Poor little tin man
Still swinging his axe
Even though his joints are clogged with rust
-Alexisonfire, ‘Boiled Frogs’
I believe we place our happiness in other people’s hands
-Savage Garden
“Hey Sez! How was your weekend?”
“Yeah, weird. What about yours?”
“You’ll never believe it! Musko and Shelly had this fight, like, it was intense! I was like, ‘hellooo, I’m here too, you guys!’ but yeah, it was shameless! I reckon they mighta split up for good this time… Is something wrong?”
“Dad got sent to hospital. He had a coupla heart attacks. I think they’re gonna send him to Sydney
Pip just stares, thinking I’ve made a really bad joke, like that Mother’s Day when I joked about ‘not having to get mine a present on account of her being dead and all’, which was followed by fits of laughter from me and gasps of shock from everyone else. But she sees I’m not kidding and lunges a hug at me. “Oh my God! Are you okay? Why didn’t you text me? Where are you staying? …But I thought you didn’t like your grandparents!”
“I don’t, nevertheless, that’s where I’m staying. I’m orright. It was a bit of a surprise, that’s all. His own stupid fault, the bugger. Shouldn’t drink so much.” I attempt to flash a smile, but it’s a weak effort, and Pip doesn’t smile back. She disapproves of my making light of unpleasant circumstances anyway. All she can say is ‘Oh my God’ and ‘Holy crap’. I start laughing at her, but she smacks my arm.
“Oi, you shouldn’t be laughing! You’re nearly an orphan! Jesus!”
The blasphemy continues with the hugs, and by the end of the day I hardly notice anything other than the churning acrobatics in my gut. Even Pip’s caring interest goes unseen. What’s happened to me, to Dad? Mum, and now him too? Where does it end?
* * *
...You can waste your time
(Redefining the day that music died)
Or you can spend your life
(Guilt-free and ostracised)
-Alexisonfire, ‘Get Fighted’
Dad’s chair scrapes as he stands up. I can’t see them – the door is shut and my eyes are closed in case one of them comes in to check that I’m truly asleep. Dad walks a few steps, but then the chair scrapes again as he sits.
“Righto, what do you think I should do? You obviously know my own daughter so much better than me. Come on?”
She laughs. “Ha! Give her a smack. Lock her in her room until she’s ready to start behaving and get on with her life, so that we can get on with ours. Isn’t that what you want, Ray?”
“Of course, but it’s only been ten months. She was never this way before her mum died. Something’s changed in her and it’s to do with Louisa. I’m sure she just needs some time…”
“She’s had time. It’s been months. Kids bounce back from things like that. It’s to do with us. You have to talk to her and sort this shit out. Get her out here.”
* * *
…This old world is new world and a bold world for me
-Muse, ‘Feeling Good’
The long car trip flutters past, seeming like one instant I’m at Nanna and Pop’s and the next I am pulling into the visitor’s car park at St Vincent’s. I hate hospitals. I don’t want to be here, but Dad… I fear the threat of guilt more than the stench of sleep, disinfectant, and claustrophobic waiting rooms, so I go in. My grandparents lead the way, seeming all of a sudden to have lost the perpetual infirmity which keeps me from wanting to visit them. Their postures are no longer slouched and their hands are by their sides, not held meekly in front. I admire them in that moment, but I still resent them for bringing me here.
We wait forever outside the intensive care unit, in a small claustrophobic room containing only an algae-infested fish tank and a ‘No Smoking’ poster for decoration. There are only three other people in the waiting room and it seems pretty quiet; all I can perceive is the sound of breathing, the hum of the fish tank’s dysfunctional filter, and the soft metallic twangs of my bracelets. There’s a bloke sitting opposite me – green eyes, dark nondescript hair and a black t-shirt – and we sneak glances at each other every now and again. Funny how even in the midst of tragedy people can still have ‘other things’ on their minds. Eventually a nurse shows her head through the door, and my grandparents ask if we can go in. “Only two at a time,” she says. Three pairs of eyes turn to me – I tell them to go in first. They do, and I wait. My friend across the aisle and I mutually decide to halt our wordless conversation, each with a feeble smile and a nod of understanding. I sit and flick at a loose flap of plastic on my chair and wonder what he could be waiting for. News? To visit a loved one? The question of his name doesn’t even cross my mind; how odd, usually that’s the first thing people ask about each other. I try not to look nervous and am perfectly conscious of the fact that I’m failing miserably.
After about ten minutes the door opens and my grandparents exit. Nanna is crying and Pop is holding her shoulders with his old-man’s hands, blemished by sunspots from decades of working in the sun. It’s my turn.
* * *
I believe your parents did the best job they knew how to do
-Savage Garden
“Crash! I’m so glad I’ve found you! Crash, Cortex is up to something, and it’s up to you –”
“Sara?” The whiney female-sidekick voice is cut off as I pause the game and go to see what Dad wants. I hate it when he interrupts me while I’m playing the Playstation.
I walk to my room where Dad’s standing in the doorway. “What?”
“I got you something while I was at the shops this morning. It’s just there.” I look on my bed, and see a Stayfree packet of pads. I almost laugh but when I look at Dad I stop myself. Poor old thing! He’s gone bright red, couldn’t be more embarrassed if the whole world were watching.
“Oh, thanks,” I manage without giggling, somehow. It’s an awkward moment. Dad goes to talk, then doesn’t, then does.
“Do you, uh, know what they are?”
Please don’t give me the sex talk! “Yeah, Pippa told our group at school about them last year... We learn about all that stuff anyway. In Sex Ed.”
