April Fool's Day

by Bryce Courtenay

  He had learned that he was HIV positive while still at school and at an age when a young man’s sexual drive, particularly his sexual fantasy, is very active. The first thing Damon had to come to terms with was that he was sexually dangerous. Naturally, he would have been emotionally distraught at such a prospect and become very sensitive about his own sex life. Celeste was his anchor and his only sexual experience; their sex life would have been expressed in the most simple and predictable ways. It isn’t difficult to understand that he didn’t want this experience with a single female partner undervalued in any way.

  It is difficult to write about the way some gay people talk among each other, without appearing to upset the sensibilities of the gay community. But Damon, who for reasons I’ve just explained, was very tentative about sex, was suddenly surrounded by gay patients who seemed to talk openly and often explicitly about sex. He was almost completely innocent in such matters and now found himself among people who were vastly more sexually experienced. Gay friends would visit patients and the conversation would sometimes be about liaisons and details of promiscuity of a type and description, so completely bizarre and explicit, that they were previously unimagined by someone like Damon.

  Perhaps if he’d been well, he might have found some of these conversations funny or even educative. But now he found them somewhat traumatic and he was never able to understand how, when sex had been the cause of such a calamity as AIDS, it could continue to be a subject of such total preoccupation among some gay patients.

  Damon simply didn’t wish to be viewed by people as gay, as he felt he and Celeste had no such experience. He’d once confided to Tim, “You must know I don’t care about anyone being gay, but I just don’t want to be viewed that way myself.” Tim, as usual, had shrugged the notion off. “Anyone seeing you with Celeste would instantly know you were straight as an arrow, Damon.”

  However, at Prince Henry, with its separate Marks Pavilion in which all the patients had AIDS, the manner of how he had contracted AIDS didn’t matter in the least. Here they were all in the same boat. He began to see AIDS as a disease he had contracted and not as a homosexual disease he had contracted. His AIDS wasn’t different, he himself was. This difference was brought about by not sharing many of the interests which the other patients had in common.

  Marks Pavilion also had a downside. Damon was the only haemophiliac there. The other haemophiliacs with AIDS had very sensibly remained at Prince Alfred to be near the Haemophilia Centre. This meant that when Damon had a bleed while in hospital, he would need to treat it himself, as no real expertise among the Marks Pavilion staff existed to handle his peculiar blood product problem. This was seldom a huge disadvantage unless Damon was unable to transfuse himself; he would have to rely on a nursing sister or a doctor, who didn’t really understand his treatment or fully comprehend how painful and inconvenient a bad bleed could be.

  Celeste would bring the AHF in from home and it would be stored in the drug fridge at the hospital where the squat round bottles sat like strangers, foreign medication, among all the well-used drugs that fought the opportunistic infections allowed in by AIDS.

  The younger medical staff seemed to understand that Damon was an “accident” and so they were generally very considerate to him. This was something for which we were very grateful. Damon didn’t always appeal to medical staff. The years spent in hospitals had made him cunning and his determination to look after his own body often meant that he wasn’t a good, compliant and co-operative patient. He wanted to know everything and, I must say, the many younger doctors at Prince Henry bent over backwards to accommodate him, showing more patience with his demands than any we’d come across before. We could see that the medical profession was changing at last, that young medicos coming into the profession were temperamentally and emotionally much better adjusted and prepared for their jobs. They were better doctors all round and seemed to have none of the arrogance and insensitivity of many of their older peers.

  With the help of Rick Osborne and the younger medical staff, Damon was quite often allocated a room when, strictly speaking, he was jumping the queue. Perhaps this was unfair, though I know it made an enormous difference to all of us. We could visit Damon without inhibiting the conversations of, for the most part, young gay visitors, who would want to talk freely to their patient friends in their own manner. We would tell ourselves that everyone benefited, though this may simply have been our way of justifying Damon’s privileged treatment. Nevertheless, I confess, I was always grateful if Rick or the doctor had somehow managed to move him straight into a private room, when normally he should be expected to wait his turn.

