‘Thanks, mate.’ He stubbed out his cigarette.
Audrey looked at his hands. They were big and able.
‘I can’t believe you met her parents,’ she said at last, and corked his shoulder. ‘You two don’t muck around.’
‘I’ve never done that before. Dinner. It was weird.’
After he left Audrey and Nick fucked on the couch with the lights down low. She could hardly see his face. His hips could have been the ocean or a horse beneath her.
Sleep Too Light For Dreaming
Audrey was awake reading when the phone rang, but it still gave her a fright. It was shrill, the wrong sound for five-thirty in the morning. Nick didn’t move.
‘Hello?’
‘Audrey?’ The voice was tentative, female.
‘Yes?’
‘It’s Hazel. Dawson. Um, Bernie’s girlfriend. I’m sorry to be calling so early…’
‘We’re awake,’ Audrey said. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Bern’s been up all night, sick.’ She sounded very young and very frightened. ‘Sorry to bother you, but I remembered Nick was an ambo. I thought he might know what to do.’
‘What’s wrong with him?’
‘He hasn’t stopped vomiting. I think he’s got a fever. And just before he walked out into the kitchen—I was getting him a glass of water—and he passed out. He just went down. He’s awake now, but he’s raving. I can’t get him to stay in bed.’
‘Has he taken anything?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Hazel. Just say.’
‘No, I really don’t know,’ the girl said. ‘He was sick when I got here last night. I stayed over to look after him, but I have to go to school. I can’t stay.’
Audrey pressed her fingertips to her eyes. ‘We’re both working. I can’t get there before tonight.’ Nick stirred. She lowered her voice. ‘How sick is he?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe I’m overreacting.’
‘No, I didn’t mean that. He’s lucky to have had you there with him. I’ll come as soon as I can tonight.’
Audrey sat on the edge of the bed in the dark room, waiting for direction. She went to the kitchen and made a cup of tea.
She drove out to Port Phillip Correctional Centre to visit a client. She rehearsed her lines.
Mr Stanley, I’ve recommended that Maddie be placed in permanent care.
No use calling Irène and asking her to check on Bernie. Better not to tell their mother at all.
This means that your daughter will be raised by another family. She won’t be moved from one foster family to another. She’ll have a permanent family who will raise her as their own child. The family who has been caring for Maddie since she was removed have applied to care for her on an ongoing basis. This is the best possible outcome we could ask for, Mr Stanley. She’s been with them since she was six weeks old.
She thought about the other questions she should have asked Hazel. Should have asked her to leave him with lots of fluids, have him take paracetamol. But Hazel was seventeen. Bernard was the boy she fucked around with. It wasn’t fair to ask her to do anything.
You can appeal the decision, but if I’m being honest, it’s very unlikely that she’ll ever be returned to you permanently.
The traffic rolled and stopped, rolled and stopped. Audrey phoned Bernie, but he didn’t answer.
At the security checkpoint she couldn’t find her lanyard with her identification. She dropped to her haunches and scrabbled through her handbag. The blazer she’d worn specially, thinking it made her look bigger, more professional, felt foolish. She was clammy.
‘I’ll have to go back out to the car. It must have fallen out,’ she said.
The security guard watched her. ‘It’s all right, love.’
She felt in her pocket. ‘Oh! Got it.’ Her things were all over the floor where she knelt, her feet slipping from her shoes.
Later, back into the city, back into the office.
‘How’d it go, Audrey?’
‘Oh—you know. I don’t think he’s going to appeal.’
Can I have a photo of her? he’d asked. He’d been too shocked to even consider disputing the decision. Audrey began to sift through emails from the morning. It seemed a long time ago. Her desk phone rang.
‘This is Amal Ahmad calling on behalf of Mr Martin Stanley. I understand you’re Maddison’s case worker?’
‘Yes, I visited Mr Stanley this morning—’
‘I’ve just been in contact with him and he’s decided to make an appeal. He wants access rights to his daughter.’
‘I understand that, but it’s unlikely that the decision will be overturned. He has a history of sexual abuse and he—’
‘I know his details. I’m just ringing to inform you that Mr Stanley has opted to go ahead with the proceedings.’
‘Well,’ Audrey said dully, ‘thanks for letting me know.’
She hung up and went to her manager’s office.
‘Penny said you wanted a word,’ she said from the doorway.
‘Yeah. Do you want to sit down?’
Audrey knew, then, what was coming. She felt very tired. She closed the door behind her and sat. She looked at the pictures of Vanessa’s kids.
‘What’s happened?’
‘The Saaed baby died last night,’ Vanessa said.
Audrey held on to the arms of the chair. ‘Fuck.’
‘I know how hard you tried. I’m sorry. It’s not fair.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Audrey. You did everything you could have done.’
