by PJ Vye
Mataio would save him. Of that she had no doubt. Mataio always did what he said he would. From the time he said he’d study medicine, even though the chances of him getting a score high enough was less than winning the lottery, even though there were less than three Samoan doctors in the whole of Australia, when he said he would do something, he did it. When Akamu went back to Samoa after La’ei disappeared, Mataio promised to take care of her financially, even though he was a student at the time. He’d found a way. If he said he could fix Junior, she believed it as absolute.
If Junior was better soon, would he leave her too? Would he go back to Samoa, like he always dreamed he would? Could she go back to Samoa without La’ei? What if La’ei came back and couldn’t find her?
Tulula threw the quilt back onto the bed, giving up on straightening it from the inside. She’d have to start again. She could hear them working in the room across the hall, small murmuring voices and the occasional, “lift.” A wave of embarrassment overcame her, and she sat on the bed, at a loss to know what to do. She didn’t want to see the team of people in with Junior, with their judgements and knowing glances. Let them lose a daughter and see how they cope.
Although not lost. Missing.
Missing was worse.
She rocked on the bed, her arms wrapped around herself, as the usual terrible scenarios crashed in on her. Where was La’ei? Was she alive? Was she hurt? Was she happy? Did they torture her? If only she had some answers. If only she could know the truth.
Her only other child, her son, her baby, her Junior, would leave her too. If not by death, then by living. Why couldn’t he stay with her here? She was his entire world and he was hers. Why couldn’t he just stay with her?
He might marry. He might lose the weight and marry a girl. A girl who didn’t like her and made him stay away. Or maybe he might marry and have children. Grandchildren. She’d like to be a grandmother.
She stopped rocking and stood up, pulled out the quilt from the cover and started again. Once in place she found the fabric freshener spray and covered the entire bed with the fresh laundry smell.
Grandchildren. They would be worth letting Junior go for. La’ei would be an aunt. Tulula loved being an aunt almost as much as she’d loved being a mother. Over the years, since her sister died, her nephew Mataio had become both her treasure and her curse. From the time he moved in, her family began to dissolve. But he’d been such a comfort she wondered how she would have coped otherwise. Logically, she understood Mataio wasn’t to blame for her sorrow, but in her heart, she’d often felt torn between her love for the boy and her mild distrust. It was an irrational feeling and she rarely let her mind dwell on it.
A gentle tap on the door made her jump. “Aunt Tulula. We’re ready for you now.”
She straightened the quilt quickly and shuffled her way into Junior’s room. A new, king single hospital style bed now sat in the room, a large harness attached above him. Mataio had placed two chairs beside the right-hand side of the bed, and she sat in the one closest to her son and held his hand. Junior was sweating, and the room had been sprayed with a disinfectant smell that she knew he hated. He looked mildly irritated, but that wasn’t surprising. She patted his hand as Junior watched his cousin draw a liquid into a syringe from a small clear jar with a handwritten label.
“If you don’t want to do this, Junior,” said Tulula, “We can stop right now.”
Mataio’s forehead creased but he said nothing as he squeezed the air from the needle.
“Will it hurt?” asked Junior of his cousin.
“It shouldn’t,” replied Mataio.
“What? You don’t know?” exclaimed Tulula.
Mataio didn’t look up as he closed the lid with one hand, the syringe upright in the other. “Like I said, first human test.”
“Fiti, Taio. Are you sure about this?” Junior attempted to sit a little higher in his bed, his concern making his face the most animated Tulula had seen in some time. She kept patting his hand, a silent prayer on her lips.
Mataio lowered the needle and stared at his cousin. “Are you sure, Junior?”
They stared at each other a moment. Junior shared Tulula’s unquestioned faith in Mataio, but he wasn’t asking because he doubted Mataio’s ability. He asked because he doubted himself. “Just do it,” said Junior, and turned his head away so he couldn’t see the needle enter his flesh.
Tulula watched the clear liquid slowly drain into her son’s arm and muttered another short prayer as Mataio withdrew the needle and covered the spot with a plaster. No-one spoke a moment, just the sound of the clock ticking in the hall and the shuffle of Ipo moving from his food bowl in the kitchen to his bed in the laundry.
Finally, Tulula asked, “What happens now?”
“We wait.”
“For what?”
“Observations. Half hourly. Through the night. Another dose every three hours. More observations.”
“And he can eat normally?”
“Yes.”
“Explain it to me again. How it works.”
She knew she wouldn’t understand it but she needed to hear him say it.
“An overabundance of food means that cellular respiration cannot occur at a fast enough rate to convert he glucose molecules from food into adenosine triphosphate or energy. Thus, the glucose is converted to glycogen and stored in the liver via a process called glycogenesis. I’ve taken these glycogen stores and with the help of insulin, converted the fatty acids to waste.”
“Okay, but how will that make him lose weight?”
“The body won’t be getting enough energy from the foods he eats, so it will burn fat stores to maintain normal bodily function.”
“What happens when he’s used up enough of the stored body fat. How will it stop?”
“He stops taking the drug.”
“As simple as that?”
“Yes.”
