My Life and Other Massive Mistakes (8 page)

‘You're just jealous that I look better in it than you do, Gooch!' Pop snaps back.

‘You are the ugliest man-dressed-as-a-woman I've ever seen, Weekly,' she sniggers as she moves in on Pop.

I couldn't have put it better myself.

‘Get outta my way,' Pop demands. He attempts to storm past her but she cuts him off. He dodges the other way but she cuts him off there, too. She is youngish and strong and nimble, and she grabs the front of his dress. An orange slips out and rolls across the floor.

‘Let him go,' I say.

She signals with a jerk of her head to a big, burly male nurse who grabs Pop's right arm.

‘You leave me with no choice, Miriam,' Pop says. ‘
Open fire!
'

A meatball whizzes past my ear, spattering my cheek with tomato sauce before hitting Head Nurse Gooch in the neck. The contents of a bedpan decorate the back of the burly nurse's uniform and he releases his grip on Pop's arm. I duck just in time to be missed by
a volley of sharpened walking sticks, hurled like spears.

Pop's troops are armed to the teeth with innovative weaponry like you've never seen before. There are balloons filled with hundreds of untaken pills that scatter on impact, turning the floor into a slippery skating rink. Plastic body parts are fired from a bandage-and-crutch catapult – an elbow, then a hand, and a prosthetic foot fly by, knocking the head nurse to the ground. Hankies rigid with snot are thrown like frisbees and false teeth are used as knuckledusters.

There's a loud bang from behind me and smoke fills the room, providing temporary cover for Pop to duck and weave his way through the battlefield. I follow closely behind. He makes it to the revolving door just as the smoke starts to clear.

I'm certain he's going to make it when the head nurse springs from the floor, still wearing
just a towel, and grabs a tuft of fur on Pop's hairy back. He yelps. She spins him around to face his own troops and the battalion of shabby, beaten nurses.

Bluuuuurp, bluuuuurp.

‘Will someone shut that darn thing off!' she screams.

The alarm stops immediately.

The nursing home falls to near silence. The only sound is the high-pitched squeal of a dozen hearing-aid batteries dying.

‘Now, Cliff,' says Head Nurse Gooch in a creepy-calm voice, tightening her grip on his back carpet. ‘We're going to give you a little something to help you calm down.'

‘Over my dead body!' Pop shouts.

‘If necessary,' Head Nurse mutters.

‘And let go of my back hair,' Pop demands. ‘It pinches.'

‘I can't let you go because I have a duty of care,' she says. She flicks her head and two of the nurses who were in the corridor earlier move in on Pop – a stumpy man with a greasy face and a lady with neat, black Lego hair. The man clutches something in his pocket.

‘I just want to go home,' Pop says, his voice cracking. But the fight's gone out of him. He's tired. I turn to see Pop's army retreating. Reg Hopper leads them. Wheelchair tyres squeak and walking frames clack as they withdraw.

‘We tried, Cliffy,' one of them calls.

‘Thought we had 'em.'

‘Never say die,' Betty whispers, and she winks at Pop before turning to follow the others down the hall.

‘Just keep still,' Head Nurse says. ‘This won't hurt a bit.'

The male nurse pulls the thing out of his pocket. It is a long, thin needle. The Lego-hair lady nurse holds Pop firmly by the arm. Head Nurse's eyes hunger to see the tip of the needle puncture Pop's paper-thin skin.

As the sharp point makes contact there's a loud ‘Oi!' from Reg Hopper, who's suddenly right behind us – he's returned to the war
front! Reg rams into the back of the greasy, needle-toting nurse's legs with his motorised cart. The nurse buckles to his knees.

‘Hop on!' Reg says.

Pop goes to jump on behind Reg.

‘Don't think so,' says Head Nurse. She and Lego Hair try to stop him.

