by Tracy Farr
Luce watches Iris go. She stands at the door to her room and listens to the party, the mill of people, the rustle of them, the shuffle of them, the hearty laughter and boozy noise. She hears a click, and watches the door to the room that her mother shares with Iris open. Her mother steps out, heads down the corridor – to the bathroom, or to the wine in the kitchen? Whatever. It was disgusting before. When she fell over. That should be me is how Luce thinks when her mother behaves like that. I should be the one getting pissed. It’s not fair.
She hears a phone ring, vibrate. It’s close, it’s on the table by the front door. Iris’s phone. Luce picks it up, swipes.
‘Hello?’
‘Iris Golden? It’s Nancy Smits calling, from Dorothy Hill Retirement Village. Everything’s fine, and I’m sorry to call so late, but we’ve just had a little incident with your mother, and I wanted to let you know.’
‘It’s not Iris. I’m not Iris.’
‘I’m sorry, could you put me on to her?’
‘She’s not here. She just –’ Luce doesn’t know whether not telling extends beyond the party, so she plays it safe. ‘She’s just gone out, and she forgot her phone.’
‘And I’m speaking with …?’
‘Luce. Lucy Flint. I’m Luce. Her – niece.’
‘Of course, Lucy, I remember you. Will Iris be back soon, do you think?’
Luce thinks of waiting in hospitals, of that long boringness. ‘I don’t think so. I could give her a message?’
‘Look, that’ d be wonderful dear. Could you just tell Iris that her mother had a fall, but she’s absolutely fine, and there’s nothing to worry about. We’re keeping an eye on her. And could you ask Iris to give me a call? Not tonight – in the morning is fine. Nancy Smits, Ess-Em-Eye-Tee-Ess. She can call me back on this number any time after nine. Okay? And don’t you worry, we’re looking after Rosa. She’s very comfortable. Goodnight, dear.’
She hangs up before Luce can answer.
Luce stands for a while with Iris’s phone in her hand. Then she shrugs, puts the phone down on the table where Iris had left it. As Luce starts to walk back to her room, from the kitchen she hears the sound of glass breaking, then a shriek, then her mother – laughing that laugh of hers, unmistakably pissed – then other people join her, all laughing like crazy. Luce stands and listens. Music starts up again, more old-fart music. She goes back to the table, picks up the phone – because someone might see it there and wonder where Iris is, and that’ d be almost like telling, to leave the phone there as a clue – and tucks it in her pocket, then turns back to her room, to shut out the noise.
Stones, not passed
Iris feels a kind of tired calmness as she drives. She is washed out, exhausted, but in that state of tiredness that is characterised by a sort of clarity of mind. She can think of one thing, and it is clear to her: drive to the hospital. Her mind doesn’t wander to other things, to distractions. It’s almost like a state of meditation, of mental stillness.
She’s not sure whether it’s even worth going to the hospital, but it’s better, she tells herself as she drives, to be on the safe side. She can feel the site of the pain, can remember the feeling of it with a bright white intensity. What she feels is no longer pain, but tenderness.
She drives at the speed limit, which always feels too slow, down the strip-mall highway, past lights flickering fast food, carpets, supermarkets, even though they’re all closed. She turns off into the carpark of the big new hospital by the ocean. She follows arrows and signs, parks the car. She reaches into her bag, on the passenger seat, for her phone. It’s not in the inside pocket; she ferrets through – nothing – then empties everything onto the passenger seat, fuck, fuck, but no phone. She must’ve left it at the house. She sees herself put it down on the table, when she told Luce where she was going; she sees herself gather her bag, fail to pick up the phone. Shit. She shakes her head, piles everything back into her bag, climbs out, locks the car.
She follows the signs to EMERGENCY, even though it no longer feels like one. The door whooshes open. She walks into the fluoro-lit space. There’s that hospital smell she’s never experienced enough to get used to – just enough that it unsettles her. She goes to the desk, hands over her Medicare card.
‘Hello love, how can we help?’
‘I’m not sure it’s an emergency, but –’
She describes the pain she’ d felt, the quickness and suddenness of its coming and going. She tells how it was this suddenness that had scared her most.
