Common People

by Tony Birch

  The woman from the flat below called to her son, ‘Au revoir.’ Joe heard the door close as she left the building. The hospital letter reminded him he would need to provide ‘proof of birth’. He went into the hallway, opened the closet door and retrieved a wooden box. He stood in the hallway for a minute or two, unwilling to move, regarding the box as if it were a delicate object. Back at the kitchen table, he opened the lid and read the inscription carved into the timber – J. R. 1969. He pulled out the birth certificate and studied it closely, in search of a mystery never to be solved. The birthdate, 29 March 1957, had been registered at the same hospital he was to attend that morning. The name of the Mother had been crudely blacked-out in smudged ink. Joe ran a fingertip lightly over the mark, a ritual he’d repeated many times. On the line below was the word Father. And on the dotted line alongside of it, scripted in a neat, flowing hand was the word Unknown. Like most boys in the Home, having no knowledge of his father’s identity, Joe had invented not only exotic names and identities for the Unknown, but a life of heroic adventure. It was not until many years later that he accepted no hero would be coming to rescue him, and that at least a blank space on a government document provided certainty. He folded the certificate and put it in the pocket of his suit jacket.

  A tapping sound called to Joe from the window overlooking the front landing. He saw a cat sitting on the ledge. It had a black coat and white front paws. Joe kept one eye on the cat as he rinsed and dried his tea cup and returned it to the cupboard. He walked across to the window and leaned forward. Joe and the cat were separated by a sheet of glass. The cat leaned its head to one side and meowed at him. It tapped a paw on the glass. Joe tapped back with a fingernail and ordered the cat to shoo! The cat refused to budge and knocked at the glass with its paw. Joe knocked back, a little heavier. The cat arched its back, hissed angrily, dropped from the ledge and disappeared from sight.

  Joe put his jacket on, picked up his keys and wallet from a glass bowl on the kitchen bench, left the flat and locked the front door behind him. He heard a meow and looked down. The pesky cat was sitting at his feet. It stood up, arched its back and rubbed the side of its body up against his leg.

  Joe clapped his hands together. ‘You lost or something?’

  He paused at the stairway and turned back. The cat was making itself comfortable on his doormat. On the ground floor he saw the boy from the flat below, his face resting against the window looking onto the street. As Joe passed by he could feel the boy watching him closely, just as the cat had done. He had already turned his back and was walking along the pathway to the footbridge, when the boy raised his hand and waved.

  Joe didn’t particularly like cats, but as he walked across the street he worried over the stray, concerned that it may not have any food to eat. He also began to worry about the boy. He wondered if the mother made breakfast for the boy, or if he prepared it himself after she’d gone off to work. Maybe he didn’t eat breakfast at all? The boy’s welfare was none of his concern, and Joe wasn’t one to meddle, and yet he couldn’t get the image of the child at the window out of his head.

  It had been raining overnight and the emptied clouds had left behind a flattened grey sky. Joe walked along the footbridge over the freeway. The morning traffic, floating in a haze of fumes, was already at a standstill. Joe looked at the sculpture hovering above the freeway, a line of narrow obelisks, painted blood red, leaning precariously over the traffic. Birds wove a path through the sculpture, enjoying the morning exercise of gliding loops. At its base a collection of debris in a pond – plastic bottles, food wrappings, three overturned shopping trolleys, a deflated beach ball. Joe sniffed the stagnant air and walked on to the railway station.

  The platform was deserted. Joe checked his watch. The next train, due in three minutes, failed to arrive ten minutes later. Joe stood on the yellow line separating himself from the tracks. He leaned forward and searched the line. It was empty. He heard a barking cough and was shocked to see a teenage girl stagger from the shadows of the waiting room. She wore a short denim skirt and black singlet decorated with sequins. A pair of high-heeled shoes dangled in one hand. The heel of one shoe had snapped off. The girl had a tattoo above one breast, a pair of dice, a five and a two. She had cuts and bruises on both arms and the front of her skirt was smeared with mud. She lunged at Joe with an open hand. He noticed she had several broken fingernails. He stepped away and looked from her bleached-blonde hair to her pained face. She froze, leaned forward with an outstretched arm and mouthed a word that stuck in her throat.

