Lap of Luxury

by Lisa-Ann Carey

  Talk about unlucky!

  So gentle, so innocent, a perfect mother and John’s sweet Blackberry Blossom used again and again as a foul snack by snaky and splenetic spermaceti yielding cachalot.

  Shrinking from the shaggy shuffle that left her shaken, her mind wrestled with confusion over what she’d found and what she’d lost.

  She’d found plenty but lost a fortune.

  “……prosperity doth succeed a battle won,” she remembered John telling her in the tree-house that sunny day.

  At midnight, after Terrance fell asleep on the couch, she took the three thousand dollars cash she had earned that night after it had slipped from his greedy hand to the floor and ran out the door…naked.

  Now, she found a fortune but lost plenty.

  Between the beach-house and the airport fortunately for LisaAnn some clothes were drying on somebody’s clothesline, she unpegged a sleeveless black velvet shift and threw it over her spunky body.

  She spent forty exhausting minutes running from the hoodoo the blackguard had put on her. Lucky for her she was able to jump straight on a flight and get the hell out of hollow Hawaii.

  Glad to be far away from the Charnel-House and happy to welcome the Brisbane International Airport, she bent down and kissed the ground the minute she alighted the plane.

  A cab drove her to the Moreton Bay jetty then she jumped on the barge feeling stronger than ever, this time was the last time anyone would greedily prey on her, she promised herself.

  “I hate you Terrance, I hope you die,” she cursed to the wind. With suffering came patience, with patience came love, with love came understanding….eventually.

  John had gone down to sit on the barge ramp every day hoping he would see his baby again and as the barge headed his way tears rained down his cheeks, he sent up a prayer of thanks as she hobbled towards him, collapsing into his loving arms, her feet sliced and bleeding, her body half-frozen from the chilling wind.

  “Take me home please Joey, I’ve lots to tell you,” she told him staring into his glassy eyes. He carried her to the car. The Prowler ZZ shot off like a bullet and soon he was bathing her aching, stinging feet in warm water with a touch of antiseptic tea tree oil drizzled in to the footspa to assist with the healing.

  “Oh darling, you wouldn’t believe what has happened to me,” her raspy voice crackled each heartbreaking word until his soothing voice overtook.

  “Sip this balm mint tea it will calm your restlessness, then take this diluted St. John’s Syrup.” She couldn’t wait to gulp down the solutions as she felt sadness rise up inside her.

  Breathlessly she described in detail everything that Hawaiian Wretch had put her through, but she had only mentioned that he had rung her she told him nothing about the package.

  “The thing that amazes me is how could he possibly be alive, we buried him last year after he had shot himself, unless…he is his identical twin brother.”

  “Yuk, you mean he wasn’t the boy I corresponded with during school?” It all makes perfect sense now, she thought, the figure beside him that had been inked out must have been the Terrance I knew.

  “Yes, he will have to be put away behind bars, he must not get away with what he has done to you,” he said with concern.

  The episode in Hawaii had left her all strung out.

  “Here my dear, we shall soak away the tension in a froth of soapy water. The best treatment for aches and pains is a little babying.”

  “The babies I forgot my babies.”

  “Don’t worry my sweet one, they have settled with a bottle of fresh cow’s milk each and mom has started them on strained foods.”

  “That’s wonderful, but when can I see them?”

  “After your de-stressing aqua-therapy with me, you must be calm when you hold them or they’ll pick up on your uneasiness.”

  He told her, regular relaxation is more than just a lingering luxury it is the essence of optimum health.

  “I know my baby loves a bit of bathroom bliss,” he scrubbed her dusty lips with his fruit scented saliva and the smooth edges of his perfect lychee-flesh coloured teeth.

  “All that has happened to me has built up a great deal of pressure inside of me.”

  “That’s not good. An excess of chemicals floating around in your blood stream can cause you heavy fatigue which can lead to serious complications if left unattended.” He tickled her belly-button with the tip of his silky tongue. She giggled.

