by Tony Birch
‘Dad. You there? Dad? It’s me, Michael.’
His bedroom door, at the far end of the hallway, was closed. The lounge room was to my left and the kitchen to the right. The lounge-room door was slightly ajar. It was as good a place as any to begin searching for him. I tentatively pushed the door open.
The room was a site of minor destruction, although I had seen it in a worse state than it was now. The floor was a mess of take-away food containers, overflowing ashtrays and old newspapers. His previously black vinyl couch had turned a powder grey hue due to cigarette ash. Back copies of Ring boxing magazine were spread over the couch.
I walked out of the lounge, down the hallway and into the kitchen. The sink was piled with unwashed dishes. The door of the refrigerator was wide open. The light was out. It was empty except for a tub of margarine, a half-full bottle of Coke, two shrivelled tomatoes and a jar of vegemite. The fridge itself was sitting in a pool of water.
As I walked across the vinyl tiles my shoes stuck to a dark paste consisting of water, cigarette ash and a variety of food scraps. I walked through the kitchen, back into the hallway and stopped when I got to his bedroom door. I knocked with one hand and turned the doorknob with the other.
He was on his bed, casually smoking a cigarette and watching a portable television set perched on a small laminex table at the end of the bed. A packet of cigarettes and a lighter were on top of the television. The picture was fuzzy and the sound was turned down, but he still managed to pay attention to the lifestyle program on screen.
A cocktail of painkillers, prescription drugs and empty bottles of cough medicine were thrown onto the table next to the television. An aluminium cooking pot sat on the floor just below his outstretched arm. It overflowed with cigarette butts. The tiles around the pot were pitted with burn marks. Both doors of a small wardrobe against the wall opposite the bed were hanging open, as were the drawers. The wardrobe’s contents were all over the floor: shirts and pants, socks and underwear, and several pairs of shoes.
He was wearing the navy towelling dressing gown that I had given him for Father’s Day last year. It was filthy. He looked worse than he had for some time. His receding grey hair was long and unkempt. And he had grown a beard since I had last seen him. It was a dull yellow colour, stained with nicotine below his mouth. He looked a little thinner in the face.
He looked up at me nonchalantly, waved a limp hand in my direction and smiled weakly, as if he had been expecting me. I noticed that he was not wearing his false teeth.
‘Hi, dad. It’s me, Michael.’
‘Yeah, I know, I know.’
He flicked ash onto the floor as he watched me cautiously.
‘What do you want? Why you here?’
I lied to him. ‘I just came over for a visit. You okay?’
He looked at me with suspicion, knowing as well as I did that I never just dropped in on him. He turned back to the television. I looked around for somewhere to sit. There was a footstool in the bottom of the wardrobe. I placed it alongside the bed and sat down next to him. I shook him by the arm.
‘Dad, are you okay? It’s me, Michael.’
He pulled his arm away with a grimace, while lifting both knees towards his chest. The soiled end of a bandage was protruding from the sleeve of his dressing gown. I pointed to it.
‘Sorry. I didn’t see that. Can I take a look? At your arm?’
He looked down at the bandage and then back at me but did not speak.
‘Can I take a look, dad, at your arm? What happened? Have you had another accident?’
He offered the arm to me. I rolled the sleeve of his dressing gown above his elbow, easing it gently over the bandage, which was smudged with blood and dirt. As I unwound the bandage he drew his arm away from me. I gripped his wrist with my hand.
‘It’ll be okay, dad. I have to get this off and have a look at your arm. How did you hurt it?’
As was common with him, he avoided my direct question. ‘Leave it. I can go to my own doctor. I’ve got my own doctor.’
‘Yeah, I know that. You got a doctor, I know. I just want to get this off and take a look at your arm and then we’ll go and see the doctor. I’ll drive you.’
