Court Reporter

by Jamelle Wells

  I somehow got my foot caught near the top step and fell. The fall was like a car crash — the action felt like it was in slow motion and you know it’s going to happen . . . but you can’t stop it. The cement was coming towards me slowly and then — bang — suddenly I had landed hard.

  I lay there for a while and could not move. I tried to get up, but my right leg from the waist down felt weak and numb. I kept thinking to myself, I’ve jarred it and it’s gone to sleep. I tried to get up again and again but when I tried to put weight on my leg, there was unbearable pain so I couldn’t stand on it.

  Looking towards the footpath near Hyde Park, I could see people walking by and looking back, but no one came over or stopped. I think I remember trying to call out, but no sound would come out of my mouth. Then I thought, This is not happening. If I rest here for a while, my leg will come good. It will be ok.

  I started to sweat. I wanted to vomit.

  On what I think was my fifth attempt to get up, two of the building reception security guards came over to help. They carried me over to a seat in the foyer and called the ICAC media manager Nicole Thomas. I told them all I just wanted to go home and to please call me a taxi and help me into it. Instead of a taxi, Nicole phoned an ambulance and after being assessed I was stretchered out to the white ambulance van waiting on Elizabeth Street past another ABC reporter and a cameraman who were filming on the footpath. They hadn’t seen the fall and they both stood there silent with their mouths open.

  ‘I’m going to get an X-ray,’ I apparently shouted at them. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’

  I think the ABC still has that footage of me being wheeled away on an ambulance trolley in the background of the shot.

  One of the ambulance officers with me said I looked white and was probably in shock because I was talking very loudly and very fast. She made small talk about her long day as she cut my tights off and tried to keep me calm.

  ‘Sorry but you won’t be wearing these again,’ she apologised.

  Having never been in the back of an ambulance as a patient before, I looked out through the doors at Oxford Street as we sped past the Supreme Court buildings in Taylor Square to the nearest hospital, St Vincent’s, with the siren blaring.

  I thought how I had become one of those annoying people in an ambulance that forces drivers to pull over and disrupts traffic in the CBD.

  When we arrived at St Vincent’s, I was wheeled out of the ambulance and into emergency.

  It didn’t seem like it at the time, but looking back I have many things to be grateful for that day. Grateful that I was working not far from St Vincent’s — an amazing hospital with great staff in the emergency unit and in the public and private hospitals. Grateful that it was a Thursday afternoon and not a weekend when the emergency department is stretched to its limit after drug and alcohol fuelled weekend injuries and violence, when I would probably have had to wait a lot longer to be seen. Grateful that the ambulance and hospital emergency staff completely ignored a lot of what I said while I was in shock and quietly worked around me.

  ‘I’m not in pain,’ I kept telling the hospital staff, but when they moved me off the ambulance trolley I screamed out with excruciating pain and wanted to vomit again. A lot of what happened then was a blur, with staff rushing around me everywhere.

  I lay in a cubicle protectively holding my iPhone and ABC work bag and waiting for my X-ray results. I phoned the newsroom and day editor Rebecca Barrett answered.

  ‘I fell over at the ICAC and have sprained my leg and I won’t be back there this afternoon. I don’t think I’ll be back in the newsroom either. I might need to go straight home from here. I’ll see you tomorrow.’ I told her.

  Rebecca was very quiet before she said, ‘You did what?’

  I started to tell her again but one of the emergency-room doctors poked his head through the curtain with X-ray in hand.

  ‘I’ve got to go,’ I said to Rebecca. ‘I’ll call you later.’

  Then the doctor said these words, ‘You have fractured your hip and you need an operation.’

  He pointed at the X-ray and began talking about surgery. I was so sure he had made a mistake and was reading someone else’s X-ray that I argued my case.

  ‘You’ve got the wrong X-ray,’ I insisted. ‘I can’t have fractured my hip. I only fell over.’