  “My back aches, my neck aches, my head is pounding and my botty is stinging from the paddlin’ he gave me.” A long loud cry made her feel even worse.

  He comforted her with the words, “Bedroom bliss is near at hand.”

  Singing Pearly Shells to her in the bath each night is important, he said if she was going to get better. He massaged her neck, shoulder and back muscles until the rock-hard tension dissolved with the warmth of his hands.

  He placed heat pillows made of silk he had sewn himself onto every part that ached. The tea tree oil he added to the sterilised wheat inside the pillow unblocked her sinuses and she breathed much easier. He sang Pearly Shells to her.

  Her mother’s inspiring music played softly in the background and the lit roman candles transported them both into heavenly ecstasy. His gentle love drifted away her cares, the lavender oil he gently rubbed on her temples at night helped her sleep soundly and the citrus oil rubbed into the nape of her neck in the morning picked her up.

  Daily, she was treated to a facial with a mixture of egg yolk, honey and almond meal. The cucumber slices Eunice had placed over her tired eyes brilliantly soothed them.

  The babies gave her more joy than words could ever say.

  She was as well educated as he was. Their marriage, a sincere companionship, due greatly to similar interests in caring for others. Well-fed on his daily bread, she never let it slip from her memory that all that was given to her was from the hand of her husband.

  Before John appeared on her scene her life under her father’s roof she compared to the Greenland Icecap, a lonely, storm-swept waste. It took few months for John to evaporate the icyness with his sunny character. The hard times drove her to her knees pleading for a saviour. Pastor Amos had once suggested to be specific in her prayers to God, “tell him exactly what you want right down to the finest detail!” That’s just what she did, she prayed for a strong man well over six feet in height, hair the colour of a glowing sunset, eyes like sparkling emeralds, a toasty heart that could melt a glacier, a humorous character who was grateful for everything. When God brought him to her she realized it was not merely her own power that drew him to her but all part of God’s amazing provisional plan that she have everything she wanted in a man.

  For angel LisaAnn and her guardian-angel John, the duo known around the globe as The Healing Superheroes, life got better and better with time healing all wounds.

  The day she arrived on the doorstep of his clinic, confused and timid, and that he could see in her qualities that she could not see made front page news in Australia’s most popular medical magazine, TO THE RESCUE, one and a half years on, the story retold along with the fairytale ending. She was more than pleased to discover her dark storm cloud had a silver lining.

  Most of the credit for their rapid rise in the medical field was due to the discovery and set-up of St. John’s Syrup and their discovery of each other was like a silver-toned rhapsody. To her he was a wonderful surprise like a gift-covered tree on Christmas morn to a poor little girl, lost and forlorn. But the biggest surprise in their eyes was when they triumphantly launched their herbal cure last year, they stood back and watched in awe as the rose bloomed for many who had lost their joy of life caught at the top of the broken down Ferriswheel of mental torture.

  In twelve short months Dr. John Wright had sold half a million bottles of the tincture world wide at twenty-five dollars for a one hundred mL bottle. News travelled fast and both Doctors found the Queen of England calling them and congratulating them on saving those in the
greatest need.

  The pair, throughout their whole career path, remained very good friends with no animosity between them. They always maintained an amicable understanding for those who were suffering. They could never turn anyone away, they were like workhorses they just didn’t stop. Since a young student he set his targets high and hit them, she later followed the trend after he discovered her gifts. They reached their peaks quite early in their career. Their patients, once bombed in the eyes of their greatest critics – their own families, soon will have their needs met physically not just mentally, when their favourite Doctors use much of the money made on the tincture to set them up permanently on their own island in a splendid residence resembling the Pharos Lighthouse that crumbled into the sea many years ago.

