Dropping In

by Geoff Havel

  I turn around towards Jess and mouth thanks.

  She smiles.

  Yes!

  17

  The hospital is like a rabbit warren with corridors everywhere and signs that are hard to follow. Mum seems to know what she’s doing though, so Ranga and I follow her along until we reach a busy nurses’ station. A nurse smiles at us and points to the phone she’s talking on. She puts one hand over the mouthpiece. ‘I’ll be with you in a second,’ she whispers, loudly.

  Mum’s nod is as exaggerated as the nurse’s whisper. I snort. Mum glares at me so I do a naughty-boy-being-told-off act with my head-bowed-nearly-crying look on my face. Ranga snorts. Mum’s eyes swivel across to Ranga but now I can see the corners of her mouth twitching.

  ‘Can I help you?’ It’s the nurse.

  ‘Yes, we’re looking for James Davidson,’ says Mum.

  ‘Let me see.’ The nurse looks at a list on her clipboard. ‘Ah yes, he’s in Room 58. It’s just down there on the left.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Mum says, and off we go.

  When we get there a curtain is drawn around the bed and people are talking behind it. Every so often James says something but he’s too quiet for me to hear what he’s saying.

  I’m not ready for what I see when a nurse draws back the curtain. James seems to have shrunk. His face is pale and he’s lying back on the white pillows like a white shadow but he brightens up when he sees us.

  Mum says hello and gives him a kiss on the cheek like she’s James’ mum too. Then says she’ll leave us to it.

  ‘You’ve got a great mum,’ Ranga says when she’s gone.

  I nod. I know.

  James looks like he’s dosed off but then he lifts his heavy eyelids and focuses on us. ‘Sorry,’ he says.

  ‘How did it go?’ Ranga asks.

  There are tears in James’ eyes. ‘Not like I thought it would. They said it wouldn’t stick out, but look.’ He hitches up his hospital gown and shows us where the implant is.

  A lump the size and shape of a pack of cards is sticking out of the skin on his stomach. The corners are barely rounded off by the skin stretched over the implant underneath. No wonder he’s upset.

  ‘It’s ugly isn’t it?’

  What can I say? It’s horrible. I can’t even begin to imagine having something like that inside me, let alone sticking out like that. ‘Does it work?’ I ask, so I don’t have to tell him what I think.

  He nods. ‘Sort of. My legs are a bit better — I can straighten them out more. But they can’t get the levels right and I won’t be able to go home until they do. Dad will be at work and Mum’s exhausted so I told her she could have time off from looking after me for the week.’

  ‘Do you reckon you’ll be in here for a week?’

  From the look on Ranga’s face he’s thinking the same thing as me. He can’t wait a week to show James the couch. He wants to show it to him now.

  ‘If they can’t get the pump working right, then yes.’

  A nurse comes in and wraps a strap around his arm and starts pumping it up for a blood pressure test. Another nurse comes in and there is no room for us. We have to wait outside the curtain.

  ‘Hey Sticks, why do you reckon they put drips in everyone?’

  It’s a good question. I haven’t got a clue what the answer is so I make one up. ‘So it looks like you’re nearly dying when visitors come.’

  Ranga grins, brain working overtime. ‘I reckon it’s because the doctors are vampires and they have to replace the blood they take in the night.’

  ‘Well I reckon they put mind control drugs in there and one day they’ll put a special signal on the telly and we’ll all be zombie slaves.’

  Ranga shakes his head. ‘It’s just to make it such a hassle when you want to move that you just stay in bed instead of running around.’

  I’m trying to think of a better reason when one of the nurses opens the curtain. She stares at us for a second and then one eye opens wider and the other half shuts. ‘What we really do is put tracking chemicals into your blood stream so your parents will know where you are and everything you do for the rest of your lives.’ She gives an evil laugh and then both nurses leave, hanging on to each other’s arms and giggling.

  How cool was that!

  James is looking better too. They’ve sat him up a bit. ‘You know what I’m going to do when I get home?’ he says.

  ‘What?’ says Ranga, giving me this sideways glance.

