April Fool's Day

by Bryce Courtenay

  “But still I didn’t believe. I’d been told, but it still seemed impossible that Damon would die.”

  * * *

  Celeste had phoned us in London when they’d diagnosed Damon’s heart condition and we booked immediately to return to Australia. I remember working all day and all night with only two hours’ sleep to get the final chapter of Tandia completed. We were on the first flight out in the morning. My publisher kindly sent a car to take us to London Airport. I handed the driver the manila envelope with the last of the pages of the book and asked him to deliver it to my editor on his return to the city.

  Damon was in even worse shape when we returned and I began to perceive that we were beginning to live on borrowed time. I talked to Phil Jones at Prince Henry and he explained that there was no turning back, his heart condition was irreversible and that his heart would continue to enlarge until it became too slow and sluggish to pump, when the end would come.

  Damon still had CMV in his bowel which caused him terrible pain and discomfort. He had infections in both eyes and he made a feeble joke about being able to wear his precious Ray-Bans legitimately in bed. The thrush was much, much worse than it had ever been and he started to develop several small bedsores and the huge bedsore which was to become an open wound, the size of a large man’s fist. The Herpes zoster hadn’t cleared up and now he could barely take even a few steps.

  But he was still required to attend the AIDS Clinic at the Prince of Wales Hospital every fortnight. This was the second last such occasion we attended, just prior to the AIDS Clinic being shifted to Albion Street where it is now. Damon was finally ushered into the doctor’s room. It was a stinking hot, summer day and he was exhausted from the business of getting to the clinic and the long walk in the sun from the parking lot behind the hospital. The long wait tired him even further. To add to all this, there was a new doctor examining him, someone he didn’t know and who was unfamiliar with his case.

  At first the medico seemed pleasant enough. That was until he saw Damon’s shingles. He brought his hands up to his chest and smiled broadly, unable to contain his delight. “God! I’ve never seen anything as good as this! There must be two hundred blisters!” He rose quickly and crossed to a desk and searched through a drawer for a magnifying glass, returning to the examination couch with it. “On the legs and feet, under the sole, that’s very unusual.” He looked up and placed the glass down on the couch and clapped his hands in delight, thrilled at what he had seen.

  “It’s the best case of Herpes zoster I’ve ever seen. We must have a picture at once! I’ll phone the photography department, you must go downstairs…”

  He must have sensed something was wrong behind him for he turned to see Celeste fighting back her tears and her anger. “He’s exhausted. Can’t you see he’s exhausted? He can’t take any more today, doctor!” Celeste was having trouble getting the words out, but now her anger grew greater than her distress for Damon. “He’s not a case of herpes, he’s Damon!” she shouted and then looked fiercely up at the doctor. “No! No you can’t! You can’t take a bloody photograph!”

  Damon’s tired voice cut in. “Let him, babe. What’s the difference?”

  The doctor, surprised at Celeste’s outburst, looked at Damon as though he was seeing him for the first time. He seemed about to apologise, but what came out was, “Are you sure, Damon?” Then he added, as though to explain himself, “These things are very useful for students.”

  Damon lifted his hand weakly, denoting his agreement, and the doctor picked up the phone and made the arrangements. As he was about to terminate the call he added suddenly, “Oh, and take a few shots of the Candida around the inside of the mouth and the lining at the top of his throat, thank you.” He put the phone down and looked up a little sheepishly. “Your oral thrush is pretty spectacular; might as well kill two birds with the one stone, eh?”

  The fortnightly clinics were awful, especially after the move from the hospital to Albion Street, though Damon only attended the Albion Street clinic on one disastrous occasion. It was the fortnight following the photography episode. He’d been in hospital the previous week and he was pretty sick but I think Damon felt that if he didn’t attend the clinic it was a sign that he’d given up, that it was all over. The Albion Street clinic was really depressing, it was filled with people who had AIDS and Damon saw himself reflected in the faces of others. There was a strong sense of being in a space where a lot of people were dying. In Celeste’s words: “It was really yucky! It was really yucky to see Damon in there with them.”

