by Kim Westwood
The ambos use the rubber cover from the trolley to lift Albee, rolling him onto it, then raise the trolley to waist height and rush it between the bike-shop shelves, rails rattling and IV bag jiggling. As they’re sliding him in the back of the ambulance, the muscles of his legs and arms start to spasm, working like a broken wind-up toy.
‘Do something!’ I shout.
They already are.
‘Five of diazepam,’ Ambo A, busy with the airbag, calls to her counterpart. The shot goes in, and Albee spasms some more. I can’t bear to watch.
The doors slam on the lit cabin. Ambo B peels his protective clothing into a biohazards bag and climbs in the driver’s seat. As the vehicle wails down the street, I dash inside and grab the keys to the panel van off the hook behind the counter. Leaving my bike, I pull closed the security screen and glass door and race through the workshop into the backyard.
The Sandman fires up immediately. Its tyres screech out of Bike Heaven’s driveway. Gunning the engine, I follow in the wake of the siren and flashing lights.
It’s already a busy Wednesday in the Emergency Department. Staff to and fro behind the half-glass doors, someone moans, a child cries out. I fill in an information form for Albee at the reception desk, and am grilled again on what contact I had with him before the ambulance arrived. I say none and ask why, and am informed that his skin and bodily fluids — even his breath — are contaminative to others, and that right now he’s being washed down and his clothes incinerated.
Nothing I can do to protect him now, I turn wearily to the waiting area. Painted salmon pink, with seats to match, its low table is stacked with House & Garden magazines from the previous century. Half a dozen people sit in various attitudes of defeat: there are those waiting to be helped and those waiting for a verdict — and no way will I sit there with them.
I walk down the linoleum corridor to call Gail. Halfway through my second sentence the tears come. I slide into a crouch against the wall. Gail guides me through the details before we ring off.
Back at reception I’m informed that when they’re done washing him, Albee will be moved to Intensive Care.
‘Can I go there?’ I ask.
The nurse makes a quick appraisal. ‘Family members only,’ he warns, then says softer, ‘They’ll be too busy to let you near for a while. I’d get a snack and a cuppa from the all-night cafeteria. It’s better than the stuff they have up at the ICU.’
There’s a sign pointing along the corridor to the place he means, but the Tum-Tum Tree café is not where I want to be right now. Nor is it here, staring at off-pink walls and twiddling my thumbs. I need to search Albee’s place for what he took, and remove any incriminating evidence before other interested parties decide to conduct their own treasure hunt. The police I’m not worried about. It’s those self-appointed guardians of the moral good at Neighbourly Watch Central.
I ring Gail again as I’m walking towards the exit. We agree for her and Anwar to meet me at Bike Heaven.
It’s still dark outside. I sit in Albee’s panel van and stare at the pair of fluffy dice hanging from the rear-vision mirror. As long as I’ve known him, he’s had a love of kitsch. I lean my head on the steering wheel.
It’s usual, if a bit awkward, to self-inject into a buttock, but I’m convinced Albee didn’t do it by himself. There had to be someone else there who’d been let in and who left in too much of a hurry to close the front door. Albee is too careful to have forgotten. So was the jab in the bum with his permission or by force? I don’t like one bit what image rises next: my friend lying on his bed, face down, pants down, someone behind him administering the dose.
Shivering, I turn the key in the ignition and the heater up full bore. The van clunks along Temperance Street and Atonement, then left onto Saviour for the straight run down into South Melbourne.
Pesticide … surely not something the inner-city emergency services would encounter often? The two previous call-outs had given the ambos the heads-up and almost certainly saved Albee’s life. I don’t want to think about whether or not the others had survived, but a spate of poisonings in quick succession says there’s likely more of the substance being circulated in the marketplace.
I swing into Albee’s street. Not a light on, nor a soul about. In this neighbourhood the doors would stay bolted at the sound of a siren, nobody caring to see what kind of emergency vehicle is arriving and who’s being put in it, nobody wanting to know that much of anybody else’s business.