‘I think I passed out. I don’t remember. I just found myself on the floor. In the bathroom. But I don’t remember how I got there.’
‘Did you fall? Hurt yourself? Any bumps?’
‘No. I don’t think so.’
‘You had any drugs or alcohol, love?’
‘No. No, nothing, I don’t any more. Drink.’
‘Are you in any pain now?’
‘No. None at all.’
She puts her hand on her belly, low, where she can remember the pain being, radiating from.
‘It was here.’ She finds herself popping up on her toes, to show the nurse where her hand is. The woman nods, types something. ‘But it’s fine now.’
‘Okay, I’ve logged that. Can I just check your contact details?’
Iris gives her address in the city, explains that she’s here for the weekend, gives the Cassetown address. They have a record in the hospital system from years before – We transferred over the records from the old hospital – from long-ago summer visits, from when she and Paul were together. She updates phone numbers, her email address.
‘Primary contact and next of kin’s listed as Paul Diamond.’ The woman rattles off Paul’s phone number.
‘Yeah –’
She could change it, but to what?
‘That’s fine. Paul’s fine.’
‘Right, all up to date. We’ll check you out and see what we can see, okay? Take a seat, wait for your name. If you’re feeling any pain, let us know right away. Don’t want you passing out on the ED floor. And you’re in luck. It’s a quiet night for a weekend so far, touch wood.’
Iris sits down on the plastic chair, careful not to touch anything. She thinks of disease, of some long-ago-read article about hospital-acquired infections. Nose-cone; nose-something. Nosocomial, that’s it. Nosocomial infections. The article had made some outrageous claim, like you’re better off having surgery in the hospital carpark than in the operating theatre. She tucks her hands into the pockets of her jacket, like a police detective at the scene of a crime. Leave no trace.
There are no men in the waiting area, only women and children. A child in pyjamas sits opposite her, cradling its arm, curled up on the lap of a woman. Iris can’t tell whether the child – a preschooler, maybe three or four years old – is a boy or a girl. At the other end of the row of plastic chairs sits an older woman, her head dropped low so Iris can see her thinning hair, white at the crown, and dark blonde dye out from there. A younger woman sits next to her, has the older woman’s hand in her hand, is patting it, occasionally rubbing it. Iris catches the eye of the hand-patting young woman. They smile at each other. Iris looks down, and sees that her hands are in her lap now; she’s rubbing and patting her own hand. She leans one elbow on her knee, cups her chin in her hand, tucks the other hand in, to stop the mirroring.
Although there aren’t many people in the waiting room, there is noise leaking from the other side of the swinging plastic doors, from the treatment rooms that she can’t see. It’s a low hum with occasional clangs, an undercurrent buzz of voices, the murmuring sound of nurturing, with occasional laughter bubbling through. Iris imagines a night that’s not quiet; she imagines shouting, the room full of drunks, and schoolkids, and drunk schoolkids; a night full of drinking injuries.
She stands up when she hears her name, and follows a man with a clipboard, pushing through double doors, around corners, past curtains, to a bed that’s like a trolley (a gurney, she thinks). The bed-t
rolley is behind another curtain, patterned with flowers like the others. He gestures. She sits on the bed.
‘Won’t be long.’ He hooks a clipboard onto the end of the bed, pulls the curtain half-closed around her, then disappears back towards the waiting room.
She clutches her bag on her lap; she unshoulders it, then shoulders it again, then puts it on the table next to her. She fiddles. She can hear a clock, ticking like a cartoon clock, louder than it needs to be, underscoring the time that she’s waiting. She wishes she had thought to grab the bag with the baby’s blanket in it; she could have spent time stitching, while she waited. What would she stitch? A clock. A telephone. Little stars, for the bright white pain.
Noises come from behind other curtains. The voices are low, keep to themselves – except there’s no keeping to yourself in here; there’s nothing substantial to afford privacy, just curtains and lines on the floor to mark out space. One voice is old and angry, hissing, venomous. Another is sleepy, or uncaring, or pissed or stoned, not really connecting, not really listening.
