Red Dirt Heart 3 (12 page)

Well, until a won’t-wait-for-nothin’ wombat declared it was midnight-feedin’ time, then three-o’clock-it’s-too-damn-early feedin’ time and by breakfast time, a new day started.

Something had changed last night, for me at least, like I’d fallen in love all over again or something I couldn’t place. I don’t know if it was the uncertainty of Ma’s health or the reappearance of my estranged mother or the intimacy of what we’d done last night, but something was different. I needed to be near Travis. I needed him close, and by the way he hugged me and kissed me oh so softly before we left for the hospital, I figured he felt the same.

He held me close and his eyes searched mine. “You ready to go see Ma?”

Today was the day we would find out if the cancer had spread. I leaned into him and tightened my arms around him, yet it was still not close enough. I shook my head. “Not really,” I answered honestly. “But we should go.”

* * * *

As far as we knew, the doctor would be giving us results today and, subsequently, the best course of action. It was all routine, apparently. It’s just what they did. Then everyone could make informed decisions about which options were best. George had said today would be decision-making day, and I was fully expecting to help them do just that.

But when we walked in to Ma’s room, her bed was empty and George wasn’t there. It was a god-awful sinking feeling, and when I backed out into the hall, a nurse grabbed me. “Are you Charlie?”

I nodded.

She was maybe thirty-five with short blonde hair. She smiled kindly. “George said you’d be here early,” she said. “He said for me to tell you they’ve taken her into surgery.”

I couldn’t seem to make the words come out. “Where is he?” Travis asked beside me.

“Come this way,” she said, leading back toward the elevators. “First floor. Turn right, you’ll see surgery waiting rooms to your left.”

The second the doors were closed, Travis took my hand. He held it until the elevator stopped and tried letting it go when the doors opened. I kept a hold of it, probably too tightly, but too scared to let it go. I didn’t care what anyone else thought. I didn’t care if I was hand-holding in public with a guy. Because I was pretty damn certain that if he wasn’t near me, if I wasn’t touching him somehow, I’d fall apart.

We found the waiting rooms just like the nurse said, and then we found George.

Nothing like his normal self who stood tall and walked proud, he was sitting in the far row of seats with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. He looked every one of his hard-workin’ years, and he looked so terribly sad.

It was like an equal mix of wanting to know and wanting to run the other way. I wanted to know what the hell was going on, but wasn’t sure I could deal with bad news. George looked so damn broken, and that scared me the most.

Still holding my hand, Travis led me over to George. He let go of my hand so I could kneel down in front of the man who was like a father to me. “George? What’s going on?”

When he looked up, he had tears in his eyes, but he tried to smile. “They’ve taken her in for surgery.” He shook his head. “I was doin’ okay ’til they wheeled her away,” he said, the tears finally brimming over. “Don’t know what I’ll do if something happens to my Katie.”

I put my hand around his neck and pulled him against me. I ain’t ever seen him cry before. Not even close. He was absolutely the strongest man I knew, and having him cry on my shoulder just about killed me.

And when I looked up at Trav and saw he was fightin’ his own tears, I stopped fightin’ mine, and I cried with George.

He pulled his head back and wiped his face on his sleeves, cursin’ at himself for being foolish.

I sat in the seat beside him and put my arm around his shoulder. “We’re all scared, George.”

Trav sat beside me, and when I offered him my other hand, he was quick to take it. For a few minutes the three of us just sat there takin’ deep, thought-collecting breaths. Eventually, I asked, “What did they say?”

“They’re doin’ a full abdominal hysterectomy,” George said. “And they’ll take a look to see if it’s spread.”

“And if it has?” I asked.

“Then she’ll need chemo, or some such thing.”

I swallowed thickly. “If that’s what it takes,” I said.

He nodded and patted my knee. “Yep. Whatever it takes.”

“How long will the operation take?” I asked.

“They said about two hours.”

“Have you eaten?” I asked. “Come on, we’ll go find the cafeteria and have a cuppa. We’ll be back before she’s out, I promise.”

We found the cafeteria and I ordered some tea for me and George, a coffee for Trav, and some toasted sandwiches and scones. When I put the tray on the table, George’s eyes widened at all the food.

