Peeling the Onion

by Wendy Orr

  'You're a wicked old woman!' says Mrs Hogan, as the affronted back disappears.

  'This is war,' claims Ruby, 'and it's the only weapon we've got.'

  A guy in a St Pat's blazer is heading towards my bed; I didn't think I knew anyone there except Hayden. This is his friend Mark. He's brought me a big box of chocolates and the news that Hayden's been wagging school all week.

  He's really cut up about this,' Mark says, and I go through my lines again: it wasn't Hayden's fault; there wasn't anything he could have done.

  'That's what I've been telling him—he says the other guy slowed down at the Give Way sign, as if he was going to stop, and then speeded up when you got there.'

  That's as far as I can remember—the car, fast and white in a cloud of dust, swooping up the road on our left, Hayden braking, then—'It's okay, he's seen us'—and then the terror. Suddenly I'm chilled and trembly. 'It was as if he was trying to trick us! There was no way Hayden could have worked that out—tell him to stop feeling guilty.'

  'I'll try. But it's not easy . . . you know he's crazy about you?'

  'Really?' So it wasn't just the excitement of the tournament!

  He grins. 'Let's say he's mentioned you a few times. And I heard all about Melbourne—he said you cleaned up.'

  'I'm not so good at kata—that's the formal routine—a bit slow and boring. But I went pretty well in the fighting.'

  'He'll have to watch it when you get out of here.'

  This is the best present I've had so far: something to look forward to.

  Hospital time is different from real time; there are days and nights, visitors and darkness, toast for breakfast and salad for lunch, but the only real marker is tablet time. Every four hours the white pills come. I don't want to know what they are; I don't care that I don't believe in drugs—I take them and the cycle begins: swallow, wait and anticipate . . . pain deadened just enough for me to start remembering who I am and catch the stray thoughts that wander into my head . . . then pain nagging, attention-seeking . . . and pain victorious again, re-energised for an endless fourth hour, as long as a month of maths, before the time's up and the tablet nurse can come around again.

  If days only last for four hours, no wonder I've been here for so long. A month, maybe two. Caroline tells me they've made it through the first week of Year 12, but I think she's counted wrong. School was going to start the day after the tournament, and that was infinitely more than a week ago.

  Ward round again, and Mr Osman stops at my bed.

  'Whiplash should have healed by now. We'll do a CT scan to double check.'

  I'm so surprised at God speaking directly to me that he's nearly out of the room before I ask what a CT scan is.

  Like a better X-ray. It will give a clear picture of my vertebrae.

  'So you think I have broken my neck?'

  'It's probably better news if you have,' he explains breezily. 'This much pain from whiplash could mean long-term problems, but if it's a broken bone it will heal up quite quickly.'

  One o'clock comes, and the X-ray porter with it. He's a fat, balding man of sixty, but so gentle as he helps me into a wheelchair, down halls and lifts, and finally onto a narrow bed at the mouth of a gleaming metal tunnel, that I'm ready to fall in love with him.

  In the womb of the scanner I lie very still. Lights flash and spin, the machine whirrs, and I do my karate meditation until I fall asleep.

  'I've never heard of that before,' the porter says. 'No one ever goes to sleep in there!'

  I sleep again till Alex arrives with the good news of the scan. He looks as if he's going to cry as he tries to convince us both that a hangman's fracture, an unstable fractured C2, a broken neck, is something to celebrate. He explains the pictures; I understand nothing except the white line of destruction across the ring of bone.

  'So why aren't I paralysed?'

  'Because it was the bone that snapped; not the spinal cord. If it had been the cord, you wouldn't have been worrying about paralysis ...'

  That's a relief.

  '... you'd be dead.'

  He locks me into a strong metal frame to hold my heavy head. 'You can take it off in bed,' he says. 'But if you want to roll over you must have two nurses. For medico-legal reasons.'

  What the hell are medico-legal reasons? Does he mean in case I die? Does it even matter if I die, or just if my parents sue?

  Jenny rushes in; stops and turns pale at the sight of my scaffolded neck. Every day I've been telling her that I'll be better soon; back at school in a couple of weeks—as if the more I repeated it, the faster it would come true. But not today. This isn't what she expected to see—and for a moment Jenny, sunny, effervescent, ever-optimistic Jenny, stares at me and can't speak.

