Gravity Is the Thing

by Jaclyn Moriarty

‘This is Oscar.’ I pivoted to present him to her. ‘I think he’s swallowed a battery. A button battery from a watch.’

  She nodded once, a quick clip, and smiled at Oscar.

  ‘When?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Maybe this morning. Maybe yesterday. We got the watch a week ago. It could have been any time in the last week.’

  ‘A new watch?’

  ‘My new watch,’ Oscar interjected, annoyed. He’d had enough of sitting in my arms. He slithered to the ground.

  ‘How old are you, Oscar?’

  ‘Five.’

  ‘And have you been feeling well?’ she asked him. ‘Any trouble breathing? Or eating your dinner? Any tummy aches?’

  Oscar stared at her.

  ‘He’s been a bit cranky today,’ I said. ‘But otherwise he’s fine. Your tummy’s okay, isn’t it, Oscar?’

  We both smiled down at him.

  ‘My tummy hurted today,’ he said.

  ‘It’s probably fine,’ Lera told me. ‘It’s probably gone straight through his system.’

  I thought she was going to send us home. I was looking inside the car, at Oscar’s car seat, the mood lightening immeasurably.

  ‘But we’ll take him inside and make sure,’ she added, reaching for Oscar’s hand and marching him towards the sliding doors.

  2.

  Everything was calm and brisk. There was paperwork. They took him for X-rays and blood tests. I was along for the ride, and Lera was driving, bypassing everything for us.

  ‘The scans will probably show nothing,’ Lera told me. She asked me how I’d been since the weekend retreat. I remembered she’d left before the ‘truth’ was revealed. She didn’t ask me for the truth.

  She was so relaxed I kept expecting her to leave. I’ll leave you in these people’s capable hands, I imagined her saying.

  The scan showed a disc battery caught in Oscar’s oesophagus.

  ‘Oh, right,’ I said, interested, when they pointed it out on the image.

  Lera remained chatty, calm, but the pace picked up. She explained that she would do an endoscopy now. To get it out.

  More paperwork.

  I had to kiss him goodbye in the operating theatre.

  ‘Give him a kiss,’ Lera instructed me. ‘We’ll keep you up to date.’

  Oscar himself was quiet, but pleased with the attention. He smiled shyly whenever anybody spoke to him. ‘Five,’ he answered in his small, shy voice, when people asked his age.

  I stepped back out of the operating theatre.

  ‘Where’s Oscar’s mum? Here she is.’ A nurse approached me, smiling. ‘Here’s the thing,’ she said.

  She told me that the battery was wedged in the oesophageal wall, that there was damage there, a deep ulceration, that it was bleeding.

  ‘Uh-huh,’ I said.

  ‘Here’s the thing,’ she repeated. ‘You have to be super careful, taking out a battery in this situation. You want to minimise the damage. What you don’t want is a haemorrhage. You don’t want a heart attack.’

  ‘Hm,’ I agreed.

  Both of us were nodding, the nurse and I, then abruptly I stopped.

  ‘What? You don’t want what?’

  ‘Here’s the thing,’ she said—a third time now—‘with these removals of disc batteries, complications can happen days, even weeks later. Serious complications. You’ve got to get it right.’

  I was only staring now.

  ‘Dr Jalloh has called in a cardiovascular surgeon. Her idea is that they’ll work together, to minimise—’

  ‘Who’s Dr Jalloh?’

  ‘You know her, don’t you? Lera. Lera Jalloh.’

  Here a new burst of panic almost throttled me. ‘I don’t know her well! I mean, is she good? Is she any good?!’

  I was only assuming she was good. Based on the elegant manner in which she walked, the pleasing way in which she talked, months ago, an afternoon on an island.

  ‘Oh, the best,’ the nurse said. ‘She’s usually at Randwick—at the Sydney Children’s Hospital. She was only here for a consultation today. Which is lucky, isn’t it? A paediatric ENT surgeon in the house? This is the best possible care for your little boy. I can assure you of that.’

  ATTENTION, said a sign on the wall. If your child or family have been in contact with someone who has CHICKEN POX in the last 3 weeks, please notify a staff member IMMEDIATELY.

  A sketch of a face covered in specks, lines shooting out of it, like a picture of the sun.