Pulling into Bike Heaven’s driveway, it suddenly comes to me — the other sickly thing apart from vomit that I’d smelt in Albee’s workshop.
It was perfume.
I bypass the front counter and ceiling-high aisles of shelving and begin my search in the workshop area, careful to avoid the place where the vomit was cleaned up.
Unlike the clutter in the aisles, Albee’s work space is immaculate, each tool with its allocated place on a pegboard or in plastic slide-out trays below. The bench is a well-used surface with clamps both ends, the shelves underneath holding cleaning fluids and neatly folded cloths. Eight bikes hang from the ceiling rack at the back wall. There are more in the shed outside.
I empty the rubbish bin. If someone else brought the stuff, there might be the telltale remains of packaging, like wax off the seal of a polyshell, or an empty ampoule; if Albee did it to himself then fell ill straightaway, there’s sure to be. Trouble is, I don’t know how long it was between the dose and its effect, and because the stuff was injected into a muscle rather than a vein, it would have been slower onset. Slow enough, for instance, for Albee to get dressed … badly.
Nothing obvious in the workshop. I move on to his flat, starting in the bathroom where it’s standing room only between the shower, washbasin and toilet. I check the cistern and the shower recess, then the set of narrow shelves behind the mirror, removing a few items I wouldn’t want the snoops to see and popping them in my backpack. Done there, I enter the studio space.
Albee’s living room is also where he sleeps, the bedding on the fold-out couch in disarray. A lava lamp sits beside it, the globs of goo collected at the bottom of a nasty green suspension. The dentist I went to as a kid had one of these, based on some misguided notion that we, the waiting, would find it comforting. To me it’s a piece of the past never meant to endure — but try telling Albee that.
There’s one clothes cupboard. I search it first, and relocate another few items from the underwear drawer to my pack. I close the cupboard and go to the bed. As I peel back the doona, a scent wafts. I lean down and take a big sniff. It’s the same perfume. Whoever my friend let in his front door, he also allowed into his bedroom.
Albee! Who did you accept dirty kit from? Who, apart from Gail and me, would you trust enough to risk that? And if it wasn’t trust but coercion, then who had laid him down without a fight and injected the stuff into him?
I cast about the kitchenette, one chance to find his personal stash before someone with less kind intentions does. After a fruitless search of the cupboards, I find it in the cutlery drawer. I should have realised that Albee’s ‘sorting like things’ mentality would put the sharp objects together. I separate the velcro tabs and unroll the canvas. There are single-use syringes of T in one pocket, and antiseptic swabs in another. If he’d used anything from here in the last few hours, he had the chance to put it away.
I add the canvas roll to my bag of incriminating goodies and return to the workshop, getting down on my hands and knees for a last check of the floor — and see something nasty at the back of the workbench. It’s a large gob of phlegm that Albee must have vomited up before the ambulance arrived. It occurs to me that the Ethical Hormones lab could analyse it for what he took — and that this may be my only way of finding out. Now Albee’s in the hospital system there’s every chance I’ll be locked out of the information loop, even denied access to him.
I eyeball the stuff, cursing. If it’s as toxic as they’ve said, I can’t just scoop it up. Then I remem
ber Albee’s welding helmet and gloves in one of the aisles of shelving.
Speedily I search the kitchen cupboards for an empty jar and a spoon, then don the helmet and gloves. Down on the floor awkwardly with the spoon, I ladle the viscous gloop into the jar and screw the lid tight. Helmet still on, I deposit the gloves and dirty spoon in the kitchen tidy to seal up and dispose of later. The floor may need another bicarb treatment, but it will have to wait. I remove the helmet and go to Albee’s bathroom to scrub my face and hands.
All done, I place the jar on the bench and stare out the workshop windows. Beyond the glass, the sky is lapped in cobalt. Soon dawn will be arriving in ever-paling shades of blue.
Headlights sweep the shopfront. I’m waiting in an unheard-of role reversal: the courier handing over a package to their boss for speedy delivery.
