Madness, Mayhem and Motherhood

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Madness, Mayhem and Motherhood Page 23

by Nikki McWatters


  The nurses and doctors at the hospital were very thorough. Harry was so limp I was terrified. They did a chest X-ray and took blood samples. He didn’t even flinch at the needle. That was not like Harry, who was usually a ball of energy and who would be most put out by having syringes sucking blood out of him. He barely even seemed to recognise me. Urine samples. Saliva samples. They administered some more Panadol and we waited and waited. Toby was getting irritable and bored and he and Ben were niggling at one another, teasing, taunting, and it was getting on my nerves.

  ‘Cut it out you two,’ I snarled at them.

  ‘It’s Ben,’ Toby whined. ‘I’m not doing anything.’

  ‘That’s bull!’ Ben snapped back. ‘It’s him. He’s being annoying.’

  ‘Just stop!’ I groaned.

  Finally we were sent home with a shrug and a vague diagnosis of a ‘virus’. I cried all the way home with frustration. They didn’t know what it was. I didn’t know what it was. But I sensed it was bad. I just wanted Harry to be well.

  Back at the villa, I sat on the edge of my bed, holding Harry against my heart, rocking and soothing him. The boys helped themselves to cereal for dinner as I really didn’t want to put Harry down. He whimpered when I did, and I could tell that he was comforted by the rocking and the warmth of my body. I was sick with worry. I had never had a child so ill, not even when Ben had bad ear infections as a baby.

  ‘It’s eight o’clock, guys,’ I called to the boys. ‘Into your pyjamas and bed.’

  Ben and Toby came in and kissed me goodnight. They each gave their little brother a kiss on the head. His breathing was shallow and his heart was racing.

  Twenty minutes after the boys had gone to sleep, the phone rang. I looked at it on my bedside table and willed it to shut up. I didn’t want to talk to anyone. It rang out. Ten minutes later it happened again. The only people who ever rang me were my parents. I hadn’t given the number to anyone else because I’d not been on the Coast long and I just got depressed hanging around my friends who had all got their lives together so much more than me. If it was Girl George, she’d just be drinking and dialling and wanting to talk shite and gossip and I was really not in the mood.

  I lay back carefully on the bed, still cradling my sick son.

  Every ten minutes for the next hour or so, that damn phone rang. It was really starting to piss me off. I eased Harry off my arm and leaned over the bed, giving the phone cord a sharp tug so I wouldn’t have to listen to its relentless wail for attention.

  I finally drifted off with one hand on Harry’s chest to monitor him.

  No sooner had I faded into that hazy place where dreams are more like half-awake daydreams than I saw a flash of red outside my window. And another. Flash. Flash. Flash. Round and round … like an emergency light on the top of a police car.

  Someone knocked on my front door and I was there in a second, my robe wrapped tightly around me. When I opened the door to find two uniformed police officers, my knees began to crumble.

  ‘We’ve come from the Southport Hospital,’ one of them began and I started to shake, terrified that something awful had befallen my parents or brother or sister.

  ‘No … no one’s hurt,’ the other one reached out to touch my arm and steady me, ‘but you had a little boy in Emergency this afternoon.’

  My mind was racing. What were they talking about? Harry was right there with me.

  ‘They’ve been trying to phone you … but there’s been no answer. I’m sorry, ma’am, but a blood test has come back positive for the meningococcal virus.’ The constable looked most uncomfortable delivering such news. ‘You need to get your son back up to the hospital immediately.’

  Meningococcal virus.

  I went cold. The newspapers had been full of awful stories about children dying of that disease. Dying. Losing limbs. I heard the police offering to take me but the boys were asleep and I was completely dazed and in shock.

  ‘No, I’ll drive him up there now,’ I stammered.

  My neighbour from the next villa appeared behind the officers. I barely knew her.

  ‘Hello.’ She looked grim. ‘I saw the lights and came out the front. I heard. I’ll watch your boys for you if you like.’

  The kindness of strangers. She was a little old woman and I grabbed her hand in thanks.

