Still Riding on the Storm

by Robert G. Barrett

  Crook as it was, it could have been worse. By now my stomach wasn’t hurting as much and the physiotherapists and some good-looking young nurses took me for walks along the corridors. Plus I had a book and a small radio. I also had a portable DVD player. I’m digressing here. But earlier when I said I didn’t read many novels, I also don’t buy many movies. I prefer to watch documentaries like Louis Theroux, Nostradamus, Enemies of Reason, Alien Gods, etc. Though I did order one movie, which cost me almost thirty dollars: Danielle Steele’s Now and Forever, starring Cheryl Ladd and Robert Coleby. Only because Michael Long and I are in it playing two detectives. It was shot back in the eighties during the 10BA scheme, when if you put money into an Aussie film, you got a huge tax break. Which was a good idea until all the smarties in the Australian film game rorted it to death. Lang Hancock was backing this movie and no expense was spared. I was on $500 a day and Longie was on $750 because he had a speaking part, a lot of money back then. But apart from the money, for weeks on end they brought us both in only to never use us. So me and Longie used to sit in the back of my Kombi-Wagon smoking hash joints and listening to Led Zeppelin. The only time we’d surface was when they wrapped for lunch and we’d stumble out of my Kombi with a roaring case of the munchies and stuff ourselves with scampi, veal medallions, grilled barramundi or whatever. It was living the dream.

  There’s also a blooper in that movie that is pure gold. Like a couple of good boofheaded wallopers, me and Longie had to go round to Cheryl Ladd’s house while her husband was remanded in custody and go through her laundry basket to find some semen specimens in her husband’s Reg Grundies. We were ratting through her knickers and her husband’s Y-fronts like the Gestapo when Longie said, ‘Ah ha! What’s this?’ and pulled out a pair of Reggies. As he did, a bra strap got caught in his watchband and phwoing! It hit poor Cheryl Ladd in the eye. Cheryl’s only small, but she let out all the Goddamns and sonofabitches and other profanities like a grizzled gunslinger in a John Wayne movie. Longie and the director both shit themselves and all the crew gathered around Cheryl like she was the queen bee. Stupid me. I just laughed and wished I had my camera. It was a classic. Poor Longie’s gone now. He loved a cigarette and the rotten Bengal Lancer got him, too. But gee, he was a lovely bloke and a pretty good actor, too. Ahh! Who said nostalgia ain’t what is used to be.

  Time dragged on, they took the staples out, I rang Agatha, who agreed to put herself out and come down and get me. Have a coffee waiting for her when she got here, it was a long drive. Friday finally came round and they wheeled me down to the lobby to wait for Agatha. Somehow I managed to stagger over to the shop and get her a coffee around the same time she arrived. The porter put my bags in the back of the ute and I gave Agatha her coffee. She whinged that it wasn’t quite hot enough then whinged non-stop about her life in general all the way home. Stopping once when she got lost on Peat Island, where I had to stop and empty my bag, and again when she almost got us T-boned about two kilometres from Terrigal. I swear the other car missed us by less than a metre. We got to my place, Agatha dumped my bags in the lounge then split. She had things to do and she’d see me tomorrow. Thanks, Agatha. I don’t know what I’d do without you. I felt absolutely rooted, I looked like death warmed up and when I got on the scales I’d lost 12 kilograms. But boy, was it good to be home. Even the old cat was glad to see me. I had a cup of tea, joined the cat in a Valium then lay back on my recliner. And that’s pretty much where I stayed till Agatha came grumping through the door the next day.

  I didn’t need a lot of nursing, and I didn’t want much food. The one thing I did want Agatha to do, apart from knock up whingeing and complaining all the time, was take me down for a coffee and a read of the paper so I could get out of the house for a while. Agatha said that would be all right, mainly because she knew I’d shout her a coffee, too. One day she came round to give me an airing and immediately started barking at me not to take too long and to hurry up because she had go somewhere. I gulped my coffee down and on the way home she sped over every bump in the road. It hurt that much I had to grab my wrecked stomach and hold on for grim death. I looked across at Agatha and she was laughing.

