by Tina Shaw
Once I found out what the nurse wanted to do to me, I was glad Mum had gone out. That nurse had me stripped down in a flash, lying defenceless in the bed, with my skinny chest on full display. Fortunately, she’d bunched the covers over my groin so it wasn’t completely humiliating.
She stood peering down at my chest. ‘Well, well,’ she was saying, shaking her can of shaving foam. ‘There’s not much there for me to do, but that’s just as well. Some guys, you should see them, are covered in hair. I had a guy the other day, his chest hair was thick as a doormat!’ This happy banter was going on while she sprayed lather all over my chest and proceeded to shave it off.
Okay, I admit this was actually a very nice experience. For a while, I even forgot about why she was shaving my chest. When she was done, she wiped my chest down with a damp cloth, and then with something else, alcohol maybe, that was cold and tingly, which took off all the last traces of foam. My chest was gleaming. I was chicken man. Then she pulled the sheet up over my freshly-shaved chest and with a final cheery smile, trundled her trolley out of the room again. My chest felt tingly, in a deliciously kinky kind of way.
‘How was that, son?’ Mum was back. She sat down in the chair again, clutching a magazine she’d got from somewhere. I gave a shrug, not wanting to admit I’d totally enjoyed my first chest shave.
‘So how long do we sit here?’ In all the excitement, I’d forgotten to ask the nurse.
‘It shouldn’t be too long,’ she said, flicking idly through the magazine. I caught glimpses of Jen and Nicole and all those sorts of people. ‘I saw the parents of that poor boy who was in the accident. They’re in a private waiting room. Poor things.’ She coughed suddenly, her lips tight again, and went back to her manic page turning. ‘They just don’t realise,’ she muttered, ‘think they’re bomb-proof.’ It took a minute to realise she was talking about Ryan now.
Actually, it wouldn’t be too bad if Doctor Brad and my mother hit it off. He’d come round to our place and hang out. We’d watch the odd DVD. I bet he had good taste in movies. I could just tell. And maybe he’d take me fishing. Not that I particularly liked fishing (a kind of smelly, messy activity, not to mention what you had to do to the fish), but it would’ve been a good buddy thing to do with Doctor Brad. Though I’d probably prefer to go snowboarding. I used to go up the mountains, before I got sick. Doctor Brad looked pretty fit, so skiing was probably a more likely scenario than fishing. We could go up the mountain and hit the slopes, yeah. Like my dad would have done, if he’d been around.
I turned my head on the pillow to look at Mum, who had started flipping pages from the beginning of the magazine again.
‘Hey, could my dad ski?’
She looked up and her eyes popped open in surprise. ‘That’s funny you should ask, James. But yes,’ she said, ‘he could. He was pretty good, too. He used to go skiing every winter.’ Then something amazing happened: she smiled as she added, ‘Before you were born, and before we first went over to Oz, your father and I used to drive down to Queenstown and go skiing. It was lovely. The snow, and all that. Even though I kept falling over a lot.’ Even a small chuckle.
Well. A good memory about my father. That was something. I put it down to my mum being all wound up about my operation. I thought about quizzing her a bit more, but didn’t like to push my luck. One good memory was enough for now. I was just segueing into a pleasant daydream of me and Dad skiing artfully down the side of a mountain (like James Bond, zigzagging down the slope, our skis going zip-zip and sending ice up with each effortless zip) when the door burst open.
It was Ms Cheerful again. Though she seemed to have lost some of her earlier bounce. She came and sat in the other chair by the bed, leaning towards my mother in that conspiratorial way people adopt when they’re about to convey bad news. Uh-oh, I was thinking, this isn’t going to be good. I was aware of my chest tingling underneath my flimsy gown.
‘Look, I’m awfully sorry,’ said the nurse to my mother, ‘but the operation’s been cancelled.’
‘Oh no,’ groaned my mother. ‘What’s happened?’
The nurse glanced over at me, then back to my mother. ‘It’s another boy from the cardio unit. He had a sudden arrhythmia just a few minutes ago, and has been rushed to theatre.’ Her work done, the nurse promptly left us to it.
