’t into bikes, he was neither sporty nor fit-looking—although he used to bowl when he was an alcoholic—he wasn
’t into road trips, he hates people, and every time Dan put the camera on him he spouted the most vile, disturbing, stream-of-consciousness rant, albeit delivered with real venom and wit; stuff that would peel the enamel from your teeth, make the hair on the back of your neck stand on end, if you were weak, old, or mentally challenged, would fuck you up. Yep, that’s my support team right there. I wondered if Ewan and Charley had a Matt on their team.

  In the end, alert from too much sleep during the day and still waiting for Skeletor, I gave in to the white-toothed allure of Ewan and Charley. It would have been easier to ignore blood in my urine; I just had to see what they did. I really enjoyed it, but I couldn’t finish it. Not to detract from Ewan and Charley’s efforts—I was fascinated—but I flaked out about halfway through.

  That’s when I met Bill—at least, I think his name was Bill—the crazy old gentleman from down the hall. My room was dark and cold, with invisible monsters hiding under the bed; I slept still aware of the crazy man down the hall, I was locked in the cell next to Hannibal Lector ready to swallow my tongue. I started to stir. Something deep in my subconscious was pressing an alarm bell. I woke with that disturbing sensation that you’re being watched. I forced my eyes open. His nose was two inches from mine; I caught his cabbage breath in the same dark instant. ‘Whoa.’ My head jerked back hard into the pillow.

  The TV still flickering with Ewan and Charley backlit his wild grey hair and creased leathery skin; he was babbling insane gibberish at me, nonsensical crazy talk, right into my face: ‘Do you know the human head weighs eight pounds? Do you know that bees and dogs can smell fear?’ He looked maniacal.

  ‘Fuck off,’ I said. I was scared for two reasons: one, because for a second there I was looking around for Dan and Matt in case Bill had indeed just been gumming my penis on film; and two, because even though I was to discover that he was very old and considered harmless by everyone, if he’d wanted to, this frail old bastard could have seriously fucked with me.

  The light blinked on overhead. ‘Out, back to bed, mate.’ I’d never been so relieved to see the grim face of Skeletor. She gently but firmly shouldered Bill around the bed and out of the room, rather like a sheep dog nudging a lamb out of harm’s way. Hot nurse no doubt had to deal with Bill’s loose misfiring bowel and cabbage-breath-delivered bullshit during the day, and Skeletor had the task of rounding him up at night. This was not to say Skeletor was a dog; she just looked bad in that light at that hour of the night, when a man was seriously in need of more drugs. Soon she came back and hooked me up with the good stuff, thank God, so my pulse rate calmed down and I settled back into the BMW duo’s well-planned ride. I need to watch it again one day when I’m not on drugs.

  After my morning prunes in prune sauce with a generous side of prunes, I hit the Zimmer for an hour, then the hospital physiotherapist came by. ‘Lose that girl’s frame, mate,’ he said. In his early thirties, he was tall and had a good sense of humour, he reminded me of Southwell. The frame got pushed into the corner while I stood in the middle of the room with my weight on one foot. The green hospital PJs were about three sizes too big, I just hobbled there like a big bald leprechaun.

  ‘Hold on to my arm, we’re going for a walk.’ It really hurt, but slowly, very slowly, it did get easier.

  Afterwards, I was in bed watching Oprah give another lesson in the real use of power, while crazy old Bill shouted nonsense from his room down the corridor, when suddenly that 48-hour back order of prunes hit exit point. Time was going to be critical. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a sloth panic; I did once, it’s a super slow motion event—their top speed is fourteen kilometres an hour. You know the poor animal thinks he’s doing 100, he’s pulling all the right faces, it’s just that he’s going well under half speed. Well, today I was doing about five and needing to do about 105. That morning I had gone from sporting oversized PJs to one of those green reverse gown things that leaves your butt horribly exposed to the elements. At the halfway mark I realised I needed the Zimmer, so I had to make a brief diversion to the other end of the room, wasting valuable time. Clenching wildly, I angled the giant Zimmer towards the nirvana of clean cold porcelain, my already naked buttocks heading directly for docking. The music for 2001: A Space Odyssey began to ring in my ears.

  I focused on holding the clench, my balloon knot under increasing pressure as I reversed through the spring-loaded saloon-style doors to the toilet. The loud internal blitzkrieg in my bowel caused me to yelp in fear. I backed up to the throne as fast as my hobbling would take me, my knees started to bend, angle of impact looked good, five seconds to touchdown, stand by, stand by. As I reached the point of no return, I was no longer able to support my body weight, and I had to let go of the Zimmer and hope that I landed well. The inside of my right knee touched plastic and I let go. There was a sudden jolt of pain, easily a ten on the pain scale, as my weight came down directly on the middle of the seat. Shock combined with joy, combined with the knowledge that this—provided no internal organs were about to see daylight—could be my ticket out of here. Hallelujah.