“You need to eat,” I told him.

He sighed. “You sound like Ma.”

I laughed and handed Travis his coffee. “I doubt it’s very good,” I told him.

“That’s why you should drink tea,” George said with his usual slow-talkin, dry-as-the-desert sense of humour.

“Even bad coffee is better than tea,” Travis said with a smile. He bit into a scone with jam and frowned. “Good Lord, don’t let Ma eat one of them.” He looked back at the cafeteria counter. “Or someone’ll be gettin’ fired.”

This time George laughed, and I hooked my foot around Travis’s in a kind of thank-you. And for the next half an hour or so, we talked of all the things Ma would chip us for and laughed at all the times she’s threatened us, scolded us, clipped us behind the ear, or just yelled at us for the sake of yellin’. “’Cause really, we all know I didn’t ever do anything wrong,” I said, and George laughed so hard he almost choked on his sandwich.

By the time we walked back to the waiting room, we were all in a much better frame of mind. We sat back down, and Travis picked up a few magazines. He snorted laughing when the Beef Farmers magazine with my face on the front was among them.

“Ugh, I’m really regretting that bloody thing,” I grumbled.

Travis opened it and turned it on its side like it was a centrefold. “I dunno,” he said, shaking his head. “I’d date him.”

George chuckled, and I snatched the stupid magazine and tossed it back on to the table with the others.

There was a nurse watching us from the door. I didn’t recognise her at first, so I didn’t really pay her any mind. Until she spoke, anyway. “Charlie?”

We all turned to face her.

“George?” she asked. “I just read the patient names at handover this morning,” she said.

She looked different. She was wearing nurse scrubs, her hair was pulled back and she had a clipboard in her hand. It took a long second for me to realise just who it was. I wasn’t expecting to see her any time soon—if at all—and I certainly wasn’t expecting to see her here.

It was Laura.

There was a long silence—I couldn’t quite place seeing her here. Even if I’d expected to see her again, I certainly didn’t expect to see her at at the hospital—and I was thankful a doctor walked in behind her. Laura stepped to the side, giving the doctor centre stage.

“Mr Brown?” the doctor asked.

George stood up with me and Travis right beside him. The three of us took off our hats in unison. “Yeah.”

The doctor, a guy about the same age as George, looked questioningly at me and Trav, then back to George. “Should we talk in private?”

I swear I could feel the hope drainin’ from George. I put a hand on his back, but he shook his head. “You can tell these boys,” he said, his voice just a whisper.

“The operation went well. It would appear that the adenocarcinoma was contained in the endometrium,” he started, but quickly clarified. “That means the cancer itself was contained within the uterus. We’ve done a complete hysterectomy, so it looks like we got it all.”

We all finally breathed.

The doctor smiled a little, but put his hand on George’s arm. “While this is good news, you need to be aware that we’ll need pathology to confirm this, and more than likely, there still will be follow-up treatments.”

I don’t think George heard any of that.

I think he was still stuck on ‘looks like we got it all’. He was just nodding and smiling and teary, and his was breathing kind of laboured. “Can I see her?”

The doctor smiled. “Briefly. She’s in recovery. I can only take one of you, though.”

I practically pushed George forward. “Go.”

Trav and I watched him disappear through some doors. Then he put his hands on his hips and breathed like he’d just run up a few flights of stairs. “Man, that is good news.”

I rubbed his back and kinda leaned into him, just a little bit, still unable to shake the need to have him near. “It really is.”

He turned and put his arms around me, pulling me close. I didn’t care if anyone saw. I needed him, he needed me, and they could just fucking deal with it. He kissed the side of my head. “We need to call home and let them know. They’ll be worried sick.”

I nodded, then I remembered something. Or some
one
. I pulled back and looked around for Laura. She looked like she was torn between wanting to give us space and wanting to stay. Travis turned and huffed when he saw her. She gave a sad, tired smile. “I didn’t know Katie was here,” she said. “I saw her name on the surgery list when my shift started at seven this morning.”

My head was just about spinning. “What are you doing here?” I asked. I looked her up and down, taking in her uniform. “You’re obviously staff. I thought you said you lived in Darwin?”

