Matthew Flinders' Cat

by Bryce Courtenay

  A very obese woman sat on one of the chairs smoking even though a sign on the wall read ‘No Smoking’. She was using a small paper cup from the water dispenser as her ashtray. Two small girls, still dressed in their pyjamas, sat with her. The smaller one appeared to be about three and was sucking on a dummy, while her sister was swinging her legs and singing softly to a rather beaten-up doll. On another chair, his legs extended and his chin on his chest, was a man in his late seventies. He was wearing a white shirt and brown flannels hoicked up to his chest and held up with braces. None of them looked up when Billy and Ryan entered.

  Billy sat on the chair in the front row clutching his arm while Ryan removed the handcuff from his wrist and placed the case on the floor. ‘Yiz real crook, remember,’ he whispered before he walked over to the reception window, behind which stood a thin unremarkable-looking woman in her fifties with iron-grey, closely cropped hair. Her breasts were the only exceptional thing about her. Too large for her slender frame, they stuck out in sharp points under a blue angora sweater. It was as if she’d borrowed someone else’s tits before coming to work.

  ‘Mornin’, miss, I got a ’mergency,’ Ryan called out rather too loudly when he was still two steps away from the window. The receptionist clerk looked up, surprised to see someone so young standing in front of her. ‘It’s me friend, he’s real crook, got a broken wrist and suspected lockjaw.’

  The woman tapped the blue and white plastic name tag pinned to her breast with her forefinger, ‘It’s Mrs. Mrs Willoughby!’

  ‘Sorry,’ Ryan said, smiling.

  ‘Well, broken wrist or not,’ she glanced over at Billy and then back at Ryan, ‘we have to complete the admission form first.’ She raised her chin and this time took a longer look at Billy, her expression indicating that she was not too pleased at what she saw. ‘Over here, please!’ she called out, ignoring Ryan.

  Billy started to rise but Ryan signalled with his hand behind his back for him to remain seated. ‘Nah, he can’t, Missus.’

  ‘Can’t what?’

  ‘Do paperwork, I told ya, his wrist is broke.’ The receptionist sighed, impatient. ‘Well, if he’ll come over and give me his personal details, I’ll fill them in for him.’

  ‘Nah, can’t do that neiva, I told you already, he’s got lockjaw.’

  ‘You said suspected, suspected lockjaw!’ It was Ryan’s turn to sigh. ‘That’s why I said “suspected” because he can’t say nuffink!’

  The woman and the boy locked eyes and Ryan, holding her gaze, spread his hands and shrugged. ‘He needs a tetanus shot real bad, Missus.’ Sudden tears welled in his eyes and his voice grew small, ‘It’ll be your fault if he dies.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ the receptionist said, raising her voice.

  Ryan took a deep breath, ‘I want to make a complaint!’ he said loudly. ‘I’m not getting no co-operation! I want to see the triage sister!’

  ‘Not until I have the particulars. Besides you’ll have to wait, this is a fracture, that’s a priority four, she’s busy with a cardiac arrest.’

  ‘HELP!’ Ryan suddenly yelled at the top of his voice. ‘HELP! HELP!’

  Billy damn near jumped out of his skin. The receptionist had had enough and pressed a buzzer under the lip of her desk. In a matter of moments two security men appeared, coming down a passage on the other side of the electronically locked door. The receptionist pressed the buzzer and the door opened and the two men stormed through.

  Billy jumped to his feet, looking at the entrance and back at them, ready to make a run for it.

  The two security men converged on him, one grabbing his arm, the other his bad wrist. Billy screamed as the security man who was holding Billy’s wrist twisted his arm behind his back. ‘Not him!’ the woman shouted, ‘The boy!’ The two men released Billy, who fell to his knees whimpering.

  ‘Sorry, mate,’ one of them said, bending over him and offering his hand.

  ‘Leave me alone! Please leave me alone!’ Billy sobbed as he lay doubled over on the floor, his stomach protecting his wrist.

  Ryan turned back to the receptionist, ‘Now look what yiz done!’ he said accusingly.

  The receptionist arched her eyebrow slightly, ‘Well, that’s one good thing, we seem to have cured his lockjaw.’

  ‘Well, well, look who the cat brought in! Gidday, Ryan,’ the second security man called out, coming over. ‘Your mum, she okay?’