But Reg Hopper has saved the best weapon till last. He stabs a button on a small device and a blue laser, the length of a sword, shoots from the end. It looks like he's hot-wired his pacemaker and turned it into some kind of lightsaber or tractor beam. With a
zzzzz
sound, Reg waves the beam at Head Nurse and she reels backwards. The stumpy, greasy little nurse holding the needle moves in. Reg captures the pointy weapon in his blue beam, flicks his wrist and the needle spins up into the air and comes down, jabbing into the nurse's cheek. The force of the impact squeezes the needle's contents into his face.
He squeals like a piglet, his eyes close and he stumbles backwards, his bottom landing in a large pot plant next to the front door. He's out cold.

Pop and I jump on the back of the cart, Pop gripping Reg's hips and me gripping Pop's.

Reg revs the engine and shouts, ‘Hang on, boys. I've made a few modifications.'

Head Nurse blocks the front door so Reg lets out the brake, does a U-turn and we
shoom
across the foyer at hyper-speed. Reg charges through the debris from the battle, sloshing
through puddles from the bedpans, mashing meatballs and sending plastic body parts flying. We soar down the hall and nurses scatter. We scream around the corner into the communal TV room to find the other ten members of Pop's army. For some reason, they're not wearing their yellow undies anymore. They urge us on, making a tunnel of nude and nightied pensioners, jumping up and down, cheering, their bits bouncing all over the place. I shield my eyes from the horror as Reg squeals to a stop on the lino floor right in front of the window.

‘Go, Cliff!' someone shouts.

‘Be careful, old boy!'

Pop and I jump off the cart and look out the window.

The troops have gathered all their yellow undies and tied them into a rope, which is hanging from the window and down to the steeply sloping ground ten metres below.

Reg and Betty give Pop a boost up to the window frame as a cavalry of nurses arrives in the doorway. ‘Grab him!' Head Nurse commands, and they push through the throng of inmates.

Pop kicks off his shoes, holds tight to the undie rope and leans out from the building. As a parting gift he pulls the other orange from his dress, hurls it at Head Nurse and drops out of view. I poke my head out to see Pop abseiling down the side of the building, pushing off the bricks with the world's crustiest feet. The oldies urge him on as Head Nurse goes to grab the yellow rope. Pop lands in the garden bed with a
whump
. Reg Hopper shoves Head Nurse out of the way and snips the rope, letting it fall to the ground.

‘Yipeee!' Pop shouts, standing and dancing a little jig. He leaps from the garden and scurries across the grass.

‘Take him down and bring him in!' Head
Nurse demands. A couple of offsiders run out the door and down the corridor to the front of the nursing home.

The oldies watch Pop, eyes glimmering, urging him on. It's as if each one of them is imagining themselves escaping, being as brave – or crazy – as my grandfather. Pop limps and stumbles to the bush on the other side of the road that runs through the nursing home grounds. At the edge of the tree line he turns, bows and disappears into the shadows. The crowd roars around me. Betty and one of the old guys cry. Others look ten years younger and 30 years happier.

My pop is a hero. He's living everyone's dream. He's going home.

Well, he was.

He didn't quite make it home. He raced through the bush behind the nursing home, crossing a creek several times in an attempt to shake his scent. The nurses eventually picked him up at a 7-Eleven across the highway, with a handful of scratchies and a ginger beer. He was only gone 37 minutes but he reckons they were the best 37 minutes of his life.

Pop is a hero in the nursing home now. The residents are filled with hope again. They know it's possible. For one beautiful moment in time, one of them made it out. He loves being a celebrity, but when Nan visits she calls him a ninny and tells him he could have broken a hip.

Every Thursday afternoon at 4.00 pm, all the inmates gather in the dining room and Pop tells them the story of his escape. Every
week the battle gets bigger and better and more ferocious. But the part they really like is when Pop tells them what the bush smelt like, the sound of the birds overhead, the taste of fresh air and the feeling of creek water running between his toes.

And, on special occasions, Pop steals a nurse's dress, puts on some lipstick and tells the story in full costume.