  “It seems like only yesterday we were joined together in holy matrimony. My Love, my only one. Please, promise me you will never allow another man to lure you from my embrace,” it was as if she were wrapped up in tinsel and placed like a crown on the top of his sweet head.

  “Never again will I leave you for another. I am yours, yours forever. I love you, My Love,” she told him. He had reheated her stone cold heart yet again.

  A sad LisaAnn returning from Hawaii

  Chapter Nine

  Fearless and friendly well-wishers from the Wright Household freed the bruised and battered flock enmeshed at the hostel of horror. The spiteful she-monster hanged by the authorities for her wickedness.

  Ten months after flowering, fruits of the avocado trees matured. Josef was busy harvesting the highly nutritious vitamin pills grown successfully in the well-drained red earth in rows next to a gigantic lilly-pilly wall protected from the strong coastal winds. Fifteen days after harvest they were soft and ready to eat.

  LisaAnn was busy in the kitchen blending the pulp of the avocadoes with cold cow’s milk and some she added to freshly chilled homemade lemonade for drinks.

  Vaardii and Mavis tucked into the dips LisaAnn and Jayne had made by blending avocado with lemon juice and onion with stacks of corn chips as scoops on their visit to the island.

  Rachel and the twins scooped up the delicious mousse with their chubby fingers ending the feed splatting it on each other’s faces. That afternoon the green goo was washed away under the spray of the waterfall.

  The Detroit men headed back to the USA.

  Chronic anxiety was observed in many of the patients from the hostel. Sourness formed a crooked edge to their personalities stirring them up in a twist of complaint. Sunnyvale’s Recreation Officer kept them busy with various creative activities and board games taught them discernment. Self-control, orderliness, obedience and capacity for cooperation were gradually grasped with the spiritual guidance of Pastor Amos and the medical guidance of both Doctors.

  The hobby of gardening had them singing, they became livelier and more harmonious between each other. They learned how to colour co-ordinate the flowering plants by using a dominant shade as the main colour and the softer shades as accents. Soon they were experts at blending cream flowers with silver foliaged plants for stunning displays around the Hospital.

  Pottery classes had them turning out garden pots, ornaments for their rooms and sculptures for their own private gardens near their quarters.

  Watering the gardens refreshed the patients.

  It was not part of their Psychiatrist’s plan to leave them in the institution, forgotten by the world. He decided to create a homelike setting where they could keep busy and have fun. He wanted more than anything to meet their impossible needs. When they were hungry he fed them, when they were distressed he comforted them. When they gave up on themselves he encouraged them. They were jumping with joy when they were told they would have their own island to themselves and that a luxurious lighthouse designed like the Pharos would be built for them to dwell in. They would be allowed to decorate the inside to their own tastes. It would be run on electricity.

  With guitar accompaniment John sang songs he arranged with their help. They came up with some powerful lyrics to his tunes. One song in particular touched their fan’s hearts at an outdoor concert they put on for the people of Moreton Bay. It was called THE COMFORTED HEART. John had them all join in the chorus.

  God move us, change our hearts,

  keep us good friends, never let us part.

  You improved the quality of our lives,

  forever our strength, forever our guide.

  Our hearts were sad, you made us glad,

  you are as comforting as an eiderdown quilt,

  when we were homeless a dwelling-place you built.

  A grief-stricken girl of eight years was brought into the clinic with her mother after her father’s throat had been cut in a brutal attack by a violent killer who invaded their home one night whilst the mother and daughter had been staying at friends.

  “Good afternoon, is your name Molly Baker?” Doctor Wright extended his hand to the little girl for a welcome shake.

  She let him clasp her hand she shook his with much force, “Yes, I’m Molly Baker, I cry a lot, my daddy has gone, I miss him.”

  “Do you feel lonely?” John asked her.

  Tears fell from her large blue eyes, “Yes, Doctor Wright my daddy used to take me on piggy back rides on the beach, but now he can’t.”

