“Does Celeste think so?” His voice was tentative.
“Celeste would like very much for you to see a doctor, Damon.”
“She’s very tired you know, Dad. She has to be on her guard all the time because we’re in danger.”
I looked down at the sleeping Celeste. She had her head cupped inside her left arm and she looked very young and vulnerable and beautiful. “You could give her a rest by going into hospital for a few days, just to let them give you a thorough examination. We’re all a bit worried, even Brent. Before he went away, he left the name of a colleague just in case.”
Damon said nothing more that afternoon but the next day, Boxing Day, Celeste called early to say that Damon wanted to see the doctor Brent had recommended at the Prince of Wales hospital, the teaching hospital where he worked. I called the hospital to be told that this doctor was away over the Christmas break and that there was no psychiatrist available to see Damon.
Celeste called a little later to say Damon was becoming severely depressed one moment and losing his temper the next, that his mood swings were getting pretty wild. “I’ve given him a sedative but it doesn’t seem to be helping,” she added.
“We’ll have to get something to calm him down,” I said. “Perhaps Roger Cole? I’ll try to call him at Prince Henry.”
I called and was told that Dr Roger Cole was away on holidays and that they had no phone number. “You mean he’s taking today off. Surely you must have a number where we can reach him?”
“No, Doctor Cole is on holidays, he’s gone down the coast somewhere. We have no authority to call him.” The voice on the other end of the phone sounded final, “In fact we don’t have a number.”
“Please! Don’t hang up,” I pleaded. “Can you put me through to the Marks Pavilion?” The phone clicked immediately, the speaker at the other end anxious to get rid of me. After ringing for what seemed ages, someone answered at the other end.
“Good morning, this is Bryce Courtenay, Damon Courtenay’s father,” I explained, sure that the voice on the other end would know Damon.
“Yes, Mr Courtenay.” The voice was tentative and one I didn’t recognise. It also obviously didn’t know who Damon was.
“You must be new?” I asked.
“Well yes, fairly. We haven’t met.” The nurse gave his name and we introduced ourselves to each other formally over the phone. His name, I seem to recall, was Alex.
“Is there a doctor I can speak to, Alex? Is Phil Jones available?”
“Well no, not really, only interns are on duty today and they’ve already done their round, they won’t be back until this evening. Doctor Jones isn’t rostered for the Christmas break. Doctor Morgan was in an hour ago but he won’t be coming back until evening.”
“Is Rick Osborne on duty?” I asked, knowing he would help if he could.
“No, but hang on, I’ll look at the roster.” I heard the receiver being put down and then shortly afterwards taken up again, “Rick comes on this evening.”
“I have to get hold of a psychiatrist or at least a doctor who can prescribe something for my son Damon, who is having some pretty bad mood swings and could be psychotic.”
The nurse was trying to be nice but I could feel his impatience. “Well, we can’t do anything here, I mean I can’t give him anything unless his palliative specialist sees him. This isn’t a psychiatric ward, you know.”
I sighed, “Yes, I’ve already tried to contact Roger Cole.”
“Oh, you can’t do that, he’s on holidays.”
“Yes, yes, I know,” I said again wearily.
“Well, there’s nothing I can do, Mr Courtenay!”
“Can you put me back to admissions, please?”
I got another lady this time, who was even less helpful than the first, and I was told there was nobody who could see Damon. “It’s the holidays. Boxing Day is always the worst. There’s really no one who can see your son, Mr Courtenay. We aren’t taking any admissions in the Psychiatric Ward over the holidays. Perhaps you should try another hospital.”
Throughout all this Benita had been standing beside me on the phone butting in, showing impatience as people are apt to do in an emergency, making suggestions with the benefit of only hearing half the conversation. When you’re overanxious yourself you get very annoyed at this constant butting in and, more than once, I felt the urge to cup the phone and shout at Benita to go away. Now I came away from the phone thoroughly disenchanted, not knowing what to do next. There was nobody out there the least bit interested in helping us.
“We must call Shirley. John is Professor of Surgery at Prince of Wales. If she talks to him he may be able to pull some strings,” Benita said as I put the phone down.