  The hospital was waiting for me and rushed me behind the emergency doors. I had rung Mum and she was meeting me there for support. The first thing they wanted to do was a lumbar puncture: a procedure not unlike having an epidural. I’d suffered through that before and knew it wasn’t nice. My heart sank like a stone.

  ‘Can I be with him while you do it?’ I asked.

  ‘No,’ a nurse shook her head, ‘it’s too upsetting for parents.’

  It was fast becoming a nightmare and I was begging myself to wake up. I had no control over what was happening. They were about to take my little boy away on a trolley. He was so sick he didn’t even seem to register that I was not beside him.

  Mum arrived and hugged me. She looked completely devastated. ‘How are you handling it?’

  I told her I was handling it because I had to handle it. I had to be strong for Harry. I had no choice. ‘But it’s really hard, Mum.’

  They wheeled my son away and I crumbled against a wall, sliding down to the cold floor. I hugged my knees and buried my face in them. And I cried little bleating noises from the back of my throat so I didn’t echo in the cold hospital corridor and disturb sick people. And I prayed. For the first time in my life I actually hoped there was a god and that he or she was listening. It felt like that might be my only hope. Please God. Please. Don’t take Harry away from me. I will do anything. Devote myself to a lifetime of missionary work. Be a better person. Harry is the most perfect boy and I cannot lose him. I just cannot. I do not have the strength to cope with that. I will not let that happen.

  I stood up and sniffed back my tears, feeling suddenly angry. No, meningococcal! You may not have my boy.

  Bad Nikki was suddenly in my face, telling me this was karma. She was suggesting that it was happening as payback for all the terrible things I’d done in my life. I stood strong.

  GOOD NIKKI: No! There is no place in this hospital right now for you. Go away. I’ve got this one! You, my dear, can fuck right off!

  Harry returned and they put us in a quarantined single room.

  ‘You and all your family will have to take a preventative medicine. Anyone who has been in contact with Harrison during the last fortnight,’ the serious doctor told me. ‘The drug has the odd side effect of staining bodily fluids red. Tears. Sweat. Urine. Semen.’

  I thought back to the last couple of days, which we had spent swimming in the common pool. Everyone in the villa complex would have to be treated.

  ‘The good thing is he hasn’t developed a rash, so we may have caught this in time,’ the doctor told me. I was nodding and thought that sounded more positive. ‘Thank goodness you brought him in this afternoon. A mother just knows, eh?’

  I nodded feebly, feeling so light I might just have floated away.

  Mum kissed me on the cheek and left to go and relieve the neighbour and be there when the boys woke up.

  Even in my state of shock and terror, I had a little wash of concern run over me that my house was a mess and that Mum would be disappointed in me.

  ‘Don’t worry the boys,’ I said to her. ‘Just tell them it’s a virus and he’s getting all fixed up.’

  The hospital staff provided her with enough medication for herself and the kids and they told me someone from the health department would take the medication to my landlord to give out to the other tenants.

  Harry had a drip running into his foot. They had splinted it to his tiny leg.

  ‘What’s going to happen now?’ I asked in a frightened voice.

  ‘Because we think we’
ve caught it early enough, the prognosis is good. We won’t know completely until the results of the lumbar come back, but a very high dose of antibiotics is being administered through that drip. The next twenty-four hours are crucial.’

  Twenty-four hours. Crucial. This was really serious. The thought that it might be Harry’s last twenty-four hours on Earth was completely unacceptable. I wouldn’t allow it.

  ‘You can stay in the parents’ lounge,’ they told me. ‘There are foldout beds there. If anything happens we will—’

  ‘No! Can’t I stay here with him?’ I blurted out.

  ‘Sure, but because we may need urgent access to the bed, we can’t allow foldout beds in the room. You’ll have to sleep in the chair.’

  I looked at the heavy black recliner in the corner of the room. ‘That’s fine.’

  All night I sat in the chair by the bed, holding Harry’s tiny hand, watching the rise and fall of his labouring chest, and I continued to pray. To every god from Zeus to Rajneesh, the Orange People Guru to Allah to Jehovah. I covered all bases. Please do not let Harry go. He is my life. I may have got through a lot of stuff in my life but I am not strong enough to cope with losing him. Please God. PLEASE GOD!!!!!!!

