Through the Cracks (8 page)

T
he car wasn’t where he’d left it.

‘A long shot,’ Billy said.

Storm clouds were gathering. Fat raindrops began to fall. The air smelled tinny. Thunder rumbled. Rain held off. Sun kept breaking through and the day became stickier and hotter.

They walked.

At a small park with trees, a slide, a swing, Billy sat down on the grass. Across the road was a large grey shed. Billy watched the cars pulling into the parking lot. A station wagon turned in. It parked down the side, away from the other cars.

Billy jumped up.

‘Stay here.’

A man got out of the car and locked it. He carried a small towel and used it to swipe flies from his face. He went into the shed. Billy crossed the road and followed him in. Within a few moments Billy reappeared, returned to the park, flopped down on the grass beside Adam.

‘Bastard didn’t use a locker.’

Billy stretched out his legs and leaned on one elbow.

‘So . . . this money . . . I think I’m going to have to see it to believe it. You said a bundle.’ He held his thumb and finger a little way apart. ‘Like that? Folded or flat?’

‘Not folded.’

‘A solid bundle like that? Really?’

‘A bit bigger.’

‘Show me.’

Adam indicated the depth of the stack he’d seen.

‘Fifties?’

‘The yellow ones.’

‘You reckon the cops would have found it?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Whereabouts did you hide the key?’

Adam shook his head.

‘Ah, not telling.’ Billy took the squashed cigarette packet from the band of his shorts. He withdrew a smoke with his lips. Squeezed the lighter out from the small pocket in his shorts. ‘Don’t trust me, hey?’

A car pulling in across the road caught his eye. It was a grey sedan. Billy snuffed out the freshly lit cigarette and put it back into the packet. He got to his feet and brushed the dry grass off his bum.

‘Second time lucky.’

The driver was a woman. She carried a sports bag, slung over her shoulder. Her ponytail swayed as she walked. Billy jogged across the road and went through the doors after her.

While he was gone another car arrived. Some people left the shed, smiling and chatting in a group, flushed red faces, sipping from drink bottles. Adam moved across and sat where Billy had been sitting. He stretched out the same way Billy had, lounging on one elbow. Adam pretended for a moment – pretending to smoke, wriggling and moving his face the way Billy did, wetting his lips, touching his tongue to his teeth, narrowing his eyes and peering at things in the distance. He practised winking. Adam imagined his skin as brown and his body as strong and heavy as Billy’s, his mind as sharp.

More people left the shed. Adam stopped pretending and drew up his legs, hugged his knees. The car park emptied. A van, a red hatchback, the station wagon and the grey car were all that was left.

It began to rain.

There was a limit. A couple of times Adam had felt close to it. Inside him was a scream. It had always been there, he had lived with it and it lived with him. It was wordless, constant, straining. No sound. To put sound to it would be the end, the limit reached. Adam made a fist and pressed his knuckles to his lips. Rain fell harder. Adam pushed his knuckles so that his lips were mashed against his teeth, and he drilled harder still, pushed the scream back in, until he tasted blood.

Billy re-emerged, strolling across to the grey sedan. He had the keys, unlocked the car. Adam licked the blood from his teeth and lips, wiped the back of his hand on the wet grass and pushed his dripping fringe off his forehead.

Billy drove up, stopped by the kerb. Soaked through, Adam got in the car.

‘Sorry about that. A class had finished. I had to wait until they all left. Place has got these new lockers too, real hard to jimmy. Probably put them in because of the last time I used this joint. Try harder next time, fuckers!’

He spun the wheels as they left.

They were a few streets away before Billy noticed.

‘What happened to your mouth?’

‘I thought you weren’t coming back.’

Billy glanced across, didn’t say anything.

Maybe there’d been times Billy had done a similar thing to himself, if not his face, then to his arms, perhaps, or to his legs, the scarred tops of them.

Billy lifted his hips and pulled some notes from his pocket. He tossed them over. ‘That was in her wallet. We can split it.’

The crumpled notes settled on Adam’s lap. He collected up the money and handed it back to Billy. ‘I don’t know how to use it. I don’t know anything.’

‘Hey, come on, kid, don’t be like that.’