“Ok then, righty-o. I just thought – well, just in case you – I thought they might come in handy. One day.”
The poor thing! He’d probably been thinking about attempting this for ages. I can breathe again once he’s left my room, and nearly laugh at what’s just happened. How naïve to think his daughter didn’t know about all that stuff by Year Four! Poor Dad. He can’t look directly at me during dinner or for the next two days.
* * *
I want so much to open your eyes
Cos I need you to look into mine
Tell me that you’ll open your eyes
-Snow Patrol, ‘Open Your Eyes’
On television you are constantly exposed to images of sick, starving children from poor parts of the world. Over-exposure to these images often leads to a sort of distancing, a numbness to the plights of these unlucky people. However, no amount of desensitisation can prepare you for seeing a loved one, a parent, weak and comatose in a hospital bed. The manifold tubes and blinking machinery arranged behind him like a city skyline seemed like props out of a sci-fi movie. The glue fixing his eyes shut would have made him look like a wax model, but for the tears that trembled indefinitely in their corners. His face was whiter than the hospital walls surrounding him, making him seem dead. The figure on that bed wasn’t Dad. Just his shell.
I was hesitant to go near him. It felt like a dream – everything moved in slow motion; a hazy glow surrounded the patients and the nurses. As my eyes wandered about the ward, ripples appeared on the walls, as though by merely shifting my gaze I was causing the room itself to move. The only solid thing in the room was my father; he was the only object without that hazy glow signifying life.
A nurse touched my elbow and I let her lead me to his bed. He remained still, the green faces of the machines the only sign that he was still breathing. I didn’t want to touch him. I was scared. It wasn’t right for Dad to be like this, he’s always been so healthy, yet there he was, pale as a ghost but warm to the touch… I had clutched his hand in mine without realising. I pressed it to my face. A pulse monitor attached to his finger slipped off, and several of the machines began to wail. I panicked and dropped his hand, cringing as it collided with the metal bed frame. It took three nurses to figure out what had happened and get them to stop. The first nurse came to me again and told me it was time for visitors to leave. I bent and gave Dad a kiss on his wet forehead – but I didn’t let myself say goodbye.
* * *
You could see me reaching
So why couldn’t you have met me half way?
-Incubus, ‘Mexico
“Sara, why do you think we woke you up?”
“Are we going somewhere?”
“No. We want to talk to you about something. Is anything wrong, anything you want to tell us about?”
“Um, no.”
“Why do you think I’m living here with you and your Dad?”
“I dunno.”
“Think about it. Why might two people decide to live together?”
“So they have more money and can buy nice things?”
She frowns. “It’s really not hard, Sara.”
I don’t understand what she’s getting at. Dad sees I’m distressed but doesn’t speak.
“I don’t KNOW!” Tears come and I whimper like a baby. I don’t understand why she’s here or what she expects me to say.
“Ray, I don’t want her in my house. Send her to her grandma at the coast, ’cause either she goes or I do! Choose!”
I glance at Dad. He looks confused. He gazes at her, then me.
“Do you wanna go stay with Nanna for a while?”
“I wanna stay with you!”
She packs her things and goes. Dad asks her not to leave but she slams the door in his face. He comes to wake me in the morning, and he’s angry, not sad.
“I hope you’re happy.”
* * *
...“Not with a bang but a whimper”
What would you do?
Arms spread welcoming the impending nothing
-Alexisonfire, ‘Jubella’
“We’ve gotta get outta here.”
I crawl into the back seat of the Mazda and shield my eyes from the brightness of the headlights as Pip turns the key in the ignition. Still half-asleep and not fully sure of what’s happening, I don’t fight against my abduction. The house lights remain off as Pip backs down the driveway – Nanna and Pop won’t know I’m gone until the morning when they go to wake me up. It’s also not until the morning that I realise I probably should have left a note.
Pip doesn’t speak as we drive past paddock after paddock, invisible in the overcast, moonless dark. The engine of the car exerts itself admirably along the windy country road, the sound of it lulling me inexorably back to sleep.
Falling asleep is the weirdest sensation. I love the feeling that you get – not often, but sometimes – when you find yourself neither asleep nor awake, but both. The limbo in between dreams and reality, where you feel an unlimited calm. No thoughts cloud your mind, and everything is absolutely still, frozen. Then you dream.
I am awakened by Pip nudging me with her gearbox hand. “Oi, there’s some arsehole behind me who’s been tailgating us for ages now – just thought I’d let you know… just in case.”
I turn to look out the rear window, rubbing my eyes with the butts of my hands, just as the bloke in the LandCruiser behind us turns his high beams on. The flaring lights blind me, and I become the proverbial ’roo caught in the headlights, trapped and waiting to be shot… What if he has a gun? What then? The glass in the car’s windows can’t possibly be thick enough to stop a travelling bullet, and I’ve seen on TV that depending on the calibre of a gun, you can get shot even through a car door…
I tense as I realise the LandCruiser has sped up and come level with our car. The man’s face is not unattractive, but has that something which makes it instantly threatening – a love of the chase, the kill. There is a flash in his eyes, and it isn’t coming from the intense beams of light which open up the early morning dark in front of his roaring vehicle. He is clearly visible, but the image of his grin lasts only for a second. He speeds up and overtakes us and is gone.
“Pretty freaky right there, Sez.”
“Yeah.”
I feel strangely fine as we continue on in the dark, which eventually begins to turn grey and then purply-orange with the rising sun. Topping the Clyde , I finally glimpse the ultramarine blue of the sea.
“We’re here.” A great shining expanse of water stretches out to the horizon, reflections of the vanishing stars as visible as fireworks on the crystalline surface.
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