by Wendy Orr
Hayden's standing back, looking stiff and unnatural. 'You want to go for coffee?'
Shouldn't my heart lurch at the sound of his voice? Shouldn't I want him to hold me tight against him till the cold lump of ice inside has melted and I'm me again?
'Are you going to tell me what I've done?' he asks, starting the car, 'or you going on with this silent treatment?' Not tender, not angry, just matter of fact.
Can't you see there's nothing in me to say? Misery seeps through me like black tears, like the radioactive dye, through bones and hair and soul. When the car stops my hand is on the doorhandle, but I can't remember what I'm supposed to do with it. Hayden says something—teasing? teaching?—the words are blurred as jelly on a hot day. Then the metal latch reminds my hand what to do, my legs remember how to get out, how to walk into the cafe, and my body follows. Going out with my boyfriend. I dig up a smile, and paste it on my face.
'I know you've got problems,' Hayden is saying, 'do I know you've got problems! But you're not the only one with feelings.'
We're back at the house, he's leaving and I should call him back, if I can just explain everything will be okay.
But the swirling fog of my brain is whirling too hard and too black, wiping away caring, wiping away sorry, and when it's wiped the blackboard clean I see the words written and know that Hayden is better off without me because my life has already ended. And Luke—why did I kiss Luke? Don't want to think about it, it's too hard, too much; I can't understand anything any more except that there's no way out.
I say I'm asleep when Hayden phones, tell Jenny I can't talk, tell Luke I'm going straight in to study when he drives me home from school.
There's a letter from the insurance people on my father's desk. The words leap out at me: permanently impaired.
Which word is worse, permanent or impaired?
Impaired's an ugly word. Worse than handicapped. Disabled. Invalid.
Am I disabled?
How could I be? I'm still the same person—just can't do a few things—like walk much, or stand up for more than a minute, or sit for too long, or . . .
When do you stop being normal and turn into a handicapped person?
You'd have to know it if you were disabled. Wouldn't you?
'Invalid' is a funny word. You say it one way it means a sick person. 'Enfeebled,' says the dictionary, 'or disabled by illness or injury.'
Say it another way and it means not true. Not valid. Worthless.
Why didn't my neck go back that extra fraction of a millimetre? Why the freak chance that stopped it just short of snapping the cord? It would have been so much simpler.
Everyone would have been sad, but they'd have got over it. Matt wouldn't be such a ratbag. Bronny wouldn't be such a hypochondriac. Mum wouldn't have an ulcer and Dad would be his normal placid self; Jenny and Caroline would still be friends. Hayden might feel guilty, but there'd be nothing to remind him all the time; he'd be okay by now too. Luke would have found a decent job. They'd have all been much better off without me.
Six months was the deal, God. You haven't got long left to keep your side of the bargain. Our lounge room is overflowing with grim people with grimmer reports. Mum and Dad, Mr Sandberg, the insurance officer, Brian the physio, Julie the OT, the two tutors, and Dr Fuller, our GP, who's carrying a foot-high file of reports.
Hairy Legs the insurance officer is running the meeting; she wants to get started. We're all here, she says, for one reason.
'We all want the best for Anna. Now the purpose of coming together tonight is to pool our information to help Anna and her parents plan a suitable treatment and school program for both the immediate and medium-range future.'
Dr Fuller offers to start by summarising the reports from the various specialists I've visited. Heavy grey sounds, words carved on slugs of lead, thump past our heads. Vestibular disturbance, cerebellar symptoms, attention deficit, short-term memory, concentration, sympathetic nervous system, subtalar disruption, traumatic spondylisthesis, chronic pain . . . Like blood-filled water balloons, the words burst and seep across the cream Berber carpet.
A minute's silence as he finishes the last report. 'Well,' says Mr Sandberg, 'that sounds like enough to be going on with!'
Hairy Legs is not amused.