“I do,” she said. “I rotate as part of the Northern Territory Health’s regional training program. I’m a surgical nurse. It gives other nurses here a chance to do training and work in bigger hospitals in Darwin. I’m here for another six weeks…”

I didn’t know what to say to her.

“I’m sorry about before, Charlie,” she said. “About just turning up unannounced. That wasn’t fair on you.”

“No, it wasn’t,” Travis answered defensively.

Laura smiled sadly again. I don’t think she minded Trav’s biting tone. She probably considered it a win that it came from him and not me.

But Travis, being Travis, fully owned his feelings and wasn’t afraid to show them. I, on the other hand, was still on the I-don’t-know-how-to-feel side of the fence.

“I called Sam,” she said quietly. “When I got home after seeing you, it was the first thing I did.” She sat down in the seat closest to the door. “I told him everything. I should have done it years ago.”

My head kept spinning. Considering the events of these last few days, this was all too much. “Now isn’t a very good time. Ma just had her operation…”

Laura nodded. “I know. I’m sorry. I seem to have worst timing. I didn’t know she was so sick.”

“None of us did,” I replied. It occurred to me then that I didn’t want to see Laura. I wanted to see Ma.

Another nurse walked past and I called out to her. “Excuse me?”

She stopped, looked at Laura cautiously, then to me. “Can I help you?”

I nodded. “I’d like to see Katie Brown. She’s in recovery. Her husband’s with her right now, but I’ll just be real quick.”

“Are you a relative?”

“Yes,” I said without hesitation. “I’m her son.”

“Let me see what I can do,” she said, then looked back at Laura. “You all right?”

Laura nodded. “Yeah. I’m fine.”

I replayed in my mind what I’d just said in front of her. That I was someone else’s son. And I opened my mouth to apologise.

But then I realised I wasn’t sorry at all.

* * * *

Ma was still all dozy and drugged when they took her back to her room, and George had hold of her hand like it was the only thing keepin’ him alive.

Figurin’ we’d be doing a whole lotta sittin’ around watchin’ her sleep, I told George we’d be back in an hour or so. The truth was I needed some fresh air, and by the way Travis kept clenchin’ his jaw, I figured he did too.

We went back and checked on Nugget, and seein’ that Trav hadn’t relaxed any, I remembered something he’d done once. “Come on, let’s get him packed up. I wanna take you both somewhere.”

We found a cafe in town and ordered burgers and drinks to go. When I then pulled the ute up to a local park, Trav snorted. “You wanted to bring your wombat to a park? I think he’s a bit young to be using the slide, Charlie.”

I laughed at him. “I didn’t come here just for him. I came here for you too.”

“I’m a bit over slides too. Kinda have been since, ooooh, I dunno, the fourth grade,” he said with a smile.

“Shut up and bring that, will you?” I said, nodding to the bag as I got out of the ute. I carried Nugget and his bag of belongings while Trav carried lunch.

I walked over to a spot, far enough from the road and the play equipment, where the grass was kinda long and the spring sun was warm. I put Nugget down first and watched as he sniffed the grass, not sure what to make of it.

I sat down and patted the ground. “Sit down. Take your boots and socks off, Trav.”

If he had wondered what the hell I’d brought him here for, now he knew. It wasn’t too long ago, he’d sat in the small park near the supermarket and ordered me to do the same. He said he missed the feel of it and that it was kinda great—not that I agreed too much—but if it helped him de-stress a little, then I could sit in the park all damn day. He smiled and, sitting down, pulled off his boots and socks. He wiggled his toes in the long grass, his smile now a grin.

We ate our burgers and watched Nugget as he wandered, not too far, sniffing and running. He’d come back to us every minute or so, then scoot off to some new patch of very important-smelling grass.

If the morning hadn’t been so stressful, it would have been a perfect day.

When we’d eaten and Nugget was annoying Travis for a belly scratch, I lay down in the grass and stared at the sky. We were only a metre or so apart, and although I wasn’t touching him in any way, just being with him right then was enough. The memories of last night—and the still lingering ache in my arse—made me sigh.

“You feel okay?” Travis asked. He frowned. “You’re not sore, are you? I was pretty rough, and—”