You try to get past him, but he sidesteps and blocks you. ‘You’ve worked it out,’ he says, and his voice is suddenly hoarse. ‘The code. Haven’t you?’ You notice the dark rings under his eyes; he must have stayed up all night trying to crack it. ‘Why else would you be going to see Charlie?’
‘Well, I don’t know,’ you say sarcastically. ‘How about because I care about him? Because I want the best for him? Because I love him like family?’
Mr Ford grabs your hand in both of his. ‘Tell me – tell me the code!’ he begs. ‘Please! It’s not because I’m greedy – I’ll share it with Charlie, whatever’s in that safe! It’s just …’ He gives a shaky sigh and lets go, abashed. ‘It’s the last link I have with my father.’
You look at him sceptically. ‘From the way you’ve treated Charlie, I wouldn’t have guessed family meant so much to you.’
Mr Ford gives a deep, groaning sigh that seems to shake his very bones.
Then Olenka speaks up. Her voice is trembling, but there is steel in her eyes. ‘If family important for you, Mr Ford, then why you never say sorry for Edik?’
There is a long silence. Mr Ford stands like a rock – apart from his slightly quaking shoulders. Is he crying? you wonder, astonished.
Mario passes him a handkerchief, and Mr Ford clutches at it. When he looks up, his eyes are rimmed with red. ‘Olenka,’ he says, ‘I am so very sorry.’
Then he turns to you. ‘I can change,’ he says. ‘I can be the brother I should have been to Charlie. I’ll come to Canberra and prove it. Just tell me the code.’
You don’t answer him straight away. You look at Mario and Olenka. They shrug as if to say: It’s your choice.
It is my choice, you think. Whatever life throws at me, I still get to choose how I respond.
If you keep the code to yourself and leave Mr Ford in Cooma, go to scene 32.
If you agree to tell Mr Ford the code and let him come to Canberra with you, go to scene 33.
To learn more, go to Fact File: Mental Health and Treatment, then return to this page to make your choice.
‘No,’ you say. ‘I’m not lending you the compass.’
Mr Ford seems to choke. ‘But it’s mine!’ he exclaims.
‘No, it was Charlie’s,’ you tell him forcefully, ‘and he gave it to me.’
‘You haven’t heard the last of this,’ he splutters. ‘And you can forget about that apprenticeship!’ He turns on his heel and storms out.
Late that night, you stir in your sleep, then wake with a jolt. Something warm and large is next to your bed. It’s scrabbling around your bedside table. You gasp and the figure turns to face you. It’s Mr Ford.
For a moment, you stare at each other, wide-eyed in the moonlight. Then you scream. He claps a hot, heavy hand over your mouth. You fight to pull his hand away, but your arm is useless against his weight. You can’t breathe. Finally he removes his hand, and you gulp in the air.
‘I don’t want to hurt you,’ he growls. ‘Where is it?’
You shake your head. You’ve hidden the compass in the waistband of your undies – you can feel it pressing against your hip right now. You hear the clip-clop of an approaching nurse and Mr Ford escapes.
You consider following him but fall back against your pillows instead as the nurse’s face appears above you. ‘Just a bad dream,’ you mumble. She offers you a sedative, but you refuse and lie awake, vigilant, for the rest of the night.
When Olenka visits you the next day, you tell her what happened and hand her the compass, which is warm from being pressed against your body all night. She promises to hide it. You were supposed to leave hospital that day, but you’re so exhausted from being awake all night that the nurses insist on keeping you in for another day.
They find you out of bed in the middle of the second night, staring out the window. You can’t tell them that you thought you saw the silhouette of Desmond Ford outside. They’ll think you’re going mad.
The following morning brings bad news. ‘Olenka’s house was broken into last night,’ Mario tells you. ‘What bad luck, hey?’
It’s more than just bad luck. It’s that damn Desmond Ford!
The nurses still won’t let you out; they seem worried about you. You pace the corridors, desperate to see Olenka, feeling helpless and trapped. Olenka doesn’t come.
That night, you dream that there are lumps under your skin. You try to push them down, but they force their way back to the surface, like hot marbles. Then they erupt. Smoke and lava ooze out in a black crackly coating. You’re burning up.
