by Gary Kemble
He closed his eyes, but found no relief. Instead of darkness, he saw terrified eyes peering out of the darkness. A baby, floating face-down on the churning sea. His stomach turned.
‘No!’
He turned the cold tap on, thrust his head down under the water. Kept his eyes open as it washed over the back of his head. He stayed there for a minute, controlling his breathing, focusing on the dark eye of the plughole, clearing his mind. When he felt centred, he stood up again, shivering as water ran down his body.
He took a step back from the mirror, assessed the tattoo again. It was real. Blues, greens, black ink. The detail was amazing. He ran his other hand over it, wincing at the pain. Panic threatened to return, but he blocked it before it could grab hold. There was no point panicking. Panicking wasn’t going to get rid of the tattoo. He grabbed a towel, dried his hair. Kept his mind busy with a mental checklist.
Call work. There was no way he was going in to work today. Christine had a handle on things. He could miss a day, given the circumstances.
Make an appointment to visit a doctor. Because something clearly wasn’t right with his head. He could wish away that first tattoo, even though the woman at West End Tattoo – what was her name? Sian – even though Sian said she didn’t even think it was done by a proper tattooist. Harry had been drunk. Drunker than he’d been in a long time. He had blacked out. While blacked out, anything was possible. But this? Sober. Going to bed at a reasonable hour. This could not be explained away so easily.
He walked back to his bedroom, felt the panic encroaching again, and decided to try and keep it on the back foot until he could go see a doctor. He grabbed a pair of shorts and a t-shirt, pulled on his shoes and headed out the door. He started at a fast walk, then broke into a slow run when he felt his legs had warmed up enough. As the sweat beaded on his brow, he tried to make sense of what had happened.
After work he had stopped off at the bottle shop and picked up a carton of VB. He wasn’t sure why he chose his uni beer over Coronas. It just felt right. At the time he’d been thinking about what Fred had told him about his tattoo. The first tattoo.
When he got home he cracked a beer. Just the one. He told himself it was mainly because Dave reckoned it was bad luck to put a whole carton in the fridge. Depending on how drunk he was, he would recount several gruesome tales of what had befallen saps who’d dared to refrigerate their whole carton.
He drank it while he unpacked boxes. And, as expected, there were emotional landmines rigged and waiting for him. Stupid stuff. Stuff he didn’t think to ditch, well, when his prime concern was making sure he wasn’t there when Bec got back.
The tacky t-shirt Bec had bought him that Christmas in London. Rudolf with a light-up nose. They’d been broke, living in the shittiest part of London. And one evening Bec had arrived home with flushed cheeks and a cheeky grin. Harry had been in a foul mood. But then she’d pulled out this stupid t-shirt, and a bottle of cheap whisky, and he’d put it on and they’d gotten shitfaced. It was the only time he’d worn it, but there it stayed, at the bottom of his drawer.
Books. His copy of Stephen King’s On Writing, with her inscription in the front, telling him she couldn’t wait to read his first bestseller. The writing had gone the way of the exercise once they got back from England. He couldn’t bear the thought of sitting in front of a computer screen all night after doing that most of the day. But, like the t-shirt, he couldn’t face the thought of throwing the book away. Same with all the other books she’d given him.
And the letters and postcards. He had a big golden-hued box full of them. The box itself had memories attached. It had contained a black shirt, her first Valentine’s Day gift to him. He’d worn it out to dinner. It was still on when they made love later that night. And the box was full of every letter she’d written him, every postcard she’d sent him when she was away on business. He supposed this box was the first thing that would go. But he couldn’t. Not yet. He placed it in the bottom drawer of the crappy dresser that had been in the bedroom when he’d moved in.
Each surprise was greeted with thudding heart, nervous sweating, shaking hands. Each one carried with it the threat of tears. And yet he stuck to that one beer. In truth, he was still a little bit scared of what might happen if he got hammered again.
And yet. . . it’d happened anyway. After unpacking, he’d carried himself off to bed, and woken up with this.
