Peeling the Onion (2 page)

Delicately, tenderly, she begins to comb my hair. Half a windscreen seems to be tangled through it, embedded in every strand of my falling-out braid. The shards plink into the bag taped to the side of my bed. Mum's fingers probe and soothe.

She's still at it when Dad arrives with Bronny and Matt. They hang back, twisting awkward feet at the end of my bed while Dad tiptoes up and kisses me gingerly. 'Come on,' he says, 'show Anna what you've got for her.'

Drawings. Bronny's is a card, with flowers and a black and white cat I recognise as Sally,
Get Well
printed neatly inside.

Matthew's is 'You in the ambulance,' he explains, 'and that's the car, all smashed.'

'Oh, Matt!' says Mum, and 'Sorry,' says Dad, 'I should have checked.'

Bronwyn is turning green. Mum grabs her quickly and drags her out to the corridor. 'It's a bit hot in there,' she calls.

But I can hear Bronny wailing, 'I couldn't even tell it was Anna!'

Dad asks quickly if I've seen the doctor. I describe the ward round. Dad erupts—my placid father, incandescent in white rage—'Tell this cowboy . . . '

Matt pipes up, 'Are there cowboys in hospital?'

'No,' I say, and thank God, it's time for Dad to take them to school. Mum will stay a little longer, all day if I like, but I know that's impossible, she'd have to close the nursery. I say I'd rather sleep. Dad asks if I know his work number—of course I don't, I never ring him at work. He hands over his card.
Peter Duncan, Chartered Accountant,
will come as soon as I need him, cancel appointments to be here in a moment.

Come on, God, what have I done to deserve this? If you want to kill me, do it quickly. Punch my teeth out one by one; pry my fingernails off with rusty nails, anything but this, this has gone right off the borders of pain and into another galaxy. I can't take it!

Painkillers bring me back to earth. I'm propped up in bed on an arrangement of pillows when Hayden appears, looking even taller than usual, broad shoulders and big hands awkward in this sterile environment. I feel breathless at the sight of him; my hands are shaky, my heart pounding. I've never felt this way about anyone before.

He's brought me a bunch of white carnations. 'They're not much, compared to all those.' He gestures to the perfect cellophane-covered arrangements which have poured in during the day: from the school, the karate club, Aunt Jackie in Perth, Oma and Opa in Holland. 'I didn't know if you'd even want to talk to me.'

'It wasn't your fault. And everyone says I'll be right in a couple of weeks; it's no big deal.'

'You weren't there,' he says, illogically but truly, and corrects himself, 'you don't know what it was like—I can still hear you screaming. Then I thought you were dead. We jemmied the door off and tried to lift you out but you grabbed your neck and screamed again, and we stopped till the ambulance came.'

I try to remember, but it's someone else's story; no memory surfaces.

Dad comes in early next morning to catch the ward round; he wants to know whether I should be transferred to a Melbourne hospital, for specialised care.

Mr Osman, the great orthopaedic god, is not impressed. 'Yarralong District Hospital,' he snaps condescendingly, 'is well equipped to deal with your daughter's injuries.' He goes on to explain the plan for the day: my thumb needs an operation—it's in eleven pieces; he's going to try to screw it together.

I don't want a general anaesthetic; I've seen 'GP' and documentaries; I know it will hurt my neck. I don't think I'll live if the pain gets worse. He promises an 'arm block' and Dad signs the consent forms; I feel so old, but I'm not old enough to sign my own name.

A few hours later the anaesthetist pumps me full of Valium till I'm floating and witty—except that my brain's lost contact with my body, so my mouth doesn't work.

Alex, the young doctor, returns in the afternoon, when everything's reconnected itself. (He's gorgeous; I've just noticed. This is not how I want to meet gorgeous men.) The operation is a success; the long bone of my thumb has been screwed neatly back together again. 'You'll make metal detectors scream.'

I smile because he is; I'm not sure how I feel about being a walking alarm bell.

'But the joint at the base of your thumb . . . I'm afraid it's in
twelve
pieces now. It was pretty well smashed.'

Success must mean the whole thing didn't drop off. Matt is wearing jeans, Bronwyn's check blouse, and Mum's straw gardening hat.

'He's a cowboy,' Mum explains.