I had some difficulty removing the final layer of the bandage. It was caked with dried blood and was stuck to the wound. As I peeled the end of the bandage away from his skin he again pulled away in pain. He had a deep cut on the point of his elbow. It was oozing pus and blood and would need to be bathed and stitched.
I pointed to the wound. ‘What happened here? Did you fall over or something?’
He looked down at his arm before indicating to the table. ‘Pass my smokes, will you?’
I ignored his request. ‘Yeah, in a sec, dad. Your arm, tell me what happened to your arm.’
He looked down at his elbow with a sense of bewilderment before shrugging his shoulders. ‘I don’t know what happened there. I don’t know.’
He drew his arm away from me and reached down the bed, grabbing for the packet of cigarettes. I stood up from the stool and watched as he fumbled with the packet before lighting up. He stretched his legs, swivelled around on the bed, sat up and began devouring the cigarette. He sucked at it desperately before holding the fumes deep in his lungs for as long as possible before hissing the spent fumes through closed teeth into the room. He let the ash drop between his legs, onto the floor. I would need to keep him moving.
‘Come on, dad. You are going to have to get up. I’m taking you to the hospital. We’re going to get that arm looked at. Come on, you’ll have to get going.’
He was not interested in going anywhere. He suddenly became agitated. ‘I don’t have to go to hospital. What hospital? What hospital?’
I tried calming him. ‘Just the hospital, dad. We have to get that arm looked at. You’re coming with me.’
It was more than an hour before I could get him out of the flat. I left him in the shower while I searched around on the floor of his bedroom for some clean clothes and underwear. I found his false teeth in the pocket of his dressing gown. They were nicotine brown in colour and matched the stains on his beard. I could not bear looking at the teeth so I wrapped them in a clean pair of underpants and put them in a plastic supermarket bag along with a change of clothing, some socks, a couple of his boxing magazines and the cigarettes.
When we were about to leave he asked me again where we were going but quickly lost his train of thought while searching around the room for his cigarettes.
‘Smokes? My cigarettes?’ I held the supermarket bag towards him.
‘I’ve got them. Don’t worry. They’re in here.’
He looked at me blankly. ‘Don’t worry?’
‘Yeah, dad. Don’t worry.’
He pointed at the bag. ‘Can I have one?’
‘No, you can’t. You can’t have one. We’re going in the car. You can’t smoke in the car.’
‘But I want a smoke. Give us my smokes.’
He refused to move. I would not be getting him into the car without him having another smoke.
‘Okay, come on. I’ll lock up and you have a smoke before we take off. Make it your last, until we get to the hospital. You’re not smoking in the car.’
It was wet outside. I sat in the car with the engine running and the lights on, while he stood smoking in the rain.
We got no further than the rise onto the bridge before he began fishing around inside the bag again. I looked across at him.
‘What are you doing?’
‘A smoke.’
I tried to remain calm. ‘You can’t smoke in the car, dad, I told you that. Why don’t you listen? Can’t you wait until we get there?’
He ignored me and took the cigarettes out of the bag. He held them in his hand without attempting to take one out of the packet. I avoide
d looking at him but could sense that he was watching me. I also felt the distracting vibration of his leg beating through the floor of the car.
I had to stop for petrol so I told him that he could have another cigarette then.
‘Stay away from the petrol bowser, dad. Go over there, on the footpath, smoke over there.’
I bought him another packet of cigarettes and the hospital staples of soft drink, potato chips and a packet of lollies. I waved them in his direction in an effort to coax him back to the car, but he was concentrating on a second cigarette and pretended that he had not seen me come out of the shop. I called him again. He took another drag on the smoke and carried it back to the car before taking another deep puff as he opened the door. Before he could drop it on the ground near to the bowser I took the butt from him, walked out of the petrol station and threw it into the gutter.
It was a long drive from the petrol station to Mont Park. We had to drive across the city and out through the northern suburbs. The rain was getting heavier and it didn’t help that the driver’s side wiper of the old E.H. Holden didn’t operate. I had to open the side window and stick my head out of the car to be sure about where I was going.