‘He didn’t teach me anything.’

‘And that’s a good thing, don’t you reckon? Who’d want him as your teacher?’ Billy reached across and gave Adam’s shoulder a gentle shove. ‘We’re gonna sort it out, hey? Get this money and sort it out?’

T
hey were going the long way around, doing their best to avoid the police. Billy explained that the gym woman could’ve already reported her car stolen. She had a string of Smurfs hanging from the rear-view mirror. They swayed at every turn.

The day had turned steamy. The car windows fogged up. Billy wound down his window to let some air in.

Waiting at a set of traffic lights, gazing at the wet roads, thinking about the things Billy had spoken of, not least of all that Joe might not have been Adam’s father and that his mother might not be dead, a bang exploded in Adam’s ears and a jolt ripped through his body. He was hurled forward, his head smacked into the dash. A car horn sounded.

‘You’ve got to be kidding me.’

Billy pushed his chest off the steering wheel. The horn stopped. He looked behind them.

‘Brilliant.’

He winced and pressed a hand to his chest, felt and prodded his chin.

Adam touched his head and moved back in his seat. The car was now on an angle, shoved across the white line, the bonnet sticking into the lane of passing traffic. Cars were stopping and banking up, unable to get past. Rain fell steadily.

‘This is too handy, ain’t it?’

A van had smashed into the back of them. It was trying to start its engine. Its motor kept stalling. Cars tooted. In front, the lights changed but no one could move. They were blocking all the traffic, front and back. A man came up and knocked on Billy’s window and spoke through the gap.

‘You okay?’

‘Yep.’

‘You’re not hurt?’

‘We’re all right.’

‘I saw it happen. My wife is taking down the van’s numberplate if you need it.’

‘Thanks. You couldn’t look and tell us what sort of damage has been done, could you? Winded a bit.’

‘Sure.’

The man left.

Billy checked he had his smokes. ‘We’re getting out. Don’t run. I’ll come round your side. We’ll go that way.’ He pointed to the closest footpath. ‘Don’t look at no one, don’t say nothing, don’t stop if someone tries to stop you. Let’s go.’

They stepped out into the rain and shut the car doors. The man who’d come to the window was talking to the van driver. Billy left the motor running and the windscreen wipers on. The van driver began shouting at them as they left. Billy didn’t look back. He skipped up the gutter onto the sidewalk. They turned down the first street they came to and picked up pace. Billy rubbed his chest and opened his mouth to take a breath.

‘I don’t know if we were real lucky or real unlucky there. Another centimetre and we would’ve been front-ended too.’

Sounds of traffic and tooting grew dimmer with each step. Rain hid them. A few streets over Billy slowed and leaned against a tree trunk. He slid down and rested on his haunches. He took deep, testing breaths, massaging below his collarbones. He kept touching his chin and pulling his hand away, looking at his fingertips.

‘You’re bleeding, by the way.’

It had seemed strange to Adam that slamming headfirst into the dash hadn’t hurt that much, not even smarted. Nothing about it had felt particularly bad or surprising. It was only now that his eye began blinking rapidly. Muscles flickered in his neck. A trickle of something thicker than rain ran down his cheek. Pain shattered like glass breaking through the top of his head.

He saw a river, glistening water sliding over rocks, felt the sun warm on his back, heard water burbling and people calling, and heavy, sloshing footsteps behind him, blue sky as he was lifted up.

‘Whoa, whoa, whoa,’ he heard Billy say.

A
dam came to in a hospital bed. He felt strapped down. The sheet was tight across him. He lifted his knees and took his arms out from beneath the bedding. In the ceiling above him was a square vent with paper cut-outs of small rabbits hanging from it. The rabbits fluttered in the cool moving air. Caterpillars were painted on the walls. He turned his head. In the bed beside him was a girl with a neck brace on. She was asleep. Soft toys on her pillow. On the other side was a boy lying on his belly on top of his sheets, in a dressing-gown and slippers, his feet resting on the pillows, watching the TV mounted on the ceiling in the centre of the room. A cartoon was playing
. Road Runner
.

Adam pulled himself up. Other beds in the room were empty. A nurse walked past the doorway, glanced in, kept going, and then backed up.