Physio Brian talks about the new type of exercises he's worked out for me. He's still hopeful, he says. He wants to continue seeing me twice a week.
OT Julie says that my thumb appears to have stabilised but that she'd like to do another home visit and school visit. She mentions aids and adaptations, posture and ergonomics, computer and tape recorder alternatives to my shaky writing; maybe a visit to the Independent Living Centre.
That's what Caroline meant about special treatment! Poor Caroline, having hands that don't shake.
Mr Sandberg asks if I have a lawyer. Hairy Legs says this is not the appropriate time to discuss legal questions. As the insurance company's representative she will ensure that I receive everything I'm entitled to.
Mr Sandberg looks sceptical.
'The most important thing to decide right now,' Dad says, taking charge, 'is schooling.'
'I decided last week,' I interrupt. 'I'm finishing English and maths and doing the rest next year.'
'You could have told us!' Mum snaps; even Dad lets the mask drop for a minute and looks hurt—humiliated in front of the crowd.
'I forgot.' Nobody understands that none of this matters, it's just a going-through the motions, if you don't exist behind your body then it doesn't matter if you finish Year 12 in one year or twenty.
'Any plans for what you want to do?' Dr Fuller asks.
'Teach phys ed.'
I'm not stupid. I know what their faces will say to that. No one's got the nerve to say it out loud.
They've got the nerve for one more thing, though. 'Is Anna seeing a psychologist?' Julie asks, avoiding my eye.
'If Dr Fuller feels it's appropriate,' says Hairy Legs, 'the insurance will cover it.'
I can't stay quiet any longer. 'You think talking to someone is going to make me feel better about this? My body's wrecked, my life's screwed—I am NOT going to see a psychologist!'
You can dissect my body, my brain, on the coffee table with the tea and banana cake, but you can get out of my mind, that last little inner bit of me, Anna me.
CHAPTER 11
It's been the coldest July on record. The coldest, the wettest, the greyest, though the weatherman doesn't measure grey. August looks as though it'll be the same—Mum complains that her bulbs are late; on the river side of the fence the wattles can't be bothered to bloom.
Cold and bleak, inside and out.
I can't hibernate forever. I'm floating through the world in a mist, on the wrong side of a glass barrier; I can see people but not touch them. School friends keep it light and breezy, their eyes twitching past me; tutors keep it light and easy, a little work and a little chat—Martin's writing a book, Baby Becky can sit up. Mum and Dad, Bronny and Matt, Hayden, Jenny, and Luke—they haven't given up on me and sometimes I think I could reach them if I could just remember how to try.
Three weeks till my birthday—the birthday I wasn't going to have unless I was better. I haven't changed my mind. I've put up with this for six months now; I don't see how anyone can expect more than that.
Jenny comes around with a stack of books from her mum: self-healing; do-it-yourself miracles. I flip through the first one: meditation; understanding your motives for not being well—motives? What kind of motive could you have for pain?
'Everything that happens, happens for a reason,' I read. 'Nothing is an accident.'
So what the hell would you call it?
If you are injured by a car racing through a red light, you must ask yourself why you planned to be at that intersection at that time? You will have had a reason for arranging that meeting and choosing the particular injuries or illnesses that resulted. Only when you find that reason will you be able to heal yourself.
I feel like throwing up—preferably on the book. 'Crap! What complete and utter crap!' How could I have willed Hayden to drive at exactly the speed he did so that we'd get to that intersection at exactly the same second as Trevor Jones—let alone how I went about willing a dickhead I'd never met to drive down a road I'd never noticed. It's too stupid to think about. But I can't stop myself from reading a bit more.
Even children who are abused by their parents have made that decision, when as free souls they chose parents whom they knew would abuse them. For the soul is wise and chooses the life that will teach it the most on each stage of its journey.