  She tells of the last clinic which was also their first visit to Albion Street.

  “We arrived at Albion Street and Damon had a lot of trouble getting there. It’s a hard place to get to and we couldn’t find parking and it was another hot day and it was agony for him walking. The whole thing was just hard. It was really hard.

  “Once there we waited for an hour and Damon was feeling very sick and there wasn’t a seat for him for part of the time and he was leaning against me and I could hear his heart beating against my breast. Damon’s beautiful heart, that was always pretty big anyway, was getting larger and larger and one day it was going to burst. After another hour we were shown in to the doctor. The doctor clasped his hands together, the forefinger of each hand extended upwards, his elbows resting on the desk, then tapping the tips of the forefingers together he smiled benignly and announced, “I’m sorry, Damon, I can’t see you; they haven’t sent your records over from the Prince of Wales.’

  “The effort just to get there had been so enormous, it had taken – from the time I’d gotten him up and showered to the moment when the doctor said he couldn’t see Damon – nearly six hours of unbelievable effort. Damon simply didn’t have that kind of strength. On the pavement outside, holding his arm as we moved slowly, so terribly slowly, back to the car, I could feel the hot tears running down my cheeks. It was so unfair. Everything was so unfair! The system fucked up and nobody cared. Damon was just a thing you checked up because the system said you must. When the system went wrong, the thing with interesting blisters and spectacular fungus in the mouth and infected eyes with no eyelashes, the thing that shit itself because its bowels were being eaten up and which had a heart that was growing larger and larger and larger, when the system fucked up, that particular thing just wasn’t attended to, in that particular fortnight.

  “’We’re not going back, babe,’ Damon said quietly and then I knew he’d given up; the mighty Damon had spent all his courage, there was no more left.”

  * * *

  But it wasn’t all like this; the last two months brought Lindsay, who not only came every day but often came after work as well to help Celeste and just to be her friend. It also produced Dr Irwin Light.

  Irwin Light is a GP with a mid city practice. He is also a friend with whom I quite often ran, a man of truly gentle nature given to putting on weight, which came from a love of good food and wine and a great weakness of character concerning both. Irwin is crazy about Bob Dylan, of whom he will tolerate no criticism whatsoever, and about most sport, though in particular cricket and rugby, both codes. It is said that on a miserable day at the Sydney Cricket Ground when nobody would dream of turning up to watch a Sheffield Shield game, the lone person you always see on TV sitting in the Members’ is Irwin Light.

  He is also one of the most knowledgeable of the “running” doctors. His advice is to be treasured, for he knows more about feet and knees and running injuries than anyone I’ve met in sports medicine. This is probably because he is a runner himself and, unlike most doctors who treat sport injuries, his advice isn’t predictable. (Rest the injury for at least a month and then come back to running slowly.) Irwin understands that runners are meant to run and that his primary job is to keep them on their feet and on the road.

  Though it should be added that, in the feet department, he sets the worst possible example. He has never been known to wear a pair of matching socks and, with his grey, three-piece sui
t, he wears running shoes to work, which, though well worn, are not the ones he runs in.

  The shoes he runs in must be at least fifteen years old with a world record mileage under their canvas tops. They are soiled and broken on the uppers and his big toes stick out through them. The soles are worn so thin, it isn’t absolutely certain they’re there at all. Irwin’s running shoes are disgusting and have been banned from entering the locker room; they must be left whimpering at the door when he arrives to run with us. One day someone will take a stick to them and put them out of their misery.

  The paradox is that if he were to observe any of his runner patients wearing shoes half as badly in need of replacement, he would deliver a profound lecture on the twenty-seven fragile bones which make up the structure of the human foot and the consequence of pounding them incessantly on a hard city pavement. He would immediately forbid the miscreant to run again until the purchase of the latest pair of high-tech running footwear had been made.

  Perhaps most annoying of all is that, in the ten years I have known him, Irwin Light has never been known to sustain a running injury.

