Michael passed his hand over his face and Min sensed his need to unburden himself. What is it about me that invites confidences? I’m beginning to feel like a sodden sponge. Do I look prurient or something? Is this how a priest feels at times after being privy to endless confessions? Min propped up her face and looked at Michael. He took a deep breath. He began to talk about the contingent nature of his life which prevented him from settling in to his job. He told her about his marriage which was still extant, but dead to all intents and purposes on account of a total divergence of values between him and his Catholic wife.
‘She’s a dyed in the wool Aussie Catholic and of course doesn’t believe in divorce. Some semantic jiggery pokery appeal to the papal office of annulment is her only hope. You can imagine how I feel about that.’ He bit his lip and slowly shook his head. Min was silent.
‘I want to tell you this Min because I need someone to know but I hope it isn’t presuming too much of your belief system.’
‘I’m between belief systems at the moment as you’ll have twigged. I’ve thrown away the crutch of dodgy dogma but I can still have a sneaking appreciation of men in drag and soaring choirs in a gothic theatre.’
‘How do you feel about mercy killing?’ The starkness of the question put paid again to an attempt at jokiness. She said she hadn’t really had much occasion to think about it - not like abortion which most people confronted earlier in life.
Michael swallowed noisily. He was finding it difficult to find the words for an event which he had not confronted like this for months. Min put her hand on his which was twirling a teaspoon on the table.
‘How about we go somewhere else? I’ll settle with Yvonne and I’ll join you in your car in a moment.’
Yvonne remonstrated about the payment so Min played a trump card.
‘You can pay me for an English lesson,’ she smiled and the deal was done. When Min joined Michael in his car in front of the café she said,
‘I wonder what she’ll tell Gerard when he gets back. I’ll have to explain the expression “just good friends”.’
Chapter 50
The very next day Michael received from home a thick white envelope containing a letter from his lawyer informing him that he was to appear before the medical council in six weeks’ time. He felt his heart speed up. After his talk to Min in the car during which he had explained his situation, he had felt some relief and her moral support had been welcome. As he thought she might, she was able to understand his motives in the administering of a lethal dose of morphine to his dying tormented and dearly-loved aunt. How much easier it would have been to follow the dictat of the state instead of choosing a personal imperative. He agreed with Min that society had to protect itself by moving slowly in a consensus rather than allowing free spirits to take the law of life and death into their own hands, no matter how passionately they held their beliefs. However when all palliative measures had failed and you were witness to the intolerable suffering of someone you loved, abstract sanctions lost their meaning. Min was moved to tears by the reality Michael had faced.
With these furies pursuing him he had sometimes found it difficult to find the energy needed to do his job. Moreover, there were the constant frustrations of nothing running smoothly and now he was going to feel as if he were marking time until his return to Australia. As far as he knew his superiors at the hospital were unaware of the history which had sent him among them. He sometimes wondered about the grapevine coming into play at the many conferences which he avoided. No doubt the facts would eventually come out and he didn’t really care; he knew there were colleagues who would sympathise, if not overtly support him. Of course the strictly God-fearing would ostracise him but perhaps doubters would emerge even in this theocratic nation.
When he arrived at the hospital mid morning he was immediately greeted by one of the junior doctors who was upset by some contamination which had occurred in the customs department. A container of equipment from overseas had been opened and the sterile seal had been broken. He asked why the officers might have done that and she said that they were probably looking for illicit drugs. He would speak to the comptroller. In future it would be better to open all equipment at the hospital with one of the officers present.
Michael was full of admiration for these young graduates who returned home to work in what were less than ideal conditions when there were plenty of job opportunities elsewhere. For a moment he was inspired by being able to work with this young woman and he hoped he could come back and offer his services in a fully medical role.
The moment was interrupted by the arrival of a coffin from the workshop opposite the hospital and Michael observed drily that this side of the business worked very smoothly. The young woman smiled and said it was for poor Mr Fillipi whose kidneys had finally failed.
‘I wish we had dialysis equipment here instead of sending the lucky ones to Australia and New Zealand,’ she said and Michael made a mental note to try and help if he ever solved his own problem.
That evening he had a call from Dinah who sounded very chipper. (Not that she isn’t always, he thinks ruefully.)There were the usual pleasantries followed by the announcement that she had almost talked Robert into moving to Queensland with her.
‘How difficult was that?’
‘Now now - none of that nasty state rivalry. Queensland has all the merits of this shangri-la but with skyscrapers. Anyhow he’ll be going back to New Zealand for a while to sort things out and stay with his mother. She’ll probably visit us there whereas she has refused to come here for some reason. We won’t tell her about the snakes and cane toads.’
Dinah wanted to have a farewell get together and Michael told her he would be leaving for Melbourne in a few weeks.
‘For how long?’
‘Not sure. I have some things to sort out too. It’s only just been decided and I was going to call you.’ They made a tentative date and Dinah said she’d contact everyone and a few extras.