  A train whistled in the distance and a cold wind cut across the platform. Joe turned up the collar of his jacket and watched the dull yellow eye of the train rounding the bend in the distance. The train arrived and the automatic doors opened. The carriage was warm. Joe found a seat opposite a young man wearing a cheap suit, scuffed leather shoes and earphones. He was drumming a beat against his thighs with open hands.

  ‘Junky,’ the passenger opposite shouted, not bothering to remove his earphones. He raised a finger towards the girl outside. ‘Hey, piss off, you scrag!’ When she didn’t move he took out his earphones and banged on the glass. ‘Piss off!’ The young man laughed and leaned across to Joe. ‘Fucken junky. You see her arms? She’s on the gear.’

  Joe ignored him and stared out the window, feigning interest in the rusting iron roofs of houses, ramshackle backyards and vegetable plots.

  ‘She’d be on the fucken job, too,’ the passenger continued, loud enough for the whole carriage to hear. ‘That’s how they pay for it. The gear. Hawk the fork.’ He smiled and looked around. Realising that nobody was listening, he sneered, stuck the earbuds back in his ears and returned to the drum solo.

  Joe stood on the street corner in front of the hospital entrance, a deafening sound in the sky overhead. A helicopter hovered above the building for several seconds before turning and flying towards the city centre. He took the referral letter out of his jacket pocket and read through it a final time. He looked anxiously over his shoulder towards the intersection and back to the automatic glass doors leading into the foyer.

  Walking through the doors he passed a florist and a post office, manoeuvring his way through the crowd to the lift. He rode to the fourth floor and, seeing a blue line etched into the tiles, followed it around several corners and along a long narrow corridor until he arrived at the radiology clinic. The large reception room was full mostly of men around Joe’s age or older. He handed the letter to a woman seated behind a desk. She scratched the tip of her nose with a ball-point pen as she read the letter. She looked over the top of her glasses at Joe.

  ‘Good morning, Mr Roberts. You need to fill out this form.’ She handed Joe the pen and a sheet of paper attached to a clipboard. ‘Please complete the details and hand the form to the specialist when your name is called.’

  ‘Where should I …’

  ‘Wherever you can find a seat.’

  Joe found a vacant chair in the far corner of the room, sat down and began filling out the form. He stopped writing each time a name was called over a speaker above his head. He heard someone reciting the Lord’s Prayer and became distracted. Looking around he noticed one of the few young people in the room, a woman around the age of twenty. She was holding the hand of an older woman who was clutching a set of rosary beads and rocking slightly as she prayed.

  A name was called: Ms Catani to cubicle three. The younger woman stood and straightened her dress. The older woman, silent now, stood with deliberate slowness and kissed the younger woman on the forehead, watching closely as the girl walked across the room towards an open door.

  Joe completed his form and stuck the clipboard under his arm. He looked across at a couple sitting opposite. The husband wore a pair of grey pants and a flannelette chequered shirt under a hand-knitted vest. Lumps of dried clay were stuck to the soles of his work boots. He looked like he’d just strolled out of a suburban vegetable patch.
Speaking animatedly to each other, the couple’s conversation shifted from English to Italian and something in between. The woman smiled at her husband from time to time, leaning into him with her heavy body. She whispered in his ear. He laughed and she slapped him playfully on the arm before resting her head on his shoulder.

  Another name was called and the couple got to their feet, he tucking the tail of his shirt into his pants and, with his wife’s help, walking to a cubicle. They waddled side by side in harmony. A thin, balding doctor waited for them with an open hand. As the old man walked into the cubicle his wife massaged the small of his back with an open palm.

  Eventually, Joe was called. Mr Joseph Roberts. To cubicle four.

  Joe stood up too quickly and felt a stab of pain in his side. He was surprised to see a female doctor waiting in the doorway; a slim woman with dark hair tied into a bun. She offered her hand. ‘Joseph, I’m Doctor McGee. I’ll be taking care of you today,’ she said in an accent that Joe thought was most likely Scottish. She ushered him into a small room, closed the door and asked him to take a seat. She placed a second chair opposite and sat down, close enough to make Joe feel uncomfortable. He could smell her perfume. The scent of orange. She was holding a manila file with his name written on the front in heavy black pen. She quickly read through the file, occasionally nodding her head and sighing.