  He turned to her mother and explained, “When the close and intimate contact of the young girl with her father suddenly ceased, her basic sense of security and trust was lost. Don’t be surprised if she avoids your mothering, as she is detaching due to paralysing nostalgia.”

  “She stays in her room isolating herself, clutching her father’s photographs and his car keys begging him to come back down from heaven. She misses him terribly.”

  The young lady hungered for Doctor Wright to stand in for her dead father.

  “If she is not treated now she may suffer neuroses in adulthood,” he warned.

  “She had a healthy personality when he was alive but now she seems so numb and distant. It has been a year since he died, she should be starting to get over it by now,” her mother said.

  He led her mother to the corridor where they could talk privately.

  “Your little girl will undergo periods of yearning and suffering, this is associated with reminders of her deceased father, perhaps it may be best to take away the photographs, tell her you are putting them in a photograph album so they stay nice and that you’ll both look at them together on a special day each week.”

  “Yes, I’ll try.”

  They returned to the room and little Molly.

  Apathy and a sense of futility led to depression. The little girl aimed anger and outbursts of irritability at herself. She became restless, stayed up until late at night searching the stars above for her father, eating less and less.

  Pastor Amos was brought in after Molly asked if God cared?

  “If a sparrow accidentally falls from its nest God knows about it,” Pastor Amos shared.

  “What does he do when a little girl’s father dies?” Molly asked him.

  A tender smile spread across his lips, he told her in a fatherly tone, “Again, he cries, everyone is precious in His sight.”

  St. John’s Syrup was given in a small dose it did the little girl no harm. She wanted to become a friend to God because she understood that he cared. At night her mother and her promised to pray to God to look after her father. John wrote a song for her and sang it for her it comforted her and gave her hope.

  “Daddy, you now live with God,

  He cares for you, you he holds.

  God is close to you and me,

  Our faith in him keeps hope alive,

  We can always believe.”

  At lunchtime the babies adhered themselves to the plump bosom in an unoccupied interview room across the hall from John’s room, LisaAnn buzzed for the receptionist, within a minute the Receptionist was knocking on the door.

  “Enter,” LisaAnn chimed.

  Casting a saintly glance at Joey-John and Lisa-Marie s
he quickly mentioned how adorable they looked then asked what was needed.

  “Do I have any appointments this afternoon?” asked LisaAnn, burping the babes.

  “Yes, a twenty-two year old pregnant lady named Sue Marr at one-thirty.”

  “Thanks, I’ll interview her in here, would you mind getting the twin’s collapsible playpen out of the Laser? Doctor Wright and myself will each need a serving of shepherd’s pie and salad plus fruit and ice-cream from kitchen with a milkshake each for lunch. I have strained carrots and pears for the twins.”

  “Certainly,” the receptionist moved quickly down the hall.

  Within ten minutes John appeared at her door smiling sweetly then his expression changed to bitterness at the odour coming from the bottoms of the bubs.

  “You take Lisa-Marie and I’ll take Joey-John,” she ordered John.

  Firstly two fresh nappies were folded kite fashion and laid out on one corner of the conference table by John. He lifted Lisa-Marie’s white smocked frock and folded the hem neatly over her chubby chest. He popped open the pins, LisaAnn doing the same after unclipping the pants of Joey-John’s blue and white sailor suit.

  “Full house, we lose,” John joked. Blobs of muddy muffins stuck to Joey-John’s marble sack and Lisa-Marie’s plump peaches. After a quick wipe the packed nappies John emptied down the toilet turning up the toffy noses of Mark and Myer waiting in the corridor for a lecture with the boss.

  “Be with you pair in a minute,” he chirped then raced back in to the room closing the door behind them.

  “There’s a line up out there.”

  “You’ve got a meeting on neurophysiology soon, I forgot.”

  “I’ve called the lecture DIRTY BRAINS AND DEADLY BEHAVIOUR, they’re not supposed to arrive for another hour, a man’s got to eat.”