  In the meantime, hot nurse’s desk was only a few feet away from the toilet door. The violent rapid bowel movement I was desperately trying to do quietly could in fact be heard in the Qantas Museum two k’s down the road. ‘You OK, Mr Carter?’ Oh fuck no, her head popped round the door.

  My voice went up ten octaves. ‘Close the door.’

  I sat there shaking and twitching for five minutes, then realised the roll of toilet paper was a good five feet from my useless left arm. The big red call button was two feet from my nose. All I had to do was give up and hot nurse would come in and really give me something to write about.

  I stretched for the toilet paper, struggling against the pain, but fell short by an inch. I looked around for something else to wipe with. If I didn’t sort this out soon, hot nurse would be back. I even contemplated ripping the arm off my backless green robe.

  I finally bridged the gap—the long reach in Longreach—between my right hand and the petal-soft, fluffy white roll by using the toilet brush I found behind me. I discovered that if I smacked the brush down on the roll to make the paper spool out and waved the bristly end in the air, I could wind layers of paper around it. I was triumphant! But I was sprung. Hot nurse’s puzzled face appeared once more in the doorway; I sat there looking at her, clutching my fairy-floss stick of toilet paper. There was nothing to say, so we both went back to work.

  Why does this happen to me? It’s not like I want to write about shit, but I’m the guy who loses his arse. In public. At least Matt will be happy.

  We are ready to leave Longreach. It seems miraculous but in four days I’ve gone from the bed, to a wheelchair, to the Zimmer frame, to the sloth hobble. Each transition was drug-assisted but still horribly painful. The hospital said I could go if I wanted to, but suggested I stay for a few more days before getting in the truck.

  ‘Being here is getting easier for you now, but don’t get ahead of yourself, Paul.’ The doctor moved to the window and looked out at our old truck parked in the car park below. ‘Sitting in that thing on our outback roads isn’t going to be pretty.’

  He knew I was going anyway; every day I was pushing my body closer to getting in that truck.

  ‘What you need is time—you’re going to be sore for weeks,’ he said, looking doubtful. I must have looked like he’d just asked me to push a kitten into a blender. He sighed. ‘Make sure you stop regularly and move about. I’ve organised some pain relief medication for you to use over the next two days till you get to Darwin. You need to sign for it, though.’

  I hobbled over to him and he shook my hand slowly. ‘You shouldn’t go near that bike of yours for at least a month,’ he said.

  I smiled at him and hobbled off down the hall.

  I could have hobbled onto a flight home, and spent the next month healing; the doctor and my body were both telling me I w
asn’t ready yet. But I was out of time and budget and full of pride and ego; there was no plan B, no backing out. The next 2248 kilometres to Darwin would be the fourth and last time the bike would be in the back of the truck, totalling 2427 k’s travelled with the bike in the truck.

  ‘The cherry picker can’t lift a Jag,’ yelled Bill as I passed his room. And goodbye to you too, Bill.

  The elevator had a mesh folding door, the old-fashioned kind that you needed to close yourself. It took me five minutes to close it, and I was covered in sweat. I was as weak as a kitten, but somehow I had to climb into the truck and sit there for three days, so we could reach Darwin. I thought about the ride beyond Darwin. We weren’t even halfway, we were just stuck in the middle of nowhere. I had to get to Darwin, get the bike repaired and repair myself, had to keep to some kind of schedule. Already we were two weeks behind and I was well over my budget. I had to push on. I’d found an excellent physiotherapist in Darwin who was willing to do nothing but work on me for a week, so at least that was organised.

  To fix Betty, Matt Bromley, God bless him, had squared me away with a mate who ran a motorcycle dealership and workshop in Darwin. I could fly Clare and Lola up there to be with me for the week as well. I focused on that while I climbed into the cab; the seatbelt felt like it was made of lead. Lola’s ear was on the mend; Clare had said on the phone the night before that she was taking her back to the doctor today for a check-up and hopefully an all-clear for the little one to get on a plane.

  Heading out of Longreach, we stopped at that same coffee shop that we were in before the accident. I had another bucket of latte, and it hit my bladder at almost exactly the same place where I had dropped the bike four days ago. Matt slowed down as we passed the spot.