16
I step through the main entrance of the Jesu Christi Hospital with the first of the fruit-and-flowers brigade, passing by the florist’s stand just inside that’s touting gaudily to the forgetful. The ground floor is busy with scrubs and stethoscopes, trolleys and crepe-soled shoes, a stream of uniform wearers and clipboard holders beginning the duties of the day. The only people not bustling are those in slippers. These vague souls wander between the lifts and cafeteria, or make for the smokers’ area outside, where a hunched contingent of self-harmers are getting in some unnecessary practice.
I check at the main desk for directions to the ICU, and am pointed to the lifts. Two floors up, walking along the short corridor to a pair of locked doors, I realise I smell bad and probably look worse. Stale sweat and saggy-bottomed cycling pants aren’t going to help me swing the difference between seeing Albee and being sent away.
I press the intercom button and say who I’m here for.
There’s a pause. ‘Are you a relative?’ is the query.
‘Albee’s my brother,’ I reply. It’s the truth — just not the one they mean.
The door release clicks.
The nurses station is directly ahead. A doughnut-style arrangement set centre-room, it overlooks the entire ward, which is divided into several open-fronted sections containing four beds each and a lot of gadgetry.
Two heads are bent in discussion over the paperwork. One glances up. I try to imagine what she sees: a person with cropped hair, broad shoulders and a lean frame, no hips or breasts to notice, but no telltale stubble either. Clean-shaven, boyish … too boyish for a girl, and too girlish for a boy.
‘I’m here to visit Albee Wainwright,’ I tell her.
She refers to her notes. ‘Are you Salisbury Forth?’ She eyes me sceptically.
I refuse to be shamed. ‘That’s me.’
‘The ED information has you down as “friend”.’
That was before I realised they’d only let relatives in. I shift to deferential. ‘I came in with him and the ambulance. I’m hoping to sit with him for a little while.’
‘He’s in isolation. I’m afraid you can’t go in.’
She motions to the right-hand door of a portholed pair, both with signs on them. Obediently I read: ACUTE ORGANOPHOSPHATE EXPOSURE. ALL PERSONNEL MUST WEAR THE PERSONAL PROTECTIVE EQUIPMENT PROVIDED.
The left-hand isolation door opens and a nurse comes out just as a loud beeping starts a flurry at the station. ‘Wait here,’ my interrogator says brusquely, and they both rush off.
I sidle to the other isolation door, and push.
Inside is an anteroom with another portholed door. I go close and peer through. Albee’s there, hooked up to a raft of equipment. I don’t know if he’s sleeping or unconscious. I cast about the anteroom: a desk and chair, a wet area with a shower cubicle and a sluice sink, and two industrial-size biohazards bins. The personal protective equipment is on a table beside me. I glance back through the outer window at the nurses’ station. No one back yet. I saw how the ambos did it, so why can’t I?
The scrub suit and gown go on first, then the shoe covers, goggles, mark and gloves, the finished effect entirely claustrophobic. I take a deep breath and ease open the connecting door.
Sounds hit me first: the rhythmic hiss and suck of the ventilator on its stand beside the bed, and the beep of the heart monitor, its readout making peaked waves on the screen above. My own heart thuds in my ears, and my throat squeezes painfully to see Albee’s solid frame made frail and insubstantial amid the paraphernalia of life support. The tube coming out of his mouth to the ventilator is held in place by tape on his cheek, while an IV line from a fluids bag on a stand disappears under more tape at his collarbone. Another line connects at his wrist then loops to a second stand. More tubes trail from beneath the covers to collection bags at the bed end.
I go to the far side of the bed and place my gloved hand on his above the covers. ‘Albee.’ I lean over him. ‘You have to pull through this, because I refuse to live a single day of my life without you. So wherever you’re listening from, I want you to know I’m waiting for you, and so are all those beautiful broken bikes that will have to be fixed by someone else if you don’t get a hurry on.’
I search for a sign he’s heard me, but all I see above the hospital gown are familiar features slackened into an unresponsive mask of grey.