My mother gave a huff, then she glanced at me, disappointment colouring her eyes. ‘We’d better go back home then,’ she said in a tight voice.
No operation, after all that: leaden.
12
We were wending our gloomy way back through the carpark building when a man carrying a large wooden boat in his arms nearly crashed into us.
‘Uh, sorry,’ he muttered.
‘Hey, Leo,’ I said.
He looked up then, frowning.
‘Remember me?’ I said gormlessly. Don’t know why I bothered. Maybe because I wanted to see what he’d done with the hole I’d put in the side of his boat.
His face cleared a little, and I could tell he did remember me. Maybe not in too bad a way, either. ‘James, isn’t it?’
‘Yup.’
Mum had stopped on the steps as well, and was looking at the boat. ‘You must be the chap who makes the toys for the children’s ward,’ she said.
Leo shrugged. ‘Just the odd one,’ he said. ‘I don’t make that many of them, but organise other people to bring them in. We’ve got a committee.’
‘The kids up there really appreciate those toys.’ Mum was looking curious.
‘You must be James’s mum,’ said Leo, putting the boat down on the ground. It was huge, something a little kid could sit on. It looked really heavy too, and Leo was not exactly a big guy.
‘I’m Emily,’ she said, holding out her hand. ‘And is this one for the kids’ ward?’
‘Indeed it is. James helped me the other day with it,’ he added, sliding a look at me.
‘James?’ asked my mother, probably thinking, Jelly-fingers James?
‘What d’you reckon, mate?’ asked Leo.
He and I crouched over the boat to have a look. I had to admit, the guy had done a good job fixing my cock-up. He’d sanded it back into a smooth crater, and he’d stuck a little metal anchor in there. It was cool.
‘I like how you’ve put rockers on,’ I said, checking out the bottom of the boat.
He nodded. ‘Yeah, it’s so the littlies can ride on it, like they’re rocking on the ocean, y’know?’
‘It’s cool,’ I said, stretching my legs.
‘Thanks,’ said Leo, picking up the boat again. It must’ve weighed a ton. I could tell he was having some trouble with it, the way the veins in his skinny arms were sticking out. ‘Well, I’d better get going.’
He’d taken a step, when he turned back for a minute, giving me a sharper look. I must’ve looked like shite. ‘You’ve been visiting?’
My mother gave a little cough of defeat.
‘Yeah, something like that,’ I said quickly.
He gave a nod, shifting the boat in his arms. I thought for a moment he was going to say something more, but instead he headed off towards the tunnel.
‘Who was that?’ hissed Mum, on our way over to the car.
A hot feeling spread up my neck. ‘Nobody,’ I said, ‘just a friend’s dad.’
A light went on above her head. ‘Isn’t that Leo Martin?’ she said, in the awed tone of a professional gossip. ‘I thought so,’ she barrelled on without waiting for me to speak. ‘Poor guy,’ she added mysteriously, unlocking the car door.
‘Why?’ I asked, plopping into the front seat.
‘Oh, his wife walked out on him, cleaned out the bank account before she left. I heard she … But never mind!’ Mum started up the engine.
I was too tired to grill her. Maybe I’d hear the rest of the story from Roxy one day. Leo seemed such a placid guy, it was hard to imagine what Roxy had against him. Unless … No, I didn’t want to go there. I tried to imagine Leo hitting her, and failed there, too. But how w
ould I know how Roxy felt, anyway? If my father had lived, maybe he would’ve turned out to be an arsehole, and maybe I would’ve hated him – just like Roxy hated Leo. Maybe that was all there was to it. Nothing more sinister than that.
I thought again about his workshop, and how it’d be cool to hang out there sometime. Maybe I could find a way to go over there when Roxy wasn’t home. Maybe Leo could show me how to make a CD tower or something.
Back home, there were skid marks across the neighbour’s front lawn. Ryan’s car was parked at an angle, half on the driveway. Uh-uh, Mr Douglas next door wasn’t going to be too pleased.
‘I think we’ve found him,’ muttered Mum.
Inside, I thought for a minute we had a burglar in the kitchen. Cupboard doors were being banged open, a chair scraped across the floor, then something went smash.
