by Dan Smith
I picked up my pace, a prisoner making a break for freedom, and found myself checking behind me, looking to every door I passed, expecting a doctor, a nurse, an orderly to hurry through and confront me. But no one appeared.
Still in my bare feet and my flimsy gown, I approached the doors and pushed one open just enough to look through. On the other side was a reception area. Nothing big, just a square entrance room with seats on either side, forming a path, which led to a large double door held open to the night. Facing the two rows of seats, just to my right, was a counter where two nurses were stationed. They were busy with the patients who’d formed an untidy line at the counter.
All of the seats were occupied, and there were a number of people milling around. Some of them, I was relieved to notice, were dressed like me, and I guessed I wouldn’t attract too much attention if I stepped in.
I was wrong. I did attract attention, but not because of my attire. It was because of the colour of my skin. As soon as people noticed me, they kept their eyes on me, and I tried hard to ignore the stares. I made my way among them, heading for the open doors, and I passed out into the night.
I stood at the top of a short flight of wide, shallow, concrete steps, which sloped down to a tarmac circle surrounded by thick-bladed grass. Behind me, on the wall of the hospital, bright lights illuminated the lawn and the palms that grew on it. Insects flitted in the cone of light, bumping into the bulbs. The air was warm but agreeable, and the smell was exotic and exciting.
Beyond the modest driveway and garden of the hospital, a pair of large, wire mesh gates, and then the road. A busy road, full of life and movement. All manner of vehicles passing, engines coughing fumes into the night. And beside the road, a line of stalls. From the top of the steps I could see a cart loaded with fruits and, beside it, a woman grilling chickens on a rotisserie, the scent of the spices and the cooking meat coming over to me on the breeze. For a moment all thoughts of passports and policemen and Domino were banished. This was what I had come for, and I felt myself drawn down the steps. I wanted to go out there, to be surrounded by the life. I wanted to be away from the hospital right now.
‘I wouldn’t go out there,’ she said. ‘Not dressed like that, anyway.’
‘What?’ I was so wrapped up in everything that had happened, I hadn’t noticed her sitting on the edge of the step to my right. Domino. She was looking up at me now, making no attempt to stand, her elbows on her knees, a cigarette in one hand, held near her pale lips so the smoke was drifting across her face. She squinted one eye as she looked up at me, then took a drag and looked out at the street. ‘It’s like going out in your pyjamas,’ she said, blowing smoke into the air. ‘You look better without the bandage, mind you.’
‘You’re … you’re alive.’
Domino looked taken aback. ‘Um. Yeah. Reckon I am.’
‘They said … the doctor said …’
‘Well, come on,’ she smiled. ‘What did the doc say?’
I shook my head, pressed the heels of my palms into my eyes. ‘Fuck,’ I said, smiling down at her. ‘What a night I’m having. They said you were dead.’
‘Dead?’ She didn’t seem surprised. ‘Well, clearly I’m not.’
‘Clearly.’
‘Wonder why they said that.’
I shrugged. ‘Maybe I misunderstood.’
‘Maybe. Oh,’ she pulled my belt from her bag, ‘this is yours.’
I took it from her, wanting to check it but not wanting to offend her. I felt a pang of shame when I remembered I’d considered she might have stolen it.
‘Check it if you like,’ she said. ‘I don’t mind.’
‘It’s OK. I trust you.’
‘You do?’ She took a drag and blew it away from me. She held the cigarette between the ring finger and the middle finger of her right hand. I’d never seen anyone hold it like that before.
‘Smoke?’
‘No, thanks.’
‘Suit yourself.’
I sat down beside her, catching the strong smell. ‘What the hell is that?’
‘This?’ She held up the cigarette. ‘Kretek. Clove cigarettes. Taste like shit, but it’s all they had.’ She nodded out towards the road, indicating that she’d bought them somewhere out there in the strange, new world. ‘The coppers came and talked to you, then?’