  Damon was now going into hospital for a few days at a time, more as a rest for Celeste than because they could do anything for him. Celeste would always want him back almost immediately he’d gone and we would have to persuade her that, in any sudden crisis, he would come home immediately.

  After the conversation we’d had in hospital when Damon asked me whether he was going to die, he made me promise that, if it should happen, he would do so at home, in his own bed. The hospital had agreed that we keep him at home as much as possible but requested that a doctor be available to monitor his progress at least twice a week. In addition to this, Damon was still having regular bleeds, though now his hands were too unsteady and the veins in his arms and the top of his hands too restricted for him to treat himself. The job was also beyond Celeste or myself and we needed to have someone more skilled who could insert a needle in places unfamiliar to us.

  I asked Irwin if he would be Damon’s doctor, pointing out the inconvenience of him having to make a house call twice-weekly or being called to give Damon a transfusion at almost any time of the day or night. Irwin didn’t hesitate for a moment and told me that he’d consider it an honour to be Damon’s physician. He gave Celeste his personal beeper number which allowed her to reach him at any time wherever he happened to be.

  Irwin knew Damon, though only as his foot doctor, in which capacity Damon had been his patient on and off for several years. Their relationship had started when Damon was a teenager and I’d asked Irwin if he’d examine his feet which had become somewhat malformed from the constant bleeding and the calliper he had been required to wear. Irwin had fitted him with orthotics which had made a tremendous difference and, every few years, Damon would return for a new pair. He knew Damon, perhaps not well, but sufficiently well to like him.

  What I hadn’t realised at the time was that Irwin was working at two jobs. He’d bought an additional practice which specialised in inoculations and business from shipping lines – seamen being sent by their companies when they needed medicals or attention. The downturn in the economy and the concurrent reduction in imports hit soon afterwards and the usual volume of oceangoing cargo ships calling on Australia diminished greatly, leaving Irwin to support the salary of a contracted doctor in his shipping practice who, as a consequence of the shipping downturn, was earning barely sufficient to cover her salary. This meant that Irwin needed to work weekends and two week-nights in an all-night practice at Kings Cross to earn sufficient income to meet his repayments at the bank. All this I heard only recently from another source.

  Irwin made almost daily calls to Damon, both scheduled and unscheduled, even arriving on a Saturday morning after picking up his kids from sport and before, as it turned out, going to his second job. He also came late at night when Damon had a bleed and he proved to be an absolute wizard with a needle. Damon enjoyed and trusted him enormously and would brighten up when he arrived. Irwin was more than a doctor, he became a friend, confidant and counsellor and he did a great deal to add a little comfort to the last two months of Damon’s life. Of all the doctors who featured in Damon’s spectacular medical history, the last one to come into it, Dr Irwin Light, fanatical Bob Dylan fan, sports freak and physician, was to be the one he’d been looking for all his life. Damon loved Irwin most.

  On a run along the coastline from Bronte to Bondi, months after it was all over, Irwin turned to me and out of the blue said, “You know, Bryce, Damon wasn’t just an ordinary young man, he had more heart, more guts, more character and more courage than any patient I’ve ever treated. He never complained, he always had great dignity and he taught me a great deal. As far as I am concerned, he died absolutely covered in glory.”

  Two weeks before Damon died, on the Ides of March, unexpectedly, he suffered a massive fit and was rushed by ambulance to the Prince of Wales hospital in Randwick, the nearest Emergency to the cottage in Bondi. Celeste was with Lindsay when it happened and she remembers, as one so often does, a small detail in a large and traumatic event. It was awkward trying to get the stretcher carrying the unconscious Damon out of the side door of the cottage and along the narrow passage; Damon’s elbow was scraped, not badly, a small flesh wound, though it left a streak of blood on the rough white wall which wasn’t noticed at the time. The elbow was never to heal; his white blood cells were virtually nonexistent and there were no platelets left to bind over the torn flesh.