  ‘I’m catching a taxi to the marina for fish and chips.’

  Ranga looks amazed. ‘How?’

  ‘There’s a taxi that can take wheelchairs. The driver is a friend of mine now.’

  ‘I haven’t seen any taxi since you moved to our street,’ I say.

  ‘I normally only use him when Mum can’t take me in our car.’

  ‘Why don’t you get your mum to take you?’

  ‘I’m sick of people doing everything for me. I want to do something on my own.’

  I’m thinking about the couch. Is that the sort of thing he’s talking about? Maybe he won’t like it. Nah! He loves skateboarding and he’ll love the couch times ten.

  18

  ‘We better test it before James gets back,’ I say.

  ‘This arvo?’

  ‘Yeah! Straight after school before our parents get home,’ I say.

  Ranga looks like he’s just got a Christmas present. His hands go into racing driver mode, holding an invisible steering wheel. He turns it and leans into an imaginary corner.

  ‘You steer the couch with your feet,’ I point out. ‘We could put ropes down to the T-bar.’ It seems like a good idea to me.

  Ranga shakes his head. ‘James couldn’t hang on to it properly. One of us will just have to do the steering. I volunteer me. You’ll crash it.’

  ‘No way,’ I say.

  ‘Well, I’ll go first.’

  ‘Toss you.’

  ‘Deal.’

  Ranga wins the toss and won’t listen when I try to make it best of three, even when I call him a chicken and make noises like a hen that’s laid an egg. I’m flapping my arms and scratching the ground when I hear Jess.

  ‘Pretty good,’ she says. ‘You should try out for the drama club.’

  I’m so embarrassed I can’t think of a thing to say so I just give this stupid laugh.

  Ranga glances at me, then he turns back to her. ‘Hi Jess,’ he says, and moves over on the bench so she can sit down. She does, but she leaves enough room for me to sit between her and Ranga.

  ‘Not sitting with your friends today?’ Ranga says.

  ‘Nah! It’s my turn to be picked on.’

  I get up enough guts to sit down too. ‘Thanks for yesterday,’ I say. ‘I was miles away.’

  ‘Miles away?’ Ranga says.

  Jess laughs. ‘You might as well say he was in outer space.’

  ‘Nearly,’ I say.

  ‘Where’s James?’ Jess asks and when I tell her she looks so upset for him that I start thinking that she’s a really nice person as well as being cool. Then I tell her about the couch and how we’re going to test it out this afternoon and, before I know it, she’s coming too, to be a substitute for James in the trials.

  We’re just organising a time to meet at my place when a flock of girls, led by Lucy Jones, comes flouncing past so obviously not looking at us that even I figure out that that’s the whole point.

  I look at Jess, trying to get an idea of how she feels about the way they’re acting. She gives me a smile and a shrug as if to say, ‘So what?’ She just gets better and better. For the rest of the day I catch myself thinking about her. I don’t get a lot of learning done.

  We all meet out the front when school finishes and head home. Jess rings her mum on her mobile to tell her where she is. I kind of expected her to say that she’s going over to a girlfriend’s place but she says she’s coming over to my house to work on a hill trolley. It’s cool, even if she didn’t mention that the hill trolley is a couch.
Her mum must be cool too. I wonder what my mum would say. She’d probably be okay about it, but I’d get interrogated when I got home. I probably will anyway if Mum sees Jess with us. She won’t today though — she’s at work.

  We’re talking about all sorts of stuff as we walk along and Jess is walking next to me. Her hand is so close to mine that I start thinking about holding hands with her. Once or twice I nearly reach out and grab it but I chicken out. What if she doesn’t want me to? What if she pulls it away? I’m gutless. I know it, but I don’t want to wreck things. Then Jess looks across at me and smiles and I nearly get brave enough right then.

  As we pass the deli I’ve got my eyes peeled for that guy Luke but I can’t see him. I look across at Ranga and he’s not worried at all. It’s like he got rid of any fear when he stood up to Luke. I figure I’m too chicken to fight so it looks like I’ll have to stay scared of him for a while. Then I look at Jess walking next to me and I know I want to toughen up.