“What the hell can he do?” I exploded, “He’s a goddamn brain surgeon!”
“He’d know someone to call!” Benita, surprised and upset by my outburst, shouted back.
“Well then you bloody call her!” I stormed out of the room. I’d been on the phone for nearly two hours and all I was getting was a monumental brush-off.
Shirley Ham is a dear family friend and also a physiotherapist who had her own practice in Rose Bay and who had treated Damon privately for most of his life. Damon loved her, in fact we all loved her a great deal. She was divorced from her husband, John, a professor of surgery at the University of New South Wales.
I could hear Benita talking on the phone, explaining in a too-loud voice what had happened and asking Shirley if she would call John to see if he could help.
I heard her put the phone down and call, “Bryce?”
I walked quickly from the bedroom into the bathroom and turned on the tap and started to splash cold water on to my face from the running tap in an attempt to hide my anger and frustration. I knew Benita wasn’t to blame, that she was just as anxious and fraught as I was, but I was close to shouting at her again and the cold water seemed to help. She came into the bathroom. “Shirley’s going to call John Ham.”
I pretended not to hear, splashing more water. “Uh?” I reached for a towel, burying my face in it.
“Shirley’s going to call John Ham. If she can get him he’ll call here. Will you take the call, please?’
“Jesus! What can he do?”
She burst into tears. “I don’t know! But it’s worth a try, isn’t it?”
There didn’t seem to be anything to say. She was right, of course, but I wasn’t about to admit it. An hour or so later, John Ham phoned. He was extremely nice and I explained Damon’s situation and how I’d been trying to contact his palliative specialist, as there didn’t seem to be any psychiatric doctors around.
“It’s the worst time of the year, Bryce,” John Ham explained. “Hospitals are staffed by interns and a psychiatrist, outside a major institution, would be very hard to find. You’re quite right, your son probably needs calming down. Who is Damon’s palliative man?”
I explained that we’d already tried to contact Roger Cole, who was somewhere out of town and the hospital was reluctant, or simply unable, to give us a number to call.
“Leave it to me. I’ll see what I can do.” Just hearing him offer to help had a calming effect on me.
I turned to Benita. “Well, he’s going to try. He seemed to imply that any doctor could be reached in an emergency.”
“Oh, that’s great,” she said, her voice conciliatory.
“I’m sorry, darling. It’s just that all the voices on the other end of the phone don’t seem in the least interested in helping. It’s the bloody holidays and they have to work and it’s giving them the shits! It seems every doctor in the world gets the bloody Christmas holidays off.” To our surprise Roger Cole called within half an hour from somewhere on the South Coast. I apologised for “flushing him out” and he listened carefully as I told him about Damon and then he promised to call back. Which he did in twenty minutes or so.
“I’ve spoken to Doctor Springsteen; she’s a psychiatrist at Prince Henry, rather young it seems and doubling
up on everything else over the holidays. She has to take Casualty this afternoon, but she’ll see Damon if you take him in. But call her first, call her immediately when I hang up. It may be some time before you get through, the hospital’s on skeleton.”
“Thank you, Roger. I can’t tell you what a relief this is.”
Roger Cole cleared his throat, “Bryce, don’t thank me, there may be a problem.”
“Problem?”
“The AIDS set-up isn’t equipped to take a psychiatric patient. They may refuse – the nurses are not trained in psychiatric care. It’s the holidays – they’re short staffed. But I’ve asked Dr Springsteen to admit Damon, she knows they all know him and he has no past history of violence.” He laughed softly, “I can’t even imagine Damon being violent.”
“If they won’t take him, what about the psychiatric ward at the hospital?” I asked.
Roger Cole paused for what seemed like a long time, “Bryce, I don’t know how to say this, but we have difficulty with their staff.”
“Uh? I don’t understand, Roger.”
“Damon’s got AIDS. They won’t admit it openly, but they won’t take anyone with AIDS into their ward.”
“Thank you for telling me, Roger. We’re beginning to learn a lot of things about being unclean!”