This must be a mistake; life isn't supposed to be like this. Pain's supposed to be nasty but bearable, like period pain or cracking a rib. Nobody tells you that real pain is more than something in your body, it's a black vortex that engulfs your mind, leaving you wondering if there's a border between life and death and which side you're on. It leaves you knowing you're not the person you always thought you were, knowing you're not strong or brave, not even a person, just a speck in the maelstrom.

'I never thought I'd see this—Anna Duncan sitting still!'

'Haven't you got the nurses organised into aerobics yet?' Jenny, Caroline and I have been together since the first day of Year 7, though we're all so different we sometimes wonder why. Neither of them cares about sport, and I live for it; on everything else they're the two extremes—even physically, though they're both shorter than me. Jenny's bubbly, warm, disorganised, with mousy-brown fluffy hair—rounder than she wants to be, but guys find her very attractive. Caroline's sharp, clever and petite, with very dark, very glossy neat hair, fastidious about her appearance and everything she puts in or on her body, and ultra-organised—we foresee a great career in computers for her.

Jenny rushes in to see me right after school, still in checked dress and white socks, not bothering to go home to change. Caroline comes later, looking cool and perfect and bringing little presents, flowers or talc or strawberries.

It's the best part of the day, the Jenny then Caroline time.

Morning pans are late again. Ruby rings first, then Mrs Hogan, then me. 'Try all together,' Mrs Hogan suggests, but that doesn't work either. Nurses bustle by in the corridors: 'We can't last forever!' Ruby calls after their disappearing, starched blue backs.

Tablet Sister, busy sisters, the man cleaning the floors—'Don't jolt the bed!' Ruby orders. 'I won't be responsible for what happens.'

Breakfast comes and goes; more nurses pass.

'Wish I was a man,' Mrs Hogan moans. 'Chuck out the flowers and use a vase.'

I eye my flowers; decide it wouldn't work; punch my bell again. Ruby shouts. Mrs Hogan looks desperate and warns Ruby not to make her laugh. The body in the corner groans; the blankets shift and an unmistakable stench seeps out.

Footsteps in the hall. We won't let this one get past.

'Tea, ladies? Cold drink?'

Poor man. It's not his fault we're hysterical, two old women and a girl, helpless as—not babies, babies have nappies, at least—helpless as a patient in a hospital bed.

'Sorry, Sister!' says Ruby, from behind her curtain.

'That's all right,' says Busy Butt, grater-voiced, wiping her shoe. 'Just let me manage the pan next time.'

'You're a wicked old woman!' says Mrs Hogan, as the affronted back disappears.

'This is war,' claims Ruby, 'and it's the only weapon we've got.'

A guy in a St Pat's blazer is heading towards my bed; I didn't think I knew anyone there except Hayden. This is his friend Mark. He's brought me a big box of chocolates and the news that Hayden's been wagging school all week.

He's really cut up about this,' Mark says, and I go through my lines again: it wasn't Hayden's fault; there wasn't anything he could have done.

'That's what I've been telling him—he says the other guy slowed down at the Give Way sign, as if he was going to stop, and then speeded up when you got there.'

That's as far as I can remember—the car, fast and white in a cloud of dust, swooping up the road on our left, Hayden braking, then—'It's okay, he's seen us'—and then the terror. Suddenly I'm chilled and trembly. 'It was as if he was trying to trick us! There was no way Hayden could have worked that out—tell him to stop feeling guilty.'

'I'll try. But it's not easy . . . you know he's crazy about you?'

'Really?'
So it wasn't just the excitement of the tournament!

He grins. 'Let's say he's mentioned you a few times. And I heard all about Melbourne—he said you cleaned up.'

'I'm not so good at kata—that's the formal routine—a bit slow and boring. But I went pretty well in the fighting.'

'He'll have to watch it when you get out of here.'

This is the best present I've had so far: something to look forward to.

Hospital time is different from real time; there are days and nights, visitors and darkness, toast for breakfast and salad for lunch, but the only real marker is tablet time. Every four hours the white pills come. I don't want to know what they are; I don't care that I don't believe in drugs—I take them and the cycle begins: swallow, wait and anticipate . . . pain deadened just enough for me to start remembering who I am and catch the stray thoughts that wander into my head . . . then pain nagging, attention-seeking . . . and pain victorious again, re-energised for an endless fourth hour, as long as a month of maths, before the time's up and the tablet nurse can come around again.