You awake screaming, in a muck sweat. This time, the nurse doesn’t let you refuse the sedative. ‘You’re being hysterical,’ she says. ‘You’re waking everyone up.’
Around midday the next day you finally wake. The sedative must have been very strong. You stand and your legs threaten to buckle under you, but you’re determined to find Desmond Ford. You make your way towards the door in your nightie, unsteady as a drunk on a ship.
‘Get back to bed!’ snaps the duty nurse, outraged. ‘What are you doing?’
‘It was Desmond Ford,’ you try to tell her. ‘He broke into Olenka’s house! He has my compass!’
‘What nonsense,’ she says briskly. She forces you back into bed.
‘They say you’ve been raving and staggering about,’ says Mario that evening, concerned. ‘What’s going on? You were doing so well.’
‘Get me out of here,’ you implore him. ‘Take me back to your place. Please, I’ll explain everything.’
Mario places a hand on your head. ‘You do feel hot,’ he says. ‘I hope it’s not an infection.’
‘I’m – not – sick!’ you spit at him, then you feel your arm clamped, and the sting of something sharp.
‘What is that?’ you scream. ‘Get it out!’
The nurse is attaching a drip. ‘This will make you more comfortable, dear,’ she soothes.
‘No!’ you cry. ‘No!’
The nurse glances at Mario and he nods regretfully. ‘It’s for the best,’ he says apologetically.
You try to fight back, but the nurse holds you down until you slide into a dreamy stupor.
There’s someone in my room. He’s trying to smother me. His whole weight is pressing into my body.
The nurses are here. They’re force-feeding me biscuits. The biscuits are compasses.
Edik is here. He points a decomposing finger. ‘It was her,’ he says. ‘It was her.’
You awake, gasping. You look at the needle entering your arm. You try to rip it out with your teeth.
A nurse comes running. ‘No!’ she cries. ‘Stop that!’ She slaps your face, then adjusts the flow of whatever is coming through the drip. Cold sleep floods through you.
When you wake again, you can’t move. You’ve been strapped down.
She tried to rip out her drip with her teeth.
She’s refusing medicine.
She was out of bed staring out the window in the middle of the night.
She’s disturbing the other patients.
Are those voices around your bed, or in your own head? All day long you are poked, prodded and sampled, as you slip in and out of clarity.
Her temperature is too high.
Is she having an allergic reaction to a drug?
Is it an infection?
She’s paranoid. Hysterical. Hallucinating.
You’re overwhelmed with anger. You try to punch or kick any nurses who touch you. They tighten the straps.
‘I’m not crazy,’ you tell Mario when he comes to visit that night. Your voice is slurred. Your tongue feels bloated.
‘Well, no one would blame you if you were, after everything you’ve been through,’ says Mario.
‘But I’m not!’ you insist. I’m not, I’m not… am I?
‘Well, in that case, if you want them to believe that’ – he nods towards a cluster of medical staff at the other end of the ward – ‘you have to stop talking about Desmond Ford. He’s a well-respe
cted member of the community.’
‘He’s a bastard!’
‘That may be, but if you keep saying he broke into Olenka’s house and stole your compass, everyone will just think you’re nuts. The authorities already blamed the robbery on the Aboriginal man who works in the kitchen.’
‘No!’ you shout. ‘He didn’t do it. It’s not fair – those hateful bigots!’ Then you start to cry, because you’re trapped here and there’s nothing you can do to help fix this. ‘No …’
HOW MUCH TIME has passed? You’re not in Cooma anymore. You kept fighting. Fighting to tell the truth … at least, what you thought was the truth. But you must have been mistaken. The compass reappeared on your bedside table and everyone said it had never disappeared in the first place.
You don’t trust your own reality anymore. For example, just yesterday you thought you saw Charlie! Here, in this hospital, wherever it is. Canberra, you think. It’s hard to get straight answers to even the simplest questions.
You don’t trust anyone – not even Mario, who visits fortnightly. They are trying strange treatments to cure you of your madness: bitter medicines, electric shocks. You don’t really care anymore. Your walk has become a shuffle, and the border between nightmare and reality has smudged.
