Bird North and Other Stories

by Breton Dukes

  In half an hour they were atop the first of a corrugation of four ranges. To the west, far beneath them, was the Great Mossy Swamp, and all the way to its shore strange croppings of rock – like melting shrines – marked the tussock. The steering wheel had started to rattle and there was a new draft through the floor of the car. Paul – he’d long since stopped responding to the normal prompts in the normal way – sat looking into his lap.

  Mark drove on. The look he’d adopted after the postman’s tribute had slackened. In the waning autumn light, his features modelled a life of wrong moves. There was a gentle curve in the road and then a puddle the size of a paddling pool. The puddle turned out to be deeper than it looked. The car went in and stopped. Mark changed gears and rode the engine. He shook his thin body forward and then back. Water splattered the back window. He put the car into reverse and trod hard on the accelerator. There was a sound like a courgette being snapped. He reached down. The accelerator pedal was now no longer part of the car. The puddle was coming through the floor. ‘Um,’ he said, ‘I might try and give us a wee push.’

  Paul shifted his hands in his lap, but didn’t say anything. Mark got out and went to the back of the car. It was cold. The land appeared as something turned upside down, or like something you’d expect to see through the porthole of a submarine. He set his feet wide and pushed. It was like pushing at a shipping container. He went to the front of the car and looked through the windscreen. He gaped at Paul and made his hands into ears. On a shot-up sign a hawk flapped its wings and rose into the sky. Paul didn’t stir. Mark got back into the car and looking over at Paul, nodded as if they were in a restaurant and he’d just returned from a satisfactory visit to the rest room, then he sat and watched the icy night drain into the day.

  *

  One hundred and forty years earlier the miners spent their nights in shacks, tents, or nestled into the tussock. They travelled alone or in small groups, and, depending on the ravel of the man’s brain, he thought of the cold, of food, of the smell off his woman’s neck and of course of gold nuggets: sized like an axe head, a dinner plate, a newborn babe.

  Orderly

  The patient had refused to travel by bed so Dale had her in a wheelchair.

  ‘I’m not so sick that I need to go in a bed. And anyway,’ she’d said, ‘you look too old to get me and a bed moving.’

  On any new orderly’s first day, Lane, their boss, would tell the same joke: ‘The patient’s always right,’ then working his neck side to side he’d say, ‘except when I’m around.’

  Dale had been at the hospital for one year. He’d already heard the joke plenty of times.

  ‘What’s your surname?’ said the woman in the wheelchair.

  ‘Harper.’

  ‘And what was it before your civil union?’ The woman made a neighing sound that turned into a wheeze.

  Dale didn’t say anything. She was heavy. Going out of the ward one of the chair’s wheels got stuck. He crouched – there was a bad smell from her hair – and pushed with his legs. At the lifts he pressed the down arrow and waited. The lift came. He backed the chair on, pressed the button for the Lower Ground floor, leaned forward with his hands on the handles and watched the numbers above the doors light in descending order. The lift stopped. ‘Here we are,’ he said.The four lifts opened onto a wide passageway that joined the emergency department to the oncology unit. The radiology department was in between. As Dale pushed the woman towards the department’s waiting-bay he handed Lily, the receptionist, the woman’s x-ray request slip.

  ‘Shouldn’t be too long,’ Dale said, parking the woman next to a young man in a bed. Half his body was in plaster and his leg was suspended by wires attached to the frame of the bed.

  The woman in the chair peered at the young man. ‘What’s your surname?’ she said.

  Dale went past the reception and down a corridor. There was a staffroom halfway down the corridor and at the end, backing onto the x-ray suites, a large room where the radiographers worked. Off that room was the orderlies’ office. Lane’s desk was at one end. Jobs came in from all the different wards and Lane entered them on the computer before distributing them amongst the orderlies.

  There were three chairs down each wall. Dale sat down. They were forbidden to rest their feet on the chairs opposite.

  Lane was just finishing a call. He liked to talk about hunting, specifically the part where the animal dies. Sometimes he’d demonstrate the exercises he performed in his home gym. ‘Coffee,’ he said, writing the next job on a piece of paper.

  ‘Eh?’ said Dale, sitting forward.