  Don’t you dare, I said to the face.

  I didn’t beg, plead or bargain. I just threatened. The face was the universe and God. I was taking them both on.

  The number three sidled at me: your brother, your husband, your child!

  I trampled it with: Don’t you dare!

  If you have a cough, sneeze or other sign of respiratory tract infection, another sign told me, please let a staff member know.

  Do we really have to let a staff member know we have a cold?

  Those ones, the life-threatening surgeries—I come out of those ones bathed in sweat.

  A yellow formica table with tubular legs. A rocking horse. Pump bottles of hand sanitiser.

  I telephoned my mother.

  ‘Abigail!’ she answered, proud that she understood how phones work. The person whose name appears is calling you.

  I read the signs on the wall again. I was standing, having refused to sit down. The chicken pox sketch, the child’s speckled face.

  ‘Hello?’ sang my mother. ‘Abigail? You there?’

  A child complained, a trolley rolled by.

  ‘Hello? Hello? Abi?’

  A woman passed me, carrying a baby. ‘Hush,’ she crooned. ‘Hush now.’ The baby blinked, perfectly silent.

  ‘Hello?’ my mother tried again, and then she was speaking to someone else: ‘It’s Abi. She must have dialled by mistake. She’s at a party or something.’ She hung up.

  I looked at the chairs. If I didn’t sit down, it would be okay.

  The clock on the wall carried on. One hour. Two.

  This is silence, I thought, amid the rattling wheels, clanging beds, children crying.

  This is silence.

  I started a text to Niall. Hey, I’m—

  Then I tapped back and amended it to: Hey, how’s Brisbane? Found somewhere to live? I’m—

  I deleted the text.

  I scrolled through the numbers. I hit Wilbur: Flight instructor.

  ‘Abigail,’ he stated, answering almost at once. I imagined him in his apartment, seated on one of his chairs, holding his phone ready to pick up. A calm, pleased voice. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Good!’ I said. ‘Well. Okay, I guess. Listen, I wanted to tell you the funniest thing. I’m at the hospital and guess who I just saw?’

  ‘At the hospital? Are you okay?’

  ‘Guess who I saw?’ I repeated impatiently.

  ‘Who did you see?’

  ‘Lera! You remember Lera?’

  ‘Lera,’ he echoed, thoughtful.

  ‘From your island retreat!’

  Wilbur breathed laughter. ‘I remember her. I liked her. And you just saw her?’

  ‘Yes! She lives in Crows Nest and she’s a surgeon, so it makes sense she’d work at Royal North Shore, but she doesn’t! She just happened to be here! So, I wanted you to know that the whole thing wasn’t madness. It wasn’t a waste of everybody’s time, because Lera’s here!’

  He laughed again. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘I appreciate that. But why are you at the hospital?’

  I studied the chicken pox sign again, chewing on my nails. A sink with a soap dispenser, paper towel on a roll, press-button bin—I had dreamed about paper towel last night.

  ‘Abigail?’ Wilbur said.

  Don’t you dare, I thought, hanging up.

  Weary at my own ferocity, I remembered, with a terrified surge, that the universe might think I wanted the worst, that don’t you dare could mean: please, do dare.

  He will be o
kay, I begged. He will be fine! Urging the universe to comprehend my message.

  Lera appeared across the room. She didn’t see me at first, so I had time to examine her face, and I knew then, from her forlorn mouth, the line on her brow.

  I tipped backwards, caught by the wall.

  She moved towards me, touched my shoulder.

  ‘He’s okay,’ she said.

  She stepped closer. Her face was bathed in sweat.

  3.

  He opened his eyes once, in the night, lying very still, and looked across at me. All the questions in his eyes, his fear, his deep, deep questions. He was wired up, a puppet, in a veil of tubes and wires, small boy tangled in fish net. The colour of his pillowcase matched the bandaging taped across his throat, a tube snaked out of his little nose.

  He closed his eyes again.

  Later, I woke abruptly, fell out of my chair in a lunge to stand up, but Oscar was still sleeping, machines beeping steadily.

  A man sat beside me, straight-backed.

  I blinked.

  It was Wilbur.

  ‘What time is it?’ I asked. Couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  ‘Just after two.’

  I looked at him steadily.