“I’m sorry, Bryce. I really am.” His voice was kind and we knew him as a kind, caring man. He cleared his throat. “I don’t know Dr Springsteen, but she seems quite competent. I’m sure she’ll be able to help. I’ve asked her to put Damon into the Marks Pavilion. To admit him simply as an AIDS patient.”
I wrote the name down on the pad next to the phone, memorising it at the same time by calling to mind the singer, Bruce Springsteen.
“Thanks, Roger, for everything, I’m truly grateful.”
“No please, Bryce, understand, it’s not an instruction. I can’t order Dr Springsteen to admit Damon. If she thinks he is likely to be violent or she examines him and she’s not happy…” He didn’t finish the sentence.
“Well anyway, I’m sure things will be all right. I’ve told her what Damon’s medication is, that is, as much as I can remember, and I’ve authorised her to have my file on him sent up from the Marks Pavilion. I’ve also suggested what she might prescribe if he needs calming down.” He paused. “Doctor Helen Springsteen,” he repeated a third time, “call her as soon as you can.”
I called Prince Henry again and asked for Dr Springsteen. I’m sure the phone rang for twenty minutes before a terse voice answered, “Yes!”
“Doctor Springsteen?”
“Yes?”
“My name is Bryce Courtenay. Doctor Roger Cole called you about my son, Damon.”
“Yes?” Again nothing more. I was not prepared to be charitable – another doctor was obviously learning the offhand manners of her profession.
“Will you see him please, doctor?”
At last the voice committed itself to a whole sentence, “I’m the only one on duty today and I have to do several wards as well as Casualty. Do you think it can wait?”
I was surprised. It wasn’t what I’d expected. “You mean until later today?”
“No, until after the Christmas break. He hasn’t shown any violent tendencies, has he?”
“Well no, but he seems to be getting more and more paranoid. We feel he should be in hospital.”
There was a pause at the other end of the phone before she finally answered, “You said he has AIDS? We don’t really have a place in the psychiatric ward.”
I made no mention of the fact that Roger Cole had suggested he be admitted to the Marks Pavilion as an AIDS patient. “Perhaps they’ll take him at the Marks Pavilion?” I suggested, not letting on that Roger Cole had told me about the psychiatric ward at Prince Henry. “I really think someone should see him, examine him. After that we’d prefer him to go into the Marks Pavilion; they know him there.” Then I added, “I really don’t think we can cope much longer, doctor.” This last statement came out as a plea and I hated myself for having to be seen to beg, but I wasn’t going to let her off the hook. “Please don’t make me beg you, doctor,” I said.
“He’s not violent?”
“No, doctor.”
“Bring him to Casualty this afternoon, I’ll try to see him.” She sounded worn out, but I didn’t care, it was a breakthrough; all in all I’d been on the phone for four hours. I wanted Damon examined and then perhaps he’d agree to go on Lithium. Brent Waters had said that once he was on Lithium he’d soon be back to normal.
Lithium, the word sounded like music, like a glis-sando on the piano. Lithium, you could make a pretend sentence out of it. “And then when the heat became unbearable and men became maddened by it, slitting their own throats, Lithium, the soft, cool wind first mentioned by the Roman General Marcus Aurelius in his famous Confessions, would blow over the Sahara from the snow-capped Atlas mountains and cool things down again.” Lithium, judges and professors used it regularly to keep them calm. Lithium would bring my boy back to me again.
Brett arrived home from early morning fishing at The Gap. I’d heard him get up at dawn. He’d caught two large tailor and a nice-sized bream and, when I told him Damon had agreed to go to hospital, he offered to accompany me. I was grateful. Brett has a nice calmness about him and it always seemed to help Damon to have one of his brothers with him.
It was a stinking hot day, oppressively humid from all the rain, and we arrived at Casualty to find the place full of the day-after-Christmas walking wounded. Bandaged heads and puffed-up faces, black eyes, broken noses, cut lips, dislocated shoulders and multiple lacerations on every body part imaginable. The place seemed filled with men holding their heads in their hands, nursing hangovers and featuring broken bits of their bodies. Some were seated beside the wives and children they’d battered while they’d been in a drunken stupor. In one corner, a family of eight was huddled with every member, except the baby, carrying some evidence of having been severely beaten up.