  After Agatha left I figured out what her problem was. She was losing her looks, she was menopausal, she was filthy on blokes because of her husband and she was plain crooked on the world in general. Especially anybody who had anything. And I made a good whipping boy. It was getting near the end of December and I rang her one day to ask if she’d come over and bag up some T-shirts and take them to the post office. It was urgent, some readers needed them by Christmas. There weren’t that many and it wouldn’t take her an hour. No, she didn’t have time. A friend was coming over to mow her lawns. I said I’d give her a hundred dollars. Remember, this is the woman who’s always complaining she’s got no money. No. She still couldn’t come over. The lawns were more important. Maybe next week. So with a bag on one side, a catheter on the other and just out of hospital after two horrible operations, I did it myself. It took me fifty minutes. That’s the good news. The bad news was, I was still rooted and hadn’t driven my car for weeks. On the way down to the post office, I side-swiped a guard rail and when I parked illegally outside the resort across the road from the post office I backed into a feature wall when I turned round to leave. I stopped at a little coffee shop just round the corner and I was enjoying a flat white with the paper, when a woman came up and asked me if I owned the blue utility across the road. The police were going over it and a woman from the resort was taking photos. I walked over to see what was going on. Christ! I didn’t know I’d hit the wall. And even if I did, so fuckin what? I’m a grumpy old man and I’ve got a senior citizen’s card. I can drive any fuckin way I want. Fuck the cops. But a concerned citizen grassed me and the cops wanted to charge me with leaving the scene of an accident. Somehow, after showing the wallopers my stoma, my piss bag and scars and telling them I’d just got out of hospital, they let me off. Which would have to be a first for up here, because the cops on the Central Coast would arrest a dwarf for growing up. The woman from the resort said they’d send me the bill. I apologised to everyone, then bid them all adieu and returned to my paper and coffee, back to my grumpy old self.

  But as they say, every cloud has a silver lining. Who should come traipsing into the coffee shop for a takeaway but my little Kiwi friend Lisa. Lisa is a brunette and a pocket dynamo who works in a nursing home and is always happy. She’s also got a monster bikie boyfriend I’ll call Otis. She asked me how I was and I told her. She said if I needed any help, give her a call. I said you’re on, baby. I finished my coffee, then went home and rang Agatha. I told her I was okay and I wouldn’t be needing her services any more. She could go back and hang out round the cauldron with the other witches from Macbeth. After I hung up, I totted up how much money I’d given Agatha. It worked out I’d been paying her $35 an hour. Not bad money to do nothing but gripe and tear the wings off an old fly.

  After that my life improved noticeably. Lisa didn’t nag or shout at me. She didn’t whinge and surreptitiously try to torture me. Plus after working in a nursing home, she was used to smelly, pissy old toads like me. The only real downside was, because of the catheter and leg bag I couldn’t wear shorts. So I had to go to the beach and sit under the pine trees in a pair of cotton trackies and stare at the lovely blue Terrigal water and think how much I’d like to go snorkel sucking. The best I could manage was a dip up to my knees and to splash a bit of water on my face. The only thing missing was a hanky with knots tied in the corners on my head and a pair of black socks and sandals, and I’d have been a swap for an unwashed Pommy on holidays at Blackpool Pier. But it was all good. I could drive my car, I was out in the fresh air and after Agatha, Lisa was an angel.

  So I sat out the summer under the trees at Terrigal reading and drinking coffee. I even lined up a builder to remodel my bathroom. One day, for some strange reason, I felt really crook. No strength, headaches. I had to go and see the stoma nurse at Gosford ho
spital and I remember having trouble parking my car and I had to walk a fair way. I could hardly put one foot in front of the other and when I saw the stoma nurse she said I looked terrible and arranged for me to have a urine test at Terrigal medical centre. I had that and my piss looked like rancid custard. I went home to lie down and my doctor rang me to say I was getting blood poisoning from the catheter and to book myself straight into Gosford hospital. I said I can’t, I’ve got builders coming tomorrow and if I’m not here they’ll wreck the place and leave shit everywhere. He said fuck the builders, pack your bag. I’ll be round to get you in an hour. He took me to the hospital, greased all the wheels and booked me in for five days on an antibiotic drip. How many doctors would do that? He left and while I was getting tested, I got this violent case of the hiccups. You could hear them half a kilometre away and they weren’t going to stop. So they gave me a shot of some drug they give epileptics when they’re having fits. It stopped the hiccups but it made me hallucinate. When the nurses were wheeling me down to my ward, they were carrying torches and I thought I’d died and they were monks wheeling me down through the catacombs. It was horrible. They got me into bed and I flaked out.