  ‘I was in Cairns when you called,’ he said—apologised. ‘So I’ve only just got here.’

  The ICU moved dark and steady around us.

  ‘But why—’ I stopped. Cairns. Slowly my mind followed the coastline of New South Wales, jiggling up to Queensland, halting at Brisbane, on and on to Cairns.

  ‘I flew back,’ he said. ‘Came straight here. Told them I was your flying instructor. Ha, no I didn’t really, I said I was a friend.’ He smiled crookedly. ‘Can I get you anything? Coffee? Food?’

  ‘But why . . .’ I tried to rephrase the question.

  ‘Your voice on the phone,’ he explained, fixing his eyes on Oscar.

  We both stared at Oscar.

  ‘What do they say?’ he asked me.

  ‘They’ll keep monitoring him,’ I replied. ‘They’ll keep doing X-rays. They’ll keep him on antibiotics. There are—’

  Here Wilbur nodded slowly, then spoke in his own low murmur: ‘He’ll get better. Kids are good at getting better. Kids are—’

  I guess I was half asleep. I found myself falling into my words the same way you fall into dreams. ‘But it’s all my fault! Because we play with everybody! We’re always playing with everybody!’

  Wilbur watched me intently trying to keep up, as I babbled.

  I’m not a mindful parent, I wasn’t in the moment, I hate goodies and baddies, I was deliberately not looking at everybody, but I know that watches have batteries, I know those are dangerous, I’m always letting my mind wander, and it’s my fault, it’s my fault—

  That my brother ran away—I told Robert he wasn’t funny! And I was needy about Robert so Finnegan left, and it all comes back to me—the starting point is me. I don’t take steps to stop bad things, I never say no, you cannot, to the boys, to the men, to Samuel, to the one-night stand, to Robert, to Finnegan, to my little boy. Why didn’t I say, no, you can’t run away, you can’t leave me, you can’t bring home the sticks, you can’t have this cheap watch, I never say no when I should be saying no, but I refused to laugh at Robert’s joke and that started everything.

  At this point, I was crying into Wilbur’s chest, trying to cry softly so I wouldn’t wake Oscar or disturb the quietly beeping patients, the quietly chatting nurses. I don’t know how much Wilbur heard or understood.

  Probably just: It’s all my fault, the shape of that phrase garbled, muffled by his shirt.

  4.

  But Oscar did recover. He was transferred to the Sydney Children’s Hospital where, slowly, his oesophagus healed. The X-rays were clear. The tubes were removed. His voice returned, his colour.

  Sometimes, the tear in the fabric is sewn together.

  He was in hospital for five weeks. I got used to the cluttered ward, with its sinking-heart of economy class on long-haul flights, wheeling tables of Rediwipe multipurpose cloths, stacks of styrofoam cups, posters about Children’s Immunisation and Not Being Abusive to Nurses.

  I slept in an armchair beside Oscar, or not slept so much as drifted, all the time a strange pressure high in my chest: relief and fear, or dismay for Oscar and his confusion—the cheap, dry gauze of his breathing, the gagging sounds he made, how he cried in fury at the pain, and how crying made it hurt more, his throat breathing fire, dragon-fire, monster-fire.

  The other adults in the room, their closely guarded terror, cheerful voices, the closeness of loss, its impossibility, and the sweet intensity of gratitude for these people taking care of our children, the people speaking in measured tones, moving around the hospital explaining things, studying charts, gazing at little faces, thoughts running back and forth behind their eyes as they smiled at the children.

  Lera—or Dr Jalloh—visited Oscar every day the first few weeks. A nurse told me that, ordinarily, the surgeon and her cardiothoracic colleague would do daily post op visits for the first few days, then drop back to alternate days, handing management over to the paediatric intensivist team. So Lera was giving us special treatment. She didn’t look at me as she spoke to him, but she always placed one hand firmly on my shoulder, which intensified the pressure in my chest.

  ‘Do you know,’ she said to Oscar one day, ‘there is a playroom down the corridor there?’ She pointed. ‘When you are well, you can play there. And do you know what you’ll find?’

  Oscar shook his head.

  ‘A castle! With a door! And windows! So, get well, and you can play there.’

  Oscar turned to me, astonished.