If days only last for four hours, no wonder I've been here for so long. A month, maybe two. Caroline tells me they've made it through the first week of Year 12, but I think she's counted wrong. School was going to start the day after the tournament, and that was infinitely more than a week ago.

Ward round again, and Mr Osman stops at my bed.

'Whiplash should have healed by now. We'll do a CT scan to double check.'

I'm so surprised at God speaking directly to me that he's nearly out of the room before I ask what a CT scan is.

Like a better X-ray. It will give a clear picture of my vertebrae.

'So you think I
have
broken my neck?'

'It's probably better news if you have,' he explains breezily. 'This much pain from whiplash could mean long-term problems, but if it's a broken bone it will heal up quite quickly.'

One o'clock comes, and the X-ray porter with it. He's a fat, balding man of sixty, but so gentle as he helps me into a wheelchair, down halls and lifts, and finally onto a narrow bed at the mouth of a gleaming metal tunnel, that I'm ready to fall in love with him.

In the womb of the scanner I lie very still. Lights flash and spin, the machine whirrs, and I do my karate meditation until I fall asleep.

'I've never heard of that before,' the porter says. 'No one ever goes to sleep in there!'

I sleep again till Alex arrives with the good news of the scan. He looks as if he's going to cry as he tries to convince us both that a hangman's fracture, an unstable fractured C2, a broken neck, is something to celebrate. He explains the pictures; I understand nothing except the white line of destruction across the ring of bone.

'So why aren't I paralysed?'

'Because it was the bone that snapped; not the spinal cord. If it had been the cord, you wouldn't have been worrying about paralysis ...'

That's a relief.

'... you'd be dead.'

He locks me into a strong metal frame to hold my heavy head. 'You can take it off in bed,' he says. 'But if you want to roll over you must have two nurses. For medico-legal reasons.'

What the hell are medico-legal reasons? Does he mean in case I
die?
Does it even matter if I die, or just if my parents sue?

Jenny rushes in; stops and turns pale at the sight of my scaffolded neck. Every day I've been telling her that I'll be better soon; back at school in a couple of weeks—as if the more I repeated it, the faster it would come true. But not today. This isn't what she expected to see—and for a moment Jenny, sunny, effervescent, ever-optimistic Jenny, stares at me and can't speak.

'They made a mistake—I broke my neck after all.'

Jenny begins to cry. And I think that maybe this is what best friends are for, not to be brave for you, but to tell you this is real, and it stinks.

But Jenny is Jenny. She stops herself quickly and is busy trying to think of all the reasons why life is better with a broken neck, when Mum arrives. Jenny turns to her and begins again: the frame's not so bad, is it, once you get used to it, and she thought that people died of a broken neck, and isn't Anna lucky—aren't we all lucky—that she didn't.

If Jenny had turned pale, Mum turns white and actually staggers once before dropping into the armchair by my bed.

'What do you mean, "broke her neck" ? You've got whiplash, that's all; that's what the doctor said:
whiplash!'

'They changed their minds.'

Jenny tennis-watches, from me to Mum and back again, and quickly decides it's time to leave.

'How could they not have known?' Mum demands, her voice rising, accent thickening. 'All this time! And then they don't even bother to ring me—just leave you here alone with it!'

And suddenly I can't be bothered with the crap about it being good news, better than whiplash and so on. The brave front is washed away in a tidal wave of rage and despair—my whole body knows this is the worst news it's ever heard. 'It's so unfair! Why did all this happen to me—and the man who hit us didn't get
anything?
Why couldn't
he
have died instead of me?'

I hear the words as they escape, sharp as flying glass; cutting away the last of the colour in Mum's face. She rubs away tears with the back of her hand. 'Jenny's right,' she says at last. 'We're so lucky you didn't. No matter what happens—I'm so glad to have my daughter.'

'Bollocks!'

It's the middle of the night. The voice is clear and distinct, not Ruby's or Mrs Hogan's. 'Bollocks!'

I've gone mad instead of dead.

I will myself back to sleep.

That's the end to lounging in bed propped on pillows; for the next six weeks I'll either be securely locked in my frame or lying straight and flat on a board-hard bed.