  ‘I always have a strong cup before bed.’ Lane smiled and put the piece of paper on the desk.

  ‘Coffee, eh?’ Dale patted at the hair on the top of his head. He wore it longer these days. With a bit of inventive combing it looked like a full head. ‘Wouldn’t the caffeine keep you awake, Lane?’

  Lane smiled and tapped his nose. ‘You’re not listening, Dale. I didn’t say bed, I said bed.’

  ‘Oh righto,’ said Dale, smiling and leaning forward to take the piece of paper. But Lane was faster and he stretched forward and held it up like it was an ace.

  ‘I don’t drink it every night,’ Lane said, ‘only when Marlene’s over.’ He leaned back and put his hands behind his head. He stared at Dale with his black eyes.

  Loren came in. She was slow. She’d been an orderly for so long that even when she wasn’t pushing a bed or a wheelchair she walked with her forearms at ninety degrees. Only she and Feroz had been radiology orderlies for longer than Dale.

  ‘So, coffee might be just what you need, Dale,’ said Lane, handing him the paper.

  ‘Coffee?’ said Loren. ‘No.’ She shook her head as if trying to shake the words free. ‘I drink Milo.’

  Dale glanced at the paper and put it in his pocket.

  ‘The All Blacks drink Milo,’ said Loren.

  ‘Yeah, righto Lorry,’ said Dale. ‘The All Blacks eh?’ He stood up and drew his hands back like he had a rugby ball and was about to make a lineout throw.

  Loren reared back as if he had an axe. ‘Assault,’ she shouted. ‘Assault in my workplace.’

  ‘Dale, get off and do that job,’ said Lane, and then, ‘Calm down Lorry, he couldn’t bring down an ant.’

  Dale went out of the office, around a cluster of radiographers, and down the corridor. Instead of going right and past reception he went left and past the bean counters’ offices, past the specialised x-ray studios, the staff toilets, the changing rooms, the spare wheelchairs and the bags of linen. In the stairwell the loose skin above and between his eyes creased causing his eyebrows to stand up and for a moment his face almost looked predatory. ‘Coffee?’ he said, and then in a rhythm which matched his each descending step, ‘Can’t a man be left to get on with his own bloody job?’ He shoved through the swing doors that led to the back corridor of the CT and Ultrasound departments. The walls were long, dimly lit, and scuffed and dented by beds. His shoes squeaked on the linoleum, a machine whirred in a vacant surgical suite, and in an alcove a heap of dirty scrubs made the shadow of a wolf on the wall.

  Outside the two CT rooms there was a Polynesian woman on a bed. Under the bed a small brown boy was holding a book with a goat on the cover. The woman was crying and had one arm around her stomach. Her other arm hung down the side of the bed and she was beckoning with her hand and talking, between moans, in the tone you would use to call a pet. Dale took the paper out of his pocket.

  ‘Mrs Edwards?’ he said, looking at the woman.

  She pointed under the bed and said something Dale didn’t understand.

  ‘English, you speak the English?’ asked Dale, looking at her wrists and on her bed for notes or a name tag. There was nothing. A nurse in blue scrubs was coming. Her grey hair was in a bun and as she walked the loose strands rode the breeze. Dale knew the nurse. She belonged to a bowling club not far from his flat. ‘Cheap beer and lots of men,’ she’d say. He always forgot her name.
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br />   ‘Hi Dale,’ she said.

  ‘Is this a Mrs Edwards?’

  The nurse shrugged as she went past. ‘Not my patient. Ask someone in there.’ She pointed at the control rooms.

  Dale looked back at the woman who was still gesturing under the bed. He got down like he was checking a tyre. The boy was eating something off the floor. ‘You don’t want to be doing that,’ Dale said. He reached out and took the boy’s foot, then he made a face and shook out his tongue. The boy laughed. Dale took the other foot and shook his tongue some more. The boy laughed again. Dale pulled, gently sliding the boy out on his bum. ‘There we are,’ he said, picking him up and giving him to the woman. She held the boy close and gave him a strand of her hair to suck. The book was still under the bed and Dale retrieved that as well. Dale showed the book to the woman. ‘Goat,’ he said, making horns of his hands. The woman smiled and patted the child’s bottom. Dale slid the book under a pillow and said the word again. He bleated and made a butting motion. The woman said something and laughed. ‘There we are,’ said Dale.