‘There’ll be another inquest, won’t there.’
‘We don’t know that.’
Audrey pushed her chair back and stood. The floor was still there.
‘I need to tell you about the Bennetts, too,’ Vanessa said. ‘Mum’s run off and left the kids with Grandad for the second time this month.’
Audrey stared at her.
‘He’s a convicted paedophile,’ Vanessa said.
‘Thanks. For telling me. I’ll get onto it.’
It was dark by the time she left the office. She called her brother again as she drove.
His lights were off when she arrived.
‘Bern?’ She made her way to his room. The house was freezing. ‘Hello? Bernie?’
‘Audie?’ he croaked.
She knelt beside the stained mattress. His eyes did not follow her, did not focus on her approaching figure. Sallow face, dark hair matted with sweat, vomit congealing on the floorboards beside him.
‘I’m so sorry. I’m sorry, Bernie.’
His hand jerked. ‘What?’ he said. ‘You were working. It’s not your fault.’
‘Have you had anything to eat or drink since Hazel left?’
‘What?’ he said again.
She went and got him a glass of water and a wet washcloth. She sat him up. He was barely conscious
as he drank. The water ran off his lips and onto his naked chest.
‘I’m cramping, Audie,’ he said. ‘Everywhere. My legs.’
The room stank of vomit and shit. Audrey took him to the couch while she stripped and re-made his bed, scrubbed the floor, opened the windows. She called Nick.
‘Bern’s pretty crook,’ she said. ‘Do you know if that clinic near Adam’s is open twenty-four hours?’
‘Bring him into St Vincent’s.’
‘I don’t want to wait hours for him to be looked at. He’s so dehydrated he’s cramping. I should have come and seen him this morning. I shouldn’t have waited.’
‘It’s quiet tonight. You won’t be waiting long. Sounds like he needs a drip. You don’t know what’s wrong, anyway. He might have taken something.’
She walked Bernie out to the car in three stages: first to the front door, where his knees buckled, then halfway to the gate, where he sat down on the concrete path, and finally to the back seat. They drove slowly, with Audrey making low, soothing sounds as if to a child or animal.
They sat in triage for three hours. Audrey folded herself into a plastic chair, and Bernie lay across a bank of adjoining seats. Nick came by early in the night. He looked over Bernie, crouched before him. He brought Audrey coffee in a polystyrene cup and sat there as long as he could.
The other people waiting did not sit near Bernie. He was frightening, pitiful. One of the nurses gave him a kidney dish, and he dutifully alternated between sleeping and retching.
Three hours for an impassive woman to say acute gastroenteritis and prescribe him some antibiotics. Another two before they found a bed for him.
‘I knew I was sick on Saturday,’ he said, ‘but I wanted to go out, and I had a big night. I think I did too much MD, and Hazel had some really good coke.’
‘Fuck, Bern.’
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘it probably wasn’t one of my better ideas.’
He slept. Nick’s shift finished, and in solidarity he offered to stay the night, but Audrey told him to go home. ‘Take the car,’ she said.
‘How will you get home?’
‘I’ll get a cab.’
‘Promise?’
She spent the night in the vinyl chair beside Bernie. Early in the morning she touched his arm. ‘Hey. I have to go to work,’ she said. ‘I’ll come back later in the day. The nurse thinks you’ll be discharged tonight. You should probably stay at ours.’
‘Okay.’ He closed his eyes again.
Outside the sky was a cold, smoky blue. Audrey wrapped her scarf around her neck and walked up Young Street. The cafés were just opening. She was fumbling for her coin purse before she realised she didn’t want any more coffee. Her body was confused.
Nick was sleeping when she got home. For a moment she stood in the doorway looking at him, his throat white and exposed, one arm flung out across the sheets. He looked vulnerable, boyish. She opened and closed the drawers quietly, gathering clean clothes, and then she ran the shower. She sank down onto her knees and sat on the slate tiles.
The door opened. Nick stood there in the steam, rubbing his eyes. Audrey’s clothes were on the floor, shed skin. He nudged them with his foot.
‘You should have called me,’ he said. ‘I would’ve come and picked you up.’
‘You were tired.’
‘So are you,’ he said. ‘You look pathetic.’ He pulled off his T-shirt and slid open the shower screen gently so it wouldn’t jam on its metal runner. She thought I can’t, I’m so tired I feel sick, but all he did was reach for the shampoo. He began to wash her hair. Audrey’s heart loosened at the small kindness. She watched Nick’s face until he said Close your eyes. His fingers scrunched at her scalp.
He threw her a towel, and she shivered in it.
‘How’s Bern?’ he asked.
‘He’s all right. He can go home this afternoon.’ She leaned forwards to fasten her bra. Nick sat on the edge of the bathtub.