‘How long have you been awake?’

She unhooked a chart from the foot of Adam’s bed and lifted the pages. She marked something on the chart, put it away.

‘How are you feeling?’ She sat on the bed near his knees. The sheet pulled tight again. ‘I’ll get the doctor to come and check on you.’

She didn’t leave. Her arms were folded and her breasts were large. There were blotchy red marks on her neck and cheeks, one or two grey hairs in her eyebrows and long coarse streaks of grey in her hair.

‘We’ve got you down as Adam. Is that right?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you know you’re in the McCarthy hospital? Do you remember what happened and how you got here?’

‘No.’

She looked at him a moment, tilting her head and softening her eyes. She patted his knees through the blankets and got up.

‘I’ll leave you to properly wake up, and I’ll come back with the doctor. If you need to go to the toilet it’s down the hall. I’ll get some sandwiches sent in.’

He must have fallen asleep again. When he opened his eyes there was a plate of sandwiches covered in cling wrap, and a cup of orange juice with a paper lid on the table beside his bed. Each triangle sandwich had a different filling. Under the blankets Adam discovered he was dressed in pyjamas. When he got out of bed he found that the pyjamas didn’t fit. They finished halfway up his calves and midway up his arms. Adam’s skin was soft and sore to touch. A band of blue plastic was around his wrist and there was a bandaid across the back of his hand and one in the crook of his arm. The pain in his lower back was gone and his head was free of any kind of ache. Hospitals weren’t something he’d thought to put together with feeling well.

His limbs were tired, but in a good way. Moving and stretching, he could feel the walking he had done with Billy, but the twinges and tight pulls were pleasant reminders. The itchy bites had faded.

In the bathroom mirror Adam saw the square piece of gauze taped to his temple. His hair was greasy. Rubbing his scalp he could feel grains of sand from the beach. His skin smelled clean, but the long lock of his fringe smelled of stale cigarette smoke and the hair gel the barber had palmed through it. Beneath his nails was a line of grime. His teeth had never before felt so unbrushed.

The hospital toilets were low and small.

Adam sat there, knees high, feet bare in the narrow cubicle. He wasn’t sure who’d decided he should be in the hospital and be cared for. The only person he could think of with the power to do that was his father. Did his father have that kind of reach despite being dead? None of the doors in the hospital were locked. People were allowed to come and go. If Adam didn’t feel so well, he’d probably be a lot more anxious.

Up and down the corridor were sounds of cartoons playing and children coughing, soft crying and lowered adult voices. Nurses’ shoes squeaked on the floor. Adam climbed into his bed. He drank a glass of water, noticed that his clothes were folded on a shelf beside him. His sneakers were in a plastic bag. The toothpaste and toothbrush were neatly placed on the shelf above, along with a tightly folded piece of coloured paper. Adam searched his things for the bottle opener. It was gone. He took the squashed bullet of paper, smelled it. Cigarettes. Not the scent of smoke, though, the much nicer smell of the box the cigarettes came in, unlit tobacco, foiled paper.

Adam unfolded the coloured page. It had a picture of a pair of boxing gloves and a pair of running shoes on it. Adam pressed the unfolded paper to his nose again. Billy. Billy was the reason he was being cared for. Raindrops had dried as raised little splats on the notice. A name had been written in blue pen in the bottom corner of the page. Adam knew enough to understand the first and third letter: A.

Adam was in the bathroom brushing his teeth. The young nurse came and found him. She would have been pretty if she didn’t stare so flatly and speak in such a lifeless voice.

‘That’s the second time you’ve missed seeing the doctor. He won’t see you until tomorrow now.’

She showed Adam to the showers. With her back turned, walking away, she told him where the towels were. He didn’t catch what she said. Adam waited for someone else to come along to ask about the towels. No one came. Baffling to him, the times he was expected to do things for himself and the times he was meant to let other people do them for him. He washed without a towel, using the pyjama top to dry himself and dry his hair, putting it back on damp.

W
hen a man dressed in a dark suit came into the room the following day, Adam thought at first it was the doctor. He was carrying a leather satchel. He went to the boy and asked him how he was feeling. They spoke about what the boy had been watching on TV and the man took a comic book from his bag. He fanned out an array of chocolate bars and the boy was allowed to pick the one he wanted. During this the man looked up, held Adam’s gaze, and Adam knew then he wasn’t a doctor.