  The next morning the screen drew back, I woke up and there was this gigantic shaven head looking down at me.

  I screamed out, ‘Who the fuck are you?’

  ‘I’m Henry. I’m a nurse.’

  ‘Jesus! What the fuck’s wrong with your head?’

  I settled down and things kind of got back to normal. It turned out Henry read my books. I’d tossed a couple in my bag before I left and gave him one which I autographed, To Henry with the big head. He was stoked.

  They kept me in hospital for five days on the drip. Five days in a ward next to a noisy old bag who talked at the top of her voice non-stop into a mobile phone all day and snored all night. Luckily I foresaw this and brought some ear plugs with me. Finally they booted me out and Lisa came and brought me home. I was right about the builders. They did wreck the place and leave shit everywhere. But eventually they came back and cleaned things up. I went back to sitting under the trees down the beach.

  Before long it was time to lose the stoma. So I booked myself back in to North Sydney Private for three days. Lisa drove me down and the surgeon joined me up. After crapping in a bag for three months, I don’t quite know how to describe my first fair dinkum shit. It was divine. It was exquisite. Shakespeare could have written a sonnet about it. This stinking gigantic turd just slid through me like it was on roller skates. I was ecstatic. I left the hospital a happy man. Next thing, it was time to get the catheter taken out. I went down myself and saw the kindly old doctor from the Crimean War. He did a little test then removed the catheter. I honestly tap danced out of his surgery and whistled all the way home.

  In fact I was in such a good mood, I noticed the local Holden dealers were having a sale when I got to Gosford. So I traded the old blue streak in on a brand new Holden utility. I’ve never had a new car in my life and I figured if there’s still a chance I’m on the way out, I may as well go out in style. The new car was the grouse, even if you needed to be a bloody cosmonaut to drive it. Shit! Don’t even mention satellite fuckin navigation to me, I’ll stick with my faithful Gregory’s. But the stereo, the seats and the steering were sensational.

  Life was now almost getting back to normal. I still had to build my strength back up and I needed to exercise, and it still hurt a bit when I went for a piss, but at least I could have a swim and get around all right. However, the big bloke upstairs had another surprise for me. Somehow or other I managed to get a pinched sciatic nerve in my back. I’d heard of these, but never had one. And I sure don’t want another. It’s like having a massive toothache in your back that never stops throbbing. I tried hot water bottles, stretching, painkillers, massages, acupuncture. I even went to these useless chiropractors who completely ripped me off. Ten minutes of actual hands-on treatment that did nothing — $110. The pain got that bad I drove down to Terrigal Medical Centre and got painkilling injections. Finally I went down and saw my old doctor and dear old friend in Sydney who used to give me cortisone injections when I buggered up my shoulder in the meatworks. He gave me a shot in the back which eased things immensely and lined me up for a CT scan up my way to find out exactly where the pain was coming from and to give me a shot of steroids. They hit the spot and I was over it. Thank God.

  So once again I’m starting to feel all right and fairly confident I’d got on top of the cancer. Plus I’d gotten over a dose of blood poisoning, I had a new car and my back was good. I was walking the walk and talking the talk and even thinking of starting another book. I had a good idea for a story rattling around in my big boofhead. I was mulling it over and getting ready to fire up the old computer, when I suddenly started going to the toilet ten, fifteen times a day, dropping these tiny little turds with each crap hurting more than the one before. Eventually they turned into absolute agony and at night it was like I was shitting battery acid. It hurt that much it brought me to tears and I prayed for the pain to go away. I went and saw my GP and he lined me up for another colonoscopy at Gosford Private Hospital. I can just recollect Lisa driving me into the hospital and a nurse giving me an enema … and that’s it.

