x x x
Charlie tried hard not to think about Mike’s letter. Neither Whiskey nor his mother had mentioned it, and he refused to discuss it with Juliet. But eventually his curiosity got the better of him, and he went around to see Audrey.
Charlie thought he knew as much about his parents’ courtship as any child knows—which was barely anything. He and Whiskey had always been told that their parents had come from the same town, gone to the same school, that their father had had to wait until he got a job before they could get married. Now he didn’t even know if that much was true.
Audrey told Charlie that when his mother was sixteen, she had taken up with a local boy named Harry Blower. He was very handsome, but it was said that his family mixed with the gypsies, and one of his brothers had been in jail. Audrey said she didn’t know how her father found out, but it didn’t take long—it was a small town, people knew each other’s business.
“Dad was a hard man, but fair,” Audrey said. “He wanted the best for us. Elaine was forbidden to see Harry, and Dad had her spend the summer working in his office, where he could keep an eye on her. She sulked her way through the summer, but when she went back to school that September, she started going out with your father. She seemed to be over Harry, back to her old self. She went out with your father all through her last year of school, and when he left school and got his boilermaking apprenticeship, he proposed to her.”
Charlie felt better hearing this. He hadn’t known about Harry, of course, but at least it hadn’t all been lies.
“I have to admit, I was surprised when your mother accepted Bill’s proposal,” Audrey said carefully. “I always liked your dad, and he loved your mum; there was no doubt about that. But Elaine was a bright spark, a bit of a live wire, and I suppose I’d imagined she’d end up with someone a bit more…” She trailed off, looking at Charlie uncertainly.
“Don’t worry, Audrey,” Charlie said. “I’m not blind. I know he was no match for her. And besides, you know how I feel about him since they split up. Don’t hold back on my account. This is what I’m here for. You might as well tell me everything.”
“The wedding was planned for April,” Audrey went on, and then one day in late March, she had arrived home from work to find Elaine in a state, waiting for her. Elaine had told Audrey she was pregnant, not by Bill but by Harry, whom she’d been seeing in secret all the time. Audrey winced as she said this, as though even decades later the memory of it was still painful to her.
“Your mother was hysterical, not because of the trouble she was in,” she said, “but because when she’d told Harry, he’d said he didn’t want anything to do with it, that he didn’t love her, that he didn’t want a wife or a baby.
“I was already married to Bob then,” Audrey said, “but I was only twenty-one myself—I didn’t know anything about the ways of the world. So I told Bob, and Bob told your mother to keep her mouth shut, marry your father, and no one would be any the wiser.”
Audrey stopped again there, but Charlie motioned for her to go on.
“Your mother thought she would live at home and bring the baby up herself. But Dad soon put a stop to that. He said she could marry your father—if he’d still have her—or she could leave, because he wouldn’t have her pregnant and unmarried in his house. It seems harsh, but you mustn’t think badly of him, Charlie—things were different then. People didn’t accept illegitimate children as they do now. There was no such thing as a single mum. My dad and your dad came to an arrangement. Your father agreed to marry your mother the next month, as planned. When she went into the hospital to have the baby, it would be put up for adoption, and people would be told it was premature, stillborn.”
“It’s like some shitty soap opera,” Charlie said angrily.
“I know it must be hard for you to hear this, Charlie. I never dreamed I’d have to tell you. None of us did. We thought it was over and done with, thirty-three years ago.”
“I wish it had been,” Charlie said. “I wish this Mike character had had the sense to leave things alone. We could have done without him opening this can of worms.”
“I’m sure it’s normal to feel like that. But don’t forget, Mike doesn’t know the story behind his adoption. All he has is his birth certificate—a list of names and places. He doesn’t know he’s opening a can of worms. All he wants to do is find his family.”
“Well, what if they don’t want to be found?”
Audrey put her hand on his arm. “It’s a shock for all of us, Charlie. I can understand it if you feel like you don’t want to meet him. But you don’t have to make a decision about it straight away. Take some time and have a think about it.”
But Charlie didn’t want to think about it. He didn’t want to think about it, and he didn’t want to talk about it—ever again, if he could help it.
He took what Audrey had told him and every thought and question that had arisen about his mother and father, his half brother—everything he knew and everything he didn’t want to know—and he pushed it right out of his mind. He pretended the letter had never arrived. He did not allow himself to think about it at all. He worked so hard at it, he was sure he would have been successful if it weren’t for Whiskey and Rosa. Because when it came to Mike Lawrence, Whiskey and Rosa apparently had their own ideas, in which Charlie’s meticulously constructed denial had no part. They had their own schemes, their own plans, and there wasn’t a single thing Charlie could do to stop them.
* * *
In films Charlie has seen, episodes of soap operas, coma victims lie peacefully in dimly lit rooms, the machinery required to keep them alive beeping discreetly beside them. There are tubes and wires, but somehow these celluloid coma patients manage to look exactly like the people they were before they slipped into unconsciousness. Whereas Whiskey is still unrecognizable, and though it has been two weeks since the accident, the medical staff never leaves him alone, except during the long, dead hours of the night watch. During the day, there is always someone wanting to interfere with Whiskey, to adjust him, to measure him, to administer something to him.