From behind the curtain closest to her she hears a man’s voice, low and muffled; she can’t hear the words, can just hear the care in his tone, like he’s talking to a sick child, or a dog. Then a woman’s voice harsh and hurting, ‘Jesus, Andrew! I told you. I don’t want a fucking engagement ring. I want a fucking sofa.’
A man pushes aside the curtain next to her. Ducking his head under the blue flowered fabric, his eyes meet Iris’s. Iris turns away, puts her hand to her bag, pretends to look for her glasses or her phone; anything. She waits a beat, then looks up to watch the man’s hunched back – the big, hurt curve of him, all red and blue flannel checks – move away, out towards the waiting room.
People come and go. They close and fling open the curtains around her; they peer in, check the clipboard, smile at her; they tap the clipboard with a pen, they write on it. One of them looks at the clipboard, then at the screen of an iPad, swipes and taps the screen, frowns. Iris can’t be sure if he’s looking up her records, or checking Twitter.
Different people come, and she has no idea whether they’re nurses or doctors or orderlies, nor does it seem to matter. If they introduce themselves, it’s by first name. They all seem to have badges with their first names pinned to their chests. Their names are written with thick markers in purple or green ink – ‘fun’ colours, no prosaic black – all next to the smiling cartoon sun that is the hospital logo.
Another woman comes to her, checks the clipboard, swipes an iPad.
‘Iris.’ There’s a glimmer of a smile, a tired smile, all she can muster to comply with customer service requirements. ‘I’m Julie.’ She nods to her name badge, the name spelled out in thick red lettering (blood-red, not a good colour choice for a hospital).
‘Acute abdominal pain, lower right, yeah? Came and went suddenly? Came in waves?’
‘That’s right. I passed out, I think. Not for long.’
‘Ever had this before?’
‘No. Oh –’
Iris has a recollection: a night, cold white pain, waking up on a toilet floor, sticky with god-knows-what. She’ d put it down to drink, as she always did, then.
‘Maybe, but not like this. This was – extreme pain. Waves of it. Then – really suddenly – gone. I feel fine now. It’s probably nothing.’
‘Not necessarily. Could be gall bladder. Possibly gallstones, little solid bits in your gall bladder or bile duct. An ultrasound should confirm that. We’ll pop you down to Radiology.’
They start to wheel her as the woman keeps talking, of stones, of calcification, of calculus and concretion, a wash of words that Iris has never before connected to her body, to pain.
She’s wheeled (on the gurney) into a dark room, next to a blank screen and a bank of plastic-coloured machines, with spiral cords like phones used to have. There’s a blue-green smock to put on, and she doesn’t know whether to put the opening at the front or the back. She goes with front.
She lies on the bed, and gel – ‘It’ll be a bit cold, just for a moment’ – is squirted on to her belly, but low, and off-centre to the right. The bulbous end – like a showerhead, or a dildo – smears the gel on her, makes her feel queasy. It slips over her skin, sliding, spreading the slippery gel on her. She feels it touch the top of her knickers, imagines it wicking into the fabric, slick, undrying. Sick rises in her throat, then goes away. Hospitals unsettle her. She concentrates on the beat of her pulse, imagining she can hear it in her chest, her throat, one-cat-and-dog, two-cat-and-dog, counting the seconds until the bulbous slithering stops.
‘Ah!’
The operator lets a sound out, but she’s not giving anything away. Iris looks at the screen, its lines of longitude and latitude mapping her body, the heights and curves and shapes of her, pulsing, bulging, unfathomable. The operator taps a button to zoom in, moves the centre of the field of view, the dark and light shapes change on screen. Iris keeps expecting a baby-shape to emerge, a jellybean foetus, as it did twenty-one years ago when she was pregnant with Kurt. The image then was as unreadable to her as this is, now. Then, they’ d printed a single image on shiny paper. The paper had started to darken, the image fade, almost as soon as they’ d handed it to Paul. It’s – where? – in some long-ago photo album, from when people had photo albums. Kristin and Paul would have got a CD, or been emailed the images. Or maybe the ultrasound operator posted them straight to their Facebook pages.