After we had crossed the river I swung the car through the streets alongside the old docks. The lines of ancient sheds, and the grain silos and oil containers that had once dominated the old port had been demolished and replaced by office towers, apartment blocks and low-slung glass-fronted restaurants hugging the river bank.
We drove through the city, and out through the streets of the old suburb that we had both grown up in. I looked across at him to see if the landscape registered, but he appeared not to recognise where we were. I headed north.
He began shifting around in his seat again. I pulled off the highway, into the yard of an abandoned car showroom. He paced up and down under a torn candy-striped canvas awning while I sat in the car with the door open, watching the late-night traffic slide by. I wanted to get this over and done with and get home to bed. I slammed my hand down on the car horn and called him over to the car.
He walked across and stood in the headlights for a moment before coming around to my side of the car.
‘Where are we going?’
‘To the hospital, dad. I told you. We’re going to the hospital.’
He summoned up as much energy as his lethargy would allow. ‘I’m not going. I don’t have to go to the hospital.’
‘You do, dad. You do have to go. Look at your arm. It’s infected. You’re going to have to get it bathed and stitched. It’s sore, isn’t it?’
He had no interest in the condition of his arm. He looked across to the highway. It was apparent that he had no idea where he was or where we were going. But he did not know that I was lying to him.
I was not sure what to say to him next. If I lied to him again he would probably cause trouble when we got to the hospital and realised where he was, so I decided to tell him.
‘Dad, you’re sick. It’s your arm and ... well, look at yourself. You’re buggered. We have to get you into hospital. They’ll look after you. Fix your arm. You need a rest. They’ll get you back on track. I’m taking you to Mont Park, dad. That’s where we’re going. To Mont Park Psychiatric.’
On hearing the words ‘Mont Park’ he appeared more relieved than surprised or annoyed. He took a few deep breaths before letting out a defeated sigh. He turned his back on me and walked over to the car showroom. I watched the silhouette of his face glow in the reflection of the glass as he lit another cigarette. I waited in the car until he had finished. He came over, jumped in and closed the door. He turned to the side window and refused to look at me. We did not speak to each other for the remainder of the trip.
The reception area at the hospital was locked for the night. I managed to persuade him to stay in the car while I stood in the rain hitting the buzzer and waiting for somebody to let us in.
His thick admission file was on the counter waiting for us. I spoke with the charge sister while a nurse took his bag from him and examined the wound on his arm. An orderly arrived with a wheelchair and coaxed him into it. As they were about to take him away my father looked at me with a sense of betrayal.
There was little that I could immediately think of that might reassure him so I said the only thing that I thought might give him some comfort.
‘Dad, I’ll come in tomorrow with some cigarettes. I’ll bring you in a carton of Marlboro Gold. You won’t have to worry about running short.’
The orderly wheeled him away without my father bothering to look back at me.
I got back in the car and drove around the wide circular road towards the exit. The hospital had changed a lot since I visited him here as a teenager. There were no more flowerbeds, and the untidy patches of grass had not been mown for some time.
As I turned back onto the highway I noticed a large advertising hoarding announcing the hospital’s future. It was soon to be closed down and replaced by ‘Sanctuary Park’, which would provide ‘individual and architecturally designed homes set in a park environment’ and all only ‘a ten-minute drive to the city office’. The commuters of Sanctuary Park were obviously going to get more from their cars than my old Holden gave me.
When I returned to the hospital the next day I brought the carton of cigarettes that I had promised. Dad had been classified for an open ward, which was helpful as it eased his anxiety. He was on a couch at one end of the day room, oblivious to a television set hanging from the ceiling. All the available couches were occupied. Patients stretched out to ensure they did not have to share with other patients or visitors.