“Christ! The place looks like there’s been a bomb attack somewhere!” I exclaimed to the lady behind the glass partition waiting to take Damon’s particulars.
“Welcome to Boxing Day!” she said in a droll voice. “The rest of the world gets Carols by Candlelight,” she pointed her ballpoint into the room, “we get carnage by daylight!”
I filled in the forms and we were asked to wait. After an hour Damon was getting pretty fidgety. He’d pace up and down with his hands behind his back. Then he’d sit down, but after a minute or so he’d be up again, pacing the length of the Emergency lounge. Finally he sat next to me again. “Dad, this is a trap. Let’s go home.”
I went up to the lady behind the glass panel. “How much longer for Dr Springsteen, ma’am?”
She looked up. There was no recognition that she’d seen me and shared her sardonic humour with me an hour previously. “The doctor’s busy, you’ll just have to wait!” Her response was automatic, she’d said it a thousand times before and I’m not sure she even heard herself pronouncing the words. “The doctor’s busy, you’ll have to wait” was an automatic response. Without a further glance at me she returned to her paperwork.
“Yes, but…I mean we’ve…”
She glanced up, but still there was no change of expression. “We’re very busy, there’s only two doctors, two interns, on duty.” She pronounced the word “interns” with a sniff, showing her disapproval.
“Dr Springsteen is an intern?” I asked, surprised.
She shot a glance up at me, her lips pulled to one side in a disparaging pout, “Well anyway, she’s very young!” Then she resumed her paperwork.
“How long do you think? An hour?”
She sighed heavily, looking up. “There are at least fifteen patients in front of you. Some have been waiting since early this morning.”
I put Damon in the car and we went for a long drive down to La Perouse, while Brett remained behind to keep our place. I pulled the car up beside the monument to the French sea
captain and explorer, La Perouse, who had landed on Australian soil before Captain Cook. “This is where it all began, even before Captain Cook. Just think, if La Perouse had thought Australia was worth having for la belle France we might have all been French, Damon.”
“Mum would have liked that,” Damon said and for a while we talked, until I was finally able to persuade him to return to Emergency to see Dr Springsteen.
We returned an hour or so later and were required to wait another two hours, during which time Damon became very upset and, on three occasions, he attempted to barge into the room where we’d observed Dr Springsteen was seeing patients who’d arrived before us. Brett was able to hold him in his arms, gently, without seeming to harm him, but so that he was unable to move. Each time he’d hold his little brother and laugh, trying to make light of the incident, chiding Damon softly, “Don’t worry, it will soon be our turn, Damon.”
I was grateful for Brett’s calm as he rocked Damon gently in his arms; he seemed so much more in control than I was. It was then that I noticed that the red T-shirt he was wearing was clinging to his body, soaked with sweat from the nervous tension he, too, felt.
Finally, late in the afternoon, Dr Springsteen saw Damon. By this time he was thoroughly overwrought and I was terrified she’d declare him violent and refuse to take him into the Marks Pavilion, the AIDS ward.
I’d packed a set of my pyjamas and some underclothes, toothbrush and paste and my slippers and put them into the boot of the car before we’d picked Damon up at Bondi to take him out to Prince Henry. He’d agreed to see the doctor, but Celeste had called just prior to our leaving to fetch him to say that he now didn’t want to be put into hospital. Obviously, she couldn’t pack an overnight bag without raising his suspicions and so I’d packed one of my own, hoping to persuade him to stay once we’d seen the doctor.
Dr Springsteen was a small, slightly dumpy-looking woman, perhaps in her late twenties, it was difficult to tell, for she wore no make-up and her henna red hair was untidily bobbed. Her legs were solid, pricked with fine red hair, and ended in a pair of leather sandals. I wondered vaguely why natural redheads so often dye quite attractive hair an unattractive henna red. She wore her white coat unbuttoned to show a shapeless, floral cotton dress underneath. In appearance she looked more like one of those young would-be writers you see around the Harold Park Hotel in Glebe than she did a specialist in psychiatry.
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