  ‘Oh, hi, Johnno,’ Ryan said slowly and pointed to where Billy lay doubled over on the floor with the other man squatting beside him. ‘No, it’s me friend, he’s broke his wrist and he’s real crook.’ He turned and looked at the receptionist, ‘She give us a hard time just because he’s a derro and can’t read and write!’

  The receptionist brought her hands to her hips, ‘I beg your pardon, young man!’ she expostulated, ‘You said he had lockjaw when I wanted to help him fill out his admission form. You were lying to me!’

  ‘Yeah, well, nobody likes to admit they’s ignorant, do they?’ Ryan replied.

  ‘It’s okay,’ Johnno said to the receptionist, placing his hand on Ryan’s shoulder. ‘Ryan knows Dr Goldstein and is well known here.’

  The receptionist clerk drew herself up, her back ramrod straight, breasts sticking out like two traffic cones. She was furious and, refusing to be mollified, proceeded to rearrange the papers in front of her, slapping each piece on top of the other, her lips pulled tight. ‘I was just doing my job,’ she said primly, ‘I don’t expect to be insulted by children!’ She pointed to the obese woman who was smoking, ‘It’s bad enough . . . She told me to ef-off when I asked her not to smoke.’

  Johnno looked sympathetic, ‘I know,’ he said soothingly, ‘You’re new here, ain’t ya? That’s Stella, she’s beaten up her husband again, they came in before you came on shift, she’s waiting for him to be patched up so she can take him home. It can get pretty grim in here sometimes.’ The woman at the desk missed the irony in his voice. Johnno was secretly amused. If she felt insulted by Ryan and Stella, then the future guaranteed a rough passage for the new receptionist, verbal abuse, physical attack, hysteria, histrionics, bad language, threatening behaviour, spitting, vomiting, choking and enough blood in a month to fill a suburban swimming pool. She’d come on duty at seven, the changeover shift known as happy hour, when most of the heroin overdoses and the ecstasy heart attacks, stab wounds, bashings and traffic-accident victims had already been brought in and processed. This was the quiet after the storm, when burns, domestic violence, broken limbs and suspected angina patients politely turned up for treatment and only the occasional geriatric heart attack arrived in an ambulance to disturb the comparative calm of sunrise in an inner-city hospital. ‘Christ help her if she ever does a pay-day night every second Thursday,’ Johnno thought to himself. He decided he’d open a book on the new receptionist clerk, where he’d offer odds of ten to one in the hospital canteen that she wouldn’t last a week. She wasn’t the first and she wouldn’t be the last.

  The remarkable thing about the security men was that they were Bib and Bub, both gay, though one was slightly taller than the other, with gym-muscle physiques, tanned faces and identical peroxided brush-cuts.

  ‘Can you do us a favour, darling?’ Johnno now said.

  ‘The triage sister is flat out with the cardiac arrest, will you page Dr Goldstein, please?’

  ‘I’ve been told I have to process the patient before he sees the doctor,’ the receptionist said stubbornly. She paused, ‘And for your information, I’m not your darling!’

  Johnno drew back suddenly, he could usually tell a lesbian. Surely not, he told himself, not with those norks and the blue angora sweater, though the hair was questionable. ‘Well, I-am-so-sorry!’ he mocked, ‘We are a bit sensitive then, aren’t we?’

  ‘I’ve been a medical receptionist/clerk for twenty years and I’m not accustomed to being treated like
this by anyone.’ She looked over at Ryan. ‘Let alone a precocious little brat like him!’ The second security man had come to stand next to Johnno, ‘Private practice, was it, darling? You’ve obviously never worked in casualty before.’

  Johnno turned on him, ‘Kevin, you’re not to call ...er...’ he turned and bent forward, squinting slightly as he pretended to read the name tag which lay almost flat on the receptionist’s sticking-out left breast, ‘Mrs Willoughby “darling”,’ he scolded. He straightened up and his voice took on a more serious tone. ‘There’s nothing to process, Mrs Willoughby.’ Johnno indicated Billy, who was now seated back on the chair looking very sorry for himself, ‘He’s an alcoholic, he’ll have no medical benefit card, no fixed address, no hospital insurance. He won’t give you his social security registration number or even his correct name. You’d have done much better with Ryan here helping you.’

