She was crying now, snot and tears running down her face, then her stomach turned over again and she had to quickly turn and let it pour into the bowl. She shut her eyes.
THE ISOLATION WARD
She had a private room. Everyone started off in one, the nurse had told her. Only once your illness was confirmed as Marburg were you moved to the main ward. There was no longer any need to keep you isolated. Except from the outside world.
The room was sterile. The walls were stainless steel. So was the floor. And the ceiling. Everything shone, reflected her, lying there on the stainless steel bed.
There were two doors to get into her room, creating a kind of airlock. The inner door wouldn’t open until the outer one was shut. In between the two doors was an emergency shower.
Samanthah was on anti-emetics to stop her vomiting, and anti-diarrhoeals as well.
The drugs were being dripped into her through a tube in her arm, because there was no point in taking pills. Because. Well—
There was a bucket beside her bed, so she only had to turn her head and lean out a bit. But the anti-emetics seemed to be working. She had used the bucket only once. There was also a toilet in this private room, but her system seemed to have emptied itself out at home and she hadn’t gone again since she got here.
The pain was intense, despite the painkillers they assured her were also being drip-fed into her.
This would only get worse. There was no cure. No treatment. It would keep on getting worse until she died.
She felt light-headed, even though she was lying down.
Darren was sitting in one of the chairs beside the bed. A woman in a doctor’s uniform was in the other. They had just appeared there, like magic, but that couldn’t be true.
She had blacked out, or maybe just slept. It could have been the painkillers. But what was Darren doing here? He didn’t even look sick.
‘I’m clear,’ he said, as soon as he knew she was awake.
‘Clear?’ her voice, like her brain, seemed to be wrestling with thick sludge.
‘No Marburg,’ he said, and it was as though he was struggling not to laugh with the joy of that news.
‘Lucky you,’ Samanthah said. How could she have caught it if Darren wasn’t infected?
‘Your tests are clear, too,’ the doctor said.
Samanthah looked at her. She wore a full biohazard suit but the helmet was off and her face was covered by no more than a standard medi-mask.
‘I don’t understand,’ she said.
‘Have you eaten any undercooked chicken recently?’
Samanthah shook her head. ‘There was some old chicken in the fridge but I threw it out.’
‘Did you wash your hands afterwards?’
She tried to remember.
‘You have salmonella poisoning,’ the doctor said. ‘It usually comes from eating undercooked chicken, or touching it then touching other food.’
‘I don’t have Marburg?’
The doctor smiled. ‘You’re all clear.’
Funny, even just hearing that, Samanthah felt a bit better. She sat up straighter in bed and took a sip of orange juice from the glass on the nightstand. The acidity cut through the thick feeling in her mouth, and washed away the bitter aftertaste of sick.
‘All clear,’ Darren said. ‘Just like me.’
Samanthah began to laugh, but he got out of his chair and stopped her.
Despite the law, despite the virus, despite the presence of the doctor, he did it with his lips.
I had a younger sister until I was thirteen.
Her name was Louise but she preferred Lou, which didn’t please our mother at all. Mum said it was a boy’s name and not suitable for such a sweet little girl.
Lou called me Tickles, although my name was Ricky. She’d struggled with that name when she was younger, and even after she’d learnt to say ‘Ricky’ she still preferred ‘Tickles’.
Lou and I were close. She was my baby sister; I was her big brother. She was three years younger, and liked girly things, which I made it my business not to like, because that’s part of the job description. I also pretended not to like her, but I don’t think I fooled her for a second.
Our mum and dad were a bit, well, different, from other kids’ mums and dads. We didn’t really understand that at first, of course. To us, our world was normal. But the more we saw of the outside world, the more embarrassed we were about our own lives.
Other kids had TV in the lounge room. We had a small raised stage and would put on shows for each other.
Other kids had Facebook and Instagram. We had conversation.
Mum was an artist; Dad a musician. Neither had a regular job, nor did they want one. Mum always said that regular jobs were for regular people.
She occasionally sold a painting through a local art gallery. Dad sometimes got a gig as a studio musician, or helped out in the backing band when some rock star came to town.
In between gigs, he would busk in the park. Mum would sit next to him and draw cartoons of people. On weekends I would go with them and do face-painting at a dollar a pop. We were never rich, but we never went without a meal.
We weren’t regular. We were quite irregular.
I’ve got a photo of Lou on my dresser. Most of the time it is just there, just part of the background. But three times a year it takes on special significance and I just lie on my bed and stare at it. Those days are Christmas Day, her birthday, and the anniversary of her death.
Today is one of those days. Two years she has been gone now, and on both anniversaries I have set aside a special time for Lou. To remember her.
Everybody loved Lou and she knew how to turn on the charm. She had a smile that could light up a room and she knew how to use it. She had eyes that sparkled like the surface of a moonlit lake and dimples that you could dive into. She was gorgeous in that cute little sister kind of way, although to really see it you had to look past the birthmark.