‘Yeah, and they were pretty scary. They searched me. The doctor must’ve told them I had a belt.’
‘Good job you gave it to me, then.’
‘Maybe I should’ve let them have it.’
‘You did that, you’d probably never see it again. Probably not the passport, definitely not the money.’
‘I don’t want to get into trouble.’
‘If you were in trouble, I reckon you’d know about it by now. And if they’d seen that money, you wouldn’t be sitting here. You’d be sitting in a cell trying to explain what you were going to buy with it. First thing they’d think of is drugs. Trust me, I know. You did the right thing, Alex.’
‘So what did they say to you?’
‘Not much. Asked me a few questions.’
‘You said something about drugs.’
‘They showed me a bag of dope, told me they found it at the crash. Asked if I knew anything about it and I said no.’
‘And they just let you go?’
Domino shrugged.
I studied her face. ‘Thanks. For helping me.’
‘Don’t mention it. I’ll keep you right.’ She leaned round and touched a finger to the back of my head. ‘Doesn’t look too bad,’ she said. ‘They’ve not made a bad job of the stitches. Should dissolve nicely. Good job you had your hair cut, though. Don’t want those buggers leaving you with patches.’
I looked out at the heavy traffic. A bus rolled past, faster than it should, the roof laden with baskets and battered suitcases. It was smaller than the bus that had crashed, this one painted blue with a yellow bonnet and elaborate lettering etched on the side. I watched for a while, distracted only when I felt something brush against the exposed skin of my leg. A cat, scabbed and dirty, rubbed its nose against me, then passed the length of its body along my shin before turning and doing it again. Its white fur was grey with filth, its face scarred from its life of survival. I put out a hand and stroked it, feeling the vertebrae and ribs beneath skin that was painfully thin. It brought memories of the old woman in the road, of the way her bones had rubbed together when I held her hand, and I snatched my fingers back, pushing the cat away with my foot.
‘You got the time?’ I asked her.
She held up both hands to show me her wrists. All she wore on them was bangles. ‘What you doing out here, anyway?’ she said, putting her hands down. ‘I thought you were supposed to be resting.’
The cat loped down the steps, spotting something in the grass, and crouched low to the ground.
‘I was looking for you. I’ve had enough resting,’ I said, seeing the cat jump, the muscles twisting under gossamer skin. ‘I had to get out. Thought I was going crazy in there. What about you?’ I looked away from the cat and studied her. She didn’t have the same strength about her I’d seen earlier that day. She had an air of vulnerability now, and it was an attractive quality. It was a side of Domino I wouldn’t often see; a side that was kept hidden, crushed beneath the dark weight of the true influences in her life.
Domino shrugged. ‘I was with someone on the bus,’ she said. ‘She wasn’t as lucky as you and me.’
I wasn’t sure exactly what she meant but I could guess. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. It seemed to be the right thing.
‘Not your fault. Not anyone’s. Shit, I didn’t even know who she was, not really. Some kid I sat next to on the plane coming over from Sydney. Could’ve been anyone. Maybe that’s who the doc was talking about when he said someone was dead.’
I didn’t say anything. I went back to watching the cat, which now had an insect in its mouth. A praying mantis, its unnatural arms locked onto the cat’s whiskers, the cat shaking its
head and pawing at it.
‘She died about half an hour ago,’ Domino said. ‘They wanted me to stick around ’cause I can speak the lingo, but …’ Her words trailed off and she took another drag on the cigarette. ‘Weird, isn’t it? She got so banged up she was bleeding inside. I was sitting next to her and all I get is a skinned thigh and a few bruises. Maybe it was just her time.’
Out on the road, life continued to speed past, the stall owners continued to trade. The cat had managed to release itself from the mantis’s grasp and was hunched in the grass, chewing and snapping at its stick-like body.
‘So what about you?’ she said after a few moments. ‘What’s your story?’
‘No story.’
‘You gotta have a story. Guy like you … on your own.’