  ‘That’s not what I’ve been instructed to do!’ the receptionist repeated again.

  ‘Call Dr Goldstein on his pager, my dear, he’ll sort it out,’ Johnno urged, this time not without a touch of genuine sympathy. He leaned over the desk and spoke in an undertone, ‘He may be a derelict but we manhandled him, there were witnesses. Stella’s not backwards in coming forward, and the old bloke would have seen it as well, that could mean trouble, not just for Kevin and me, you’d also be implicated.’

  The woman hesitated, then sighed. ‘Very well!’ she said, trying to maintain her dignity. She dialled the doctor’s pager and, when he answered, asked him to come to reception.

  ‘Thanks, Missus,’ Ryan said politely. The receptionist glared at him, but remained silent, not sure she wasn’t being sent up.

  Dr Goldstein appeared a few minutes later. He was a bear of a man, whom even Billy, a rugby union man in his day, recognised as one of rugby league’s truly greats. Nathan Goldstein was probably the bestknown medical name in Sydney. He’d played in the second row for the Rabbitohs for ten years and had gone on to play for Australia in three test series. He was the son of a Jewish heart surgeon who’d survived the Warsaw Ghetto and the Holocaust and who, after the war, had migrated to Australia, where he’d been required to do the final two years of the medical course at Sydney University. He’d worked with the people in Redfern, helping the local GP, whose qualifications he’d greatly exceeded. When he passed his second medical degree he’d been invited to join the medical faculty, but Moishe Goldstein politely rejected the offer and chose instead to practise in Redfern, not two miles from the university campus and in the heart of Rabbitoh country.

  His son, Nathan, had attended Waterloo Public School, where he earned the respect of his peers by belting the crap out of anyone who called him ‘Dirty Jew’ or ‘Reffo!’ Later he won admission to Fort Street Boys High, a selective school whose former students included some of Australia’s most famous men. There he played rugby union on Wednesdays for the school and for South Sydney Juniors on Saturday. At the tender age of nineteen, much to the chagrin of the university rugby union club, Nathan elected to play first-grade rugby league for South Sydney. He played as a lock, wearing the number thirteen jumper, and despite his dark hair and eyes was predictably known as Goldilocks.

  In the seventies and early eighties when South Sydney nearly went broke and, with no money to pay players, almost didn’t survive, Goldstein could have played for any club in the competition, earning big bucks, but he stuck with the Rabbitohs. ‘In football terms, South Sydney is my mother and father and you don’t walk out on your parents when things are getting tough for them, do you?’ he’d once told a reporter from the Herald.

  It was a popular myth among the people of South Sydney that Goldstein had acquired a tattoo showing a rabbit wearing the famous red and myrtle-green football jumper leaping over the crack in his bum with the legend above it inscribed in Latin: ‘Nisi cunicularius, pilosus podex es’. Which roughly translated means ‘If you’re not a Rabbitoh, a hairy arse you are.’

  Nathan Goldstein was to become a rugby league legend and be included in the lexicon of South Sydney’s greatest players, awarded sixth position behind such immortals as Clive Churchill ‘the little master’, Harold Horder, Ron Coote, Bob McCarthy, Ian Moir, and then Nathan ‘Goldilocks’ Goldstein equal sixth with Les ‘Chicka’ Cowie.

  ‘Gidday, mate,’ Dr Goldstein said to Ryan, putting his giant hand on the boy’s shoulder, then looked at the receptionist and back at Johnno and Kevin. ‘What seems to be the problem?’

  Mrs Willoughby was the first to speak, ‘This child is a troublemaker, doctor!’ Dr Goldstein looked surprised. ‘Ryan?’

  ‘Spot of bother with the paperwork, doctor,’ Johnno said.

  ‘Oh? Who’s the patient? Not you, Ryan, is it?’ Kevin pointed to Billy, ‘Old bloke on the bench. Suspected fractured wrist.’

  ‘The boy lied, said he had lockjaw,’ the receptionist interrupted.

  Despite himself, Goldstein laughed. ‘Lockjaw? What have you been up to, Ryan?’

  ‘Me friend, he fell in the dirt, he needs a needle, tetanus.’

  Nathan Goldstein looked over at Billy and immediately understood the situation. ‘And his wrist?’

  ‘I think it’s broke.’

