The Ties That Bind

by Lexi Landsman

  Jade beamed, happiness flowing through her. She wanted to imprint this moment onto the back of her eyelids. The way he stared at her as if she were shaped of gold, the glint of his snow-blue eyes, the tingling in her chest each time he smiled in his boyish way, the warmth of his hand on her cheek.

  ‘I don’t know what to say. I’m shocked. A happy shocked.’ She stepped towards him and held her hands behind his back, kissing him. ‘I think you’ve changed my mind about surprises.’

  Adam laughed with relief. ‘You had me worried there for a second.’

  ‘So, where will you stay?’

  ‘Riley said I could stay with him for the time being. I have some savings, so I’ve given myself four weeks to decide where I go from here. I hope you won’t mind the extra company on site.’

  Jade laughed. ‘You have no idea –’ She stopped herself before finishing the sentence.

  ‘Idea of what?’

  How happy you’ve made me. ‘How to pour concrete,’ she joked instead.

  ‘I’m a fast learner,’ he said, smiling.

  Jade gazed out the doorway and thought of the scorched land: its trees cracked with burns, its valleys baked, its forests blackened. But now green life was seeping through its scars, carving a new outline. A fresh beginning. It would never heal from those scars completely, but it wouldn’t be defined by them either. She turned back to Adam and felt an inner surge of joy at the thought of what the future might hold for them. If the land could rise again from the ashes, so could she.

  40

  COURTNEY was headed to the hospital listed on her birth certificate. It was located in a town called Clendale, in the Silver Creek region, which was just over a three-hour drive from the city.

  Courtney found it challenging getting used to driving on the other side of the road. She flicked on the cruise control as she hit the highway and glanced at the piece of paper sitting in the passenger seat as it fluttered in the breeze. The paper wasn’t even a millimetre thick and yet it felt large and looming, like a person sitting beside her.

  She still couldn’t digest where she was. How could she, Courtney Hamilton, have had her beginnings here, on this vast land on the other side of the globe? The country felt so foreign to her.

  When she got off the highway, her phone navigation led her on a route through mountain areas of the Yarra Valley. Tall mountain ash trees rose from cool green ferns like proud shipping masts on guard, only letting snatches of light escape below their canopies. She opened the windows to let the heady fragrance of the Australian bush fill her lungs. It was the most scenic drive she had ever been on and she took it all in – the moist air, the dappled light, the scent of moss and eucalyptus, the wind carrying through the branches like a whisper of buried secrets.

  This was the earth she was born into. A place she could have called home.

  Yet as she descended further down the mountain, her picturesque entry into the countryside ended abruptly. It was as if the rainforest had shed an outer layer of skin, leaving behind a raw, bruised surface of black, scorched tree stumps. It was only then that she recalled hearing about bushfires on the radio and seeing some of the devastating news footage. Back then in Miami, she hadn’t given much thought to fires in a country so far away.

  The landscape was charred and lifeless except for pockets of green that crept through the earth. It was an unsettling sight that was only compounded further when she pulled up in front of the hospital to find one side of the building completely blackened.

  She swallowed as she got out of the car, clutching her birth certificate close to her chest.

  The walls of the hospital looked freshly painted yet the reception area smelled musty and damp. Only two other people were seated in the waiting area – an old man with skin like rice paper and a middle-aged woman who’d fallen asleep with her head resting against the stand of magazines.

  ‘Excuse me,’ Courtney said, grabbing the attention of the lady at the desk. ‘I was wondering who I could speak to about your birth records.’

  The receptionist looked up from the computer. She was grey-haired and plump, with thin lips. ‘That would be Doctor Annabel Harvey, director of the hospital’s medical records. Do you have an appointment?’

  ‘I sent an email a few days ago about some information I’m seeking, but I never got a reply.’

  ‘Unfortunately since the fires many emails have gone unanswered. We’re still finding our feet, as you can imagine.’ She turned to her computer again. ‘I’m just looking at Doctor Harvey’s schedule for today and it looks like she’s in a meeting at the moment.’

