The Best Australian Stories 2014 (9 page)

I think it's nothing I should be looking at. I think it looks a lot like the oil stains in the car park. I think it's a lot like a place where a cop's face used to be. I think it's time I got back to writing. I think there's a bakery nearby.

I smell fresh baked bread and pastry and buns as the dough cools, the blood dries and … the blood dries and … the blood dries and it maps the last moments of a mind. All that brain wasted. All those convictions, assertions, experiences, all those exams, interviews, tests. All that criteria painted dark and heavy over the cold walkway of a pub that doesn't have the decency to dim the jingle-jangle of the gaming room. This is all linked, I think. I wander back to my bright-lit post, stop and talk shop with a cop.

He's SRT, special response. That means he gets a Taser, spray, sidearm and a Kevlar vest, all the good gear that wouldn't have done shit. Says the dead guy was in civvies, a ‘D'. The detective got a couple shots away but missed, got surprised by someone with a shotgun. They gave him both barrels. Blew a bit of the back of his head out from ten metres but he took a day to die. I ask if it was a solid slug or SGs. He says the hole in the front of his head looked solid but there were pellets everywhere. ‘Maybe two different loads, second shooter, dunno.' Maybe he talks because I'm polite or because I bounce, or maybe he tells this shit to everyone.

He has that friendly way about him that good bouncers have, good stories, good injuries, a lack of pretence and the kind of matter-of-fact take on violence that betrays a friendly familiarity with it. None of that pent-up defensiveness you get from people who can't go there, can't do that. I'm not sure if this is risky, writing it all up a stone's throw from this man, probably less so than getting stoned on my way to this shift.

Crow call from low lights and it's 5 am. The scavengers are circling already, having conversations on the wing as fit people assemble at a nearby gym. No lorikeets, I notice. Fitting, I guess, lends solemnity to the scene. The only pub that served no beer today. In the rising sun I spot pots and schooners half-drunk sitting on the rails of the verandah. A Tooheys tallie in the gutter reflects slow arresting flashes of blue, red, blue, red, while cold storage fridges drone on, preserving overpriced stock for an overdue opening.

Crows calling at the Pines Café. Peewees in the poinciana bleating. Swifts hunt and pierce. A kookaburra lands and doesn't laugh. The cop van sits in the entrance weighed down with flowers. The blue people have not always been my friends but we'd be worse off without them. Like sleep they probably keep us feigning sanity. Like they say, money's made round to go round. I see the shadies pumping cold notes through hot machines on the weekends. I see the old ladies falling face-first in the wet grass. I see managers counting money and busting humps. I see the cop chopper chasing schoolies through Surfers. I see a mining magnate bring down a prime minister over a tax. I see a detective at a crime site where there's no detection required. All this shit is linked.

I see all this and I know I'm naive. But no one deserves to be cut down for revenue. No one deserves it while they work, wife worries, daughter sleeps. I resolve on this day to never die doing a job I don't like for people I don't love in a place that I hate. So if I tell you I can't, then fuck off. I'm resigned to it, I will not do it. Instead – I keep pen on paper. Rubber to road. Brainium in cranium.

Griffith REVIEW

Now I See

Fiona Place

I was an ordinary woman. An ordinary woman on all fours giving birth. On Saturday 17 February 1996 at 2.45 pm in a busy Sydney maternity hospital I gave birth to a live, crying newborn. But instead of elation and joy, instead of sparkling sentiments and congratulatory words spilling into every nook and cranny of the room, the delivery space collapsed into an uneasy silence, into pained whispers of palpable disquiet. A stillness no mother would find manageable.

Decent.

Reasonable.

I knew something was amiss, knew all was not as it should be. My first glimmering of recognition occurring as my baby slithered out of me. Unlike my firstborn, this baby had not thrust open the walls of my birth canal, hadn't caused me to fear I would tear wide open. Yet, while I knew something was wrong, knew instinctively, at another level I didn't have a clue. And told myself the softness, the lack of robustness could simply be a second birth thing, or something that in retrospect would be classed an irrelevance.

And easily explained away.

*

I stopped inhaling the gas. And crumpled down onto the floor.

I was free.

The blood on my legs, the blood on the floor – the blood of a job well done.

I had become a mother for the second time.

Given birth to a boy for the second time.

However, my instincts would not be subdued, and there was a voice telling me my journey into motherhood might not be as straightforward as it had been the first time. That it had already veered off course. And as I looked upwards, looked towards my husband Anthony, I couldn't summon, couldn't find any words.

Not a one.

It was as though I needed to stall, needed to delay the moment I stepped into motherhood and acknowledged our son. Unable to speak, I took Anthony's outstretched hand and pulled myself upright. I then steadied myself against him, before shuffling the six or so steps from the birthing mat to the bed. With each step I experienced a growing sense of apprehension, a violent swirl of emotions that made me both want, and violently not want, to make eye contact with my son. There was no way I could ground myself other than to pull the flimsy bed sheet up over my naked body.