  The doctor looked up. ‘The urinary bleed that you experienced three weeks ago, can you tell me something more about it, Joseph?’

  Joe shifted in his chair. He wasn’t sure what to say.

  The doctor prompted him. ‘Can you begin by telling me what time of the day it was?’

  ‘Well … I must have got out of bed at around one in the morning, needing to go to the toilet. And when I did, well … I was bleeding.’

  ‘And when had you last gone to the toilet before that, for a wee?’

  Joe wasn’t sure and took a guess. ‘Most likely before I got into bed for the night. Maybe around ten o’clock.’

  ‘And there was no blood in your urine?’

  ‘None.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ she asked, leaning forward. The doctor was close enough for Joe to notice a blood spot in one of her hazel-coloured pupils.

  ‘I’m sure,’ he said. ‘I would have noticed.’

  She smiled with satisfaction. ‘Good. Now tell me about the colour of the urine. How would you describe it?’

  Joe didn’t know how to best answer the question. ‘The colour? It was, you know, like blood. It was red.’

  ‘Yes. I’m sure it was, Joseph. It would have been reddish in colour, but I need to consider the amount of blood in your urine. A more accurate description of the colour will help. This may sound odd, but let’s imagine that your urine was a wine. If so, would you describe it as a claret? A darker red. Or would it be more the colour of a rosé, lighter, even pink in colour?’

  Joseph thought about the question and remembered that at the time he was convinced he was peeing straight blood.

  ‘It was a darker red. More like a claret.’

  The doctor tapped him lightly on the knee, as she might do to a well-behaved child. ‘Very good.’ She wrote a few comments in his file. ‘Thank you, Joseph. Now, tell me, have you had another bleed since you came into Casualty that first morning?’

  ‘Twice more. The same day, while I was in here. There was nothing more until I had another bleed two days ago.’

  ‘Two days ago. Was it the same dark colour as the first bleed?’

  ‘Yes. The same.’

  ‘And when you wee, particularly when you have had the bleeds, has there been pain?’

  ‘Not when I go to the toilet. But when I wake in the night wanting to go, yes. And I have this other pain in my side sometimes, mostly when I move too quickly.’

  Joe hadn’t expected he would be required to answer so many questions. Each time she asked a question the doctor moved a little closer. Eventually he could feel her breath on his cheek. He began to involuntarily massage his stomach. The doctor, sensing his anxiety, stood up and moved across to a narrow examination table covered with a fresh white sheet.

  ‘In cases such as this,’ she explained, ‘and in consideration of your age, we’re going to put you through a series of examinations, commencing today with a full body scan. I want to get some nice pictures of your organs, Joseph. Your kidneys in particular. It’s important that we find out what is causing this bleeding. Each examination we put you through will help to build a diagnosis, largely through a process of elimination.’ She patted the white sheet with the palm of her hand. ‘But first up I need to go over you myself,’ she said, pulling a two-step wooden ladder out from under the table. ‘I’ll need you to undress and pop up here for me.’

  ‘Pardon?’ Joe replied.

  ‘I need you to take your clothing off, Joseph, so that I can examine you.’

  ‘My clothing?’

  ‘Yes. Down to your underwear please.’

  Joseph slowly removed his jacket and shirt. He sat back down on the chair, took off his shoes and socks and stood again, to attention.

  ‘And your trousers.’

  Joe unbuckled his belt, dropped his pants and stepped out of them. Reduced to his underpants and singlet, he climbed onto the table and folded his arms across his chest like a shy boy. As the doctor checked his blood pressure and heart rate Joe concentrated on a Life for Living Advice poster on the wall. The doctor lifted Joe’s singlet and had the stethoscope pressed to the left side of his chest when she noticed a series of small circular raised scars under his left breast, between his two lower ribs. She looked more closely at the scars and ran a gloved hand across the areas of raised skin. Joe twitched involuntarily.

  ‘I’m sorry, Joseph. But what do we have here? I’ve seen burn scars similar to these before. Cigarettes would be my guess?’

  Joe continued studying the poster. The doctor gently prodded the scar tissue.

  ‘Yes. I’d say these are burns, Joseph. A long time ago. Would I be right?’