  All I could think of was that I didn’t have time to be injured. I was busy at work, I was moving house and I had family obligations. I also couldn’t bear the thought of not being mobile and independent.

  I also had visions of people fracturing their hips in dramatic skiing accidents, high-speed rally car crashes or falling off tall buildings saving lives, but falling over at the ICAC? Really?

  The doctor left for a while then returned with two colleagues for reinforcement. Yes, they said, it was indeed my X-ray. I had fractured my hip and because of the nature of the fracture, the complications could be life threatening.

  I needed emergency surgery. Right then and there.

  I tried to bargain with all three of them.

  This was bad timing.

  This was a mistake.

  I hadn’t filed my online ICAC story. I had only filed four radio stories. There were more to do and I had a live radio cross coming up on ABC Radio Sydney with Richard Glover.

  ‘Do you want us to call anyone?’ asked a nurse.

  My elderly parents lived miles away in the country and couldn’t travel and I didn’t want to bother them. Did I really want anyone else to know I had had this silly accident and to drive me mad with fussing and carrying on?

  ‘No, it’s ok. I’ve called the newsroom,’ was my response.

  Almost on cue, Rebecca Barrett and the newly appointed New South Wales news editor Shane McLeod came into the room with worried looks on their faces. So I gave them the same spiel: that I was fine and I wanted to go home.

  I was in shock and in total denial about the seriousness of my injury.

  Shane and Rebecca were super-efficient with armfuls of ABC paperwork on a clipboard. The producer of Richard Glover’s show phoned for my live cross just after the 5 p.m. radio news bulletin. I was so zonked out on pain meds by then, I habitually answered my phone and probably would have done the cross affected by drugs from the emergency-room bed if Rebecca hadn’t politely taken the phone out of my hand and explained that I was in hospital.

  My surgeon, Dr Tim Yeo came in then to explain the operation I was about to have and I grilled him about how many of these he had done before. He explained that because of my relatively young age for this sort of injury I would be getting a metal plate and screws to start with instead of a straightforward hip replacement. The surgeon also said there was a slight risk the plate and screws would not work, but it was better to try it to preserve my own bone for as long as possible ahead of a future possible hip replacement.

  ‘Quick google the operation, google the surgeon,’ I said to Rebecca and Shane, who had by now been joined by St Vincent’s public relations manager David Faktor who had wandered down to see what was going on.

  Journalists must seriously be pains for doctors to treat because we question everything. It’s our job.

  David reassured us that Dr Yeo was an amazing surgeon and it turned out he was.

  As I was getting prepped for surgery, a nurse asked, ‘When did you last eat?’

  She didn’t seem to believe me when I told her it had been 10 o’clock that morning. It was now almost 6 p.m.

  ‘She works in a newsroom,’ Rebecca and Shane almost said at the same time by way of explanation, which probably meant nothing to the nurse, but was a reminder to us that there is sometimes no time to eat properly when you are out on a story.

  When Shane and Rebecca left, the reality hit me. There was something seriously wrong and now I just wanted it to be over. I texted a couple of people to tell them I was in hospital and to please check on me the next day. Some actually thought it was a joke. I remember crying as I was wheeled down the corrid
or to the operating theatre. Not just with pain but because I felt helpless and at the mercy of all these strangers around me. I had gone to work that day a reporter in control of my court round with an above-average fitness level for my age. I could run from the Supreme Court near Martin Place down to the Downing Centre in Liverpool Street and back, chase witnesses up and down stairs and across roads and go wherever else I wanted.

  But now I had no control. I had to lie on a bed and watch the people near me move me around.

  ‘We will look after you,’ a nurse said leaning over me.

  As I drifted under the anaesthetic I remembered a criminal trial I’d covered for a rogue doctor who deliberately performed an unnecessary procedure on a female patient. I also thought of the inquest I had covered after the Quakers Hill nursing home fire and how the innocent victims of nurse Roger Dean, who had deliberately started the fire, must have felt being unable to move and get out of their own beds as the flames took hold.