‘Who says I’m on my own?’
‘Well, aren’t you? I mean, you never asked about anyone, you didn’t ask to make any calls, nothing. It’s like you’ve got no one else to think about but yourself.’
I rested my chin in my palm.
‘You must be brave, I guess; it takes guts being alone like that. Not many people come out here on their own. Normally you see mates, couples, people seeing a bit of the world before they go to uni or whatever, but not on their own. And normally they’re a bit younger.’ She looked at me. ‘Younger, but not so green.’
‘Lucky I found you, then.’
‘Lucky I found you. You should’ve brought someone with you.’
‘Couldn’t find anyone,’ I said.
She ran her eyes over me and smiled. ‘Something tells me you didn’t look too hard.’ The smile broadened her mouth, stretched her full lower lip, changed her whole face.
I put my forearms on my knees and watched another bus pass on the road beyond the gates.
‘So what is it with you?’ she asked. ‘You don’t look like the backpacking-before-uni type. Well, you don’t look like the uni type, anyway.’
‘Don’t I? Why not?’
She shrugged. ‘You just don’t.’
‘I wanted to go. Filled out my applications, posted them in, but things didn’t turn out how I’d hoped.’
‘Plans change,’ she said.
‘Yeah.’
‘It happens. The path is clear, then …’ she shrugged, ‘then something blocks it and we take a new direction. It’s fucked up, but it’s life.’
‘Maybe I’ll go to university one day,’ I said, more to myself than anything. ‘When I get back.’ She didn’t seem to hear, though.
‘So what is it, then?’ she asked. ‘You’re looking for something? An adventure? That’s why you’re on your own, right? You’re hoping to find yourself ?’
I turned to look at her now. ‘Sounds cheesy when you say it out loud.’
Domino nodded. ‘That’s ’cause it is cheesy.’ She finished her cigarette, smoking it as far as it would go, right down to the filter, before dropping it at her feet and grinding it into the rough concrete.
She cast her eyes over me again, looking at every part of my face but not making me uncomfortable. Something about the way she did it made me feel wanted rather than studied. When she was finished she smiled a wistful smile and looked out at the road, allowing a light sigh to escape her lips.
‘My mother died,’ I told her, not really knowing why. ‘I looked after her a long time.’
‘Sounds shitty.’
‘It was. I took care of her at home, but eventually she needed more than I could give.’
‘That’s tough.’ She flicked her head back. ‘I guess you’ve had enough of hospitals, then?’
‘You could say that. Seeing her hooked up to machines all the time, being pumped with this drug or that drug. Christ, you should’ve seen the tablets she had to take every day. I didn’t really have to be there all the time, she hardly even opened her eyes, but … somehow it seemed like the thing to do, you know.’
‘Look after your own, right?’
‘Maybe, I don’t know.’
‘Funny what makes us do things. No brothers or sisters?’
‘Uh-uh. No one.’ I pinched the bridge of my nose and sniffed hard.
‘No one?’
‘I barely even have any friends,’ I told her.
‘No one waiting for you back home?’
‘Nope.’
‘That’s tough.’
‘You know, I did things I never thought I’d have to do for my own mother. Clean her up, wipe spit off her chin, wipe her … well, you can guess.’
I wondered why I was telling her this. Maybe it was because I’d never had anyone to talk to about it before. Not someone who was going to be a fleeting part of my life. Someone who’d walk into and then straight out of my life. I was here on a journey. I’d pass through this place and leave no trace of myself behind. It didn’t matter what I said.
‘It went on for so long it’s like there was no end to it,’ I told her. ‘She hated every minute of feeling like that; I hated every minute of seeing her like that …’
‘You put me in a situation like that,’ she said, ‘I reckon I’d have to do something.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Give her meds, switch something off, increase the dose. Anything. It’s not right to be like that; to let someone suffer. I mean, I wouldn’t want it, would you?’