  All the way around the bend and up the hill I’m thinking about holding her hand and about facing up to Luke. It’s like she doesn’t think of me like I’m a little kid and that makes me feel grown up. It’s funny how we’ve always been the little kids on the street and now we’re older all of a sudden.

  Jess has to sit on the couch because that’s what James would do and Ranga is sitting dead centre with his feet on either end of the T-bar. I’m doing the pushing.

  A car comes up the hill, turns right at the roundabout and disappears around the corner. It’s the only car we’ve seen for the last ten minutes.

  ‘Go,’ yells Ranga. ‘Go! Go! Go!’

  I shove the back of the couch as hard as I can until it starts rolling down the hill, faster and faster. I’ll have to judge it so it doesn’t get away from me. Then I feel it starting to speed up on its own so I run around the side and jump onto the seat. The couch lurches sideways and starts swaying.

  ‘Careful!’ Ranga yells, holding the T-bar steady.

  It works, because the couch settles and we hurtle down the hill. Here comes the roundabout and I’m feeling uneasy. What if there’s a car coming up the side street?

  ‘Watch out for cars,’ I yell, but Ranga is too busy woo-hooing to hear a thing and Jess is hooting so loud it almost hurts my ears. We’re going so fast by the time we reach the roundabout that we get a bit of a lean up as we go around it, first one way and then the other. After that the road is a gentle curve and we sit there, enjoying the ride, until the couch stops way down by the next roundabout.

  Trouble is, now we have to push it all the way back up again and it won’t steer straight. Ranga tries lifting the T-bar and dragging it from the front but that makes the back of the couch drag on the ground. The only way to do it is to get Jess to steer while Ranga and I push. It’s hard work. We’re both puffing when we reach the top of the hill but that’s because we hurried so we could have another go sooner.

  On the next run Ranga is pushing off and I’m steering. It’s not as easy as I thought to keep the couch steady but, as we pass the first roundabout, I start doing swerves from side to side and we’re all leaning our heads in time with each other and laughing our faces off.

  There’s just enough time left for Jess to have a go at steering before we have to pack it away, otherwise our parents might show up and ban us from using it before James has a go. We charge down the hill sitting bolt upright, with our arms folded, as cool as anything, and Jess holds my hand while she steers.

  Woo-hoo!

  19

  On Friday morning James is back at home, looking out of his window just like he used to. I give him a wave as I head down the hill. I’ve got my school bag over my shoulder. Ranga comes out of his house and we walk past the roundabout and around the corner acting natural. Once we are out of sight we duck down the path into the middle of the park, where no one can see you from the road, and sit on the swings waiting. After about fifteen minutes Jess comes in from the other side of the park where her house is. It’s just like being spies.

  We hang around, planning how to surprise James. Jess keeps looking over her shoulder so I turn around to see why. There’s no one there. I’m relieved. For a moment I thought we were about to be busted.

  ‘What?’ says Ranga, looking at us both.

  ‘It looks like it’s going to rain,’ Jess says.

  ‘No way!’ says Ranga. ‘I watched the news last night. It’s not going to rain until Sunday.’ He looks confident, but then again, he always looks confident.

  I didn’t see the forecast but big, black clouds are building up on the horizon. It does look like it is going to rain — soon. For the next half an hour we wait, every few minutes stealing glances at our watches and then at the clouds. Ranga keeps getting up and sitting down until it’s time.

  At exactly 8:30 we walk back up the street. All of us are straining our eyes to see if any cars are still in the driveways of our houses but it looks all clear. Our parents are at work. Cool! James’ mum is working today as well and his carer won’t be here until ten o’clock so we’ve got an hour and a half.

  The way we’ve got it planned is like this: Jess and I go into the garage and get the couch ready behind the garage door while Ranga knocks on James’ door. When James comes out we’ll press the door opener and we’ll stand there with the couch like we’re about to go where no man has been before. If only we had a smoke machine. Anyway, then we’ll load him up and off we’ll go. Ranga is going to steer for the first run. Jess and I are going to push off and I’ll jump in the couch once it gets going.