The door swings open and a nurse comes in, kitted up.
‘Actually, you were supposed to wait.’ Her voice is muffled, but not enough to hide the anger. Hands on my shoulders, she turns me around to inspect me. ‘Your friend’s in isolation for a reason. If you’ve done your PPE wrong, we’ll have to hose you down — unless you want to end up as a patient too.’
When she’s satisfied I’ve not put myself at risk, she busies herself with the electronic pump on the IV line, then checks the screens and various fluid bags before turning again to me.
‘You can have ten minutes in here with him. Then we talk out there.’ She points to the anteroom.
I nod gratefully. ‘Thanks,’ I mumble into my mask, but she’s already swishing out the door.
Ten minutes goes fast. At the rap on the inner porthole, I squeeze Albee’s hand gently and tell him I’ll be back very soon.
Her protective layers shed, the irate RN bristles. ‘You shouldn’t have gone in there by yourself like that.’
‘I’m sorry — it’s just I …’ My voice cracks. That Albee not die is all I can think.
She softens minutely. ‘Time to get out of that gear.’
She instructs me in the removal and dumping of the disposables into one biohazards bin and reusables into the other, then takes me to the sink to oversee my hand-washing. When she addresses me again, her tone is more conciliatory.
‘By the way you got kitted up, it looks like you’ve already had a lesson in the safety procedures.’
Silently I thank the ambos for their unwitting instruction.
She looks intently at me. ‘There appear to be no family members listed for your friend.’
‘I’m the long-term stand-in,’ I say.
She nods. She seems to get it.
I’m heartened enough to try her with a question. ‘Can you tell me what’s happening?’
‘We need to help him breathe, so we’re keeping him tubed and ventilated for now. His blood pressure was very low, so we’re bringing it back up with drugs and fluids. I’m afraid we won’t know for a few days how much damage has been done elsewhere.’
I try to take it in. It’s like digesting a brick.
‘You called the ambulance?’ she asks.
I nod.
‘If we got to him early enough, there may not be irreparable damage. Either way, he’s in a lot of trouble right now.’
‘But there’s a chance he’ll be okay?’
‘A chance. I won’t lie to you: his heart and brain function are the main concerns. It all depends on how long it was between the overdose and the antidote, and what else he had in his system to complicate things.’
‘He didn’t do it deliberately,’ I say croakily, and she gives me a sympathetic look. I know she doesn’t believe me
. Why else would someone inject an organophosphate into themselves?
I’m choking up again, but there’s something else I need to ask her. Albee is at the mercy of hospital protocols now, and I need to find ways to protect him. As ill as he is, he could be in danger of being outed as a gender transgressor to the NF watchdogs. All it would take is a quick word in the ear of a local card-carrier for Neighbourly Watch, and he’d be put on the pervert register for future attention.
I feel the stress rise as I try to frame my question. ‘Albee has had some operations …’
Her response is measured. ‘We have no interest in his other condition.’
Normally I’d take exception to that word, but right now I’m just enormously grateful she’s onside. Some of my tension eases off. Albee’s personal nurse, at least, isn’t going to report him.
‘We’re not all slavish followers of NF precepts,’ she says grimly. ‘Some of us still think our job here is to help sick people, no matter who they are.’
I have to ask. ‘Have the police been in?’
‘Not here — check down at ED. But I can tell you they won’t be interested in taking it any further.’ She gets the look of someone who’s had to explain hard stuff to upset relatives many times. ‘They’ll call it in as an unspecified OD; they don’t care about the circumstances or the type of drug. Then they’ll sit on it for another week to see if there are any new incidents, specifically ones involving high-profile persons. If there aren’t, they’ll decide it’s not enough fatalities to warrant the manpower required for a public safety alert and a proper investigation. With so many dodgy backyard sellers, the field of potential suspects is enormous, and the city cops are overstretched and under-resourced. If anything, they’ll hand it over to Neighbourly Watch to follow up. After all,’ she adds wryly, ‘they’re the only ones around here with seemingly endless resources.’