April Fool's Day

by Bryce Courtenay

  I gulped, breathing heavily. I knew that, I’d seen him do it dozens of times and I’d even swabbed the back of his hand for him in the past. Already things were going wrong. I broke open the swab and rubbed the area around the vein we’d selected. Then I picked up the needle and, inhaling silently, hoping Damon didn’t sense how anxious and terrified I was, I moved the butterfly needle forward.

  “Jesus! We’ve forgotten the gloves!” It was Damon again, this time his voice raised. I burst into tears, the tension too much. Damon released the tourniquet and took me in his arms. “I’m so sorry, darling, I didn’t mean to. I guess I’m as nervous as you are.”

  But I had started to shake. Simple things were going wrong; in my anxiety my mind was blanking out and I was neglecting the most basic procedures. Sniffing, I drew away from him and crossed the room to his medical cupboard, the top drawer of an old dresser where he kept all his transfusion stuff. “I’m sorry. I’m so stupid. I know what to do,” I sniffed. I found the box of ultra-thin, clear plastic gloves which surgeons wear, but which now everyone who works with anyone who is HIV positive automatically puts on when they approach. “They could make the needle slip, make it hard to hold?” I said lamely.

  “They won’t,” he assured me. “Surgeons have to do delicate things with them on, delicate operations.” He paused. “They’ll definitely help you. You’ll see.”

  The gloves were very necessary for another reason: the HIV virus is carried in blood and if some of Damon’s blood should enter, say, a cut on my hand, I could become infected. It wasn’t much of a risk, perhaps a chance in a million, but he didn’t want to take any chances. I realised that he was trying not to remind me of this possibility, simply suggesting the gloves would help me to get the needle in.

  With the pale, protective latex gloves pulled tightly over my hands so that my hands looked as though they belonged to a ghost, Damon placed the tourniquet back again, pushing it high up his arm before pulling it tight around the biceps. Then he pumped his fist again to make the veins on the back of his hand stand out. I took a deep breath and, taking the butterfly needle and squeezing its wings together, I felt for the most propitious vein with my free hand.

  To my consternation, this time the best prospect seemed to be a different vein from the last, a slightly smaller one which now seemed the more “bouncy". I angled the needle and felt the momentary resistance as its tiny, hollow, elliptical point broke through the surface of the skin and moved along the vein. I prayed for the sudden, glorious moment when the blood would shoot up the tiny plastic tube leading from the end of the butterfly needle. But nothing happened, the needle was stuck an inch into the back of Damon’s hand without any result.

  “Jiggle it,” Damon grunted. “Jiggle it a bit. Just gently…try to reposition it, you could be almost in without knowing.”

  I tried to move the needle around, almost withdrawing it and taking a different direction, but nothing happened. Damon, I could sense, was trying not to show any reaction, to keep from wincing.

  “Pull it out. Try again. Use the same vein before it dies.” He said this quietly, though I could sense the urgency behind his casual tone. Drops of perspiration covered his brow. I knew he so badly wanted me to succeed.

  Perspiration formed on my own forehead making it itchy and I wanted to blow my nose which seemed suddenly to have filled with mucus. I felt sure the sweat on my brow would run into my eyes and make it impossible to see. I withdrew the needle and tried inserting it again, keeping it flat and in line with the blue-green vein, but again nothing happened and I was now very close to panic.

  Damon sighed, “Pull it out, babe, that one’s shot. Never mind, you nearly got it that time. We’ll try another vein, perhaps the big one you were going to use before?”

  I used an alco-wipe to wipe away the speck of blood where the needle had been withdrawn, surface blood that didn’t come from a major vein. Damon removed the tourniquet while I broke out a fresh butterfly needle from its protective plastic wrap. My hands were visibly shaking as I forced myself to stay calm.

  “Just sit down for a moment and wipe your face.” Damon looked at me kindly. “It’s just a knack, you’ll soon get the hang of it. If it was hard I wouldn’t be able to do it, would I?”

  I nodded, feeling sick in the stomach. I wanted so badly to do it right but I was scared, not only of missing, but also of the blood when it came. I tried to smile. ‘I’ll get it this time, you’ll see.” Please God, I’ll do anything you ask! Anything! Just let me get it in this time.