‘I’m cursed,’ you tell the walls. ‘Cursed, cursed.’
The walls just laugh.
To return to your last choice and try again, go to the end of scene 29.
You feel your jaw harden as you look at Mr Ford. This man lied to me, you think. He pretended Charlie was dead, and now that a fortune’s at stake, he wants to change his tune. I don’t trust him.
‘No way,’ you say firmly, and you link your arm with Mario’s. ‘My loyalty lies with Charlie.’ You try to march past Mr Ford.
‘He won’t recognise you!’ he shouts, trying to intercept you. ‘He forgets what he did yesterday! There’s no point!’
‘Mr Ford,’ says Olenka firmly, stopping him in his tracks so you and Mario can get away, ‘there is point.’ She places an index finger on his chest. ‘It is love.’
Mario points out his car. You jump into the passenger seat, and Mario revs the engine. This is a lot more action than you expected for your first day out of hospital in two months.
‘There’s a map in the glove box,’ Mario tells you, and you roar out of Cooma, gravel spitting under the tyres. Your other feelings – excitement to be on a mission, and concern over what state you will find Charlie in – fade as you concentrate on the map.
‘Oh no!’ yells Mario. ‘He’s following us!’ You crane your neck to look in the rear-vision mirror and see a grey jeep roaring up behind you, the grim face of Mr Ford behind the wheel.
‘I’m going to pull over,’ Mario shouts. ‘This isn’t safe!’
‘Mario De Luca,’ you scold him, ‘are you Italian or not?’
He grins.
‘And do you work as a tunneller a thousand metres underground or not? Risk is your middle name!’
‘I know, but you’re in the car …’ he begins.
‘I’m not made of china. Now go!’ you command, and Mario accelerates. Mr Ford disappears in a cloud of dust. The road is steep and windy, and Mario is still speeding. You whoop and cheer. It feels like the car will take flight at each corner.
‘Good God, he’s keeping up!’ cries Mario though, glancing in his rear-vision mirror again.
‘Come on, give it all you’ve got!’ you urge, feeling like a little kid on the swings. Push me higher, Mamma!
‘I’m going as fast as I ca—’ A bang like gunshot comes from underneath you. One of the tyres has burst. The car begins fishtailing down the road, and Mario struggles frantically to regain control. In slow motion, through the passenger window, you see the edge of the embankment coming closer and closer.
Mario swears as the left wheels of the car glide over the embankment and the car starts to tip. You fall against the window; Mario is thrown from his seat and lands against your right side. A constellation of glass bursts around you as the window smashes. Dirt is in your mouth and your ears. With a gigantic crunch, the car flips onto its roof and you are dropped on your head.
Then you are floating above the scene. A man leaps from a grey jeep and rushes to the smashed car. He struggles to right it, and you see him try to pull someone from the wreckage. You get a glimpse of dark curly hair: it’s a girl.
You feel someone take your right hand. You turn and see a boy. After staring at him for an age, you realise he’s someone you know.
Mario, you whisper.
The boy smiles.
To return to your last choice and try again, go to the end of scene 30.
‘I’ll be honest with you, Mr Ford,’ you tell him, ‘I don’t like you. I’ve never trusted you, and I still don’t. But I want what’s best for Charlie. I want to see him loved and cared for, in a home instead of a hospital. It’s not too late for you to help with that.’
Mr Ford wipes his palms on his trousers. He nods. ‘Thank you,’ he says softly.
You, Mario and Mr Ford get into Mario’s car and wave goodbye to Olenka. You’re surprised to find that it feels like you’re leaving home.
I belong here, you realise. I want to stay.
For a long time, the purr of the engine and rumble of the tyres are the only sounds. The shadows of trees and the sunlight between them flash across your face.
‘I should warn you,’ Mr Ford says eventually, ‘that Charlie … won’t be the Charlie you remember.’ There’s another long pause. You feel a sinking sadness. ‘He looks much the same,’ Mr Ford explains. ‘But he has these things called flashbacks. He thinks the war is still going on around him. It’s like a waking nightmare.’
‘When we knew him,’ you say, ‘he didn’t seem disturbed like that. What happened to him afterwards?’