Take a ticket, Charlie feels like saying, every time a member of the medical team appears at the door. There are the regular ICU nurses who are always in and out—changing dressings and IV bags, emptying catheters, checking the monitors. There are Angie and Fergal, a physiotherapist named Grant, specialists of various kinds whom Charlie struggles to keep track of, even with his extensive list. Charlie knows he should feel grateful to these people, their efforts to treat Whiskey’s injuries, to rouse him from his coma, but sometimes he resents them, wishes they would leave Whiskey alone.
Again and again, Charlie hears the medical staff use the term secondary complications to describe the various problems that might arise, either because Whiskey cannot move or because his brain can no longer be relied upon to control his bodily functions. It is only after the temperature scare that Charlie begins to comprehend the seriousness of these secondary complications, the very real threats they pose to Whiskey’s life.
Gradually it becomes apparent that Whiskey is just as likely to die of something Charlie has previously thought of as minor—such as pneumonia—as he is of something major, such as organ failure. Whiskey is susceptible to deep vein thrombosis, bladder infections, deformities of the bones, joints, and muscles. Simply from lying in the same position day after day, he can develop pressure sores on his skin that can be difficult to heal. These pressure sores can become gangrenous, can lead—in extreme cases—to the amputation of limbs. Charlie had thought of gangrene as a thing of the past, a condition that existed only in the adventure stories of his boyhood, something that affected wounded soldiers in the field hospitals of World War I, injured explorers who ventured into uncharted territory in colonial times. He had imagined that in an age of sterilization, in a modern hospital equipped with gleaming instruments, trained staff, tried and tested pharmaceuticals, no one
’s life could be threatened by something as simple as a bedsore. But every day at the hospital, what he sees and hears begins to convince him otherwise.
Whiskey has been placed on a pressure relief air mattress to avoid the development of bedsores. He wears intermittent pneumatic compression stockings to prevent the formation of blood clots. The staff checks regularly for symptoms of pneumonia, and the physiotherapist comes every day.
“Regular physio makes recovery much easier if the patient regains consciousness,” he tells Charlie.
Charlie likes Grant. He has unruly hair, muttonchops, a manner that suggests he knows how to have a good time when he’s not working on life-threatening cases. He’s the kind of person Charlie thinks he might have become friends with, under different circumstances, someone he might have invited out for a beer. But he says if the patient regains consciousness. Because Whiskey has now been in a coma for more than fourteen days, which means that statistically speaking, he has become more of an if case than a when.
Rosa has been asked to consider an operation in which Whiskey’s nasogastric tube is replaced with what the medical staff call a G-tube—a gastronomy tube, which is inserted in an incision in the stomach. Charlie almost laughs when he hears the word gastronomy. He imagines the gastronomy Whiskey is used to enjoying—the oysters and white truffles, wagyu beef and Iranian caviar—all the delicacies he must have charged to his company credit card over the years, wining and dining corporate clients at Melbourne’s finest restaurants.
The operation is recommended for patients who need a feeding tube for an extended period. It is a simple operation that will make Whiskey more comfortable, Rosa has been told. That is enough for her. But not for Charlie. He is suspicious of the term extended period. And in a short space of time, he has already come to the conclusion that in a case like Whiskey’s, there is no such thing as a simple operation. For starters, the operation requires a general anesthetic. Almost everyone Charlie knows has, at one time or another, undergone a medical procedure that required a general anesthetic. In the past, it has never crossed Charlie’s mind that in even the most routine of operations, something might go wrong, that a person might fall into that sickly sweet sleep and never wake up. But it is different for Whiskey. Charlie has had it explained to him more than once that being in a coma is not like being asleep, that, in fact, one of the characteristics of coma is a lack of sleep–wake cycles. But to Charlie, this is a medical technicality. As far as he is concerned, Whiskey might as well be asleep. Might an anesthetic not wrap him in another layer of unconsciousness, let him descend to the next level?
Charlie knows everyone thinks Rosa is suffering the most as a result of Whiskey’s situation, closely followed by his mother. He suspects many people—especially Whiskey’s friends—think it matters less to Charlie because he didn’t get on with Whiskey. No one understands that makes it matter more, that it is Charlie, in some ways, who has the most to lose by Whiskey dying.
Charlie wishes to be presented with a mathematical diagram in which Whiskey’s increased comfort is measured against the risks of the G-tube operation. In the absence of this, he wishes for the opportunity to ask a few simple questions. But he doesn’t even get that much. It is Rosa’s decision, and as soon as it is made, the preparations for the operation begin. And then no one has time to talk to Charlie, to explain what he needs to know, to wait while he writes it down in Whiskey’s journal. Everyone is too busy getting Whiskey ready. There is a brief flurry of activity, and then Whiskey is gone, wheeled away to the operating room, and Charlie is left with his questions in an empty room.