  ‘Yes,’ Joe sighed. ‘Many years ago.’ He could not curb his curiosity. ‘How can you tell?’

  ‘Because I’m a doctor,’ she laughed, attempting to ease the tension. ‘Before coming to work in Australia I spent two years with Médecins Sans Frontières. Doctors Without Borders. Have you heard of them?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘We work in sites of disaster. Floods and earthquakes. War zones. Any place there’s a need for us.’ She rested an open palm against Joseph’s chest. ‘You know, there are so many ways to damage the human body,’ she said, in an oddly cheerful voice. ‘Guns. Grenades. Machetes. You name it. Oh yes. And let’s not forget torture,’ she smiled. ‘Regardless of new technologies one of the common weapons of choice remains the good old Marlboro filter tip using human skin as an ashtray. Or the tip of a metal stake heated on a fire. Simple and cheap. And a method that gets the job done. Apparently.’

  The doctor dug into her jacket pocket and came out with a pencil-sized silver torch. She shone the beam over the scars, examining them closely, and let out a soft laugh. ‘Looks like the planets of the solar system lined up here. This was done with a sense of order in mind. How and when did you come by these injuries, Joseph?’

  He hesitated before answering. ‘It was long ago,’ he shrugged. ‘I really can’t remember.’

  The doctor raised an eyebrow, unimpressed.

  Joe did some quick arithmetic in his head. ‘It would have to be close to fifty years.’

  The odd smile left her face. She looked down at the clipboard. ‘Fifty years back. You were just a boy, Joseph.’

  Joe stood up and reached for his clothes. ‘I’m sorry, but I thought we were here so you could help me out with the bleeding? This other stuff, it doesn’t matter. It was so long back, I can’t remember much about it. And it’s got nothing to do with how I’m feeling now.’r />
  ‘Let me share something with you, Joseph. We try to forget the truth sometimes. All of us, walking in and out of this hospital. Me as much as anyone. But the body, it never lies. It carries our scars, on the inside and outside. The body never forgets.’ She put a hand on Joe’s shoulder. ‘Is there anything more you can tell me?’

  ‘As I said, there’s nothing,’ Joe answered forcefully, but in no way convincingly.

  She leaned against the examination table and watched closely as Joe methodically put his shoes on and tied the laces.

  ‘Reading your notes, you were transferred at school age from a government to a religious institution?’

  ‘That’s right,’ Joe answered, feigning calmness. ‘The Christian Brothers. I was with them until I was sixteen.’

  ‘Do you know if they have medical records for you, Joseph?’

  ‘I really don’t know,’ Joe answered, honestly.

  The doctor peeled off her gloves, took a fresh pair out of a box on her desk and put them on. She studied the tip of a gloved finger as she spoke. ‘Now that we’ve finished here, you’ll be having another examination this morning, just along the corridor. If your kidneys or bladder are not the culprit, we’ll follow up in a week.’

  ‘Why do you look at the bladder?’ Joe asked.

  ‘We’ll be ruling out cancer.’

  She detected a slight twitch on Joe’s face.

  ‘Please don’t worry too much, Joseph. In your case bladder cancer is the least likely diagnosis. But as with any urinary bleed, we must get inside the bladder and take some pictures to rule it out.’

  She raised a long and shapely index finger in the air and smiled sympathetically at Joe. ‘But test number one, unfortunately, is your prostate.’

  Joe left the cubicle and once again followed the blue line on the tiled floor down the corridor where he was met by a nurse who handed him a white hospital gown and a large plastic-lined brown paper bag. She directed Joe to a changing room, with the stern order to remove everything, including jewels and dentures. Joe took his clothes off for the second time that day, put the gown on and placed his clothes in the paper bag. He sat down on a bench with two other men also cradling their possessions. One of them was the older man he’d seen earlier in the waiting room with his wife. The man nodded and smiled at Joe, who smiled sheepishly back. Not long after, a fourth patient exited the changing cubicle. He dropped his paper bag and quickly managed to work himself into a frenzy, trying to fasten the ties at the back of the gown. Joe couldn’t help but smile, suddenly remembering the grainy black and white film footage he’d once seen of the famous magician, Houdini, hanging upside down from a chain above a river, attempting to wriggle his way out of a straitjacket.