  Damon applied the tourniquet and began to pump his fist. I felt along the veins, trying to decide which one felt right, none of them as big or bold as the one that I’d just missed, not even the original big one.

  I selected one again, running the pad of my index finger along it, making sure I wanted this one. The plastic glove made it feel smooth and it seemed pretty bouncy, though I had no idea whether it was. I resterilised the top of Damon’s hand and took up the butterfly needle, pinching its two tiny plastic wings together between my forefinger and thumb and hoping I could hold it steady enough.

  “Relax, it’s really quite easy,” Damon said quietly. “Come at it at a slightly flatter angle; feel the vein and then try to push the needle into the centre of it, like inserting a smaller pipe into a larger one – nice and steady.”

  I flattened out the needle and pushed it in. Almost as I broke through the surface of the skin, the needle pushed in up to its hilt and a sudden rush of blood moved up the tiny tube. “Beauty! Quick, connect it to the syringe,” Damon shouted excitedly. He was grinning like an ape, hugely pleased for me.

  I frantically reached for one of the syringes already filled with AHF (antihaemophilic factor) and clipped the end of the tiny plastic pipe leading from the butterfly needle to the point of the syringe. My heart was beating furiously and I thought it was going to break right through my chest. I was too preoccupied to care about the blood. Now it was done and I was holding the syringe in my hand I wasn’t squeamish at all. Seeing his beautiful dark blood shooting up the tiny capillary tube was one of the most beautiful moments in my entire life.

  Damon released the pressure of the tourniquet around the top of his arm.

  “Well done, babe! Madam Butterfly Needle, star of The Love Transfusion!”

  I grinned. I was pretty proud of myself. “Wow! How about that?” I cried excitedly.

  “Careful, don’t move the syringe, the needle might slip out.”

  The idea of this happening calmed me instantly. I imagined having to do it all again and the thought was too awful for words. “Very slowly, push the plunger down very slowly,” Damon instructed quietly.

  I began to push the precious clotting liquid into his vein. I suddenly felt incredibly close to him, as though we were one person and I was giving him my own blood so that he could live. If only my mother had known how willingly I would have let him have my blood. I felt as though I was going to cry. I was now able to look after Damon when he couldn’t transfuse himself. I can’t tell you how good this felt, like being Queen of the Universe.

  When I’d emptied the first syringe and connected the second and emptied it as well, the moment arrived to remove the needle. I took up an alco-wipe. “What now?”

  “Just pull it out smoothly and quickly and put the alco-wipe down on the spot and hold it down. It won’t bleed for long.”

  I held the alco-wipe in my left hand right next to where the needle entered the vein, ready in an instant to blot any drop of blood that might follow the needle as I withdrew it.

  Damon looked up at me and smiled. “Keep your free hand away from the point of the needle, babe.” It was another quiet warning that his blood was potentially deadly. The needle came away, slipping out of his vein smoothly. I blotted the entry point with an alco-wipe and put pressure on the spot to stop it bleeding. Suddenly a large tear splashed on to the back of Damon’s hand and to my surprise I found I was crying, but I was also grinning like mad. Oh God, it
felt so lovely!

  Thirteen

  Celeste

  Tortilla Brings the Love out in a Man.

  The reality of Damon’s existence and the way he chose to live were very different. He was just so outgoing and expressive and talkative but now that we were living together I started to see him differently. A new Damon I didn’t entirely know began to emerge. Before we’d lived together, sometimes he’d call and cancel a date or make some excuse which meant he wouldn’t see me for a couple of days. This didn’t concern me. I was a pretty private person myself who needed a bit of breathing space and so I thought it was natural enough. I now realised that on these occasions he’d been confined to bed or, at least, at home unable to walk. I now started to see what the bleeding was doing to him; a knee or an ankle would go wrong and I began to realise how much pain he was required to, almost constantly, endure.

  One morning, soon after we’d moved in, I woke up in our lovely, sexy, wonderful bedroom and just lay there for a while watching the light play patterns on the crazy, white-washed, flaking wall. Suddenly I was filled with the too muchness of it all, the joy of everything, and I leapt up and bounced on the bed and grabbed my pillow and bashed Damon on the head. “Wake up, Grumpy. It’s a beautiful day and I love you!”