  'They made a mistake—I broke my neck after all.'

  Jenny begins to cry. And I think that maybe this is what best friends are for, not to be brave for you, but to tell you this is real, and it stinks.

  But Jenny is Jenny. She stops herself quickly and is busy trying to think of all the reasons why life is better with a broken neck, when Mum arrives. Jenny turns to her and begins again: the frame's not so bad, is it, once you get used to it, and she thought that people died of a broken neck, and isn't Anna lucky—aren't we all lucky—that she didn't.

  If Jenny had turned pale, Mum turns white and actually staggers once before dropping into the armchair by my bed.

  'What do you mean, "broke her neck" ? You've got whiplash, that's all; that's what the doctor said: whiplash!’

  'They changed their minds.'

  Jenny tennis-watches, from me to Mum and back again, and quickly decides it's time to leave.

  'How could they not have known?' Mum demands, her voice rising, accent thickening. 'All this time! And then they don't even bother to ring me—just leave you here alone with it!'

  And suddenly I can't be bothered with the crap about it being good news, better than whiplash and so on. The brave front is washed away in a tidal wave of rage and despair—my whole body knows this is the worst news it's ever heard. 'It's so unfair! Why did all this happen to me—and the man who hit us didn't get anything? Why couldn't he have died instead of me?'

  I hear the words as they escape, sharp as flying glass; cutting away the last of the colour in Mum's face. She rubs away tears with the back of her hand. 'Jenny's right,' she says at last. 'We're so lucky you didn't. No matter what happens—I'm so glad to have my daughter.'

  'Bollocks!'

  It's the middle of the night. The voice is clear and distinct, not Ruby's or Mrs Hogan's. 'Bollocks!'

  I've gone mad instead of dead.

  I will myself back to sleep.

  That's the end to lounging in bed propped on pillows; for the next six weeks I'll either be securely locked in my frame or lying straight and flat on a board-hard bed.

  Lying flat is being trapped like a rabbit in a snare. Does the rabbit know it's going to die? Does it thrash legs and ears in its last desperate fight against immobility and death? I'll die if I fight. It's the same thing.

  In my frame I'm freer. I fight the exhaustion as long as I can, sitting up in my cage till the pain makes me beg for mercy and rest. It's still the first full day, though; I have to give in right after lunch, and am nearly asleep when I hear Ruby say, 'Go on—she'll want to see you.'

  Hayden. Wagging again. The grapevine told him this morning; he'd been sure it was wrong, a crazy grape of a lie, but hadn't been able to rest till he knew.

  'It doesn't hurt more because I know it's broken—and the spasms are way better with the frame on.'

  Maybe it wasn't the right moment to admit to muscle spasms. He slumps into the chair beside me, where I can't see him.

  'You won't be able to do your black belt,' he says, hiding his face on the sheet; on my chest. 'I won't do my grading either.'

  A flood of emotion surprises me, and I stroke his hair. He has thick, brown, wavy hair, very nice to touch.

  'If you don't do it either,' I say, 'that ba
stard's beaten us. There'll be another grading in eight months—get your last brown belt stripe now, and we'll do our black belts together.' The feel of his breathing, warm against my breast, is melting me with tenderness.

  'I want to kill him,' Hayden says. His voice is shaking and if I could see his eyes there would be tears. 'I keep on dreaming about it; I'm so afraid that if I see him I'll do it.'

  He moves his face against the sheet, drying his eyes and rubbing against my nipple on the way. He flushes and jerks away from the bed. 'Anna, I didn't mean—'

  'I know,' I say, and wish he'd kiss me.

  'How come you didn't die?' Matt asks.

  'Just lucky, I guess.'

  'Will you die now?'

  'Matthew!' groans Dad.

  'Not if I can help it!'

  'If you died, Bronny would be the oldest. Would I still be the youngest?'

  There are two Annas. One joins in the chatter and surface of daily life, of being a friend, a daughter, a patient; this Anna knows that if you're strong and cheerful and fight fair you win the game and live happily ever after. That's the rule and she plays by the rule because that's the only way she knows how to fight—if you drop the rules the game is chaos, a street fight where you don't know who your opponents are.