  ‘That’s okay,’ Courtney said, ‘I can wait.’

  ‘She’ll be at least another hour,’ the receptionist said. Her Australian accent was thick and heavy. When she spoke, she lowered her chin against her neck, making folds in her skin. ‘Anything I can help you with, love?’

  ‘I’m looking for some documentation of my birth,’ Courtney said quietly, suddenly conscious of her out-of-place American accent.

  The receptionist smiled apologetically. ‘Sorry, love, but see that wing over there?’ She pointed down a long corridor in the direction of the blackened wall Courtney had seen from the road. ‘They haven’t finished rebuilding,’ the nurse said. ‘Clendale wasn’t as badly affected as the other towns in Silver Creek, but still, the bushfires managed to take out a whole wing before the fireys got it under control. That destroyed section held all our medical records.’

  Courtney felt overcome with disappointment. She had travelled all this way on one lead and it had immediately taken her to a dead end. ‘Surely you keep digital records?’

  ‘I don’t mean to offend, love, but unless you were born twenty-five years ago, the only documentation we kept would have been on paper.’ The woman’s tone softened. ‘But, you can still wait to see Doctor Harvey if you like. She’s been here forty years and if anyone can help you, she can.’

  Courtney sat down, gripping her birth certificate like a lifeline. She looked out the window at the skeletons of trees, their branches like a graveyard of bones. The region had been battered by Mother Nature’s backhand. And here she was, weathered and beaten by a blow to her only child.

  She couldn’t fathom that she was born here. On this land. In a lifetime she didn’t know she’d ever had.

  David still couldn’t get used to the sight of Matthew’s bald head – the smooth, almost shiny surface of his white scalp that stood out like a beacon of his lost innocence.

  Matthew’s appetite had been poor and David was starting to notice how fragile he was. His bony knees seemed to jut out more sharply. Fortunately, his neutrophil count hadn’t dropped, so Matthew was allowed to go home for a few days before his next round of treatment.

  To celebrate this minor victory, David took Matthew to get ice-cream. Matthew wore a cap to hide his scalp, and David chose a table away from everyone else just in case someone sneezed in their direction. Matthew seemed more energetic than he had in a while, which was a welcome change from his fatigued, sleep-filled days in the hospital.

  Matthew chose a cone with coconut and hazelnut. ‘Hey, Dad,’ Matthew said, ‘did you and Mom have a fight?’

  The question caught David off guard. ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘Because Mom’s gone on holiday without us.’

  ‘No, buddy. Of course not. Mom’s away because she’s looking for a special medicine.’

  Matthew licked the ice-cream that was dripping down the sides of the cone. ‘Why can’t she get it here?’

  David tried to keep his answers clipped so that Matthew wouldn’t probe him further. ‘Because no one has it.’

  ‘No one has the medicine?’

  ‘No one. Not even me,’ David mumbled.

  Matthew looked confused. ‘Why would you have it?’

  David hesitated, then quickly corrected himself. ‘In case one of my patients needed it.’

  Matthew gazed away, deep in thought. ‘When I’m older, I want to be really rich
so that I can buy the medicine for all the kids like me.’

  David’s chest felt heavy. If only money could buy a cure. He wanted more than anything to pretend to be a normal parent with a normal child right now, and it took all his energy to behave as if Matthew’s words hadn’t cut right to his core. ‘And how will you make your riches?’

  ‘I’ll be one of the world’s best soccer players. I’ll practise for five hours a day and I won’t stop until I’m the best.’

  ‘Well, that’s a great goal. Maybe I can take an early retirement,’ he said, playfully.

  ‘I need to get back on the field soon.’