  He smiled and just lay very still and then I collapsed on him and hugged him and started to smother him with kisses. Suddenly I heard a terrible, involuntary groan. I pulled away from him in alarm, my arms propped on the bed on either side of his shoulders so that his torso was directly under me. He was fighting to hold back the tears, blood running down his chin where he’d bitten his lip, trying not to cry out from my embrace. “Babe, there’s blood on your chin. Don’t lick at it and go and wash now!” was all he said. Through his own pain came this urgent instruction to me.

  Damon had developed a shoulder bleed during the night and was in the most awful pain. I returned from the bathroom where I’d gone to wipe his blood from my chin to find that a drop of his blood must have run down his chin and spotted the white bedspread. It never quite came out, even though I washed it and bleached it a dozen times. Now, I love that old bed cover and the faded brown spot can just be seen where the spread covers my pillow. I must have kissed that spot and cried on it a hundred times.

  We still hadn’t made love. Damon and I were developing our loving relationship before we attempted a sexual relationship. I know Damon was scared, but that he felt the same way; we both wanted something special.

  As part of this development, I started to see Damon as an old man sometimes. In the mornings his arthritis was usually bad, he was stiff and sore and barely able to move even though he didn’t have a bleed. Getting down the stairs from our attic bedroom was hell for him and often just getting to the bathroom to have a pee was a major problem.

  He’d sometimes be pretty grumpy and even short-tempered when the pain was very bad. Sometimes he’d even shout at me, though this was very seldom. Compared with what I was used to this wasn’t exactly earth shattering and he’d always apologise later. I found this strange, because as I had grown older and into my teens at Maison le Guessly, we did a lot of shouting at each other. There was often terrible frustration, particularly between my mother and me, but also with Muzzie too; and sometimes we all genuinely hated each other, but we seldom apologised. Damon would get frustrated with his pain or his inability to do something and I guess I was sometimes a bit over-cheerful. He’d shout at me or tell me to grow up, but he was sorry almost immediately afterwards and always said so.

  He was missing a lot of uni with his bleeds, mostly from an ankle or one of his knees, that had been playing up since childhood. I sensed that when they happened he couldn’t get down from the bedroom and he was too proud to tell me, so he missed a lecture instead. He hated having to pee in a plastic bucket and then have me take it downstairs. Once, when I’d been forced for some reason to go over to Maison le Guessly, I brought one of Daddy’s bed pans, but Damon wouldn’t use it. At least the bucket was a bit macho, I suppose. The bedpan was hospital, a place he’d been a thousand times too often as it was. He didn’t want me as a nurse even though in fact I thought nothing of it. Daddy had gone senile in the months before he’d died and had caused me a great deal more indignity than a silly old plastic bucket. Anyway, there really wasn’t anything Damon couldn’t have asked me to do.

  The upstairs room was both wonderful and awful for him and I suggested we make the front room (the room with all the records) into the bedroom. Damon was genuinely upset. “I’ve had this arthritis all my life. We’ve only got the best bedroom in the world for six months!”

  I learned that everything in Damon’s life was a tradeoff. He could never guarantee anything happening and so he’d learned to use things while and when he could. He knew how I loved that bedroom and the whole house and he wasn’t going to compromise just because he had a bleed or was in a bit of pain. Damon lived with pain like someone learns to live with an awkwardly placed birthmark – he seemed to just make it a part of his life and get on with things.

  Most young people want to leave home. It’s the ultimate fantasy of anyone going through school: to be free to be themselves, be untidy, never cook, stay out as long as they like, have noisy parties and not have to answer to their parents any more. I had always been able to do all of these things so I wanted to leave home to make a home. A place where people could come over for tea and scones and I’d bake an apple pie and we’d listen to records, a house which I’d be proud to share with friends. I just couldn’t cope any longer with Maison le Guessly, it was just too much. I’d finished school. I had no reason to stay at home. I was working part time and had a little bit of money; I was probably making about $120 a week and, for me, that was a lot of money. Damon, too, had a bit of income from Woollahra Electronics and also the Vaucluse locksmith. So we had enough.