Harry stopped at the top of the hill. He leant on a street sign for support, wincing as the muscles in his arm flexed under the tattoo. Catching his breath didn’t take as long as it should have. When he felt rested enough, he turned and headed home.
***
Harry pulled off his sweaty clothes, picked up his phone. Dead. Again.
‘Jesus!’
He plugged it into the charger, then had a quick shower and got dressed. Harry considered putting on a long-sleeved shirt. But then he’d need to put on long pants, and it was too hot for long pants.
Screw it. These are part of me now.
As soon as he thought it, it felt right. These tattoos were part of him. He didn’t understand why, or how, but the thought of having them removed felt wrong.
He felt much better by the time he was sitting in his car. Mouth feeling fresh and hair slicked back with water. Then he turned the key in the ignition.
Click!
He tried again.
Click!
‘For the love of. . .’
A third time, even though he had no right to expect a better result.
Click!
He pulled his phone out and dialled the RACQ. Eventually, Mike turned up, changed the battery. Harry explained what had been going on. Three days, three dead batteries.
Mike put a multimeter on the new battery, frowned.
‘Doesn’t look like there’s anything drawing too much power,’ he said. ‘But then car electrics are tricky things.’
He said that the new battery should help things, then dropped the bonnet with a crash that reverberated under the house.
‘Sometimes you can’t do much for a tired old thing like this,’ he said.
Mike suggested parking the car up the street, facing downhill, until he could get an auto electrician to have a look at it. That way, if the battery went flat, Harry could hill-start it.
‘You do know how to hill-start, right?’ he said. A rhetorical question.
‘Oh yeah,’ Harry said. ‘Of course.’ It was one of the skills Dad taught him after Mum left. They all got very good at improvising and making do. Chewing gum and bread ties were not uncommon in dad’s attempts to get another hundred kays out of their ancient Holden.
Harry walked Mike back to his ute, and they looked up the steep road towards the water tower.
‘Up there somewhere,’ Mike said, as though Harry – despite being able to hill-start a car – might not appreciate the concept of ‘downhill’.
He wondered if there was a way of hill-starting his iPhone.
* * *
Harry sat in the doctor’s surgery, wishing he’d thought to bring his jumper with him. They always had the air-conditioning cranked. Whether this was to lull patients into a soporific state while they waited, or to suit the Scottish secretary, Harry wasn’t sure. He’d been coming here for years. It was one of the things he and Bec shared that would become part of the unarticulated post-separation carve-up over the coming months. All their shared places – the cafes, restaurants, parks, cinemas – would go one way or the other.
Harry wanted Black Cat Books in Paddington and Avid Reader at West End. Maybe Brents restaurant over the back of Toowong, though there were so many memories associated with that place that maybe it would be better to let it go. It seemed bizarre that he and Bec would never go there again as a couple for Valentine’s Day or one of their unofficial ‘anniversary’ dinners. And it seemed even more bizarre and unlikely that one day Harry might take someone else there and be able to not associate it with her.
His phone buzzed. A
message from Christine: Are you OK?
He texted her back: Yeah. Thanks.
A brief message that in no way summed up how he was doing. He always wore long-sleeved shirts to work, so he didn’t have to worry about her finding out about the latest tattoo in the short-term. He’d probably wear his suit to the end-of-year awards night. And by then, he should have some idea of what he was dealing with. Anyway, maybe she’d like this one, like she did the last one.
‘Harry?’
He looked up. Dr Boyd was there, holding Harry’s file, dressed in shirt and slacks, juxtaposed with worn cowboy boots. Harry had never felt comfortable asking what the deal was with the boots, whether they were the symbol of a mid-life crisis or something else. But a year or so ago Harry had to have a mole cut out of his back, and while Dr Boyd cut into his flesh – What are we going to do with these? – he had Johnny Cash playing on the sound system, so things came together slightly. It was a little disconcerting listening to his scalpel-wielding doctor whistling along to a tune about a guy who shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die.