  ‘You have to finish your treatment first, buddy.’ David tried to make it sound light, using the same tone he might say something like You have to finish your homework or You have to finish your dinner. Not what the reality was: It will feel like forever before you get back on a soccer field. You’ll have to undergo more painful treatments. You’ll vomit into a bucket countless times more than you have already. You’ll need to have more biopsies and lumbar punctures. When you go back to school, you will feel older, as if you’ve experienced a whole other lifetime that your friends haven’t. You’ll feel different. Your friends will be nice at first but they won’t really understand what you’ve gone through and how it has changed you. You’ll find it hard to fit in. It will seem as if your friends have changed, but really it will be you who has. You won’t ever be same again. You might be healthy for the rest of your life but you’ll live knowing how easy it is to find yourself hanging on the spider’s web between life and death.

  ‘When does Mom get back?’ Matthew interrupted David’s thoughts.

  ‘In about a week.’

  Matthew had eaten one scoop and stared at what was left of his ice-cream.

  ‘Buddy, you don’t have to finish it if you’re not hungry.’

  ‘No, I am,’ Matthew insisted as he licked around the cone, but David could tell he was forcing it down. Maybe he too wanted to believe he was a normal child enjoying a simple pleasure. Not one making the most of something he might be too nauseated to have for a long time.

  ‘Dad, when you were my age, did you know what you wanted to be when you grew up?’

  ‘Let me think,’ David said, finishing his last spoonful of salted caramel. ‘I think I wanted to be a famous rock star.’

  Matthew giggled. ‘A rock star! But you don’t play any instruments. You can’t even sing.’

  ‘I know,’ David laughed, happy to see his son smiling. ‘Well, at least I know that now. But back then, I thought I could sing. And Grandma sent me for lessons but they told me to come back when I was older. Apparently I’m tone deaf, so I couldn’t actually hear how bad I was.’

  ‘That’s funny. No offence, Dad, but I can’t picture you being a rock star.’ Matthew bit into the end of the cone. ‘I don’t think I’ll ever change my mind about being a soccer player.’

  David thought he was set on his career at age ten too, but he had his whole life ahead of him to change his mind many times over. Matthew’s future was now in the hands of a donor registry and Courtney’s mission on the other side of the world.

  41

  DOCTOR Annabel Harvey was not the kind of doctor usually found working in a hospital. The sight of blood made her woozy, surgical instruments reminded her of childhood trips to the dentist, and she gagged whenever she smelled vomit. She was, after all, not a medical doctor but an academic with a PhD and a stream of published papers on health informatics.

  She kept a record of just about everything. In her study at home, she had a number of filing cabinets dedicated to things most people didn’t think to keep. One shelf held small neatly labelled envelopes containing receipts from every month. Those twelve smaller envelopes were put into a large one for each year. All her university folders were catalogued by year of study just in case she ever needed them. She didn’t believe in throwing out books, so a whole wall of her study was lined from bottom to top, side to side with them.

  Annabel didn’t have children and hadn’t wanted any until she realised it was too late to choose. She’d had a few failed relationships but she preferred to be alone. She often joked that she was married to her job and that was the only lover she needed.

  Forty years ago, she’d arrived at the Mater Hospital to cover a twelve-month maternity-leave position. Four decades on, she was still there, now serving as the director of medical records. She was the longest consistently serving staff member at the hospital. Annabel had probably accrued more than a year of long-service leave but she had no plans to take it.

  Annabel thought of herself as the custodian of life records. She took pride in her job. And it was just her luck that a force of nature had destroyed the very things – the only things – that gave her life purpose. Most people could rebuild, restart. But Annabel’s life’s work was now literally in ashes. Being a country hospital, they had only started to keep digital records in the past ten years. So, that meant decades of history had been incinerated.

  Annabel had put a Busy sign on her office door. It wasn’t the most hospital-appropriate notice but she hated the way people barged in and out. She was just looking over plans for the new wing design and accompanying filing room to replace the destroyed areas when she heard a faint knock on the door.

  ‘There’s a woman here to see you,’ the receptionist said, peeking through a gap in the door as if she were too afraid to open it fully.

  ‘I’m not expecting anyone. Tell her to make an appointment like everyone else. What does she want?’

  ‘She said it would be easier if she just explained it to you.’