“You sound so confident.”
“I don’t mean to. I can’t be sure of anything. It’s a risk. Either way, Junior is at risk. We all agreed, this was a risk worth taking, right?”
“If it goes wrong, what might happen?”
“His insulin levels might skyrocket or drop suddenly. His body might reject the medication, or the brain might react differently than expected. He might vomit repeatedly, he might break out in a rash, he might convulse—.”
“Okay, perhaps we don’t need to know everything.”
“Aunt Tulula, there’s always risk for any person taking any drug of any sort, tested or not. The odds are in his favour. It’s actually a relatively simple thing to do.”
“Where does the fat go?”
Mataio’s words blurred in her ears like a foreign language as he explained again.
Aunt Tulula held up her hand for him to stop. “Enough. I don’t really care how you do it.”
“I read a journal article a couple of years ago about using a compound found in dandelion to assist weight loss. It’s not a new idea, technically.”
A loud, stabbing snoring sound erupted from the bed and they both looked up to find Junior’s face, relaxed with his mouth open, asleep against the pillows.
“Well, I better get on with the dinner. Can I get you a coffee, Mataio?”
“No Aunt, why don’t you sit here awhile, and I’ll get the coffee. You’ve earned a rest. Let me take care of you for a while.”
Tulula gave him a half smile and nodded, allowing him to fuss over her. She really was exhausted. It had been a very, very long decade of dedicating herself to the child in that bed. If things were about to change, maybe she might be able to put her feet up a little more often. Her feet were tired. So were her hands, her heart and her mind.
Six
MATAIO
47 days to go
“This is what happens when you bring strange white people to the house,” said Aunt Tulula, smoothing down Junior’s bed covers as if less creases in the linen might reduce the man’s ailments.
“We don’
t know that for sure, Aunt,” repeated Mataio for maybe the tenth time. He lifted Junior’s wrist and took his pulse for thirty seconds, counted his respiratory pattern for another thirty, then wrote the results in the chart. He angled the workbook away from his aunt so she couldn’t see the graph he’d created for each of Junior’s vital signs. Not only was he not showing any improvement, he was actually deteriorating. His blood sugar levels were still unpredictable, the damage to his liver and heart likely to be irreversible and his current quality of life was an almost vegetative state. Practically, Mataio was certain it had nothing to do with the trial treatment, that Junior’s deterioration would have happened anyway, but with Junior now battling some kind of infection, Mataio couldn’t help but second guess himself.
“My child lies here with a fever, cold sweats, and no will to live and you tell me it has nothing to do with this miracle serum? If that’s true, then he must have caught it from one of the white folks you brought into the house to poke and wrestle and gawk at my son.”
“Firstly, they were professionals, and no-one was judging.”
“Humpf.”
“Secondly, it’s happened now, and we’ll deal with it. I’ve given him antibiotics and he should start feeling some relief soon. When he wakes up again, give him some aspirin.” Mataio turned and walked away before he said something else. The pressure over the past five days had been intense for them both, but her sudden lack of trust, hurt. “I’ll be in my room.”
“You can leave that white coat attitude elsewhere, Mataio. Don’t you be coming in my house and turn your back on me. You hear me?”
Mataio nodded and caught an expression he hadn’t seen from her in a long time. The same look she’d given his father when he’d come to collect them after an extended stay. A look of pure disgust.
He fell onto his bed and stared at the ceiling. He’d slept very little over the past five days, but that was nothing unusual. Sleep wouldn’t come to him now and he had to work hard to keep himself from thinking about his life back when this really was his bedroom. Not a happier time, but a less complicated time. Less rules.
Aunt Tulula had nurtured him back then; when his mother was still alive. Aunt Tulula and Uncle Akamu had moved to Melbourne to be closer to his Ma after she married. Tulula and Ma were as close as sisters could get. He remembered the time when, after a particular long stay at his aunt’s, she’d told him his grandparents had forbidden Ma’s marriage to his father, and how Ma, being headstrong and reckless, married him anyway. His father was not welcome in Samoa. It’d felt good, knowing a family Mataio hadn’t even met, had the same opinion of his father as he did. Tulula told him how well respected his grandparents were—his grandfather was a Chief—and one day she’d take him back so they could meet. Mataio had dreamed about that day. A family that he could be proud of, and a home of sparkling beaches, and tropical fish and feasts and singing and community gatherings. As a child, that dream saw him through a lot of long, terrifying nights.
Aunt Tulula’s home was Mataio’s idea of the perfect family. No-one screamed. No-one was scared. It was his safe house and aunt lavished love and affection on everyone around her. When his Ma died, and he moved in permanently, she changed. Slowly, subtly—but enough for him to know that he was separate. He’d tried to be good. When that didn’t get him noticed, he tried to be bad. Her indifference to him and her over-the-top dedication to her own children made him lonely. She blamed him somehow for everything that went wrong. His mother dying, her daughter’s disappearance, her son’s food addiction. Everything was his fault. Why did he spend so much time trying to impress someone who couldn’t be impressed?
How could he make her believe in him, when he barely believed in himself?
