Owen and Eleanor Make Things Up

by H. M. Bouwman

  I didn’t want to get too excited because I knew the rug could be pulled out from under me again, so I was protecting myself. I’d been gone for about twenty-five days, and the thought of returning to Australia was almost too much to bear.

  The afternoon before I left Singapore, after all the arrangements had been finalised and the others had gone to start packing, I was alone in my room. It was probably the first time that I’d been totally on my own since the accident. I was staring up at the ceiling, allowing the excitement of home to take hold.

  Good Doc came in and explained what was going to happen and that I was going to be okay. The doctors back in Australia would take over all my care; I was going to be in good hands – that sort of fluffy stuff.

  I thanked him, and we went through the paperwork and the discharge process before he eventually left.

  A couple of hours later, Bad Doc walked in. He sat down on the edge of the bed. I immediately thought, Oh my God, this is weird; this is completely out of character…

  He spoke in broken English, whereas Good Doc was fluent, and he had to concentrate on what he was saying. We talked about how I felt, and I was thinking, I feel great, I’m going to Australia, I’m going to be walking in a week, even though I’d had that steely look from him before.

  He stared at the floor, then he began studying the reports, turning the pages over and over – maybe he was signing off on them – while I waited uneasily for him to say something. He turned and looked at me with that hard glare, and he put his hand on my chest. I looked back at him, thinking, This is getting even weirder.

  ‘You must pray,’ he said.

  What?!

  He stared at me and his eyes changed from that steely glare to a look of sorrow, as if, for the first time, he couldn’t say what he really wanted to say. I could see in his eyes that something had affected him, and he kept saying to me, ‘You must pray. That is your only way. You must pray.’

  I was trying to register what he was saying, but all I could think was, What the fuck? What do you mean?

  He stayed by my side, nodding his head with this sad look that said, Do you understand? but not actually speaking. He couldn’t say, ‘Only God can save you. Only prayer can make you walk again.’

  He waited for me to nod back in agreement, to show that I understood.

  I looked at this expression and thought, This is really, really bad.

  I knew there and then that my mind had flipped – I realised this could be it. Even though I had known my injury was bad right from the moment it happened, I still harboured a lot of hope that I was going back to an Australian hospital; they’d make me right.

  Bad Doc sat with me for about ten minutes. This was the guy I’d looked to for the real guts of where I was at, and now he was almost throwing his hands in the air. Being an atheist, there was no way I was going to pray. If this was all the advice the doctor had to offer, I must be fucked.

  Then he just got up and left.

  Oh shit.

  I lay there alone, trying to process it all, thinking about how my life was going to change and what it would actually mean to be paralysed for the rest of my life: Aimee, Bowie, me, surfing, work. The thought had been there all along, but it had been masked until I couldn’t avoid it anymore.

  Whenever the physios had come in and assessed me, they kept talking about ‘spinal shock’ – after an injury to the spinal cord, the body shuts everything down for a while, but gradually movement and sensations come back ‘on line’ as the initial shock passes. But when I reflected on Bad Doc’s prayer prescription, it felt like the physios had been passing the buck down the line, saying, ‘You might be okay, but we’re just focussing on this treatment now,’ or ‘We’re working on this approach.’ Whatever happened down the track was for someone else to deal with. You’re constantly being given this hope, even when it’s not there. ‘Three months spinal shock … six months spinal shock … twelve months … we still don’t know.’

  Well, guess what? When you’re injured, you know.

  I reckon it’s how your body reacts to the trauma. You get sold this hope that things could get better down the track, but I react better to a more clinical diagnosis. Bad Doc just couldn’t bring himself to say, ‘You’re fucked. Your cord’s been damaged way too much, and you can expect not to walk anymore.’

  And that was enough. I thought, If he can’t say it, I must be fucked. I didn’t tell anybody about the encounter I’d just had, because everybody was even more hopeful than I had been. They weren’t living it, so they had no idea what it felt like, to wake up every day believing it had all been a bad dream only to realise that you were still paralysed.

  The people around me were convinced that they had to stay positive, but I was thinking differently. You can be positive, or you can be pessimistic, but there’s something in the middle – realism. I’ve always been that way inclined. I knew the score, but I was trying to ‘fake it till I make it’. I’ve never cried over spilt milk, never played the victim card, but I had no idea how a person with a spinal cord injury functioned. I’d never even noticed people in wheelchairs before, let alone been around them. I had a million things going through my head, but nothing could stick because there was too much to take in.

  I was on my own for about an hour, turning all this over in my head, and then Sparkesy came back. We talked about this and that, but I was fully aware that he’d left the holiday and had taken a further few weeks off to be with us in Singapore. I couldn’t be more appreciative. I knew I needed to thank him, and this was the time to do it, even though my head was all over the joint from my strange encounter with Bad Doc.

  I’m not an emotional guy, but I had to tell Sparkesy that I was thankful for everything he’d done; it meant so much. He’d been like my guardian angel looking over me. My family was in Singapore, but they were a mess – he was the medium between everyone, keeping them balanced. I rarely cry, but I was a blubbering mess, and he started welling up too. It didn’t last long, but at least I felt a bit better for saying thank you. He’d been on the ride from the beginning, even though he was asleep when it happened, that lazy bugger Captain Snooze.