‘Spence,’ he said as she towelled her hair, ‘you should talk to your mum. You shouldn’t have to look after him like this.’
Nick’s mother had driven him to football practice, ironed the number onto his guernsey, cooked him roast chicken every Sunday night of his life. He’d never had to worry about his brother.
Audrey opened the cabinet over the sink and poked around, fishing through empty paracetamol cartons and discarded tabs.
‘Don’t we have any Panadol?’
Nick leaned over her and found an unopened packet.
‘Here.’ He popped two capsules into her palm.
‘He’s seventeen,’ Audrey said. She tipped back her head. ‘I can’t just abandon him.’
‘I’m not asking you to!’
‘This is just how it goes,’ she said. ‘Maman can’t look after any of us. She doesn’t know how. She expects me to look after him. If I don’t, nobody will. That’s how it works.’
‘What about your sister?’
‘If I don’t look after him, nobody will,’ Audrey said. ‘Nothing’s changed. It’s always been like this.’
‘Right. Nothing’s changed. And look at you.’
She turned and pulled a face at the mirror. ‘Yeah, what a hag.’
‘There must be an easier way of doing this. That’s all I mean,’ said Nick. ‘All this running around and pulling all-nighters in Emergency. You don’t even have a good story to tell for it.’
She yawned. ‘I’ve got to go. I’m going to be late.’
‘Come on,’ he said to her retreating back. ‘You can’t go to work. We’re still talking.’
She pulled on her shoes and tied back her hair. She kissed him. They clung to each other.
‘Nick. There is nothing to talk about.’ Her heart beat fast.
‘One of the first times my mum met you, she said Audrey’s very contained, isn’t she?’
‘What do you mean,’ Audrey said, ‘by telling me that?’
She was very alive at that moment. She felt her eyes wide and tired; she felt her body made of blood and bone and nerves and something else, something harder, like steel. She could have run for days.
Nick held her at arm’s length, peered down into her face.
‘Are you all right?’ he asked.
Shy worry: Audrey was taken aback.
‘I’m fine. It was just a long night.’ She pulled away. ‘I was thinking. I might see if I can get a prescription for some sleeping pills.’
‘That’s a good idea,’ Nick said. ‘You might feel better if you could get some sleep.’
‘I’ll see you tonight.’
He stood at the front door and watched her go. She wanted to make him feel better. She turned back at the gate, mimed an extravagant goodbye.
She called Nick to come and get her from the pub. She couldn’t be there another second. It was only the girls from work, but she couldn’t remember what to say. By the bar Chelsea said You okay? You look knackered. Audrey couldn’t see faces any more. She tried to think about where Nick would be. Two minutes to put on his shoes and jacket
and find his keys, ten minutes up Nicholson Street to Glenlyon Road.
He called when he arrived. She felt her phone vibrate in her hand. She said goodbye to the others, bent over to kiss their cheeks where they sat around the table.
Nick met her at the door of the pub.
‘I’m so glad you’re here,’ she said.
He hugged her a long time. ‘What happened?’
‘I just got scared.’
‘Weren’t you with work people?’
‘Yes.’
‘I don’t want to be an arsehole about it,’ he said, ‘but I don’t get why it was so scary. Can you just explain it to me a bit?’
‘I can’t. I know it doesn’t make sense.’
He’d parked in Edward Street, opposite the warehouses. Audrey stopped by the car. ‘Can we just wait here a second before we go home?’
They sat down at the kerb, and she put her head between her knees.
‘I wish I wasn’t getting into a vehicle,’ she said.
‘Yeah, I wish you weren’t, too,’ Nick laughed, but he rubbed her shoulders while she spewed stringy red-wine vomit out the car door later, and undressed her, and gave her a glass of water. He said You don’t need to keep saying thank you.
Irène arrived mid-morning with Zoe, miniature coat and backpack hanging from her elbow. The heels of her boots made a smart clonk clonk along the floorboards. She didn’t have time for a cup of tea, wouldn’t sit down. Her clothes were tastefully drapey.
They all stood in the warm kitchen.
‘Thanks for doing this,’ Irène said. ‘She’s had bronchitis. We’ve just about knocked it over, but she hasn’t finished the antibiotics yet. She needs four mill after lunch. It’s printed on the bottle, anyway. It’s in a Ziploc bag in her backpack.’ She fished around for the medicine. Audrey glanced at Nick. He was working to suppress a laugh. ‘Tiens,’ Irène said, handing Audrey the brown bottle. ‘Can you make sure she’s rugged up? Sorry if I sound neurotic. She’s just been a bit sick, haven’t you, Zoe?’ She turned to Audrey and Nick. ‘Thank you so much.’
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