  ‘I’ll take a look.’ He turned to the receptionist, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll take care of the paperwork. The triage sister will do his medical details later.’ He still had his hand on Ryan’s shoulder and turned him to face the receptionist. ‘I think you owe . . . I’m sorry, I don’t know your name, madam?’ he said politely.

  ‘Mrs Willoughby, doctor.’

  ‘You owe Mrs Willoughby an apology, Ryan.’

  ‘Sorry, Mrs Willoughby,’ Ryan said in a small voice, bowing the way little kids do at school. It was a sendup and it wasn’t missed by the still angry receptionist.

  ‘The boy should learn some manners and could do with a good wash if you ask me,’ she sniffed.

  Goldstein ignored her remark. ‘Righto, come in, let’s take a look at your friend, Ryan.’

  Ryan walked over and picked up Billy’s briefcase. ‘Let’s go, Billy, see I told yiz, no worries,’ he whispered rather too loudly.

  They entered casualty, where Goldstein took them through to the treatment room.

  ‘He’s real crook, Dr Goldilocks,’ Ryan offered.

  ‘Do you know his name?’

  ‘’Course, it’s Billy.’

  ‘Just Billy?’

  ‘Nah, Billy O’Shannessy without the u,’ Ryan replied.

  Nathan Goldstein walked up to Billy, who rose at his approach. ‘What seems to be the matter, Mr O’Shannessy? Ryan here says you’ve had a fall, hurt your wrist. Have you?’

  ‘I probably just sprained it,’ Billy said, looking a bit sheepish, ‘We shouldn’t have bothered you.’

  The doctor looked up in surprise at Billy’s accent, it was obvious it was not what he’d expected. ‘That’s why we’re here, sir. Will you hold your wrist out, please?’ Goldstein let out a soft whistle. ‘Looks ugly, it’s badly swollen and you have a large haematoma spreading up the arm.’ He touched the wrist lightly with his forefinger. ‘How did you get these lacerations?’

  ‘Handcuffs!’ Ryan said quickly.

  ‘Pardon?’ said Goldstein.

  ‘From the briefcase,’ Ryan said and pointed to the set of handcuffs dangling from the handle of the briefcase he held.

  Dr Goldstein looked puzzled but recovered quickly, ‘Oh, right, that’s how you carry it, is it? Good idea around here.’

  Nathan Goldstein knew better than to inquire any further, his job at St Vincent’s covered the whole spectrum, from heart attacks in the elderly, domestic violence, stabbings, drug overdoses of every description from heroin to the even more dangerous amphetamines. He dealt with just about every other complication known to medical science that could be brought on quickly by human stupidity or sudden frailty. He was famous for a quote he’
d once given a reporter: ‘If the city of Sydney were to be given an enema, they’d stick the catheter into the front door of St Vincent’s Casualty.’ Child prostitutes, male and female, who sold their tender young bodies to paedophiles and the other trash preying on children while posing as respectable citizens, knew to come to Dr Goldilocks when they were in trouble.

  He’d chosen to practise among what he thought of as the victims of society, the young, the weak, the hopeless, the silly, the unfortunate and the mentally retarded. Nathan Goldstein was a constant thorn in the side of DOCS, and he’d long since given up asking questions or judging his patients. But what he did understand was that these addictions and proclivities usually created a deep sense of vulnerability and a lack of self-esteem that often led to paranoia. Billy’s desire to carry his briefcase shackled to his wrist was a mild enough obsession when compared to some he’d come across.

  ‘You’ll need an X-ray and then you’ll have to wait for an orthopaedic surgeon to examine your wrist. Broken bones are not my area but it looks very much like a Colles’ fracture.’

  He indicated the lacerations, ‘We’ll clean up this mess and give you an antibiotic shot and a sling to make you more comfortable, but while you’re here I’d like to examine you, is that all right?’ Billy looked alarmed. ‘How long will all this take?’ Goldstein didn’t try to placate him. ‘Most of the morning, I dare say. You look pretty wretched.’ Billy’s wrist rested in the palm of Goldstein’s massive hand and the doctor pinched at the skin on the back of it, pulling it up into a ridge and releasing it. The ridge of skin on Billy’s hand remained static for several seconds before slowly resuming its previous position. The doctor also noted the papery dryness of Billy’s lips and the blood blister where earlier on he’d forced the pebble into his mouth.