  The next thing I can remember is seeing myself floating in a lake about three metres under water. I could see shafts of sunlight shining down into the water and the water was brown and mixed with algae. I was lying on my back dressed in white with my left arm half up in the air and I was looking at myself from my right hand side. It was all very peaceful and serene and there was nothing at all to be worried about or scared of. The next thing I knew, I opened my eyes to find myself in a strange bed in a big strange room full of screens and monitors. I was wearing a hospital gown, I was covered in drips and monitors and this nurse I knew, Toni, who I’d done a few favours for, was with some other nurses calling out to me, ‘Bob. Bob. Do you know where you are?’ I just looked at her, looked around and shook my head. ‘You’re in the intensive care ward at Gosford hospital,’ said Toni. ‘You’ve been in an induced coma for five days. Your bowel was perforated and you had extreme septicaemia. You’re lucky to be alive.’

  I feebly felt around under my gown and my stomach was again full of metal clips, I had another catheter jammed up my wozza and I was wearing another bag. Only this time, the stoma was as big as a Kransky sausage. I couldn’t fuckin believe it.

  Apparently, Lisa took me home and left me on my bed. Trudi, my friend’s wife from up the road, called in a couple of days later and found me on the bed almost delirious with pain. She called the hospital. The paramedics came round and filled me full of morphine then raced me into intensive care where the nurses put me in an induced coma. A doctor operated on me and found that as well as septicaemia, the cancer had come back, which was why I’d been crapping all the time and in so much pain. He cut another big chunk out of my bowel and put me on dialysis to get all the shit out of my blood. But my body just kept shutting down and I was going south in a hurry. Finally, the doctor said, ‘That’s it. I can’t do any more. He’s dying.’ Which means when I saw myself floating in the lake I was having an NDE, a Near Death Experience. However, Toni the nurse said, ‘No way. He’s not dying. He’s my friend.’ And you know what this beautiful bloody woman did? She pulled double shifts to keep the drugs up to me and saved my bloody life. Toni might not know it, but she’s in my will — big time.

  After I came to, I just lay in the intensive care ward like a bag of shit, either dozing off or hallucinating from all the drugs they’d pumped through me to keep me alive. Everything I looked at changed shape into a human form or a face. I imagined all the nurses were talking Klingon and at night I thought I was in a cabin on a boat, the Sea Shepherd, while they were out chasing the Japanese whalers. I could hear Bob Hawke and Peter Garrett making speeches, I could hear the whales calling out to each other, I could hear children crying and waves breaking against the boat while the rain pelted down on the roo
f and the boat rocked from side to side. It was a fuckin nightmare. I woke up one morning and standing on the right-hand side of my bed was a big white rabbit wearing a straw boater and a red-and-white striped vest. Standing on the left side of my bed was a big white mouse wearing a white laboratory coat. After a while, I looked up at them and asked them what they wanted. I asked them a few times. Finally they turned to each other and walked off. But as they walked off they shrank till they disappeared into a little hole at the bottom of a wall. I was Through the Looking Glass. It was like Alice in Wonderland. I read once that Lewis Carroll was right into the opium and hash when he wrote those books. I can guarantee he was and I know where he got his ideas from, the rotten, low-life, mull-head, druggie bastard.

  After a few days they wheeled me and all my drips and piss bottles and other paraphernalia out of the intensive care ward into a room by myself. I lay there, still watching all the fast runners and shape changers, only this time all the voices I heard in the hallway had Irish accents. Also, there was a door outside my room that slammed every time somebody walked through it. I was absolutely convinced I was in the middle of an artillery barrage and the noise was shells landing. I could even hear the shells whistling through the air before they exploded. I spent a day and a night in the war zone before they moved me into a cancer ward alongside five other people. This wasn’t too bad and one young bloke in there had a guitar, which he used to strum quietly. I nicknamed him Slash, and Slash and I got on okay. My hallucinations settled down, then two pleasant young physiotherapists arrived, a man and a woman, who dragged me out of bed and onto a walking frame. It was terrifying. After being on my back for over a week, I was as weak as piss and could hardly move my legs. I begged them not to let me go because I’d never get up again. But they were patient and caring and they got me going till I could slowly get around with a walker. I lost the two young physios and got an older man with a beard who seemed to fancy himself as an intellectual and was absolutely chuffed to find himself looking after an awther. We’d walk down the end of the corridor and along another, then sit down in a little alcove and it was out with the smoking jackets and the brandy and cigars for a literary discussion. I honestly didn’t feel like talking to anyone let alone talking about fuckin writing. But I’d play Ernest Hemingway to his Michael Parkinson till he’d walk me back to my bed.