‘I don’t know, I …’ I let the words fall away. I’d said as much as I wanted to; the conversation had taken a difficult turn. I didn’t want to think about it any more; the guilt of what I had or hadn’t done.
‘So then you ran away.’ It was as if Domino had sensed my discomfort and now she steered me in a different direction.
‘Not ran away,’ I said. ‘No.’
‘But you had to get away. Do something? It’s what I’d want.’
‘After she died, I felt like I didn’t know who I was any more.’ I stopped, wondering if I was saying too much, but Domino looked at me as if she were expecting me to go on, so I said it anyway. ‘I spent so long looking after her, I had no life. Nothing. I was going to go to university. I had a girlfriend. All gone.’
‘There’s always a girl,’ she said, lighting another cigarette. ‘What was her name?’
‘What difference does it make?’
‘Good answer.’
‘If things had been different, maybe I would’ve come out here with friends, who knows? Maybe I never would’ve come at all.’
‘Maybe.’
I shrugged. ‘What happened happened. So I had enough money to come out here. She paid for it. My mother. So I have to make it worth it. Make it mean something.’
‘Because you don’t know where you fit in. You don’t know where you belong. You’re looking for yourself.’
I felt a smile cross my lips. ‘Only place I found myself is in a hospital ward that smells of piss.’
‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘I noticed that when I came in. Wasn’t yours, was it?’
‘No,’ I laughed, but thinking about the ward reminded me that I’d lost everything I owned except for the belt that was strapped to my waist beneath my gown. And sitting out here, I knew I wanted to get away from this place, leave this part of my trip behind me. I looked at Domino. ‘You know, I heard somewhere that you’re never free to do what you want until you’ve lost everything you’ve got.’
‘I like that.’
My attention was drawn to a car pulling up by the entrance to the hospital, white and blue, the word Polisi across the bonnet. It looked cleaner than the other vehicles that passed. Newer. For a moment, there was no movement, then both doors opened at once.
‘And …?’ Domino asked.
‘And what?’
‘And is it working? Is it true? You’ve lost everything, right? Are you free to do whatever you want?’
‘The jury’s still out on that one.’
Domino put the cigarette to her mouth, that strange way of holding it, her middle finger touching the tip of her nose. She raised her eyebrows as she took a drag. ‘I was like you once,
Alex,’ she said around the scented smoke.
‘Yeah?’ I glanced at her, seeing that she, too, was looking at the police car.
‘Mm. Lost, I mean. In a different way, though. Foster care with my brother before we were split up. After that I was trouble all the way.’
‘What kind of trouble?’ I asked her.
‘Kids’ stuff mostly.’ She continued to watch as two policemen stepped out of the car and headed towards us. They were not the same ones who’d come into the ward, but her words became slow, more considered. Distracted. ‘But then I came here. Found a home and a purpose.’
Dressed in short-sleeved khaki shirts, black trousers and boots, pistols in leather holsters, the policemen reached the steps and started up, both of them with their eyes on us.
‘Don’t look at them,’ Domino said.
‘What?’
‘Don’t make eye contact.’
‘Why?’
‘They don’t like it.’
‘OK.’
‘You know, there’s places for people like us,’ she said, lowering her voice as they passed, their boots heavy on the broken concrete, one of them his feet almost touching my thigh.
‘How do you mean? What places?’ I turned my head just as one of them looked back and down at me, so I glanced away, watching from the corner of my eye as they went through the hospital doors and disappeared from sight. ‘What kind of places?’ I asked again.
‘Good places.’ She jumped to her feet as if a sudden change of mood had overcome her. ‘You hungry?’ She took me by surprise.
‘What? Yeah, starving.’
‘Let’s get something to eat, then.’
‘Maybe we should go back inside.’
‘What for?’
‘I dunno. The police—’
‘You give them your name?’
‘My name? Um. Yeah. Yeah, I did.’
‘But they don’t know where you’re going, who you are, anything about you?’
‘I suppose not.’