My apprehension was overwhelming.

However, once I was handed my son, when I did first search into his eyes for that moment of recognition, that moment I would cherish and recollect forever, I was immediately overcome by a yearning to push the looming dread aside and talk the small talk parents usually do when they hold and gaze adoringly at their newborn for the very first time.

Isn't he beautiful? Doesn't he have your eyes? My ears? And your nose?

And in a voice that wanted to feel excitement, that wanted to expand and fill the room, in a voice that wanted to be comforted and reassured, I found myself asking Anthony if he too thought our son had ‘Downsy' little eyes. I wanted him to say
yes,
to agree with me, but also to say my observation meant nothing. That
yes,
just like Imogen, the nine-year-old daughter of close friends, our son had exquisite, almond-shaped eyes.

I wanted my observation to be swept up, to be made ordinary and part of the everyday. Wanted the man I had chosen to have children with to chat and reassure me. To circle us with love. To shelter our son from the growing unease, the foreboding that was beginning to suffocate any feelings of warmth. Or joy. I wanted him to dismiss my musings, to refute the medical knowledge now threatening to choke off any feelings of happiness.

Of pride.

*

I didn't, or couldn't, realise that he too might be wondering.

In my post-birth effervescence I couldn't appreciate, couldn't imagine Anthony might be thinking our son's eyes were too almond-shaped, his head too small, and his ears too lowset. In my post-birth desire to be a mother showered in love I couldn't understand that Anthony might be in pain, might be experiencing distress. And want to protect me.

Protect us.

Privacy was not on the agenda. Minutes after giving birth I was asked to hand over my newborn to allow the paediatric registrar to examine him. To observe him for any signs of disorder. There were, after all, legitimate concerns.

Our son was red. Ketchup red.

A red too intense not to signify anything.

*

I watched from my bed as the registrar undertook his examination, each moment of his observing stab-wounding my heart. There was something deeply dehumanising about his looking. Unpleasant. Yet if the truth be known, I too had looked, I too had noted the signs and the stigmata.

I had been taught to see them as a 23-year-old paediatric student nurse, taught to notice signs of abnormality in the newborn, one of those being the appearance of a simian crease on the palm of the hand. A single crease that extends across the palm, formed by the fusion of the two palmar creases; it was rare, and called simian because it resembled that found in higher primates, in non-human simians such as monkeys and apes.
He may have a small head and lowset ears, but he doesn't have the telltale sign, the simian crease.
I wanted to shout it out, to let loose with pride.

In other words there was still plenty of room inside my head for doubt, for the possibility of good news, enough space for me to continue harbouring any number of reasons for my baby's floppy body.

His difference.

*

I still remember the enormity, the loud female voice as it smashed through the silence. ‘Did you have an amniocentesis?'

The question hit hard.

And at the same time didn't hit at all. Still woozy from the effects of the nitrous oxide, still wanting to experience the elation of having given birth to a second son, I couldn't take in the signs, the significance of the midwife's request for information. I simply said that no, I had chosen not to have that test. I also found it an odd question. Almost rude. I was, after all, still trying to comprehend why there were no smiles. No warm words of congratulations. No welcoming rush of wonder towards my newborn. Towards the baby Anthony and I had made.

Wanted.

Instead of bathing in the precious awe of a new life, I found myself up against a headwind. Without warning, ice-cold gusts were slapping at my cheeks.

I was to be managed, processed and moved out of the delivery suite as quickly as possible. I wasn't special. There was nothing to applaud.

‘Do you have private insurance?' she continued.

‘Yes.'

‘Then we'll put you in your own room.'

I knew that being allocated my own room signalled bad news, but I still allowed myself to feel special, to feel encouraged by the idea of my own space. I couldn't, however, be that naive. I did know the allocation had been decided upon because it was presumed I might be upset, might be depressed, might even be angry if I roomed with mothers whose babies had been deemed normal.

I might need a space to cry.

We
might need a space to rage furiously at all and sundry.

We didn't.

*

While holding our new son, while adjusting to the circumstances in which we found ourselves, we did wonder at our son's redness, his probable polycythaemia as noted by the registrar, a condition in which there are too many red blood cells. We did wonder if his floppiness, his low muscle tone could be explained away by exposure to a virus during pregnancy, did wonder if he really was as different as everyone seemed to think.

We needed to latch on to these thoughts as a way forward, as a way of protecting ourselves against the swift and brutal biology-as-destiny attitude of the medical staff.

We also knew.

*

I still remember the exact moment of recognition. Still remember looking into Anthony's eyes and him beginning to say, ‘Yes, they do think he has Down syndrome,' when we were interrupted by a knock at the door.

It was the paediatric consultant Dr J, the same consultant we'd had with Angus, our firstborn. Dr J was visibly shocked. Uncomfortable. And rather than engage in any ‘great to see you again' chat got straight down to business.

‘You're both intelligent people,' he said. ‘You know what we are thinking.'