November
Whiskey was in a South Yarra side street around the corner from his office when the car hit him. A driver exiting a parking lot suffered a massive heart attack, careened across the road, mounted the curb, and slammed Whiskey against a wall. One moment Whiskey was on his way to get a coffee, the next he was unconscious on the pavement, his bones crushed, bleeding inside and out.
Charlie was walking down Swanston Street when his mother called to tell him about the accident. Thinking back on it, Charlie cannot remember exactly what his mother said; he remembers only that she used the phrase critical condition. He had heard this phrase many times before, but it had always been in relation to someone far removed from his own life. To hear it applied in the context of his own brother knocked the wind out of Charlie. What did he say to his mother? Did he swear or gasp or moan? He remembers looking at a sign outside a bookshop that said Only 30 shopping days to Christmas! The sign made no sense to him. He understood it was the last week of November, but in the space of that phone call from his mother, Christmas had become utterly irrelevant, nonsensical even, some exotic land he might never visit again.
These were the thoughts that ran through his head as he stood on the corner of Collins Street trying to hail a taxi. He remembers calling Juliet, but he does not remember what he said. He remembers that every taxi he saw was already occupied and that eventually he got on a tram for the Alfred Hospital. He remembers that on the tram he had the sense that people were staring at him. Was he crying?
x x x
In the days that followed, Charlie felt overwhelmed by information and yet, at the same time, he felt he knew nothing, understood nothing. His brother was in a coma. But what was a coma? Charlie’s head was filled with questions. He talked to the doctors and nurses, to Rosa and Juliet, his mother, their friends. He was told that Whiskey had a high chance of this, a low chance of that, he might be paralyzed or brain damaged or both, he may have the mental age of a child, be confined to a wheelchair or bedridden for the rest of his life. Charlie was offered expert opinions and hunches, facts and statistics, fears and prayers and miracle stories—a desperate hodgepodge of science and blind faith. He heard so many different things from so many different people that he couldn’t keep it straight in his head.
There were the things he knew and wished he didn’t, the things he didn’t know and didn’t want to, and then there were the things he needed to know and could not ask. He read an article in the local newspaper about the accident, though he knew nothing he read could tell him how to feel about what had happened, how to deal with those feelings. Charlie did not need a tin-pot journalist to tell him it was a freak accident. It was of no interest to him that local residents, business owners, and shoppers had expressed shock and heartfelt sympathy for the victims and their families. According to the article, Whiskey was only at the beginning of a stellar career in advertising and the car that took him down was a pewter 1991 Mazda 626. As he read this, Charlie came to understand that Whiskey’s accident, which was, to him and his family, a very real tragedy, was being turned not into news, not even that, but entertainment.
Since neither Charlie’s family nor the family of the man driving the car would talk to the journalist from the local paper, he had interviewed anyone who was willing to say anything at all. The owner of the café where Whiskey was headed that morning was reported to have said Whiskey’s coffee of choice was a soy latte. And a café regular said she had seen Whiskey at the café many times and had always noticed him because he was so well dressed. Charlie wished he could find this woman, this woman who could say something so utterly inane in such a situation; he wished he could find her and slap her face. Instead, he cut the article out of the paper and burned it in the sink.
x x x
When Charlie tried to imagine a car accident, it was always nighttime on a remote stretch of a dark freeway. He found it incomprehensible that such an accident could happen just off Chapel Street, in broad daylight, on an ordinary weekday morning, while less than a few hundred feet away, people were listening to CDs at the Virgin Megastore or trying on jeans at General Pants. Charlie thought of all the people who were in the vicinity of the accident on that day, how it might easily have been one of them who was hit by the car instead, how if Whiskey had stopped for a moment to make a phone call, slowed down to look at a window displ
ay, left his office ten seconds earlier or later, the car would have narrowly missed him.
The accident that had put Whiskey in a coma had also left the driver of the car dead. Charlie did not know whether it was the heart attack or the accident that killed the driver, or some combination of the two. It made no difference. What mattered was that it was not the driver’s fault Whiskey was in a coma. It was no one’s fault.
Sometimes Charlie wished there was someone to blame. He thought that if he had someone else to be angry with, he might be less angry with himself. He knew, of course, that he was not responsible for the state Whiskey was in. But he could not avoid the fact that he had made no attempt to repair his relationship with his only brother while he had the chance, that he had held a grudge against him long after he should have let it go.
All the times he had thought about the demise of his relationship with Whiskey, it had always been Whiskey’s fault. In Charlie’s version of events, any bad behavior on his part had always been justifiable as a response to a graver misdemeanor on Whiskey’s part. But now that Whiskey was in a coma, it no longer mattered whether Whiskey had been a bad brother to Charlie. The moment that car hit him, Whiskey entered the realm of the blameless, a state in which he was responsible for nothing, and nothing could be held against him. Their relationship, or lack thereof, was now Charlie’s responsibility entirely.
Oscar
It was less than three weeks after Whiskey’s accident when Juliet’s nephew Oscar was rushed to the hospital with breathing problems.
“It’s not a virus, Mummy,” he had said to Juliet’s sister, Genevieve, between sobs. “I’m actually dying.”
Whiskey & Charlie Page 15