  The recovery

  When I woke up I was groggy with morphine but I clearly remember a man in the room next to me moaning in agony and that I was eventually moved away from him. As decisions were made about what to do next in terms of rehabilitation, I grappled with the indignation of using a metal walking frame and needing help to do simple things such as get out of bed. Some hip injuries take longer than others to recover from and I was told straightaway that I faced a longer than usual recovery due to the type of injury and surgery. It was frustrating and it made me realise some of the things that take on a whole new meaning for people who spend a long time in hospital: radio, television, food and visitors.

  My friends, media colleagues and family members, who travelled a long way from the country, trickled in and out of St Vincent’s. Long-time friend and ex-2UE state parliament reporter Derek Peterson was visibly upset when he came in to see me.

  ‘I admire your strength,’ he said as I tried to joke about the freak accident. Off he went with my keys to get clothes and items I needed from my home.

  ABC News Channel presenter Joe O’Brien was a big hit with the nurses who swooned whenever he came in. Some even loitered around, finding excuses to come into my room during his visits.

  When he left they would rush back in and ask things like, ‘Oh my God, what’s Joe O’Brien really like? Is he single?’

  When Joe did a national shout out on television a few days later with a rather undignified photo of me in my hospital bed some of the nurses and kitchen staff were in a huddle watching.

  A visit from News Channel presenter Joe O’Brien in St Vincent’s Hospital after my fall at the ICAC building in June 2015.

  Other nurses asked about the marital status and any other gossip about presenters Juanita Phillips, Jeremy Fernandez, Kumi Taguchi, Michael Rowland and Virginia Trioli.

  I remained tight-lipped.

  The accident was not long after the ABC had a round of retrenchments where our skills had been assessed for suitability working in a multi-media environment. In the media world, where ultimately you are a name on a roster that can be replaced any time, many of my work colleagues were concerned it would be an excuse for the ABC to get rid of me.

  ‘You’re fucked,’ exclaimed Macquarie Media political editor Michael Pachi when he drove down from Canberra to visit. He had articulated the fear going through my head. I had worked with Pachi in commercial newsrooms for many years before I moved to the ABC and while Pachi — as most people call him — is lacking in tact at times, he is brutally honest about the industry we work in. He’s an amazing journalist who sometimes scares people but I’ve lost count of the number of young reporters he has mentored throughout his career in radio and television.

  ‘At least you’re not dead I suppose,’ Pachi added. ‘Remember that 2GB traffic reporter Wayne Hutchins, who died of a heart attack when he was on air with Clive Robinson?’

  The Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance union was also concerned about my accident and sent in representative Pat Donoghue to lend moral support.

  A few days after the surgery there was another ride in an ambulance. This time across town to Wolper Hospital at Woollahra to begin what seemed to me like a very slow process to get back on my feet again.

  There were days when I hated the physios at Wolper because they were so brilliant at their job and they pushed me to the limit to work through the pain barrier. At the group physio sessions I felt humiliated by some of the other patients who were older than me and who had more straightforward surgeries and were charging past me on their walking frames in the corridor. To get up off the bed was an ordeal. To move down the corridor on a walking frame or go outside was a major achievement. My first day getting from my room to the physio studio was the hardest and when I did get there a very loud man wearing lurex yellow shorts shouted, ‘Here comes Hop-along.’

  This smart arse had already progressed from a frame to crutches and was keen to impart his pain medication affected wisdom on anyone who would listen. Exhausted, I just sat down with my head in my hands.

  I thought, One day I will look back and laugh at all of this. But in that moment, the day seemed a long way off.

  Each day was spent in two physio sessions that wiped me out, interspersed with visits from other reporters and friends and a surprise visit from my family.