  If I appear to have made light of Damon’s first stay in an AIDS ward, then I have given quite the wrong impression. AIDS-related pneumonia is extremely serious and he was very ill for several weeks and required constant oxygen to breathe. Pneumocystis is a killer: in some circles it’s called “the merciful killer” because it often occurs as the first real crisis in the progression of AIDS. If it proves terminal, the victim dies in fairly good shape and doesn’t have to suffer through the mental and physical deterioration which is the inevitable way of the disease.

  Towards the end of Damon’s first stay at Marks Pavilion an accident occurred which shocked and saddened him tremendously and might have been one of the causes of the deep malaise or depression he was to fall into not long after leaving hospital. In the room next door to his own was a young man called John (in most cases only first names are used in AIDS wards) who was also suffering from AIDS-related pneumonia. His entry into hospital had been delayed and he’d had a tremendous fight on his hands, but now seemed to be over the worst.

  But, while he’d been in hospital nobody had visited him. Rick explained to Damon that John was in the navy and his friends were not in Sydney and that his parents lived in the country. Damon, who by this time was sufficiently well to be allowed out of bed for two or three hours every day, spent a lot of his time just sitting with John, who seemed to be making a very slow recovery and wasn’t yet off the danger list. Damon has always been a sharing person and soon we were bringing what we could for John, when we visited Damon, which was precious little as he was still very ill.

  Benita would visit Damon every morning and Celeste would go straight from university so that she saw him every afternoon, while I would leave work at about seven and take the evening shift. One evening, Damon confided in me that he’d wake up at night to hear John sobbing and delirious, shouting, “Mum and Dad please forgive me!” Damon explained that it was like hearing a terribly distraught little boy, first the sobs and then his plaintive wail to be forgiven.

  “He says it over and over again, Dad, like he’s heartbroken but doesn’t know what he’s done. We have to do something. Nobody has visited him since he came in.” I suggested that Damon try to find out where John’s parents lived and, if it was a question of money we could help, maybe fly them up or down to Sydney and put them up in a hotel for a couple of nights.

  Damon went to work, but without success; John shook his head, too ill or weak or simply not wanting to reply. Rick confided in Damon that John’s prognosis wasn’t good. “He doesn’t have anything to live for; when this happens they often just give up,” he observed.

  Then one day John had a visitor, a young woman who was the sister of a shipmate and had received a letter from her brother on HMAS Perth asking her to visit John. She hadn’t known John previously and of course she was shocked by what she saw. Their conversation was awkward, she was young and shy and quite unprepared for anything like this, so she didn’t stay very long but promised to come back if she could get away from work again.

  Damon, seeing that she was about to depart, left his bed and waited at the front desk of the hospital until she arrived; confronting her, he asked if she knew where John’s parents lived. She didn’t seem sure. “In Black-town or Bankstown, one of them. I know because my brother once told me, but I don’t know which one now,” she shrugged. “I
can’t remember nothing more.”

  That night Rick went home and got on the phone and called everyone in the book by the name of Baker and who was located in or near either suburb. Baker is a pretty common surname and after about four hours he finally located a family who had a son called John who was in the Australian navy and on HMAS Perth.

  Bingo!

  Rick explained to Damon that they had somehow to get John’s permission to make the call to his family. “He’s very ill and we can’t just have his parents drop in on him,” he explained.

  “But why?” Damon asked. “Surely they’d want to see him, come what may?”

  Rick explained that gay people often lived a life of which parents were oblivious and that John’s guilt could be terrible. “Just because you’re gay doesn’t mean that you’re not influenced by all the values your parents hold. The church, what friends would think, the relations, all that working-class crap. John’s in the navy, his dad’s probably proud as punch and thinks he’s practically the captain by now, a real son of a gun!”