  Everything was confirmed, and it was finally official: I was leaving.

  The flight was scheduled for early morning, so everyone had gone back to the apartment to get some sleep. It was quiet in my room and I was almost drifting off when suddenly the Coke can nurse appeared at the door peering in. It was the first time we’d been alone together. I was really freaking out – this was her moment. The evil nurse was going to take me. How could this be? I was so close to escaping …

  I slept with one eye open for most of the night. There was no-one else there until a couple of other nurses came on shift in the early hours of the morning. I thought, I’m saved. They’d come in to dress me for the flight home, and I was sitting there alone after they left when the evil Coke can lady returned. This time she entered the room. She came closer and closer. My eyes were getting bigger and bigger. Shit! This is really going to happen now …

  I don’t know what I thought she was going to do to me, but she jumped on my bed and gave me the biggest hug anyone had ever given me. She was teary, and I welled up too. She wouldn’t let go. I kept saying, ‘Oh my God, I thought you were an evil Coke can nurse …’

  It wouldn’t have made much sense because I was blubbering. I went to pieces.

  She gave me one last big hug, a kiss on the cheek, and then left without saying a word. The other staff wheeled me out into the corridor, where the nurses on duty were lined up along the corridor, clapping and cheering. All those faces I had got used to over the past few weeks were there to see me off. It was the first time I’d been out of the room, and I looked around, thinking, What’s going on? I’m getting cheered out of hospital. This is crazy!

  I’m guessing that the ICU department of the hospital in this part of the world sees a lot of people who don’t make it through, so it’s their way of showing happiness when someone has re
covered enough to be released. They got me into the ambulance, out of the hospital and on my way to the airport.

  I was finally heading home.

  14

  On home shores

  For the flight back to Australia, the airline had to remove several rows of seats to fit my bed on the plane, then curtain me off. I hadn’t thought about flying very much; I was just focussed on leaving Singapore. I started to feel more and more apprehensive when it sunk in that it was a normal commercial flight. I had my family with me, but what about the other two hundred people? I didn’t want to hold them up or cause any complications.

  Being on the plane would be the first time I’d been out of the hospital’s intensive care unit since my accident. What if something went wrong during the flight? There was a doctor who flew with us in case of an emergency, and he gave me a sleeping tablet (not Stilnox!), which helped, so once the plane took off I slept through most of the flight. I don’t remember much after getting on, other than Aimee checking on me a few times.

  I came to just as we landed in Australia, and I was so relieved – I still had the mindset that I would be rolled into this magical hospital where an amazing team would fix me, BANG, straightaway. But those moments with Bad Doc were still in the back of my head.

  Between Aimee and the team in Singapore, and David in Australia, my family had asked around to find out who the best spinal doctors were, but they soon discovered that there were only two spinal wards in New South Wales, both in Sydney. One was at the Royal North Shore Hospital, which covers the northern half of the state, while the other was at the Prince of Wales Hospital, which covers the southern half. On reflection, Prince of Wales might have been a bit easier to go to, seeing as Kiama is south of Sydney, but the decision was made to send me to the Royal North Shore.

  But first, I had to get off the plane.

  We touched down and I waited for everyone to get off, as you would expect. Aimee came to see me and said, ‘We’re going straight to the hospital, we’ll see you there. It shouldn’t be too long; there’s an ambulance waiting for you on the tarmac.’

  She and the others got off, and I was on my own with the doctor when the airport staff came to get me. I was waiting to be put into an ambulance on the tarmac, but they struggled to get me off the plane.

  I actually don’t remember how they got me into the plane back in Singapore, because it’s a narrow doorway, but they must have used a smaller gurney. I suppose this kind of medevac doesn’t happen very often – thankfully – but with the size of the bed and all the equipment I was hooked up to, they couldn’t get me out. As they tried different angles and moved me around, I remembered the moment I’d arrived in Padang and looked at the plane from the car park. I thought to myself, What is it with airports? How can they not know what to do? After everything I’ve been through, we’re finally in Australia and these guys can’t get me off the fucking plane and onto the tarmac.

  They transferred me onto a smaller stretcher in the end and carried me off, but it seemed to take well over an hour before they reached that decision. I didn’t speak out, but in my head, I was thinking, Oh no. Just another fucking thing. Everyone went through immigration, but I didn’t have to deal with any of that. I don’t know whether someone took my papers or whether it was all prearranged, but I didn’t see any airport officials because the ambulance headed straight to the hospital. Sparkesy finally went home. He’d been with me for so many weeks, which must have been a tough ride. He needed to rest and get his own business back in order.

  I dozed off again during the ambulance drive but was fully awake by the time I entered admissions at Royal North Shore. I had already been in hospital for a month, paralysed with a broken neck, but the staff were doing the whole evaluation process all over again: ‘Can you feel this? What about here?’