‘Ryan!’ cried Mum, standing in the kitchen doorway.
Her big blue vase, which always sat on the windowsill, was now shattered in a thousand pieces across the lino.
‘Accident,’ he mumbled.
Mum had gone bright pink. ‘But what have you been doing?’
‘Nothing,’ he grunted.
He headed for the door, and I stepped out of his way. I was feeling fragile enough without Ryan elbowing me out of the way.
‘Ryan!’ Mum cried again. ‘You get back here, young man!’
He stopped in the hallway. There was a hot white light around his eyes and I thought he was about to hit something. I took another step back. Maybe he’d been possessed by psycho aliens while we were away. My mother, on the other hand, looked about ready to burst into tears.
‘Do you know where we’ve been?’ she asked in that high, put-upon tone she gets just before she starts crying or shouting. Usually it’s a tone reserved for road-rage drivers who toot at her in the street (our mum’s not the most crash-hot driver in the world). I had a suspicion that all the emotions that had washed through her at the hospital were now about to bust free. ‘Well, do you?’
Ryan gave a hard little shrug. As if to say, What do I care?
I started sidling off towards my room for a well-deserved lie-down. As charming as it was, I didn’t want to experience the rest of this little domestic scene. But my mother had other plans.
‘James,’ she said in that grating voice, ‘tell Ryan where we’ve just been.’
But I wasn’t about to be dragged into a slanging match. I gave a wave, kind of like the Queen, and disappeared into my room. Mum then proceeded to fill Ryan in on what had happened at the hospital, saying things like, ‘Where have you been all this time?’ and, ‘I was worried sick.’ Quickly followed up by the classic: ‘… while you were here wrecking the place.’ Which anybody could see wasn’t a good way of telling my brother anything.
‘Whatever,’ he grunted caustically.
They took their little discussion down the hallway. By the sounds of it, Mum was following Ryan as he headed for his room. Then there was the slamming of his door and a moment’s silence while the dust settled.
Mum got in the last word: ‘And don’t think I’m cleaning up that mess!’
But I could tell by the sound of her footsteps, going back up the hall to the kitchen, that she’d lost the battle. Indeed, it wasn’t long before I heard the brush and shovel being brought out, and the bits of vase being swept up. It was her favourite vase, too. My brother was such an arsehole.
Later, over the soundtrack of a crap survival show on TV, I heard the front door slam. That would be Ryan. And I didn’t think anything more of it. I mean, what was his problem? He had the girl, after all – he had Roxy. He had a good heart. In fact, his heart was in tip-top nick. We knew this because when my little heart problem popped up, Doctor Brad checked Ryan’s heart for a murmur as well, in case defects ran in the family. Should’ve checked Ryan’s defective brain, more like. But well, heart defects sort of did run in the family, but Ryan was the lucky one. Yeah. It was like the genetic version of Russian roulette. Ryan got home free, I got the bullet. Luck: you’ve gotta love it.
I sighed, stretching my legs out on the bed, and flicked over to Juice TV. A bunch of rappers in white suits were dancing in the middle of a city street with a bunch of half-naked chicks. So much for feminism, I thought cynically, but kept watching anyway. Mainly because of the half-naked chicks.
It still didn’t take my mind off the day, though. Not so much being at the hospital and all that (I rubbed my hand over my shaved chest; it felt weird, but nice weird), but I couldn’t stop thinking about that guy. The one who was in the car crash, who could’ve been Ryan. He would’ve been lying unconscious in the Emergency Department while Mum and I were driving to the hospital. And then he would’ve died.
I started to wonder when exactly. Obviously some time before we saw Doctor Brad … maybe while we were walking along the carpark tunnel. One minute he was alive and breathing, next minute nothing. As easy as that. And all because he drove his car way too fast and smashed it into something. Life, death. Good heart, bad heart. It all seemed so random. He was dead. Nothing mattered for him any more. In another month or three, that could be me dead. Maybe not in such a violent way, but the result would be the same.
The video clip finished. Now it was that weird-looking Swedish chick levitating along a country road, singing. A house drifted up into the sky.