He pulled himself off the bed and collected five days’ worth of blood samples from the fridge. Scribbling a note to his aunt, he called a cab and waited for it outside. Leaving was dangerous. If Junior went into cardiac arrest or a diabetic coma, a quick response might save him. Mataio didn’t even have a phone she could call him on.
Mataio knew the benefits outweighed the risks. He needed the results before he could make a decision about moving forward. They couldn’t weigh Junior—he was too big. Mataio needed to make more serum anyway. He could hire someone to stay, but then there’d be questions and he couldn’t risk anyone else’s medical license but his own.
Maybe Sunny would have a phone he could use.
Seven
MATAIO
47 days to go
Mataio knocked for three minutes before he heard movement inside. When Sunny still didn’t answer he called out, “Sunny, it’s Mataio. I need to talk to you.”
Another stumble, a curse and something hit the ground before she opened the door, just a small amount, and stuck out her head.
“What?”
Her hair looked like a family of birds had made their nest in it for the winter. There were dark circles under her eyes and he suspected she’d been asleep. It was 4 o’clock in the afternoon.
“I need your help.”
“Has it been a week already? I thought you were gone for a week.” She looked strangely disappointed. The door fell open and he could see she wore striped men’s pajamas that were slightly too small. And there was something stuck in her hair—a potato chip?
“I came back early. How are you?” Mataio looked past her into the apartment and she gave up trying to hide its contents. She turned and wandered into the kitchen, leaving the front door open. He assumed the invitation and followed her in, trying to act casual. It was as if someone had taken a leaf blower to the place. Every surface was covered, the furniture, the floor, the benches. Not just casually messy—seriously messy. Like upturned coffee cups with the contents spilt and left, layers of empty cartons and smashed glass on the floor, like she’d made room on the bench by dragging her arm across it. The mirror above the table had been broken, possibly by the hammer that now hung by its claw from a hole in the plastered wall. There were tissues everywhere. Used and unused. Strewn around like some weird kind of room dandruff.
Something wasn’t right with Sunny. For a year, he’d listened to her from downstairs, her routine had been faultless. He heard her run the water to wash dishes every night before bed. The hum of a vacuum every Saturday morning. He could set his watch to it. It had been a comfort at times, knowing the outside world ticked by while he chained himself to the experiment.
He didn’t quite know what to do. If he asked if she was okay and she said no, what would he do with that information? Was he in a position to help? He doubted it.
He needed more time to think about a strategy, so he focused on his initial request. “Can I use your phone to call someone?”
“You don’t have a phone?”
“No.”
She shrugged and started upturning clothes and the cushions on the sofa in search of it. “No-one calls me either, so…”
Sunny’s movements were slow and laboured, like she couldn’t be bothered looking and didn’t really believe she’d find it anyway. Mataio wondered if it had been smashed along with the mirror.
He stood awkwardly, unsure if it was rude to help with the search.
She must have sensed his unease. “The place is a bit of a mess. I’ve been…unwell.”
Finally, something he could help with. “Well, I’m a doctor you know. Is there anything I can do? Would you like me to take a look at…?”
His voice trailed off when he saw the look of horror on her face. She crossed her arms across her ample chest, perhaps now aware she wasn’t wearing a bra under her top.
“It’s nothing.” She turned away and moved into her bedroom.
Mataio continued to stand and glance around the room, unsure what to do next. Her guitar sat on a stand under the window, perhaps the only thing in the entire room that was still in its place. He picked it up and touched the strings, gently at first, to remind himself of the feeling, then his hand shaped a chord, like a reflex action, and he began to str
um a percussive beat.
He didn’t hear Sunny re-enter the room. “I didn’t know you played.”
“I don’t. Not compared to you. You’re really good.”
“How would you know?”
“I can hear it, downstairs. The violin too.”
Her face exploded into a crimson shade of uncomfortable. “Oh god.”
“It’s okay. I like it.”
“You can hear me? And the songs I write? Do you hear them too?”
Mataio fought the instinct to lie. It was a good way to start a conversation about her mental health. “No. Couldn’t quite make out the words. I mean…some of them I could. The occasional ‘fuck you’ and ‘shitty shitty bastard.’ But only because you sang those words with tremendous clarity.” He smiled and she seemed to relax.
“We should jam sometime,” he said, surprised at his words, but clear on his intention.
Her head sprang up with an unexpected smile and he could see himself saying just about anything to keep it there.
“Yeah. I guess,” she ran her fingers through her hair and when they got stuck in the knots, she removed them and rubbed the back of her neck instead. “Maybe.”
He balanced a quick timetable in his head. “How about tonight?”
“Tonight?” The confusion on her face wasn’t hard to understand. He’d spent months ignoring her and now he wanted to jam.
“Um…”
“Look, I have to leave again soon and I’m not sure when I’ll be back. But when I do, it would be really nice to listen to you play. It used to be my favourite thing to do. I miss it. What do you say?”
She looked like she might say no. She scoured the room as if seeing it for the first time through his eyes. “I just think it’s a bit too hard—”
“I’ll order pizza when I get back. See you then?”