  Damon went to work on John, but again this was to no avail and that night, when I visited, Damon was exhausted himself, needing more oxygen than usual. Quietly, between bouts with the oxygen mask, he explained what had happened. “Dad, Rick says John’s getting worse and may not make it and he’ll die without seeing his mum and dad or even having them give him a hug or saying goodbye!” Tears were running down Damon’s cheeks. “It’s not fair, he didn’t do anything wrong!”

  I held Damon’s hand, feeling helpless, saying nothing, unable to think of anything to say. In the next room, we could hear the hissing sound of John’s breathing apparatus and his heart monitor and, above it all, his laboured breath. “Dad, will you talk to him?” Damon asked finally.

  I rose and walked the few feet through the connecting door, feeling a little panic-stricken and I am ashamed to say a bit foolish. John’s room was in semi-darkness with only the small night light above his bed. His breathing was laboured and his chest was rising and falling as though each inward breath brought him pain. The room smelt of the peaches Benita had brought the previous day, which were in a paper bag on his bedside console, three hothouse peaches, a blush of pink on the downy skin, one halfway out of the paper packet. They’d been brought in the hope that they might tempt him to eat something. Now I noted that they remained in the half-opened bag untouched.

  I sat down beside John and took his hand. It was a surprisingly big hand even for a big lad. It was cool and slightly clammy to the touch, a hand that would have come from generations of people who’d worked hard for a living. A big, practical hand, I thought, probably like his father’s. John’s hand lay limp in my own and I had no idea whether he was fully conscious as his eyes remained closed as I entered the room and sat beside his bed. I cleared my throat. “Good evening, John.” I paused for a second then continued, “John, if you can hear me just nod your head, just a little from side to side or, if you like, squeeze my hand. Don’t try to talk, just a squeeze or nod of your head.”

  In the semi-darkness I thought I saw his head nod, almost imperceptibly, although his hand remained limp in my own. “John, please let me call your parents,” I said gently. “No matter what’s happened between you, as a parent of three sons I know they’d want to be with you now.” I waited a few moments then added, “John, if you agree just squeeze my hand. Just a tiny squeeze.”

  I waited but his hand remained limp, inert in my own. “Please, just a tiny squeeze, or if you like, just nod your head again.” But still there wasn’t any life in his hand and no movement of his head. Finally, after sitting with John for a little while longer, I returned to Damon’s room. I was disappointed but didn’t know what else I could do, though I must confess I was pretty certain John had heard me and that I had failed.

  At ten the following morning Damon called me at work from hospital. He was terribly excited. “Dad, John told Rick this morning it was okay to call his parents!” Damon started to cough over the phone, the excitement too much for him. “They’re coming this afternoon, his parents are coming this afternoon to see him,” he gasped then added in a thin, chesty voice, “He’s going to be all right, you’ll see, he’ll get better now!”

  I arrived to see Damon that evening to find him in a great deal of distress.

  “You came too late, Dad,” he sobbed. For several minutes I could get nothing from him, just the same phrase, “You came too late!” Finally he managed to tell me what had happened.

  John’s parents had arrived late in the afternoon. “They were, you know, just ordinary working-class people like everybody else. Rick met them as they came in and John’s father wanted to know what the matter was, you know, why was his son so sick? Rick took them to the TV lounge and asked them to take a seat. John’s mum sat down but his father remained standing. John’s mum had not spoken a word since they’d entered the hospital, she’d just followed them to the TV lounge. Rick said she looked scared. Rick then explained to John’s father that he was very ill, that John had a kind of special pneumonia.”

  “Why wasn’t we told before?” John’s father demanded to know.

  “Well, I told you on the phone this morning.” Rick replied.

  “No, before. Why wasn’t we told before?”

  Rick cleared his throat. “We couldn’t get your phone number until I phoned two days ago; it was just a punt,” he explained, then added, “I’d already phoned dozens and dozens of numbers, maybe fifty Bakers until I got you.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me then, on the bloody phone! You just asked those questions about the navy and his ship and hung up. We thought he’d deserted, jumped ship or somethin’ real bad like that!”