Iris isn’t offered a printout, nor a post to Facebook. The operator wipes some of the gel from her, then hands her a clutch of paper towels.
‘There you go. Clean yourself up,’ she inclines her head to a rubbish bin in the corner, ‘and you can get dressed. Wait in Reception. The Registrar’ll come and talk to you once she’s had a look at the imaging.’
Iris sits up on the gurney, wipes the mess from her belly. A wave of shame washes over her. It feels sordid, as if she has soiled herself, or had sex with someone she shouldn’t have. She touches her hand to her belly, feels the tight drying stickiness forming a scum, a skin. Then she does as she’s told: in the little curtained cubicle in the corner of the dim-lit radiology suite she dresses, places the hospital gown in the plastic bin labelled USED GOWNS, then she heads back to the waiting room.
The clock above the reception desk shows 2:46. The party will still be going.
The weight of it
Kurt goes outside, kicking the kitchen door closed behind him on the tail-end hum of the party, the stayers. He stands on the lawn, in the rain. He must concentrate to stand; in fact, he sways on the lawn, looking back at the bright house. A shriek – that’ll be Auntie Mart – leaks into the night, out through windows and doors closed against the cold. He doesn’t feel cold, though. He has a beer jacket on. He managed to remember to grab his actual jacket, too, and he’s flicked his hood up. The rain has eased, but everything’s soaking.
He shoves his hands into his pockets and stands (sways) on the lawn, listening to the waves, though he can’t see them. The sound of them from this distance is all shush and tumble, light and strong at the same time. It’s like cars on a distant freeway. Or like that sound when you hold a shell to your ear, that they tell children is the sound of the ocean, but is the pressure in your own ears, little waves of blood whooshing and rushing through your body.
He opens the gate and walks on the path by the river to the bay. There isn’t much moon, so it’s dark. He has to watch his feet (because beer; because joint, then whisky, then more beer; because dark), to stay on the path. He wants to put his hands up in front of him, to feel his way to the beach, but there’s nothing to feel, nothing to guide him there but the sound of the waves, getting louder as he gets closer.
When he gets to the top of the beach, he realises just how hard the waves are hammering in tonight, booming in – not like the calm of yesterday, when he watched the kids with sticks. Tonight you can’t hear yourself think, thoughts drowned by sound so loud it thumps through the ground and up through your
body. You can feel it in your chest as well as hear it, like music coming at you when you’re standing in front of a massive fuck-off speaker. You feel it when a wave dumps, feel that pause before the crash, the thump, the reverberation. The weight of it frightens him.
When he was little, for a few years he went surfing with his dad, both of them learning, neither of them very good at it. He doesn’t remember being scared of the waves, back then, when he was eleven or twelve. Something changed, though, and he stopped wanting to go surfing, or even to go to the beach at all, for years. It’s only this last year, since he’s left home, that he’s started going to the beach again, but only to walk, and only when it’s cold, windy. He’ll wrap himself into his jacket, button the buttons, turn the collar up, or the hood if it’s really bitterly cold and blustery. He’ll put his hands in his pockets and his head down, and walk.
Sometimes he’ll stop to pick something up, but mostly he ploughs on; the walking, the ploughing on, is the meaning of it, for him. His mother’s the one who picks things up – always has been. She’s always been the collector. When he was a kid he used to bring her things – seaweed or stones, feathers or ferns – and she’ d turn them over in her hand, or turn them out on plastic or paper, examine them, name them for him, explain them; sometimes explain them away. He doesn’t bring her things any more. She still collects, though. Always the archivist. She doesn’t plough on, when she walks. She stops and starts, stops and starts. It takes her forever to get anywhere.
He walks down the slope of the beach towards the dark solidity of the platform rock, and settles on it – his rock, his place, the feel of it so familiar – lies down, looks up at the sky, his gut acid, his head bedspin-tight. Bedspin; rockspin. He closes his eyes, but the bedspin, rockspin is worse. He rolls on his side – recovery position – but the spew doesn’t come. He clutches his jacket in around him, grabs a steadying hold of the edge of the rock, pulls his knees up, foetal, closes his eyes and sinks into blackness to the sound of the waves’ rush and roar.