Worse than stupid—evil. The sickest thing I've heard since the neo-Nazis tried to claim the Holocaust was a myth. It's not only okay for Trevor Jones to slam into me and ruin my life, it's even okay for parents to torture their children, because that's what the children chose as an interesting lesson! In fact whatever horrendous thing you want to do to anyone else must be okay, because their soul planned for you to do it, no matter what their body thought. According to this wanker.
I'd have never made a bulimic—I can't throw up on command. But there's always another solution. It's not a very big book; more of a fat pamphlet. I shred it into tiny pieces and flush it down the toilet.
The world is so empty. Too drained for anger. I'm hollow inside, except for the tears. They ooze out when I don't expect them; ooze like mud, muddy misery.
Hayden and I are sitting together on the sofa, not quite touching and nothing to say, watching a holiday program with my family. The presenters are sailing the Whitsundays in a charter yacht; after the break they'll have a go at rock climbing in the Grampians.
No one else is crying.
How can I even know who I am when I can't do anything?
Jen won't give up on me either. Now she wants me to try and tell her exactly what's wrong. My life, basically. Too much to think about. But she keeps on pushing till I find part of an answer, 'You know how tragedy is supposed to make you find yourself? The theory that I should be stripping away all the layers and finding the real me? But what if there isn't one? I'm so scared that if I peel everything away there'll just be a big empty hole with nothing inside.'
'You're crazy!' says my friendly psychology expert. 'There's plenty inside you—you're just too down to see how real that person is. Trust me; I wouldn't choose a big empty nothing as a best friend.'
I remember the poem I wrote for Martin. I know now why it was a lie: it was a real person's poem—someone who could lift off the mask and find themselves still there, who could reach deep down inside and touch something vital, something clean and strong. But for me, behind the mask, under the shell—there's nothing. Nothing but the mute emptiness of my mind—the swirling, engulfing chaos of a black hole.
I write it again.
I am
peeling like an onion—
decaying slimy layers,
hiding blackened mush inside.
I am
opening like a babushka—the
painted dolls are broken; there's
no baby left inside.
I am
unwrapping like a present—the
paper's torn and crumpled; the
gift's stolen from inside.
Though the 'I am' is still a lie—because now that the superficial Annas have been ripped away there's nothing at the centre except a swirling void, the vortex of fear. The real Anna doesn't exist.
The letters on Dad's desk weren't just about what's wrong with me. They were about what we're supposed to do about it. Suing. Lawyers. Court. Judge and juries. Me on trial.
'It won't be for a couple more years,' Dad says—as if that makes a difference . . . as if I could hang around for two more years with this as the prize!—and suddenly anger jolts me out of the greyness.
'I don't want to make money out of this! It's putting a price on my body—it's obscene—it's prostitution! I don't know how you can do this to me!'
'I'm not doing anything to you!' Dad's shouting too; first time he's been angry at me since the accident. 'You've got serious problems, you seem to be in constant, terrible pain; the doctors are suggesting that you'll only ever be able to work part-time if at all—you're going to need some extra money to make up for that!'
'I just don't see why I should have go to court . . . as if I were the criminal!'
'It wouldn't be like that. But Anna, I'm your father; I'm an accountant—this is the one thing I can do for you. Let me do it.'
The suffocating blackness again; fighting the terror by screaming myself awake. What if I didn't? What if I let the choking win?
Luke wants to walk by the river after English; I tell him my foot's too sore. I need more than a muddy path, more than a giant log and damp trees to make me feel alive again. His eyes are dark and his face worried; for once he's got nothing to say.
I'm dragging my friends down with me. They'd be better off I were gone.
My neck is cramping and tearing, the pain on the back of my head is screaming, and I might too if it doesn't stop. I'll have to take a painkiller.
So what am I waiting for? There's nothing magic about my birthday; I'm not going to have a miracle in the next ten days. I'm not going to have a miracle ever. This is it, this is as good as it gets: pain and failure, failure and pain. It's not living, I'm not alive, I'm nothing but a blob of pain and I can't keep going this way.