  The first blue tinge of morning peeked its head up over the ledge of the window. I chided myself for having drifted off briefly. Harry had his eyes open and was looking around the room.

  ‘Mummy?’ He struggled to sit up and tried to pull at the slab on his foot.

  ‘Hey, honey.’ I sat up on the bed and hugged him so tight and never wanted to let go. ‘We’re in the hospital. You’re a bit sick. Are you feeling better?’

  He looked brighter and felt cooler.

  He nodded groggily.

  He was going to be OK. I knew then that he was going to be all right and I sobbed tears of gratitude into his soft brown hair as he fell back to sleep in my arms.

  I didn’t know which god to thank. But I felt Clay’s presence for the first time since he left. I suspected that some of the quantum particles of light that had made up his energy, his life, were in that room with us that morning. I looked at the dust motes floating in the first rays of sunshine slashing through the Venetian blinds and I smiled and whispered, Thank you.

  Two weeks of sleeping in an uncomfortable recliner in a quarantined room in a hospital will put you in a very bad mood. I highly recommend avoiding this at all costs. It was a small price to pay for my son’s life, but I was very cranky because the reunion with my darling Ben and Toby was kind of tempered by an eviction notice in my mailbox. It was the day before Christmas Eve! The sleazy Elvis-impersonator had popped, not a Christmas card, but an eviction notice in my mailbox because while I was in hospital with my son I had once again fallen behind on my rent.

  ‘You are three weeks behind,’ he said, looking at my boobs. ‘So you need to pay five so that you are two weeks in advance.’

  ‘I’ve got two weeks’ rent right here,’ I begged, holding out the cash.

  He took it and counted it, and shrugged. ‘I need five to make the eviction notice go away.’

  Three weeks’ rent was like six hundred dollars. I was not going to ask Mum or Dad for that much. It was Christmas. I already felt bad because I didn’t have presents for them. I hadn’t even been able to buy any for the kids because I’d been in quarantine in hospital. I could manage their toy shopping on Christmas Eve, but I wouldn’t have enough to stretch to buying presents for the rest of the family and I was not going to ask for a hefty loan on top of that, a loan I really had no way of repaying. And the car rego was nearly up. I was living in a nightmare within a nightmare and I decided once and for all that I hated the Gold Coast. If a place could have energy, it had bad mojo. I got the distinct impression that the feeling was mutual and that the Gold Coast hated me back just as much.

  ‘I can pay like an extra fifty a week, or maybe a fortnight,’ I pleaded with the landlord. ‘And catch up that way.’

  ‘Nup.’ He shook his head.

  ‘Well, I don’t know what else I can do,’ I said desperately.

  ‘Well,’ he raised his eyebrows and licked his fleshy lips, ‘I guess, maybe we could work out some sort of other arrangement.’

  At first, I thought I was imagining what he was insinuating. Just the way he oozed out the word arrangement made my eyes pop, and I stared at him for a moment. ‘What do you mean exactly?’ I asked slowly.

  ‘What do you think I mean?’ he leered.

  I just stared at him, unable to actually believe what I was hearing.

  ‘What?’ He laughed. ‘I don’t know what you are talking about. Are you hitting on me, love?’

  ‘You disgust me.’

  ‘Then you’ve got two weeks to get out, and that’s me being generous. Take your little brats including the one with AIDS or whatever he’s got and get out of here.’

  ‘I will!’ I yelled again.

  ‘You do that!’

  ‘Merry Christmas!’

  I marched out of there and I was shaking, I was so livid. It was Christmas! I went back to the villa, looked at the boys and said, ‘I hate the Gold Coast!’

  I wished I hadn’t given the landlord the cash because it had been almost every cent. I didn’t have enough to move my stuff. I certainly didn’t have enough for a bond on another place. I was screwed. I was fuming and cursing and wondering how I had ever let Mum talk me into moving home. I was trapped between a big jagged rock the size of Uluru and a very, very hard place. I had no one I could really turn to. Mum lived in a small but swanky unit and didn’t even have a spare bed. Dad was not an option. I knew I could stay there for a few days but my three boys were livewires and would drive most people nuts pretty quickly. Dad had had Ben and Toby staying with him for the two weeks I was in hospital and he’d made it clear that was enough for him. I knew I was a burden. I really was a wreck with spares.