  Towards the end of my stint at Wolper, I shuffled into the group physiotherapy room one overcast morning and saw a man with electrodes attached to his chest and hooked up to machines, staring at me from across the other side of the room. He looked suspiciously like the man who, a couple of years earlier had sat in the ICAC public gallery during a long-running mine licence inquiry with electrodes in his head and who told me he was involved in medical research at a nearby clinic. Was I imaging it or did I know this person?

  I stared at the man in the chair.

  He stared back.

  The penny dropped.

  As I mentioned earlier, it was retired New South Wales Supreme Court judge and former acting ICAC Commissioner Anthony Whealy, and as I moved my walking frame towards him, he grinned from ear to ear and asked mischievously, ‘Did an ICAC witness do this to you?’

  We both burst out laughing.

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘but did an ICAC witness do this to YOU?’

  Anthony Whealy, who was recovering from heart surgery, had been a big part of my court reporting for years before he retired from the bench. He had presided over many high-profile criminal trials I had covered, including one of the longest-running trials in Australia, a terrorism trial that went for over two years. When I covered that trial, I felt angry on the judge’s behalf because the accused men refused to stand for him citing cultural reasons. How things change, because now legislation has been introduced in New South Wales to make that sort of behaviour an offence. Mr Whealy was also the judge for the high-profile Keli Lane baby murder trial I covered and numerous cases in the Court of Criminal Appeal. He was made an assistant ICAC commissioner from September 2013 to February 2014 to preside over the public inquiry into Circular Quay café leases.

  So I parked my walking frame next to the machine he was wired up to and we talked about life, court and the ICAC. Anthony Whealy told me that instead of being in hospital recovering from surgery, he really should have been in Canberra presiding over the David Eastman retrial, but that had all fallen through. David Eastman, a public servant, was jailed for life for the shooting murder of AFP assistant commissioner Colin Winchester in the driveway of his Canberra home in 1989. In 2014 Eastman’s conviction was quashed after a court found he did not get a fair trial and he was released after spending twenty years in jail. Anthony Whealy was appointed as an acting judge by the ACT government to hear Eastman’s application for a permanent stay on the proceedings to stop any new trial going ahead.

  David Eastman, however, objected to Whealy because he argued the former judge would be biased because of his twelve-year working relationship on the New South Wales Supreme Court bench with Michael Adams QC who had p
rosecuted Eastman in his original trial. So Anthony Whealy was eventually removed from the case in June 2015.3

  Anthony recovered from his heart surgery and went home from Wolper to resume his consulting and advisory work.

  I, too, went home from Wolper and discovered Sydney can be a hard place to navigate on a walking frame or crutches. It gave me a whole new appreciation of how difficult we make it for older people and those with disabilities to use public spaces and shopping centres.

  Once, I was on my way to a medical appointment in a shopping centre when a guy with eyes glued to his iPhone came out of a shop in a hurry, bumped into me, knocked my crutch from under my arm and just kept going without turning back. I grabbed the shop wall in fear.

  After a couple of weeks at home I became bored out of my mind watching repeats of the ABC television series Rake and daily episodes of Judge Judy. I confess to loving both those shows but there are only so many times you can watch them. Rake is filmed around some of the courts I work in and I enjoy Judge Judy’s no-nonsense attitude. It was during an episode of Judge Judy that I phoned my boss Shane Macleod.

  On set with a News Channel crew in December 2017. From left to right: Peta Yoshinaga, lineup producer; Sian Dyce, producer; me; Anthony Meleca, autocue operator; Jaryd Otton, director; and Jacqueline Howard, producer.

  ‘I want to come back to work,’ I said.

  ‘You’re a worthless lowlife,’ Judge Judy said to someone on the television.

  I turned the sound down.

  Courts were out of the question for a while but I went back into television presenting on the ABC News Channel and reading the news for ABC Radio.

  Back at work, even simple things like getting from the ABC ground floor make-up room to the news channel set was a challenge. A two-minute sprint became a fifteen-minute slog on crutches.