  We hadn’t expected to find the cottage or even live together; I mean we were so young and Damon had a nice home. So the cottage came along just when I couldn’t stand being at home any longer and would have had to find a place and run away from Maison le Guessly anyway. But, now, it had happened and we had enough to live on and have friends over for home-cooked meals.

  Ha, ha! Home-cooked meals! Damon couldn’t “boil water” except for two things he could make and I, too, hadn’t any idea about cooking much beyond a fried egg sandwich. I mean, not the foggiest! It was really lucky that Damon liked just about anything I made and, before I learned to cook, our friends put up with some very funny things to eat and joked about being poisoned.

  After a few goes Damon would beg for spaghetti bol-ognese which I’d made well by mistake one night. He also made his only two dishes, a sort of a curry which he said his dad used to make and of which he was pretty proud and Maggi 3 Minute Noodles. He called these “Notorious Noodles” because, when all my skills failed and I was in tears, he’d get up and go into the kitchen and we’d have this for dinner.

  But slowly I got better and I even started to keep a recipe book, writing down those things that hadn’t been a disaster and which we liked. One day, several months after Damon’s death, I found the book and flicked through it, the memories flooding back to me as I remembered each recipe, even the first time I’d made it. Suddenly and quite unexpectedly I came across Damon’s neat handwriting; this is what he’d written:

  Notorious Noodles

  Boil half-full kettle, empty packet of Maggi 3 Minute Noodles in two equal portions into two soup plates and pour half the boiling water into each plate. Stir. Delicious and good in an emergency!

  Damon once, after a particularly awful meal, told me that, when he was very young, they had a maid called Dina who was Spanish and who used to make tortillas for them. He raved about this tortilla. It became sort of our joke: “Good, but not as good as Dina’s tortilla,” he’d say after another go of practically poisoning him.

  Reyes was a Spanish boarder at Maison le Guessly all my life. He was the only male we were able to be near as kid
s and he would sometimes cook a meal on the hotplate in his room and invite us to share it. So I made a reluctant trip back to Maison le Guessly to ask him if he could show me how to cook a tortilla.

  We went shopping together and bought special potatoes and extra virgin olive oil and eggs and bits and pieces of this and that and two beautiful, shiny, deep red Spanish onions and a proper tortilla pan. Then Reyes made me make a tortilla to his instructions right there in his tiny kitchenette on the little green and cream Early Kooka stove. I must say it smelled wonderful and when it was finished it looked like a beautiful yellow moon in a pan.

  That night I took it home to the cottage in Woollahra and at dinner…da-da-dah…I presented it to Damon. We really pigged out and I was so proud when he said it was even better than he ever remembered Dina’s being.

  That was about two months after we’d come to the cottage and that night, after the tortilla, we made love for the first time in the beautiful, big bed with the white quilt. I don’t really remember whether it was marvellous or anything. I think Damon was so preoccupied with the condom staying on that the earth didn’t have time to move much. But, afterwards, we lay in each other’s arms in our own home with the moon coming through the window and it was the happiest single hour I think I’d ever had.

  BOOK THREE

  Friends Gather Round.

  Fourteen

  The Return of the Prodigal Son.

  The owner of the cottage returned, delighted to find his small home spotless and in better condition than when he’d left it, his precious record collection dust-free and intact, the shower rose over the ancient bath shining with coppery brilliance. But for Damon and Celeste it meant a parting. They had nowhere else to go where the rent was sufficiently low for them to be together without the need to share premises with others.

  I was unwilling to help them. I had reluctantly given Damon fifty dollars a week to cover the token rent they paid for the cottage. Now I withdrew even this. Benita and I had been living in a sort of suspension of judgment. We wanted Damon back with us and we worried for his girlfriend, whom we still didn’t know very well. Occasionally, they’d come home for dinner and on these occasions Celeste would seem ill at ease, sitting very straight in her chair and speaking only when spoken to. The portions she took on her fork were very small and she proceeded to chew them too thoroughly to avoid contributing to the conversation around her.