That guy had a mum, just like I did (and a dad). They would have been sitting somewhere in that hospital, waiting to hear about him. Maybe we even passed them when we walked through on our way to the cardio ward. And now they didn’t have a son any more, because he was dead.
I rolled over onto my side, the sound of the music video blatting away in the background, feeling really odd and wondering how much time I had left if I didn’t get that operation soon. It made me wonder what was out there.
It also made me really want to talk to someone.
I picked up the phone, hesitating for a moment, then punched in the number which, shamefully enough, I had memorised.
The phone rang several times and I was just about to hang up when a lazy, sleepy voice said, ‘Hello?’
‘Hey,’ I said, ‘it’s me.’
‘Hello, Griffen,’ drawled Roxy. She’d recognised my voice. Unless of course she had caller ID.
‘I didn’t, uh, wake you or anything?’ My heart was fluttering nervously.
A snort of derision. ‘Pu-lease.’
Static hissed between us. ‘I hope you don’t mind me calling,’ I gushed (if I didn’t get talking, and fast, I’d freeze) ‘but I was just lying here thinking about stuff, and–’
Another snort, incredulous this time. ‘Lying on your bed, Griffen?’ The way she said Griffen was the same as when Ryan called me a faggot.
‘Not that kind of stuff,’ I said quickly.
‘Oh good,’ she said.
Some music went on in the background. She was channel surfing too.
‘Do you ever think about, well, what’s out there … when you die?’
There was a silence at the other end. I could sense she was thinking about it.
‘Yeah, sometimes,’ she said cautiously.
‘You know how people talk about dying on the operating table, then before they’re brought back to life, they see this light, like at the end of a tunnel …’
‘Yeah?’
‘Well, does that mean there’s somewhere to go? Some destination at the end? Maybe like visiting one of those survivor islands, where random people just wander round this hot, jungle place trying to avoid the big spiders and snakes and things?’
Roxy giggled. ‘I thought maybe it’d be like a shopping mall, at night.’
‘A shopping mall?’
‘Yeah, but at night, when nobody’s there. So all the lights’d be on, and all the shop windows’d be shiny, but it would be empty and eerie at the same time.’
‘A whole bunch of dead people wandering round a shopping mall,’ I said.
‘Window shopping,’ she said.
‘Right.’
‘No, seriously,’ she said, and it sounded like she was changing position, ‘I don’t think there’s anything at all out there.’
‘I like to think there’s something.’
‘But why? What’s wrong with there being nothing? Does that scare you?’
‘Well, yeah,’ I admitted, realising that it actually really did. ‘And if there’s nothing out there, then it makes our lives here not mean anything. Like we’re just animals.’
‘Griffen, I hate to break this to you, but we are animals.’
‘Not like that. Not really. I mean, we think.’
‘Yeah, we think,’ she said, and I could hear her roll her eyes. ‘Big deal. I’d rather be an animal. Then when I died, I’d like for there to be nothing.’
‘But why?’
‘Just in case, stupid, it really is one big shopping mall!’
‘And a whole bunch of dead people milling round inside it, looking for bargains.’
‘Exactly.’
‘At least, if there was nothing, it’d be quiet.’
She had a point, I supposed. There’d be no worries. No school. No being a dork with a wonky heart who couldn’t do anything. After we said good night, I lay watching the shifting images on the TV screen.
I was still thinking about dying. I mean, if we did go somewhere, then that guy today was there already. Right now.
I turned the remote over a few times in my hand. Maybe Roxy was right and we didn’t go anywhere. Maybe we just finished, and that was that. Strangely enough, that idea didn’t bother me too much.
It might be just like that time we stayed in Nelson. We went out to Cable Bay, and I floated on my back in the cold, jade-coloured water, looking up at the big sky and hearing the sound of the stones underneath rattling with each wave. Bush-clad hills came down to the water like arms cradling the bay. I was suspended there, between these two huge things – the ocean, and the sky – like a crumb. Maybe that was what it would be like.
These cheery thoughts were interrupted by the sound of footsteps going down the hall. Funny, it sounded like Ryan. But he’d gone out, hadn’t he? I muted the TV and heard the back door open, then somebody went out onto the porch.