  ‘That’s awfully convenient. Tell her I’ll come and get her when I’m ready. That could take a while.’

  The receptionist fiddled with a clipboard. ‘She’s been waiting here for an hour, Doctor Harvey.’

  ‘Well, she should have made an appointment,’ Annabel snapped. She was often curt but the staff who knew her understood that it was just her way. She didn’t mean any offence, she just didn’t have the patience for pleasantries.

  ‘All right then, give me ten minutes and then tell this uninvited guest that she can come right on in and disrupt me while I’m in the middle of my work.’

  Ten minutes later, when she heard the woman step into her office, Annabel kept her eyes deliberately down at her desk to make it clear that she was not invested in this unscheduled meeting. The woman stood for a moment and Annabel realised she was waiting for some sort of invitation to sit down.

  ‘You can sit, you know, these chairs don’t bite.’

  Annabel didn’t look up from her notepad. ‘If this is about the extra few metres I’ve added to the plans, I’m not changing them.’

  The woman sounded confused. ‘Sorry, you must think I’m someone else. I have no idea what you mean. My name is Courtney Hamilton. I have a rather strange request.’

  Annabel took in the thick American accent. ‘If there’s one thing I’m used to, it’s strange requests,’ she grunted. She finally looked up from her notepad at the woman, who was pretty with thick, brown hair and blue eyes. Annabel felt her shoulders loosen as she let down her guard. ‘Well, then, what is this strange request?’

  ‘As you can tell, I’m not from here. Or at least, I didn’t think I was until recently. I’m adopted and I need to find my birth parents. Except I don’t know anything about them or about my adoption. And so far, every avenue I’ve tried has led me nowhere.’

  Annabel felt a prickle of intrigue as the woman continued. ‘My adoptive father has Alzheimer’s and my mother died a few years ago, so I really have nothing to go on. Except for this.’

  She handed over a blotched birth certificate. Annabel held it carefully as if she were studying an ancient manuscript. She read it slowly several times before responding.

  ‘Your parents’ names are illegible. It looks like someone’s spilled something over the paper. But yes, I see. 1979. Mater Hospital. You were, no doubt, born here.’

/>   ‘I came here hoping you might keep copies of birth certificates or birth details, but the receptionist told me about the fires.’

  Annabel winced. Just the word ‘fire’ made anger rise up in her chest. ‘I made copies of everything myself. Most hospitals don’t. But I did. I’ve been here forty years. Let me tell you, that’s a lot of paperwork to accrue and then have go up in smoke.’ She shook her head. ‘I always said we should have kept another copy of everything off site. But of course, they scoffed at the idea.’

  ‘So, is there anything I can do?’

  ‘Have you tried getting a copy of your birth certificate from the Victorian Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages?’

  ‘No,’ Courtney sighed. ‘There’d be no point. You need proof of identity in three forms of identification, and I have none. My name is not the one on there.’ She pointed at the certificate. ‘And I have no documentation at all of my adoption.’

  Annabel couldn’t believe that this woman was hoping to find answers from a single, barely legible piece of paper. ‘And you’ve come all the way from … where?’

  The woman sighed and rubbed her temples, and when she drew her hand away, Annabel noticed a small beauty spot above her left eyebrow. ‘Miami.’

  ‘With just that?’

  Courtney’s tone changed. ‘Look, I know it’s not much to go off, and feel free to judge away. My husband said this was a stupid idea. But I had no other choice. Thanks anyway.’ Courtney stood up to leave.

  Annabel could sense the desperation in her voice. She had perhaps been too abrupt and quick to judge. ‘Can I make a photocopy of your birth certificate?’

  The woman nodded and Annabel left her in the office to go to the scanner. While she waited for the machine to turn on, she noticed for the first time that the woman’s birth name was Rose. Why did that name together with the year of her birth send a disquieting feeling through her body? She recalled a story that made headlines a few years into her job at the hospital. When she got back to her office, she sat down at her computer to run a web search to see if it would jog her memory.