The next day Michael met Semese leaving the hospital just as he was arriving and he told him about the possibility of a party but was careful not to mention his leaving because he was on his way to see the superintendent. She must know first; she would receive the news with resigned equanimity because staffing was a chronic headache and perhaps God would provide. Even so, Michael was not happy breaking the news at quite short notice and with an indefinite time scale. How much the superintendent knew of his background he never enquired and he was grateful for the discretion afforded him as an outsider. It had not been difficult to slip into his paramedic role although he sometimes worried about a loss of skills if he ever wanted to practise medicine again.
He left the hospital soon after his chat with the superintendent who had expressed resigned regret and he drove to the part of the lagoon where he could descend to another world whose inhabitants, decked out in their multi-coloured finery, darted and swarmed with astonishing finesse. Transformed into a risibly clumsy undersea creature he glided around as the fish swooped and divided like giant punctuation marks in fluid form. Painted in the colours of the group they followed an ordained pattern which of its nature demanded conformity. This was unanimous genius in motion where the individual component was subsumed into the group. This stunningly beautiful world naturally secluded from the terrestrial scene by human lungs he had first encountered during a holiday with his wife on the Great Barrier reef. He had tried to convince her to join him in the submarine world but she refused to clutter herself with the equipment which made it possible. He remembered wanting to share the experience and feeling disappointed by her nervous reaction which may have been the beginning of divergence in their interests.
The silence and the colour had stopped the clock and when he clambered back into the shallows he had no idea of the time and needed to remind himself of what he had to do back in his own medium. He would answer the letter confirming his attendance at the medical council meeting before applying for unpaid leave from
the hospital board. He should try one more time to contact his wife to let her know that he would be in Australia within a few weeks.
‘Well well - look who’s here!’
Michael, sodden and preoccupied wasn’t able to react at first. Without his glasses he wasn’t used to scanning faces. As he got closer he recognised Jim and guffawed amiably.
‘Blind as a bat without my specs.’ Jim asked why he didn’t have a prescription mask.
‘I manage.’
As he dried his legs and Jim put on his wet suit they chatted about the effect of becoming semi-weightless in a world of balletic perfection.
Michael watched while Jim waded over the coral and waved as he did a back flip into the water.
Elation slowly became sadness as Michael turned to leave the lagoon area.
Chapter 51
The party at Michael’s place had been a quiet affair with the unspoken regret that friends were starting to break up the circle. He would miss the wedding and he told Yushi that he had been looking forward to the experience of a ceremony Polynesian style. Yushi said he had not much idea of how it would be either.
Michael asked people to help themselves to the left-over food as they were leaving and he suggested quietly to Min that she stay until last, because he didn’t want everything to be over all of a sudden. She kept thinking as she watched him making sure that everyone was watered and fed, what a different person he now appeared to her from the one she had met over a year ago at Polly and Jim’s. Then he seemed not to have a care in the world and even his name had changed.
He looked at the bottle of Benedictine liqueur to see if there was any left.
‘Let’s finish this off - I can’t take it with me.’
‘God - that sounds like an excerpt from a sermon.’
‘We listened to enough of them to have our discourse affected by them - don’t you reckon?’
‘Yup yup.’ Min’s eyes shone. ‘Oh Michael! - isn’t it amazing to share the same weird language and cock and bull stories?’
They sipped in unison and smiled across the spartan room.
‘Will you miss all this?’ Min waved her hand over the room, feeling mellow.
‘All this and more.’ He got up and walked across the room to take Min’s hand.
‘Let’s go to the bedroom - it’s more comfortable.’ Michael sprawled full length and patted space beside him but Min perched cross-legged on the end of the bed clasping her glass with both hands.
‘Noli me tangere,’ he said mysteriously and Min looked at him quizzically.
‘What are you referring to?’ she said archly. ‘Sounds like a sexually transmitted disease.’
He sat up and put his glass on the table and then took Min’s from her. He put his arms around her in a strong hug.
‘Ouch - my knees.’
‘Lie down then and relax. That cross-legged position is very uncomfortable.’
They lay like ‘gisants’ recumbent on a tomb and both burst out laughing. Min made a grab for the last of her liqueur and leaned over to give Michael his. He lifted his head and opened his mouth so she could pour the viscous dregs on to his tongue.
‘Hic est enim something or other.’ She lay back and shrieked at the blasphemy and Michael propped himself up to study her. He stroked her cheek until she stopped laughing and then leant over and kissed her.
‘Is there a middle point between flippancy and seriousness Min E Ha Ha?’ Min admitted that he had made a very good point and she would like to be more level-headed.
‘But for me life’s usually either absurd or distressing and it depends on your mood which way you deal with it. Since I’ve been here it’s been a serious business, I must say.’
Michael made no response and Min wondered if her remark had been facile and even tactless.
‘Sorry Michael.’ She took his hand. ‘I can hardly imagine what you’re facing and what you’ve been through. Will you have support when you get back to Melbourne?’