Lou was born with a large reddish-coloured birthmark that covered most of the left side of her face, from her cheekbone down to below her chin. The doctor called it a haemangioma, but most people would have called it a strawberry birthmark.
You can get them treated with lasers apparently, but that was expensive, and also not recommended in case it caused scarring.
Anyway, the doctor said it would probably be gone by the time she started school.
Lou didn’t seem to mind the birthmark at all. To be honest, I don’t think she even knew it existed until she was about three, and then she just accepted Mum’s promise that it would go away before she started school.
It’s so easy for adults to promise things to kids. We always believe them. We assume they can’t be wrong, simply because they’re older.
I don’t think any of her friends noticed the birthmark. I mean they saw it – you couldn’t help but see it – but I think they all looked right past it and just saw Lou.
Her friends were mainly kids from our apartment building, or from pre-school, and roughly her age, so they had known her long before she even knew she was a bit different.
The first time that the strawberry birthmark became a real issue was the day before her first day at school. By then Lou was starting to get a bit self-conscious about the mark, at least as far as strangers were concerned. And it hadn’t faded away like the doctor promised.
The doctor had changed his tune by now and was ‘almost certain’ that it would be gone by the time she was ten.
We might have been all right if not for Mrs Lee’s grandson.
Mrs Lee lived on the floor above us and her grandson was visiting. We met in the foyer, where the two of them were waiting for the lift. Lou and I had been playing in the park and were about to begin our trek up the stairs (elevators were for lazy people according to Mum).
The boy was standing by h
is grandmother and they turned around when they heard us coming.
I gave him a big smile and he smiled back, but then his face dropped when he looked at Lou.
‘Ewww. Alien skin,’ he said.
Mrs Lee hushed him immediately and I whisked Lou away up the stairs.
But the damage was done.
Lou went to bed that night crying and in the morning flatly refused to go to school.
I remember my first day at school. It was probably the most exciting day of my life. You’re no longer a baby; you’re one of the big kids. You put on your uniform and strap on your backpack and you’re off on a whole new adventure.
So it seemed especially sad, it seemed wrong, that for Lou, this special day was a nightmare.
She wasn’t a tantrum kid. She was always calm and happy. ‘Placid’ was the word I heard Mum use when describing her to others. I looked that word up in the dictionary and although I understood why she used it, it didn’t seem quite right. Placid, to me, implied a lack of excitement, of enjoyment, and Lou was full of both. ‘Serene’ would have been better. The dictionary defined it as ‘shining bright and steady’, which was exactly what she did.
But on the morning of her first day at school she was far from placid or serene. She threw a tantrum and it was a real screamer.
There was no way she was going to school, to face all those strange kids, with her blotchy red face.
She wouldn’t even put on her bike helmet for the taxi ride to school.
We lived on St Georges Street in an old apartment above a butcher’s shop.
We didn’t own a car. Couldn’t afford one.
I always caught the bus to school, but by the time Mum calmed Lou down enough to get her into her uniform it was already too late for that, so a taxi was our only option.
Mum didn’t like cars much. Too many accidents, she said, and most fatal accidents were caused by head injuries. So when we had to travel by car, taxi usually, we all had to wear bike helmets. They would absorb the impact of the inevitable crash and ensure our survival. Protect us from brain damage at the very least.
I had come to hate helmets. I cringed every time I had to put one on, and prayed that nobody I knew would see me. Some taxi drivers couldn’t hide their amusement when they saw us.
Lou never minded, though. She wasn’t old enough yet. Just driving in a car was still a novelty for her, and she hadn’t learnt yet that other kids didn’t have to wear helmets in a car.
But this morning there was no way she was putting the thing on. And no way Mum could make her. She twisted her head this way and that, and swung wildly with her chubby little arms, and if Mum did manage to clamp the helmet on top of her head, she would have it off again before Mum could do up the strap.
At 8.40, and on the verge of running late for school, I had an idea.
I went to get my face-painting kit. Mum put the helmet away, which calmed Lou down a bit, then I sat her on one of the dining chairs and turned her strawberry birthmark into a big red strawberry, complete with pips, a stalk, and little bits of leaf.
I showed it to her in a mirror and she squealed with delight and clapped her hands.
She put on the helmet herself after that and we made it to school on time.
Just.
At school Lou was not the weirdo she had been so afraid of. Far from it. The other kids were all jealous that she’d come to school on her first day with a big yummy strawberry on her face. One kid even cried because he didn’t have one.
The teacher sat all the kids down and explained about Lou’s strawberry. How it was really a birthmark, but Lou had felt sad, and worried that they would laugh at her. But surely they wouldn’t have been so mean as to laugh at someone just because they were a little bit different!
Lou went to school with a bit more confidence the next day, but still made me draw the strawberry.
There must have been some phoning around among the mothers, because the next day all the kids in the class, every single one, turned up with a painted face. There were apples, oranges and bananas, a few flowers, and a couple of butterflies.