We were in disaster land, a land where Dr J's eyes betrayed an inability to fathom how two tertiary-educated professionals could have allowed this to happen. Could have gotten themselves in this unenviable situation.

True.

It was not what Anthony and I had planned, not what we had wanted, but even then, even under the harsh spotlight of our medical peer, we knew we were united, that we were solidly there. Solidly behind our son. We also knew our immediate task was to put Dr J at ease, to make him comfortable with our ‘tragic' birth outcome while managing our own need for time and space.

*

Anthony and I agreed to the chromosomal studies, but we also requested that Dr J run a viral screen to rule out the possibility that our son had been exposed to a virus in utero. Dr J looked doubtful, but in deference to our friendship, and to the fact that Anthony was also a doctor, he agreed. We needed a wildcard, needed the possibility of some path other than that mapped out by a chromosomal study. Needed to push back the categorising of our son.

We needed a space with possibilities.

*

‘The other issue, the more pressing issue,' Dr J told us after he examined our newborn, ‘is your son's probable polycythaemia.' And shifting his gaze to Anthony he began explain how our son's hyperviscosity was putting his central nervous, gastrointestinal and renal systems at risk. He also told us his heart rate was falling and he wasn't adequately regulating his body temperature. ‘I think we should act,' he advised. ‘You can have 24-hour access, but I need to take him now.'

We both nodded.

On this issue, the health and wellbeing of our son, we understood the need for swift intervention. And I was pleasantly surprised to see Dr J take the time to carefully wrap him in his bunny rug. ‘Give me half an hour, and then you can come down,' he said. And wheeled the crib out of the room.

*

Left alone with so many uncertainties, we focused on what we could do. On what we hadn't yet thought about in earnest. A name for our new son. And the name that kept returning to our lips, kept returning in our effort to restore some tranquillity, some sense of order, was Spencer.

Spencer.

S-p-e-n-c-e-r.

It was an uncommon name, but on saying it out loud to one another we decided it was the one.

A name that
could,
a name that
would,
take our son anywhere.

*

Before heading off to the NICU I had a quick, bracing shower. I wanted to clean away the remaining streaks of blood on my legs and revive myself. I also wanted to forcefully spray my vagina, spray the area where I had torn and allow the water to penetrate my stitches, to dull the pain.

I dressed in a pair of Anthony's underpants with a fresh pad attached, his soccer shorts and one of his collared t-shirts, clothes that comfortably fitted a post-birth me. The half-hour up, we left for the NICU, with me insisting on a post-birth pace, a slightly slower pace than usual.

*

On arrival we introduced ourselves to the staff, one of whom smiled towards us and led us to Spencer's crib. The atmosphere in the NICU was so different to that of the delivery suite. The focus was no longer on our son's genetic abnormality, on a tragic outcome, but rather on his health and wellbeing. And pulling up a chair I sat as close as I could to his crib and gently stroked his cheek, and whispered his name, and told him I loved him. Over and over.

My breasts were hurting from the fullness of the milk, and I was relieved when Dr J suggested that I try and feed my son. Spencer didn't find it easy to latch onto my nipple and only sucked for a few seconds; it wasn't enough to relieve my discomfort but it was immensely satisfying. Immensely normalising. I smiled at Anthony. He smiled back. It was a start.

The next few hours passed in what seemed like seconds and I have no memory of any conversation other than bidding Anthony goodnight.

*

I stayed with Spencer for most of the night, now and then returning alone to my room for a brief period of sleep.

I admired my son's calm. For no matter how much they poked or prodded his small body, his grace under pressure was remarkable. His ability to settle himself, to compose himself after each and every interruption, was humbling.

Spencer, however, was not progressing; he wasn't feeding enough or keeping his temperature within an acceptable range. And early on the Sunday morning Dr J advised that we consent to a partial plasma exchange.

Spencer's blood would be diluted and the extra blood cells removed.

Dr J told us this would decrease the internal friction, decrease the thickness of his blood and allow for better tissue perfusion; allow his organs to receive the necessary oxygen to function properly and minimise the risk of any long-term neurological damage. He also told us the procedure was not without its own risks and was still considered controversial in neonates.

We tried to assess the risks, to understand if the dangers, including blood clots, infection or high blood pressure outweighed the benefits, but we were also too tired, too overloaded with information. In the end we decided to trust Dr J, to accept what he believed was best for Spencer.

To our enormous relief Spencer came through the procedure without distress and within hours was more alert, more hungry and, simply, more
him.

On the Monday afternoon he was discharged from the NICU and allowed to join me in my room. I breastfed him. Bathed him. And slept when he slept.

*

Anthony visited as often as he could, and brought in two-year-old Angus with him. Angus seemed to like the idea of having a brother, seemed to understand there was a new family member, but was more intent on operating the remote control of the television set, and on watching cartoon after cartoon. I too had planned on watching television, had planned on my second birth being a breeze. I decided to luxuriate, to enjoy the short period free from domestic chores and focus on Spencer, on what was going well, on the ways in which he was like any other baby. But the medical staff had other ideas.