  The other Anna has no shape or role. She is an amorphous blob who just is. She is a black hole of pain and misery and terror, sucking the rays of friendship and politeness into oblivion. She floats above and around and behind the cheerful Anna, threatening to obliterate and swallow her down into that nothingness. And sometimes I think that she's the real me, but that can't be true, I won't let her, I've been the first Anna for so long, it's the only way I know how to be me.

  It's morning tea time. The anaesthetist, masked and gowned, runs into my room. 'Anna,' she cries, 'I just heard! Thank God you didn't have a general anaesthetic!'

  She runs out again.

  'Why?' I ask Tablet Sister.

  'They have to move your head a bit for a general—I guess it could have damaged the cord.'

  Three times lucky. Three times my fragile spinal cord, no longer protected by its ring of bone, could have snapped and didn't.

  When the car hit and my neck jerked so hard it broke.

  When I screamed and stopped my rescuers from pulling me out of the car.

  And then when I had the arm block instead of a general anaesthetic.

  I hate my frame and bedpans and nurses washing me and everything about being in hospital. But they're better than the alternative.

  CHAPTER 3

  Pain is an animal, a shark, a crocodile, devouring me, crunching ravaged mouthfuls of my flesh. Pain is a noise, a siren's scream exploding through my body.

  Mum wants to take some time off so she can be home with me when I leave here. (If I leave; the time has stretched so long already that sometimes I can't imagine living anywhere except this bed between Ruby and Mrs Hogan.) She's nearly crying as she tells me that Chris, who does weekends and the odd extra days, has just taken a full-time job in a pharmacy.

  'She'll be able to give you things for sick plants.' (A dumb joke—but Mum standing by my bed sobbing is more than I can take.)

  'I'll just close it.'

  'Don't be silly, Mum! You've only just got it going—you can't close it now! I'll be okay on my own.'

  'You won't,' says Dad. 'Not for a while. But with a million unemployed across the country, we should be able to find someone.'

  'Do you want to see a social worker?' Alex asks. 'You've had a considerable trauma—it might be useful to talk to someone.'

  But I can't see the point—pain goes away faster if you ignore it; no point sitting around thinking about it.

  'It still mightn't be a bad idea,' Mum says when I tell her. 'You've had an emotional shock too, not just physical.'

  'I may have broken bones, Mum, but there's nothing wrong with my mind!'

  Ruby's been waiting all day for 'Sun and Surf'. By eight o'clock I realise she's not joking. It really is her favourite program.

  The plot's fairly basic: Bronzed Hunk meets Big Boobs. One tries to drown, the other rescues. A bit of lust in the sand, action shots of surf and sea, boobs and rippling pecs everywhere.

  Ruby is old enough to be the oldest hunk's grandmother—but she's obviously not thinking about knitting booties now.

  'You know the worst thing about getting old?' she asks, when the last romantic clinch has faded from the screen and our lights are out. 'It's knowing that you've missed your chance at all those things you've never done.'

  'You could always buy boobs like hers.'

  'Maybe I'll do that. Tell the doctor to slip them on when he's doing the new hip.'

  'And if you fall over,' Mrs Hogan points out, 'you'll bounce right back without hurting yourself.'

  Ruby laughs. 'I still reckon I've missed my chances for rolling around on a beach with a handsome bloke.'

  'You never know . . . there's life in the old girl yet. There might be someone out there waiting to meet you.'

  'And little piggies might fly. Face it, Iris, I'm not going to meet Sean Connery now . . . Are you paying attention, young Anna? You've got that lovely boy; you get out of here and do whatever you want to. No point in lying in a lonely bed in sixty years time, wondering what it would have been like.'

  'Stop corrupting the poor girl! You go to sleep, Anna, and don't listen to us wicked old women . . . Tell you what, Ruby, I'll lend you my husband.'

  'Does he look like Sean Connery?'

  'Close your eyes and you'd never know the difference.'