  Sitting with Damon in the back of the ambulance Celeste, for the first time, began to embrace the possibility of Damon’s death. It wasn’t the fit, he’d fitted before. It was the fact that Damon became conscious while they were on their way to the hospital. He stared at her and Celeste took his hand and, fighting back her tears, said, “Hello, Damon, we’re taking you to the hospital. You’re going to be all right, darling.” Damon continued to stare blankly at her. There was no corresponding squeeze of her hand, no sign of comprehension or recognition. Celeste was filled with a sudden horror. Damon was gone, the person she loved the most in the world didn’t know who she was. That had never happened before; whatever had taken place it had always been the two of them clinging to each other, being there for each other no matter what.

  The next hour in this long day into night is the subject of the opening chapter of this book and the beginning of Damon’s story. We’ve come almost full circle in the life and times of the mighty Damon. Now all that remain are the last of the saffron days.

  The day following Damon’s fit, he was transferred from the Prince of Wales to the Marks Pavilion at Prince Henry to recover and there he spent several days which extended over the weekend into the following week.

  On the Monday evening I was on my way to visit him when I met Rick Osborne in the passageway of Marks Pavilion and he greeted me with the good news that they thought Damon could go home on the Wednesday or Thursday. Then he looked directly at me and took a short breath as though making up his mind. “Got a moment?” He ushered me into one of the visitors’ rooms, but we didn’t sit down. “Bryce, do you know what to do?” he began. I must have looked confused; getting Damon home was no real problem. Rick saw my confusion."I mean, would it help if I came over to your place and talked to you and Benita some time during the week? There are things you are going to have to know.”

  My mind went numb and it must have been a few moments before I collected my thoughts, because he put his arm around my shoulders. “He won’t be back here?

  This is it?” I asked foolishly, my heart starting to pound.

  “You’ve already agreed that no attempt should be made to bring him back when his heart goes next time. Bryce, Damon is going home for the last time.” He spoke as gently as he could and I sensed that he wanted to be the one to tell me. That it was important that it come from a friend.

  Later I was sitting with Damon, quietly holding his hand, knowing that it was soon time for me to go home, not knowing what to do, u
nable to face him, to tell him, when in a quiet voice Damon said, “Dad, it’s time to bring Adam home.”

  There was nothing to say, I could feel the silent tears running down my cheeks and all I could do was squeeze his hand to tell him I understood. “It’s okay, Dad,” Damon said. We sat there for a long time and said nothing. There was nothing more to say. The mighty Damon had come to terms with his sweet, sad life.

  Adam arrived on the Wednesday and Celeste went to the airport to pick him up, whereupon they went directly to see Damon. Both brothers cried a bit, Adam holding the tiny Damon in his arms like a child; they were overjoyed to see each other. Damon was to come home to Bondi the following day and Adam and Celeste made arrangements to arrive early and to get him home before breakfast.

  There was one last incident which occurred on the same day and which I ought to preface by saying how it was atypical of Marks Pavilion. It also emphasised the kind way Rick Osborne had approached me three days earlier.

  As Adam and Celeste sat with Damon, the palliative specialist entered the room. He was a new doctor, the much-loved Roger Cole having accepted an appointment to a South Coast hospital. The new doctor seemed in a bit of a hurry and Celeste knew him only by sight. She introduced Adam as Damon’s brother and the doctor gave him a perfunctory nod then, largely ignoring Damon and Adam, he spoke directly to Celeste. He asked her at length what drugs Damon was on and how he had reacted to them. Celeste, expert by now, gave him the answers. Then he started to describe the death process to her.

  “This is what is going to happen: the patient is going to go through an increasing amount of very bad pain,” he began.

  He went on to talk about cardiomyopathy, explaining that the muscle of the heart enlarges until it is incapable of pushing blood around the body, so that the muscles become slack and cause a great deal of pain. He continued in great detail in front of Damon and Adam, who sat holding his brother’s hand, too shocked and jet-lagged to react. The doctor was so removed from what was happening to the three young people in the room, on an emotional level, that he might as well have been addressing a class of first-year medical students.