  My parents came. I phoned them eventually. Mum and Xuang, Dad and Lynette, in a friendly circle. On their first visit, Oscar was sleeping. He opened his eyes, stared at one face at a time. There was blood on his nose. He wiped it away with his sheet. Then he turned to me and whispered, ‘Tell them about the castle.’

  Children arrived and stayed, or left after a day or two. A little girl named Dara was in the bed beside Oscar a while—she had reached into the babysitter’s scalding coffee—and she woke the ward with screaming nightmares each night. Her mother apologised frantically.

  Dara was replaced by a boy named Dylan, who was six and had Kawasaki disease. There was a lot of talk about Vaseline for Dylan’s lips, and about the rash on his face and chest. ‘My lips are sore,’ he complained often.

  Once, a boy around eight turned up across from Oscar. He was exhilarated by the hospital. He could watch TV and play computer games all day long, he told his sisters when they visited. His sisters asked if he would ever walk again. It hurts too much to walk, he explained, but that’s just for the moment. The sisters seemed relieved. The father arrived with spring rolls.

  *

  ‘When I get home,’ Oscar told me one day, ‘I will be too sick to go into my bed. I will need to go in your bed. I am very unwell.’ His dark-circled eyes huge in his pale face, his ribs, his skinny little body.

  ‘Yes, you are,’ I agreed. ‘But you’ll get better.’

  And his colour returned, his brightness.

  5.

  Wilbur visited Oscar regularly, sometimes bringing gifts: a stuffed rabbit with fur so soft Oscar and I took turns holding it against our cheeks; a book of stickers from the movie Cars (these ended up all over the bedhead, table, drawers). Wilbur would sit alongside Oscar and set to work playing with him, and I’d lean back and watch, relieved to see him entertained. A few times, Wilbur produced foil-wrapped meals he’d prepared for us, dessert in a separate container. He said he liked to cook, it was no trouble.

  One night, Oscar was sleeping when Wilbur arrived.

  He’d brought along chocolate chip cookies, which we ate with coffee, speaking softly in the dark ward. They were warm and delicious. He mentioned he’d got the recipe from a client.

  ‘A client?’ I asked. ‘You know, I don’t actually know what you do?’

&
nbsp; He smiled broadly, the dimple in his left cheek deepening. ‘Flight instructor,’ he said.

  I smiled too. ‘No, but what do you really do?’

  ‘Flight instructor.’

  My stomach fell. Thud, it went, hitting the floor. He really is mad! I have to cancel these visits! Delete him from my phone!

  But he explained, gently, that he taught people to fly aeroplanes. He owned his own plane, and kept it at Bankstown. He also used this for charter flights, which explained why he’d been in Cairns the night I called.

  ‘My parents got a lot wrong about aeroplanes,’ he confided. ‘I think they found the material in old library books. I used to worry that I’d undermine their lessons when I corrected their mistakes, and that we’d end up not being able to fly. And then I’d think: Oh, wait.’

  We both laughed. Partly I was laughing in relief that he was sane, and partly because there was a certain beautiful insanity about the fact that he really was a flight instructor.

  ‘I grew up wanting to be a pilot,’ he explained. ‘Sometimes now I wonder if I was subliminally affected by my parents’ obsession with flight—or if I’d have done it anyway. I’d also like to be a chef, and maybe that’s my real dream? But it was a course in Japanese cooking that got me interested in cooking, and I did that course—’

  ‘Because The Guidebook told you to?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Causation is complex.’

  ‘Yes!’ He surprised me with his sudden intensity. He swivelled the chair so he faced me, knees almost touching mine. ‘We’ve had this conversation before—that day in the bike park, remember?’

  I shrugged. I remembered the day in the bike park, but not what I’d said. I was embarrassed, though, because I often tell people causation is complex. It’s one of my favourite, empty phrases.

  ‘But it’s not empty,’ Wilbur argued. And he reminded me of what I’d said in the ICU, that first night.

  Again, I was embarrassed—to be reminded of my hysteria—but he spoke kindly. He was sorting through my words: it seemed he’d understood more than I’d imagined.

  He did ask me to clarify a few things. Who exactly was the everybody Oscar had brought along to Maisy’s, for example? And everything was somehow my fault? Everything?