Harry quelled the rising nausea as he rose to walk through to the doctor’s consulting room. The appointments over the years always took the same path. Dr Boyd came out, brandishing Harry’s file and calling his name as though it were the first time he’d ever said it. Harry sat down in Dr Boyd’s room. Dr Boyd asked: ‘So, how’s it going?’ Harry described his symptoms, and usually offered some apocalyptic self-diagnosis from time spent on the internet, pointing to dark options such as tumours and cancer. And then Dr Boyd, while Harry peered at the sporting memorabilia on the walls, told him it was something relatively benign. And then prescribed a cream, ointment or, if things were really bad, antibiotics.
‘So, how’s it going?’
Harry took a big breath. ‘Not so great.’
He pulled up the sleeve of his shirt, displaying the new tattoo. ‘I got this tattoo.’
Dr Boyd moved in, peering over his glasses, studying Harry’s arm as though it was a rash. He took Harry’s arm and gently turned it.
‘Looks fairly recent. When did you get it? Yesterday? Day before?’
‘I don’t know. Last night, I think.’
Dr Boyd looked from the arm to Harry, then back to the arm. Harry thought he’d ask for an explanation, but instead he just sat back and waited.
‘I think I’m having blackouts,’ Harry said. ‘In fact, I know I am.’
Harry told him the story, from waking up the night after Dave’s buck’s night, to the visit to West End Tattoo, finishing off with his discovery this morning. Dr Boyd sat in front of his computer, tapping notes out on the keyboard.
He took his ophthalmoscope, turned Harry’s head and shone the light into each of his eyes.
‘Have you been experiencing any dizziness? Anything like that?’
‘No.’
‘Seeing lights flashing behind your eyes? Things floating in your field of vision?’
‘No.’
‘Odd smells? Any strange sounds?’
Harry thought of the scratching he’d heard under the house the past three nights, just as he was waking up. But that was just rats, right?
‘Smells?’ Harry said.
‘Yeah, often – if it’s a problem with the brain – there can be what we call auras before episodes. Often visual, like blurry spots or losing your peripheral vision. But sometimes olfactory – smells, in other words. Or aural – sounds.’
‘No, no smells.’
Dr Boyd put down the ophthalmoscope, turned back to his PC and clicked through some screens. ‘Can’t see anything here about head injuries. Is there anything from when you were younger?’
Harry thought about it. He always found himself trying to second-guess the diagnosis, provide the ‘right’ answers.
‘No,’ he said.
‘How about your family? Any history of seizures, migraine, that sort of thing?’
‘Well, they’re all batshit crazy,’ Harry said. ‘But just in the usual family way. Mum went through a phase where she had a lot of migraines, but that was just before she split up with my dad, so. . .’
Dr Boyd nodded as though he knew what Mrs Hendrick was going through. He pulled out another piece of equipment.
‘Here, give me your finger,’ Dr Boyd said. ‘This might hurt a bit. I need to test your blood sugar level.’
Harry offered his hand. There was a brief sting. Harry saw a smear of blood on a small piece of cardboard. The doctor slipped it into a small machine, which beeped. Dr Boyd checked the readout. He pressed a cotton wool ball against Harry’s finger.
‘Yeah, that’s fine,’ Dr Boyd said. ‘How have you been sleeping?’
‘Okay. But I’ve been having nightmares.’
‘Is your bed, ah, dry in the morning?’
Harry did a double-take.
Dr Boyd cleared his throat. ‘It’s just that, when people have seizures or other similar episodes, they often lose bladder control.’
‘No, I mean, it’s wet, but it’s just sweat,’ Harry said. He leant forward and rapped his knuckles on the table, aiming for a levity he didn’t feel.
‘Uh-huh. And obviously on the first night, you were under the influence. . .’
‘Putting it lightly.’
‘How about last night. Alcohol? Drugs?’
‘Just one beer. A VB.’
Dr Boyd made a note of that, as though the brand were important. He opened drawers, pulled out more equipment. Checked Harry’s pulse and blood pressure. Then his reflexes.
‘Ooookay, that’s all fine,’ Dr Boyd said. ‘You’re getting your money’s worth today, right? If you could just pop up on the bed.’