  I sat down in the villa at my cheapo dining table and thought hard. It was difficult to concentrate because the boys were watching some terrible cartoon with terrible cartoony music and I felt like I was living in a three-dimensional Hieronymus Bosch painting. I thought and thought.

  BAD NIKKI: I—

  GOOD NIKKI: No! Not now!

  I was going to have to investigate public housing and emergency accommodation options.

  The church people gave me the keys to go and look at the emergency house in Nerang. It didn’t look too promising. We walked through the overgrown, rubbish-strewn front yard and up the stairs. Inside was even worse. The carpet stank of urine. The bathroom was disgusting. The curtains were torn; the windows were cracked. The boys looked horrified.

  ‘We don’t have to live here, do we?’ Ben asked feebly. ‘It’s really gross.’

  From next door I heard someone shouting. I looked out the window and could hear a couple arguing. Then a thud. A scream.

  ‘Oh for fuck’s sake …’ I muttered.

  There was a guy beating a woman next door. It went on. It got worse. I grabbed the boys, my heart hammering, and got out of there. I drove straight to a phone booth and called triple 0 and asked them to send the cops to the house and maybe an ambulance as well.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I told the boys as we drove. ‘I’m not taking you back there.’

  I gave the church people back the keys and politely declined the kind offer of reduced rent for the house. It wasn’t worth it. Living in a place like that would have been so dangerous. I couldn’t do that to my kids. I had to come up with something better. I thought I’d been at rock bottom before in my life, which meant things were way underground now.

  The eviction notice had given me two weeks to be out. I smiled through Christmas lunch with the family. I didn’t touch the champagne. I needed a level head. I didn’t let on to my family that my world had crumbled. I didn’t want the lectures. I didn’t want their reluctant charity. Most of all, I di
dn’t want to be a complete loser any more. I had got myself into the mess and I had to get myself out. Something had to give. I needed more than a quick fix. I needed a full life transplant. Things had to change and they had to start with me. I had to get off the treadmill.

  At the Boxing Day sales I bought a tent with my welfare payment.

  With no real options, no clear plan, I scrounged together enough to put my meagre belongings in a small storage shed. I garage-saled away the bigger things. I redirected my mail to my brother and sister’s place and told them I’d get them to send stuff on once I knew where I’d be.

  ‘I’m going on a holiday,’ I told my family and left to the strains of everyone telling me it was a bad idea.

  There were a few weeks left until the school year began. I felt like a kid playing spin the bottle. I was just going to go and see where life led me.

  And so I took my new tent and my three little boys away. I just got in the car and headed south.

  ‘Where are we going?’ Toby asked.

  ‘On an adventure.’ I smiled. ‘A really exciting adventure.’

  I was a nomad, a gypsy. I had no home. Nowhere to lay my head. Nowhere to plant my boots. I just had my boys. And my little car. And my tent. I felt free and hopeful. We were alive. We were all alive and as long as we were alive there was hope. Hope. I was driving into the unknown and, for the first time in a long time, I felt free.

  The creek burbled beneath the birdsong. The tent was filled with the smells of sleep and warm skin. I stretched and unzipped the fly and stepped outside into the day. My plastic containers sat on the picnic bench and underneath was a new cooler. I crossed to the small stone public toilet and hoped I wouldn’t fall into the bog of eternal stench. After a quick cold shower, I came back out and started the barbecue. I cooked up a mean meal of beans. Onion. Lots of garlic, green and red capsicum diced, a can of creamy borlotti beans and another of tomatoes. Salt. Pepper. The bread was two days old so I fried it up on the grill, and boiled a saucepan of water for my cup of tea. A kookaburra glared down at me from a gum branch, hoping I’d have some sausage for him, but we’d eaten them all the day before because without a fridge I couldn’t keep meat overnight.

 

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