‘After he left the cave he tried to cross through German-occupied territory in Italy to rejoin the Allies,’ says Mr Ford. ‘The Nazis caught him, and he was treated mercilessly. He lived through things … torture, really. He nearly died.’
‘Poor Charlie,’ says Mario.
‘Yes, indeed,’ says Mr Ford. ‘After he came back, he couldn’t trust anyone. He believed I was going to turn him over to the Germans. He accused me of poisoning his food, and hid strange letters written in code all over the house.’
‘That must have been hard,’ you say, beginning to understand why Mr Ford might have felt forced to put his brother into hospital.
He gives a deep sigh. ‘Well, it was a lot harder for him. Still is. The doctors think that his trauma has prompted some sort of amnesia. One time when he still lived with me at home he nearly burnt the house down, because he forgot about the meal he was cooking – he went for a walk to the shops and got completely lost.’
You sit in silence for a while, feeling heavy-hearted. The war damaged so many lives. Not everyone can start again.
‘I’m sorry I accused you of being a bad brother, Mr Ford,’ you say. ‘I didn’t know the whole story.’
‘That’s all right,’ Mr Ford says. ‘You can call me Desmond, by the way. I really haven’t done my best as a brother. I’ve thrown myself into my work and just tried to pretend he doesn’t exist. I stopped visiting because it seemed to stir bad feelings up for both of us. After a while, it seemed easier to say he was dead.’
ONE OR TWO hours later, you arrive in Canberra – a tidy, new city with broad streets. Mario parks outside the hospital. Desmond leads the way, and you and Mario follow, holding hands.
You’re nervous. What will it be like in the psychiatric ward?
You sign a visitor’s form and tiptoe down the corridors, which smell of antiseptic. Some doors are open and you peer through them. There’s a stubbly-faced man wearing a straitjacket to keep his arms pinioned across his body; a nurse is spoon-feeding him. In another room, a girl your age is rocking back and forth on her bed.
You feel queasy. ‘I can’t do this,’ you tell Mario. ‘I have to go outside. I can’t
see Charlie in here.’
‘Charlie has to live here,’ Mario reminds you. ‘Come on, be brave. It’s just a visit.’
You come to a door with ‘Charlie Sanders’ on it.
‘It’s Des,’ Desmond calls out, knocking lightly. Then he opens the door.
The room inside has sage-green walls. Sitting on a white bed, in a bright square of sunlight, his arms wrapped around his knees, is Charlie. He’s different – skinnier, more stooped. But he’s still Charlie. A flood of relief washes away your horror. You want to run to him and squeeze him tight, but instead you wait as he slowly gets off the bed and comes to shake Desmond’s hand.
Your heart is galloping. Will he recognise me? Will he remember our time together? He looks past his brother and meets your gaze. His blue eyes search your face.
‘Charlie …’ you whisper. ‘Do you know who I am?’
You can hear his breathing, rapid and shaky. He lifts a trembling hand. His fingers brush against your cheek.
‘You aren’t real,’ he stammers. ‘I want you to be real – oh, you’re so beautiful, just look how you’ve grown up! Oh,’ he moans. ‘I so want you to be real.’ His eyes turn to Mario. ‘Oh God, it’s both of you! But older … and so strong …’ He hasn’t noticed your missing arm. ‘Des, Des, Desmond,’ Charlie stammers. ‘I wish you could see these two. It’s a good flashback – or a flash forward! I don’t want them to go.’
‘Charlie, we’re real,’ you assure him. ‘Mario and I, we came to Australia. We’re really here.’
‘I can see them too, Charlie,’ Desmond confirms. ‘They’re working with me at the Snowy.’
Charlie reaches out. Touches your cheek again. Folds you into a hug. Then he starts sobbing. ‘I’m sorry you have to see me like this,’ he chokes. His tears and breath feel humid on your shoulder. ‘Sorry I left the cave. I put you in danger. When they tortured me, they wanted to know who hid me after I crashed. I never told them. At least, I don’t think I did. But I have nightmares all the time. I feel like I did tell the Nazis where you were. I dream they tortured you, like they did me.’
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