  I felt calmer than I did when I was admitted in Singapore, since everyone spoke English, but I thought, Is this necessary? Come on, there’s a bed ready for me upstairs. If we need to go through this, can we just do it up there? I’ve got everyone waiting for me. I was really hoping that Bowie was going to be there as well, and I was getting more and more frustrated – the delays were killing me.

  I didn’t say anything, though, and I sat there for another hour and a half.

  Meanwhile, Aimee was up on the ward, along with Mum and her husband, Tim; Dad; and David and Kirsty, down from Newcastle – all of my immediate family besides my brother and sister, who were either interstate or overseas.

  I finally got the call that it was time to go. As I was being wheeled through the hospital, I had all these ideas about how an Australian hospital was going to be a posh, modern place, but I found myself staring up at holes in the ceiling. The plaster was falling off the walls, the wallpaper was peeling, and the paint was flaking. This can’t be the right place. As I was wheeled further into the hospital, I found it cold, dark and really old. I kept thinking, There must be some kind of mistake.

  We came out of the elevators and followed the corridor around the corner, where it opened into a big waiting room full of old lounges and tables with chairs. There was a massive blank wall at one end, which was probably seven by four metres, with a really small telly sitting in the middle of it. I was giggling to myself as I was wheeled in – it looked so tiny.

  I realised that everyone was gathered there. I had a neck brace on and could only look up and a bit to the periphery, but I could sense who was there, and there was no Bowie.

  Then I heard Kirsty yelling, ‘Dazzzzaaaa!’ which is how she’d normally greet me.

  This was the first time those guys had seen me, and they didn’t move as I was wheeled past to my room. I put my arm up to say ‘hi’ with a fist, and I thought, I can hold my arm up! It actually stayed up!

  I got into my new room, the nurses set me up, and they allowed my family to come in. I asked Aimee straightaway, ‘Where’s Bowie?’

  She said, ‘Look, we didn’t bring her because it’s so late. She’s at an apartment in Chatswood that David organised with Annie [my dad’s wife]. I’ll be camped out there to be close to the hospital.’

  This was good news because Kiama is a solid two and a half hours away from the hospital. The other half of my family, David and Kirsty in Newcastle and my mum up on the Central Coast, also had a similarly long drive to get here. The travel insurance company continued to be a great help, paying a portion of the apartment.

  Once I knew where Bowie was, I started looking around the room. There were four beds, and it felt big now that I had got used to being by myself in my own room. The other bays were curtained off, and I was next to the window. It had an old aluminium frame, and I noticed that it had been patched up with old masking tape, half of it ripped off. Something must have happened to the ceiling – the panels had been removed and never replaced. Everything seemed to be held together with tape. I thought, What the …?

  I stopped thinking about my surroundings and focussed back on my family. Everyone wanted to talk to me at once, and I was happy to see them all. Those who hadn’t seen me yet were super excited. It’s important to point out that I wasn’t sick. So even though I was talking softly and struggling, I was still talking. I didn’t feel ill or anything; I just couldn’t move.

  There may have been another three patients in the room. Although I couldn’t see beyond the curtains, I was hyper aware of them, and I kept saying, ‘Guys, keep it down. There’re other people in here.’

  David had asked around and found out that the best neurosurgeon in the country was at North Shore, but because I had already been operated on there was nothing for him to do once he had reviewed the X-rays. From then on it was all about recovery, and for that I had a separate rehabilitation doctor.

  He came to see me for the first time while my family was there, soon after I had arrived. He was short, probably in his late fifties, with glasses and a full head of hair. As he walked in I could see he was a bit startled to find me lying in bed, surrounded by everyone, but he quickly too
k it in his stride. Without saying a word, he grabbed the notes from the foot of my bed, looked through my details and checked my wristband to make sure I was who I was supposed to be. The whole room went silent, anticipating some sort of announcement.

  I had already prepared myself for the possibility that things weren’t going to get better. I’d spent quite a lot of time processing it all, and I was in relatively good spirits. But now I had everyone else surrounding me in a semicircle, and they had smiles on their faces, as if they were expecting to hear some good news.

  The doctor came right out with it: ‘Right, so you’ve broken your neck here.’ He held up the X-ray images of my neck. ‘You’ve damaged your spinal cord extensively, part of your vertebrae dislodged and crushed the cord when it dislocated,’ and without taking a breath he went on, ‘so forget about your legs. You’re never walking again.’

  Short, sharp and cold.

  I looked at him with a manufactured smile. Righto. That’s confirmation. I already knew it, and now I really know it. But the energy in the room collapsed. The whole mood changed.

  I took it with a, Thank fuck – somebody’s told me the full story. I no longer had to read between the lines, like when Bad Doc had told me to pray.

  But nobody else in the room was as prepared for it as I was. Was that a bad thing, not having to explain how I saw things? I don’t know. I was halfway there in terms of the diagnosis, whereas everyone else was thinking it was going to be a bit of hard work, but that it wouldn’t take long until I was back on my feet. I think the spasms I was having in Singapore played into it. My family who were there had seen my body move in ways I wasn’t supposed to be able to move, but they hadn’t fully understood why it had happened. To them, it was a glimmer of hope.