Nobody else did a strawberry, though.
Lou was the strawberry girl, and they called her Strawberry Lou.
I drew the strawberry every day for a week, but the following Monday she shook her head.
‘Don’ wannit,’ she said.
The doctor was right about the birthmark in the end. By the time she was eight it had completely faded, with no sign that it had ever existed. Day after day Lou had watched it shrink, until it just wasn’t there at all.
That same year my baby sister was diagnosed with leukaemia.
She told me herself. She wouldn’t let Mum and Dad do it.
She sat me down and said she had some sad news.
‘You just found out that you’re adopted.’ I tried to make a joke because I was already quite worried about what she was going to say.
‘No, but you are.’ She giggled.
Then she told me the truth.
They gave her chemotherapy, which made her horribly sick and made her hair fall out, but they were just going through the motions. You could see it in the faces of my mother and father when they came home from the appointments.
Nobody expected her to live.
Lou knew she was sick. At the age of nine she understood that she was dying, but her serenity didn’t desert her. She made jokes about it.
‘I’ve got Lou-kaemia,’ she’d say. ‘It’s my own disease.’
We all laughed, and cried later when she wasn’t around.
It’s hard to be thirteen and have to face the death of someone you love. And I did love my little sister, even if I would never have admitted that to anyone.
I’m sure it would be even harder to face your own death, but Lou handled it better than I did.
I wished they made helmets we could wear on our hearts.
I was at school when she passed, and arrived home afterwards to an empty house.
Passed. Even now I can’t bring myself to say ‘died’.
Mum and Dad eventually came home from the hospital with their bravest faces on, and Mum handed me a letter, addressed in Lou’s careful, ten-year-old handwriting.
I read the letter and had to lock myself in my room for the rest of the day so they wouldn’t see me bawling my eyes out.
The funeral was four days later, open casket, so family and friends could pay their respects.
I filed past with Mum and Dad, before the rest of the mourners. Lou looked placid, and this time that was the right word to use.
Her arms were folded on her chest, as if clutched to her heart. A pretty little blonde wig replaced the hair she had lost to the cruel chemicals.
And somehow I found the strength to fulfil her final wish.
The left side of her face was decorated with a bright red strawberry, complete with pips, a stalk, and little bits of leaf.
She wouldn’t have any problems making new friends where she was going.
Strawberry Lou.
What a friend we have in Jesus,
all our sins and griefs to bear!
What a privilege to carry
everything to God in prayer!
The sound of the voices – those of everybody on the island except for me and Tom Semper – rise above the old concrete gun emplacements and drift like thin smoke out across the cobalt blue of the bay.
But that is just my imagination. The smoke is thin, but it is real: the result of our unsuccessful attempts to blow smoke rings. Tom has a packet of Rothmans. He keeps them in a hollowed-out Bible. I have a Bible, too, but the only thing mine has in it is my name, on the inside front cover.
Richard N.
N for Nicholls.
N for Nobody, more like.
There is a dead seagull below us on the
sand dunes, the body shredded, gently decaying under the summer sun.
‘Reckon they’ll smell the smoke on us?’ I glance back in the direction of the singing.
‘Nah. We’ll go for a quick swim,’ Tom says. ‘I was gone down anyway after morning service. For the beach volleyball.’
I wonder why he says ‘gone’ instead of ‘going’, but don’t ask. ‘You think they’ll pick you?’
I try to say it casually, but it’s clear what I mean.
They wouldn’t pick Tom. Or me. Not even if they were down two players. They’d look around, pretend not to see us, and just play short.
For some reason I think that at a Christian Youth Camp there’ll be equality, that everyone will be welcomed and included. (Isn’t that what Jesus would do?)
But the reality is that this camp is a miniature version of the outside world. I am an outsider here.
So is Tom. Somehow we have been drawn together. Misfits, but friends. Broken pieces of the jigsaw, making an awkward little puzzle of our own.
‘You kidding?’ Tom makes a sound that is a bit like a laugh. ‘I wouldn’t play with those muckers if you paid me.’
He doesn’t say ‘muckers’. He says the ‘F’ word. But in my mind I censor it out. This is a Christian camp and Jesus would never say that.
‘But Madison Woodes is gone to play,’ he says. ‘She always plays.’
There is the ‘gone’ word again. Again I ignore it.
I shrug. ‘So?’ I say, as if I have no idea what he is talking about. But I know exactly.
Behind us the singing stops. In a few moments morning prayers will be over.
Tom takes a last drag on his smoke and flicks it away down the dune. He has obviously practised this. I watch the tight spiral of the butt arc through the air.
‘Come on,’ he says, ‘I know the perfect place to watch. It’ll be triffid.’
He means terrific.
I stub my cigarette into the sand beside me, poking it in with my finger and smoothing sand over the hole.
As I follow Tom down the dune I see his smoke, still smouldering. I stand on it and bury it. Deep.
Stubborn Seed of Hope Page 4