  A linen trolley clattered out by the lifts. Dale remembered himself and went briskly into the control room. On each wall, along with the computers and boards of dials and buttons, two windows looked over the massive mechanical sleeves. ‘Hello?’ said Dale, but the rooms were empty. He stood in front of the computers and raised his finger like he was testing the wind. ‘Houston, we have a problem,’ he said, staring at a large red button.

  There were footsteps and just before them the wind people bring underground. Dale thrust his finger into his ear and turned. There was a young Indian woman in a white coat. The Queen, that’s what Feroz called her. Feroz was Fijian-Indian and when he told a story or joke about her it would be: ‘Dale man, you’re not going to believe what the Queen said.’ His head would bobble and he’d put his arm around Dale’s shoulder and, at the end, if it was a really funny story, he’d slap Dale’s stomach or even clutch his knees.

  ‘Mrs Edwards?’ asked Dale, putting his hands in his pockets.

  ‘No,’ said the doctor. She was holding a book of notes. ‘I’m about to scan Mrs Tapisi.’

  ‘Tapisi?’ Dale took out the piece of paper. ‘This says Edwards.’

  She grabbed the paper. ‘You bring this patient to us,’ she shook the paper in his face. ‘Mrs Edwards from 7D. I’m scanning her next.’

  She was right. Lane’s coffee story had distracted him. ‘Thanks,’ Dale said, taking the paper. He heard her laugh behind him.

  ‘Where do they find you people?’ she said.

  You people. The woman with the child smiled at him as he went past her bed. ‘Don’t worry about me,’ he shouted, waving like he was dusting a black board. ‘This place’ll do your ruddy head in.’

  He stomped around to the lifts and pressed the button. Lane would have him on the stopwatch. There’d be hell to pay. The lift came and he got on. It stopped on the third floor and two specialists took their time getting on. Dale leaned against the back wall sneering at them. Dressed up like bloody golfers. The doctors murmured to each other, and the lift went slowly upwards, shuddering as the giant pulleys groaned and whined. Sometimes a lift broke down, and men in grey overalls went up through the man-holes and clattered around with wrenches and spanners. ‘One of these days something’s going to come completely unstuck around here.’ The doctors looked at Dale. One of them started to say something, but the lift doors opened onto the seventh floor and, wearing his predator’s face, Dale marched between them.

  A man was asleep in a wheelchair in the corridor. The back of his head was resting on the bottom of a fire extinguisher. Two nurses, big thighs rolling under blue smocks, went past. They didn’t look at Dale. ‘Bloody fire hazard!’ he said, thumping the wall. The sleeping man woke up. His Adam’s apple pumped forward and then back. Dale glared at the list of names on the whiteboard outside the first room of the ward. He shook his head and kept walking.

  A linen trolley, its chipped blue ribs containing logs of linen bags, was coming. Salu was pushing it with one arm and sucking noisily on his teeth. ‘Hey Dale, my man,’ he said. His hair was cut high over his ears.

  ‘Can’t stop, Salu,’ said Dale, shaking his head. But then he did stop and, sighing to finally let out a breath, he turned around and said, ‘What’s on the lunch board today, Salu?’

  They always talked about the menu at the staff cafe: meatloaf, shepherd’s pie, spaghetti bolognaise, hamburgers, the Friday surprise. But Salu was busy. Steering the man in the wheelchair out of the way with one hand and towing the linen trolley with the other. Good old Salu. Dale strode to the nurses’ station. ‘Hello Mary,’ he said.

  ‘Who you after, Dale?’ Mary said. Her fingers were so bony it looked like a gentle pull would joint the lot.

  ‘Edwards, for CT –’

  ‘A Ms, in room three.’

  ‘Thanks Mary,’ said Dale. He went into the room. ‘Taxi for Ms Edwards,’ he said.

  That winter the hospital was sixty. The sealant around its windows was failing and the drafts were murder. Curtains to be drawn at all times. Lights blazed and surfaces shone.

  ‘Paging Ms Edwards?’