  “I’m sorry, Mr Baker.” Rick smiled, trying to disarm the big man who towered above him. “You see we were very worried. John is very sick and we knew only that you lived somewhere in Bankstown or Blacktown but that’s all. He was too sick to tell us how to contact you. I couldn’t tell you before I had his permission to call you. I mean, we didn’t know if you…you,” Rick hesitated, clearing his throat, “know, knew about John?”

  John’s dad looked down at Rick. He was a tough-looking guy, big and rough, the sort of man you made a mental note not to annoy in the pub, and he was very angry. “Knew what? Knew bloody what?”

  Rick looked at Mrs Baker for help, but she was seated with her hands in her lap not looking up. He talked directly to her, not looking at John’s old man standing beside him. “Mrs Baker, your son has AIDS, he’s very sick with a sort of pneumonia called PCP, he wants to see you.” The woman gasped and looked up at her husband, clutching at her neck with both hands. John’s dad looked at his wife. “You hear that, woman?” It was as though he was accusing her of something, blaming her for his son’s predicament.

  Damon was weeping again. “Dad they went in and stayed perhaps for twenty minutes. John’s mum sat on one side of the room and his dad on the other as far away from him as they could get. They didn’t touch him, they didn’t even speak to him. John’s mum just sat and looked into her hands. Maybe she was crying, I couldn’t see from the way she held her head.

  “I couldn’t see his dad at all, I just knew where the chair was he was sitting on, it was about four feet from John’s bed. All I could hear was John crying and him saying, ‘Forgive me, Mum and Dad, please forgive me!’ Just like at night. He was begging them. His voice was terribly laboured and I knew how hard it was for him to speak. He’d get it out and then lie panting and then get the oxygen mask up and he’d try to get enough air to say it again. He kept repeating it, over and over, begging his mum and dad to forgive him, until I thought he was going to die; but his parents didn’t move, didn’t say anything! His mum didn’t even look up.”

  Damon stopped, too upset to continue. I was shocked myself and close to tears. “It’s hard, darling. It’s very hard for a man and woman like that to be confronted suddenly with something like this. Perhaps they don’t know how sick John is. Rick says that, o
ften when people hear of their son’s homosexuality and AIDS condition together for the first time their reaction is traumatic, just like John’s parents today; but then they go home and think it out and come back the next day and they are soon reconciled. People like that just don’t understand, they’ve been conditioned, often since childhood, to think homosexuality is a sin or a terrible disgrace.”

  Damon wiped his eyes and I wasn’t sure he’d been listening to me because he continued, anxious to get his story over. “Then I heard John’s dad say, ‘Come, woman!’ and John’s mum got up and they walked out. They didn’t even stop at the door to say goodbye.”

  Damon was howling again and I cradled him and rocked him and tried to comfort him. It was only then that I realised that John’s breathing apparatus wasn’t making its customary hissing noise and that the door to his adjoining room, which was usually open, was now shut.

  “Is John all right?” I asked.

  Damon stopped sniffing and looked up at me. “He’s dead. He died an hour ago!”

  The remainder of the story came out later. Immediately his parents had departed, Damon and Rick had gone in to see John in an attempt to comfort him. John hadn’t said anything, he just lay exhausted, his breath coming in great heaves from behind the oxygen mask. Tears just kept running down his dark stubbled cheeks, running along the edge of the oval oxygen mask on to his chin and down the front of his neck and into the V-top of his pyjama jacket. Big, silent tears that just seemed to squeeze out every couple of seconds.

  Rick pulled up a chair and Damon did the same and they sat on either side of the bed and held one large hand each. There wasn’t anything they could say, they just held John’s hands. Finally Rick had to go because they were paging him to an urgent call and Damon was left alone with John.