‘No Smoking’ signs were posted on each wall of the room (at least some things had changed over recent years). On the far side of the room a sliding door led out to an enclosed courtyard. I could see a line of smokers through the glass door as they paced back and forth across the courtyard.
He did not see me come into the room. As I walked towards him another patient stepped in front of me, stopping me from walking any further. He was wearing a three-piece chocolate pin-striped suit, no shirt and a floral tie. He wore no shoes or socks and his feet were covered in dirt.
‘I’m in the wheel, in the wheel, the wheel. You know the wheel, in the wheel?’ He repeatedly circled a finger across the middle of his chest as he spoke. ‘I’m in here, in here, in the wheel, around and around, the wheel, around inside, it goes, around and around, and I’m in here, inside, in the wheel, in the wheel, going around and around, in the wheel, in the wheel …’
I held my hand up in an effort to stop him talking. I stepped around him. He stopped momentarily before heading for another visitor, an older woman sitting on a long wooden bench alongside a teenage girl wearing a pair of flannelette pyjamas with teddy bear designs all over them. The girl was resting on the bench with her head in the older woman’s lap. The woman was holding the girl by the hand.
My father stood up and walked towards me. He looked a little better. He was wearing a clean set of clothes and he had his teeth in. He was clutching the cigarettes and lighter in his hand.
When he saw the carton that I was holding he smiled at me. ‘Marlboro Gold?’
‘Hang on, dad, hang on. How are you? You look a lot better, really.’
He held his hand open for the carton. ‘Yeah, I feel better. My cigarettes, please, please.’
‘Dad, I’m going to hand these cigarettes in at the nurse’s station. They’ll put your name on them and look after them for you. I’m not going to give them to you. They’ll get knocked off.’
He closely followed my every word.
‘You understand that, dad? Remember that time when you were in here and two packets of Winfield went missing? Remember that? You had no smokes for the rest of the weekend. Remember that?’
I don’t think he remembered it at all, but just the thought of having hi
s cigarettes stolen terrified him now. I indicated in the general direction of the nurse’s station.
‘All you have to do, dad, is go to the nurse’s station and ask for them. When you want another packet of cigarettes you ask and they’ll give you one.’
He stood up and walked out the door leading to the courtyard. I followed him outside. As soon as he opened his packet of cigarettes two patients gravitated towards us and asked him for a smoke. Without hesitation he gave a cigarette to each of them. One of them, a skinny teenage kid wearing a pair of red tracksuit pants and a sleeveless North Melbourne football jumper, also asked for a light. The other patient put his unlit cigarette in his shirt pocket and quickly walked away.
I could not believe what he had just done. ‘Dad, don’t give your cigarettes away like that. You’ll have none left for yourself. Don’t do that. Why did you do that?’
He looked at me defensively, as if I had accused him of something he had not done. ‘No, I won’t. I won’t give them away. I won’t.’
His hair and beard had been washed, but it was clear that he could do with a haircut. Before leaving the hospital I enquired about it. The nurse shook her head and explained that the hospital no longer provided a barber for patients; if I wanted him to have a haircut I would have to arrange it myself and have a hairdresser from outside come in and do it.
She picked up a business card from a collection sitting on the counter and handed it to me. ‘You could try these people. They’re regulars here.’
The card read Modern Settings & Styles.
‘And before you leave, Mr Byrne, could you please collect your father’s personal washing. We no longer have a laundry on the premises.’
I wondered what it was that they did still have on the premises. ‘Is this still a public hospital? A taxpayer-funded public hospital?’
‘Yes, it certainly is, Mr Byrne. And we no longer have a laundry service, nor is personal grooming provided for patients.’
I had no confidence that my father would allow himself to be manhandled by Modern Settings & Styles, so I returned the next day with a packet of disposable razors, shaving cream, a comb, and a pair of scissors. I asked a nurse if we could use one of the bathrooms for the haircut and shave. She diligently explained to me that visitors were not allowed to enter either the patient dormitories or their bathrooms.