They're gone—all of them, the pack in my drawer and the ones in the medicine cupboard. Find Mum.
'One or two?' Mum asks, doling them out as if I were a kid. I don't believe it—she's hidden my tablets!
'They're powerful drugs,' she says. 'We shouldn't keep them where Matt could get them.'
Except that the bathroom cupboard has a childproof lock—Matt can't open it. And he knows that if he went through my underwear he'd need more than painkillers to help him.
'You took them out of my drawer! What happened to privacy—or did I lose that along with everything else?'
Mum flares as fast as me; suddenly we're both screaming. 'I'm worried about my child's life and you complain about privacy?
Then just as suddenly she's crying. So am I. Crying with messy tears and drippy nose and lots of noise. Because I know which child she means. The one that can open childproof locks. The one who might have been looking for a way out.
And I know I can't do it. I can't hurt them that badly.
'It's okay, Mum, I promise. I won't do anything. Promise.'
It's not that easy. It was always there, a talisman to touch when life was unbearable, that secret plan—the escape route. Now even that's gone. With no way out the pain is infinite, misery can go on without end. One more bit of control lost. But I promised. Some promises you can't break.
CHAPTER 12
Part of the promise is agreeing to see a counsellor. Counsellor doesn't sound as bad as psychologist. Not as crazy.
Her office is in a big old house, behind Mario's Hair and a beautician (we fix your head, inside and out). I pretend I'm here for my usual trim of split ends and fringe, but I've never felt this sick waiting for Mario. It's almost a relief when a woman appears and asks me to follow her down the hall.
She's about thirty, with a lively face that stills to concentrate as if what you're saying is the most important thing she's ever heard. Her name's Laura and she says that it's my time, to talk about whatever I like, and that nothing I say will leave the room. What if I said I wanted to kill myself? Would she just keep quiet and let me?
I don't know what I'm supposed to say.
So she asks me about the accident; how it happened, what it was like being in hospital. I can tell her all that; I describe the pain and the bitch battles with the nurses and the old lady dying. I tell her that one of my best friends couldn't deal with it, and how she dumped me.
'That's a pretty terrible story,' Laura says. 'Some people might even want to cry about it.'
Maybe they would. Some people aren't me.
I go on
with my story—part of the promise was that I'd co-operate, not just turn up—the doctors' visits; the tests. I tell her that I've been told I can't do just about everything in the world that's important to me.
But I don't tell her how I feel about it. I tell it as if it's somebody else's story—just the facts—no emotion. I can't take the risk. Can't tell her how scared, how terrified I am that if somebody gets right into my head, pokes around and tears it apart, it might never come back together again.
She's quiet for several minutes when I finish.
'You didn't want to come here today, did you?' she says at last.
Not much point in lying.
'You've been through hell, and it's not over yet. You've had extraordinary adjustments to make, not just in your life now, but in how you see the future—I suspect you can't picture it at all at the moment . . . am I right?'
If I could see a future I wouldn't be here!
'You'd be crazy if you weren't sad about all this.'
I'll risk one question: 'So if I'm not crazy—why do I sometimes say that I died in the accident?'
'What do you think?'
'Because the old me is dead?'
'The old you is dead,' she repeats. 'That's a very powerful statement, and might well be the reason you feel that you died. But your problem now—your task—is to find the new you, and we've got three options on how you'd like to work at that: we can set up regular appointments for you to come and see me; if you don't think you can work with me, I can refer you to someone else; or I can simply give you the names of a few books and a couple of suggestions and leave it at that. If you don't feel comfortable about starting therapy there's no point forcing it on you—it has to be your decision.'
If I talked to any psychologist it'd be her . . . . but, 'It seems so weird—coming in to spill your guts once a week!'
She laughs. 'When you put it like that . . . What's weirder is that when you're ready, it works. So any time you feel really desperate, or you'd just like to talk, I'll be here. Please call me.'