Harry climbed up on the bed, feeling a distinct unease. This wasn’t panning out like his usual doctor’s visit. In and out in ten minutes. For once, he feared the diagnosis was going to be worse than he anticipated. Dr Boyd rolled a machine over. It was plugged into the wall.
‘Shirt off, please,’ Dr Boyd said.
Harry took off his shirt and lay down.
‘Have you had an ECG reading before?’
Harry shook his head.
‘It’s easy. I just attach these electrodes and it reads your heartbeat. You’ve probably seen it in movies hundreds of times.’
‘In the movies I’ve seen, it doesn’t end well.’
‘Ha! You’ll be right. I just need to rule things out before I send you up to the hospital.’
‘Hospital?’
Dr Boyd nodded. ‘Just as a precaution. Would be good to get this sorted. It’s your brain, Harry.’
He attached the electrodes. Started the machine. Peered down at Harry.
‘Any trouble on the home front?’ he said.
Harry laughed. ‘Is it that obvious?’
Dr Boyd shrugged. ‘Nah. Standard question.’
‘Bec and I split up.’
To his credit, Dr Boyd didn’t rush in with the shallow condolences that had been coming at him thick and fast, in person, on the phone and on Facebook.
‘That’s rough.’
‘Yeah. We’d been together six years, so. . .’
Dr Boyd glanced at Harry, but seemed to look through him. ‘And how have you been dealing with that? Any suicidal thoughts?’
Harry was taken aback. He laughed nervously. To be honest, there had been one. Right after the fight. He had sat in his car watching the traffic go by, thinking that if he did something stupid, drove his car into the path of an on-coming truck, she’d regret it. But it passed as quickly as it arrived. It was a mass of hurt and anger trying to find an outlet.
‘No. I’ve been good. Considering.’
‘Uh-huh.’ Dr Boyd checked the machine, looked at his watch. ‘Looking good, Harry.’ He removed the electrodes, gave Harry a couple of tissues to wipe away the gel. ‘You can put your shirt back on.
‘I’m going to send you for a CT scan. It could be psychological. Sounds like you’ve had a rough trot of late. But we need to make sure we rule
out all the physical stuff as well.
‘I’m also going to give you a referral for counselling. Sometimes it can be good to talk to someone who isn’t involved. Someone who doesn’t have an axe to grind, you know?’
Harry nodded.
Dr Boyd looked at Harry. ‘Exercise can be good for stress.’
‘Yeah, I’ve. . . I’ve taken up running.’ He wasn’t quite sure if his early morning lurches through the streets were classed as ‘running’, but it was certainly the most sustained physical exercise he’d done in a long while.
‘As for the tattoos themselves, do you know anything about looking after them?’
‘No.’
Dr Boyd opened a couple of drawers, rifled through them. Then checked the bookshelf above his computer. He pulled down a glossy pamphlet.
‘Here you go.’ Dr Boyd handed Harry the referrals as well as a pamphlet called ‘Caring for your tattoo’.
‘The basics are pretty simple. No hot baths for a couple of weeks. No swimming for a couple of weeks. If it scabs up, leave the scabs alone and let them come off by themselves. Once it’s healed, make sure you use sunscreen before heading out into the sun.’
‘Thanks.’
Harry folded up the referrals and the pamphlet, got up out of his chair. Dr Boyd stood, removed one of his cufflinks and started rolling up his sleeve. Before Harry could question him, he’d revealed a large tattoo of Johnny Cash. It was a silhouette, with ‘Walk the Line’ written above it.
‘Got it done twenty years ago,’ Dr Boyd said. ‘What do you think?’
Harry raised his eyebrows and nodded. ‘Do you ever regret it?’
Dr Boyd shook his head. ‘Nah. It’s not like it’s a tattoo of my wife, right?’
He slapped Harry on his untattooed shoulder.
‘Have you got someone who can drive you up to the hospital?’
‘Yeah, yeah I think so,’ Harry said.
‘Take care, Harry, and let me know how you get on.’
CHAPTER 8
Dave pulled out into the traffic, leaving the hospital behind them.