He said that he had one friend who might try and help but he had lost touch with most of his contemporaries from school and university. In fact the person he had felt closest to in later years apart from his wife, had been his aunt who had become a good mate when they moved to the same country town. She was his father’s oldest sister who was unmarried and who had often stayed with them when they were children. She was always great fun, he remembered.
And she played the famous piano.
Then he and his wife saw a lot of her while they were getting their general practice experience after graduation.
‘However, Helen my wife was keen to go back to the city after three years but we kept in touch with Eleanor and then I heard that she’d been diagnosed with cancer. She came to Melbourne for the usual treatment and she was eventually well enough to go home and resume her gardening business. We often went to see her for a weekend after that and then one day she told me that the doctor suspected that the disease had spread to her liver.
‘She asked me on the quiet if I would help her if the suffering became intolerable and she didn’t want it to be prolonged to an inevitable end. I was shocked at first and told her that it would be considered a crime even if I could reconcile the act with my personal ethics. But I explained that it was unknown territory for me at this point in my medical experience; at the same time I was wishing that she hadn’t put me in such a situation.’
Michael stared at the ceiling and Min said quietly that perhaps he should not relive the painful experience. He turned to her and said almost angrily,
‘I know now that doctors are often in this situation and they apply the “principle of double effect” which means they administer drugs to alleviate pain but which they know can shorten the life of the patient. It’s a question of a very humane response to what is pointless anguish which has no redemptive features unless you’re a religious zealot. I was young and still forging my own philosophy of life after the certainties of the church had become irrelevant for me. Helen on the other hand, was still as convinced as ever of the church’s infallibility and my action shocked her to the core.’
Min asked Michael to promise to stay in touch and could she go to Australia if he needed her. He agreed to keep her posted and they would meet up again once this business was over. It was true that his life had been on hold for too long and who knew what lay ahead for them both. Finally when he noticed that Min had fallen asleep he put the sheet over them both and turned on his side to try and sleep too. But confronting so clearly the narrative he’d tried to put in the back of his mind he remained wide awake, so he got up very quietly and went to the kitchen to make a hot drink. He wrote a note to Min to let her know that he’d gone to the hospital to write up his log book and tidy his papers in the silence of the sleeping hospital.
In the early morning when she woke and read the note, she tidied the rooms where they had partied and washed the dishes before going home to shower and go to school. Throughout that day she kept referring to Michael’s path ahead and it put any small problems which she met into perspective. It was a sort of privilege to carry the knowledge with her and she felt as close as she had for a very long time to praying for a merciful outcome.
Chapter 52
‘Sorry I’m late,’ called Dinah. ‘I was waiting for Rob because he wanted to come.’
Michael put his two bags into the back of the van and climbed in beside her.
‘I was still cleaning up till about five minutes ago. I’ve written a contact address for you and I’ll put the envelope in here - in case you need it.’ He leaned over to open the glove box and then lay back against the headrest.
‘How are you feeling?’ Dinah gave him a quick glance. ‘Looking forward to the bright lights and all those well-heeled go-getters?’ He blew a little puff of denial which was all the remark called for.
He stared out at the overpowering vegetation and the small children running around in the villages; nostalgia for the static beauty of this place was inevita
ble and would throw the bustling city and its temperamental weather into perspective. Whether he came back or not was in the lap of the gods but if he did he would not be treading water and his life would be able to take shape, unshadowed.
Dinah was talking about their plans and the process of getting their exit visas.
‘Has that been a problem for you?’
Michael switched on at the word problem and wondered what she meant. His mind had not grasped her context. He said simply ‘No’ - hoping it was the right answer.
They reached the village where Min was on one of her supervision sessions and Dinah asked him if he wanted to stop to say goodbye but he said they had had a last cup of coffee at Gerard’s café the previous night. She had given him the address of her parents in New Zealand and he had given her the same one he’d given Dinah.
When they parked the van Dinah was surprised to see Robert’s work pickup there. While Michael was checking in Dinah disappeared for a moment and Robert appeared. When she came back she was holding a tiny parcel which Michael unwrapped to find a plaited necklace with a tiny carved wooden turtle threaded on to it.
‘A lucky charm,’ she said and she gave him a peck on his cheek.
‘Just the thing in the Lucky Country,’ smirked Robert touching on one of his favourite topics.
Saying goodbye was more of a wrench than Michael had expected and Dinah had tears in her eyes as she gave him a final clap on the back with, ‘See ya mate,’ to cover her emotion.
‘Ditto,’ said Robert, giving him a brief handshake which verged on the painful. He walked past several knots of weeping relatives, gave a final salute and went into the waiting area to sit down. He had a jab of envy as he looked at the teary travellers mopping their eyes.
As the plane’s nose lifted and rose above the plantations beside the runway a small involuntary convulsion in his throat released the built-up tension. The village school then the town dwindled into miniatures until the aircraft entered a very white cloud which obliterated everything. When it emerged from the cumulus, they were high over the reef where the Pacific collided and boiled as if against a rampart. The steady climb to the flight zenith slowly ironed out the swells and the sea became tamed and remote.
Another Throw of The Dice Page 17