  ‘Down here. That one,’ said a legless plump woman.

  There were six beds in the room. The plump woman was in the bed at the far corner and she was pointing to the bed opposite hers. The old woman there was bent like a staple, bent so far forward that from the end of her bed, and beneath her hospital gown, Dale could see the length of her spine. ‘A young lady for CT?’ he said, going to the head of the bed and knocking on a bedside table.

  ‘She’s not young,’ said the plump woman. In a red satin slip she looked like some sort of circus balloon.

  Dale pulled the bed-curtain across. A strand of drool joined the old woman’s mouth to the sheet. He hooked his arm under her armpit and settled her back then chocked her with pillows and spread the covers up her front. With tissues from the bedside table he cleared her nose and while he worked he told her who he was and where they were going, but she just looked through him as if he were a window and, as if through the window, she could see someone coming, someone she’d been looking forward to seeing for an awfully long time.

  Dale flung the curtain back and unlocked the bed’s wheels with the toe of his shoe. He checked once again she wasn’t attached to a drip or a blood bag and that her catheter bag was properly fastened. Finally, he turned her wrist to re-check the name on her wrist-band. ‘Haven’t you got your own watch,’ she said, in a firm and loud voice, but then just as quickly she returned to her stupor, not staring, but tilting forward so that despite Dale’s work with the pillows, her forehead sunk back to the covers.

  ‘Ropes away,’ cried Dale, bringing the bed out from the wall in a smooth motion and walking backwards with it down the middle of the room and into the corridor. A nurse was waiting with a folder of notes.

  ‘Off for your CT, Ms Edwards?’ she shouted, patting the woman on her hand and putting the folder on the bed. ‘We’ll get you a nice cup of tea when you come back.’

  Dale brought the bed into line and then gave it another tug. He dodged with matadorian flourish and let it glide by straight and true. For a moment he walked alongside as if it were nothing to do with him and then caught its head and coached it past the man in the wheelchair. ‘You directing traffic?’ said Dale.

  The man smiled broadly and signalling frantically in both directions caused the fly of his pyjamas to spread and expose a withered-looking handful of plumbing. ‘Eyes left Ms Edwards,’ commanded Dale, leaving the ward and arcing through two elegant turns to park in front of the transport-lift. He went around the bed and picked up the lift-phone. It rang once.

  ‘Yep?’

  ‘I’m on seven.’

  ‘Yep.’

  The lift came and the doors opened. It was Sione. He was dressed the same as Salu. The linen orderlies took turns manning the lift. Sione wore an earring and a moustache. He smiled at Dale, reached out a huge hand, a
nd grabbed the end of the bed, pulling it straight into the lift and stopping it just as suddenly. Ms Edwards rocked forward and then back petting the covers with her forehead.

  ‘Where to Dale?’

  ‘Basement please.’

  The doors closed and the lift thunked and shuddered before starting.

  ‘You hear the one about the man and the chicken?’ said Sione.

  Dale shook his head. As soon as he’d stopped moving he’d started worrying. It had been twenty minutes already. Lane was going to string him up.

  ‘I’ll tell you when there isn’t a lady present,’ said Sione, looking at Ms Edwards who didn’t move or say anything.

  The doors opened onto the basement. Dale pulled the bed out of the lift and brought it around. ‘Hey Sione,’ he said, ‘can you wait a minute and take me to LG?’

  Sione nodded and leaned into the back corner of the lift. And as the air conditioning pipes in the ceiling made their strange hoovering sound Dale pushed hard for the doorway to the CT corridor and then started his turn. Like a speedway pro, he used the sideways momentum of the bed to take it into the tight corner and, just as the bed seemed sure to smash into the door frame, and as Ms Edwards resurfaced and made the sound of a child on a slide, Dale powered up his old legs and came at a canter out of the corner.

  ‘Safe as houses,’ he said, docking the bed, scooping up Ms Edwards’ notes, and hurrying into the room with its lights and computers. ‘Ms Edwards,’ he announced, putting the notes on a desk and jogging back to the lifts.

  ‘A man arrives home with a live chicken under his arm. His wife’s watching the TV and the man says, “So, this is the pig I’ve been fucking.”