  Last summer Caroline, Jenny and I deep-and-meaningfulled for most of one long night, wondering about everyone we know—who's still a virgin and who's not. Most of our friends are, we're pretty sure. Unfortunately, since none of us had a boyfriend at the moment, we couldn't decide on the really crucial question: which of the three of us would be first? But I never thought I'd be having a slumber party with eighty-year-olds and talking about the same thing.

  It's not exactly a nightmare; there are no pictures, no story. Only feeling.

  I'm sinking in woolly blackness, thick, choking blackness. I want to claw my way out but can't move, want to scream but don't know how. A strangled squeak. Another and another. Not loud enough to wake my roommates or bring scurrying nurses—but, finally, enough to wake me.

  I'm alive, I'm okay. But with the choking terror still stuck fast in my throat and my heart pounding so fast and hard it hurts, the blackness is more real than my bed.

  Student nurse Fiona is back.

  'You know how you had your accident on the corner of Woolshed Road and the highway?'

  I know.

  'We live down Woolshed Road, and people were ringing my mum all the next day, because they heard a girl had been hurt, and they thought it was me!'

  'Wasn't it lucky it was me.'

  I picture all those worried-about-Fiona people, queuing for a telephone, overcome with joy because thank God, it was only Anna Duncan. Fiona, lucky Fiona, was still bouncy and healthy and on the right side of a hospital bed.

  Now she's telling me about the man who hit us. She uses his name, Trevor Jones—I hadn't thought of him as a person with a name like anyone else—and suddenly I'm swamped by shock, drowning in a flood of pure, burning hatred.

  Fiona, with the sensitivity of a bulldozer in a rainforest, chatters on. He's her brother's best mate, a really good bloke.

  That's supposed to make me feel better? But the waves of hate are still crashing over me—if I open my mouth, I'll choke.

  'He's really upset, couldn't even drive for a couple of days afterwards.'

  'I couldn't either!'

  She gives me a funny look and wanders off.

  Jenny of course has told her mum who's told her best friend who happens to be a faith healer and has turned up here to heal me. Would I mind if she prays for me?

  How do I say no? She sits beside me, her hand on mine. She asks the Virgin Mary, Jesus and all 'my loved ones who
have gone before' to intervene for me, and begins to pray. This is so embarrassing, what if someone else comes in? It's a long prayer, detailing the parts of my body that need healing, all the way down to corpuscles and capillaries. Her voice is gentle and deep, hypnotic, maybe—and in spite of myself I'm dropping into a warm sea of peace, floating on a vast lap of blue; strong arms cradle me lovingly, rock me tenderly. The peace seeps through my bones and blood, melting pain, healing hurt, dissolving muscles and will so deeply I can barely move my lips to thank her at the final Amen. Lying still and quiet, my eyes brimming with tears, my soul overflows with the exquisite certainty that I'll be well soon, quickly and completely.

  Half the class have come with Jenny and Caroline tonight: a swarm of friends—a blur of faces, a hum of voices. They'd wanted to surprise me, but I surprise them instead, and the sight of me quiets them in a way teachers would die for.

  My head aches as I try to follow the ball of conversation; Chris to Caroline, Josh to Emma, Thula to Brad, Caroline back to Mia. Only Jenny sits quietly, watching me, deflecting answers as if she sees that I can't snatch the words as they flit through the air, but it's more than that, the noise is building inside my brain—I can't tell who's speaking; the words are garbled like an untuned channel.

  Busy Butt bustles in. Two visitors at a time, she says. A couple of you stay, the rest out to the hall, wait your turn or come back another day.

  I groan with the rest, make faces behind her departing wobbly bum, and silently thank God for rules.

  Jenny and Caroline stay; the others disappear. They'll come back another day in pairs, they say.

  I don't mention to anyone that I had trouble understanding the conversation. Not Jenny or Caroline, or my mum or the doctor. It doesn't seem important. And at the back of my mind, I think that if it is important, I don't want to know.

  Six weeks in this frame, Osman said, and four more in a foam collar, add a couple of months to get back into training after that . . . no matter how hard I work, I'm not going to make the state team this year. Winning one tournament doesn't take the place of the trials. I'll never be the under-eighteen title holder myself. Never . . . impossible . . . too late—how can a dream be killed like that? Glowing within reach one minute, ripped out of me and out of sight the next.