  Jess will get a ride down the next time while I’m steering and then she can have her turn driving.

  Jess and I roll the couch to the front of the garage door. She stands next to it, ready. By the time I get to the little side door where I can see Ranga’s signal he has already rung the doorbell. It seems like ages before the front door opens and James appears. Ranga talks to him for a while and then James rolls his chair out to the top of his driveway. Ranga signals like a maniac behind him.

  The garage door takes a while to open but when we finally see him it’s worth it. He’s staring at us and his mouth is hanging open. He still hasn’t got a clue what is going on but he drives his chair across to get a better look — fast.

  Jess and I bring the couch down to meet him at the road, ready to go. For the first time I start to wonder if James will be keen. It would be scary to do something like this if you couldn’t move your legs or arms like you wanted. I don’t need to worry. From the look on his face it will be hard to stop him. He’s seen the T-bar on the front of the couch and he knows what it means. In about five seconds he’s hassling us to give him a ride.

  Ranga gets on one side of James’ chair and I get on the other. He’s lighter that he looks and we lift him out easily, but when it comes to getting him down on the couch it’s much harder. We have to lean forward to put him on it and the couch keeps rolling backwards. Jess gets behind it and holds it steady but even then we wind up having to half dump him like a bag of groceries and then help him to sit up and move into position. We put a cushion between him and the armrest to stop him leaning too far out that side when we turn.

  Once he’s set we line the couch up on the road and Ranga gets into the driver’s seat, feet on the T-bar. No cars have come past since we started so we figure it’s a good a time as any for our first run.

  Jess and I shove the couch off and once it’s rolling I jump aboard. At first it sways everywhere but Ranga holds the steering bar steady with his feet and things settle down. James is on the other side of Ranga but I can hear him hooting. It’s just like I imagined but somehow this feels different from when we practised. The couch feels unsteady. It lurches from side to side every time Ranga turns a little. Maybe it’s because James can’t brace himself properly. He’s flopping around a little, especially when Ranga turns left to line up the roundabout. I’m a little edgy. Apart from the dodgy steering the couch feels like it would be too heavy for just two of us
to stop quickly. What if a car appears now? The noise of the skateboard wheels and James hooting drowns out any chance of hearing one coming from the side street. No. No cars are likely to be driving around here at this time of day. The streets are usually empty. We’ll be right.

  Still, as we approach the roundabout I lean out, trying to see around the corner. The couch is barely in control and I’m gripping the armrest as we swing wide around the centre island. James leans on Ranga and Ranga leans on me but I push back, keeping things balanced. I’m trying to look out for cars but Ranga’s and James’ heads are in the way so I just brace myself. Then we’re through. It’s not until we slow up at the bottom of the hill that I realise I’ve been holding my breath.

  James is still hooting when we turn the couch around. He wants to go again — straightaway. Danger boy! We might have created a speed monster.

  This time we’re organised for the push back up the hill to the top. Ranga has some rope that we attach to the T-bar so we can steer the couch as we push it. It’s not pretty but it works like a beauty — much easier than last time. All the way back up the hill James describes how good the ride was. Ranga has a huge grin on his face and I figure my smile is just as wide. This is going perfectly.

  For the next run Jess gets to ride on the couch and I’m driving. I get Ranga to go down to the roundabout and look for cars. I know we won’t get going as fast with only Jess pushing off but we’ll still roll all the way down. Ranga reckons I’m like an old granny, worrying too much, but in the end he agrees after Jess says it’s probably a good idea. No cars come while he walks down there and after a quick glance from side to side he signals. Jess starts pushing and eventually we get rolling. James just sits there as we cruise through the roundabout like a bunch of pensioners on a slow-motion Sunday drive. He’s not hooting at all but he’s still smiling.

  Ranga walks down to us and helps me get the couch turned around. ‘Well, you got down here in the end,’ he says. ‘What do you reckon, James?’