‘Hello, Adam, I’m Brother Hayden from the True Life Mission. How are you? It’s always struck me that they need some sort of older room, a teen room, in this ward. I’ll have to mention it. I know in other hospitals they have a room set aside, without Peter Rabbit and the Very Hungry Caterpillar everywhere. I wonder if it would be too much to ask for a Walkman, a cassette, and some Saturday morning music videos.’

He smiled without showing any teeth. Adam didn’t smile back. Flowing words and velvety voices didn’t make any difference. Dark hair, a handsome face, small hands, bony wrists, gentle movements, none of it changed what lay underneath. Adam’s heart sank and his mind lurched awake. Danger came like this. In a snap. He’d been wrong to relax and think it wouldn’t. A nurse walked in and Adam watched her, puzzled that she couldn’t see it, sense it – the air had changed. Those people from the playground, down near the beach, the drunks, one of them might as well have staggered in, reeking of the thing they couldn’t control. This man stunk.

The nurse smiled, tucked in her chin, lifted her shoulder to her ear. ‘Brother Hayden.’

‘Looking lovely as always, Nurse Judith.’

When she left, Adam continued staring at the doorway. Nurse Judith would have to return. She’d walk down the corridor and begin to feel something wasn’t right. Brother Hayden wasn’t right. He shouldn’t be there. He shouldn’t be allowed to offer chocolates to boys or be left alone to do what he was doing now, sitting down on the bed, touching the back of Adam’s hand, brushing Adam’s fringe away from his eyes, moving so that his bum was firm up against Adam’s hip and talking about the colour of Adam’s eyes.

‘Quite entrancing.’

Brother Hayden’s eyes weren’t entrancing. Adam couldn’t look at them.

‘A young man named Billy passed on to me that you were here. It seems the hospital contacted the Boytime Co-op. Yes? Billy likes to train there. He’s well known at the Mission. He told me to look out for you. How’s that sounding, Adam? Agreeable? Do you think?’

‘Don’t touch me.’

The boy eating his chocolate looked across. Brother Hayden reached into his satchel and took out the same piece of paper Adam had found with his clothes. His sheet was flat, without a crease. He held it up. He must have looked at Adam’s clothes at some point while talking, and seen the folded page, he reached for it, unfolded it, and held up the matching notices side by side.

‘Boytime Co-op. Will I tell Billy you don’t remember him? He seems very concerned about you. My understanding is he has helped you quite a bit.’

‘If you don’t get away from me I’ll scream.’

Brother Hayden got up. He slipped his copy of the notice back in his bag.

‘The generous spirit of the True Life Mission extends even to young men who shun it. Our doors are always open. We welcome teenagers, like yourself; we need mature role models for the younger ones to follow and look up to. We like to see young men thrive in the right conditions, off the streets, in positions of leadership. I’ll let you think about the alternatives and I’ll visit again soon. God bless.’

Brother Hayden left without visiting the girl in the neck brace. She didn’t get to choose a chocolate bar. She didn’t get a comic book. She burst into tears. She’d coloured in a picture of Jesus to give Brother Hayden. Nurse Judith soothed her.

‘Sometimes he runs out of time.’

The nurse gave the girl a lollipop. She sucked on it and looked with tear-filled eyes at Adam. The nurse glared at Adam as she walked past the foot of his bed. Adam waited until the nurse was gone. He pushed his bed covers back. At the very least he’d have his clothes and shoes on, ready to run.

The doctor strode in.

Adam’s foot was over the edge of the mattress. He drew it back, perched high on the bed, up against the pillows. The doctor closed the curtain around Adam’s bed and unhooked the chart. Nurse Judith stood beside him. He handed her the chart to put away.

‘Good to see you with some colour in your face.’ The doctor leaned in and placed his thumb beneath Adam’s eye. The skin on the doctor’s cheeks and chin was pitted. He had crooked teeth. He pulled Adam’s bottom eyelid down, looked, let go. ‘How are you feeling? Not experiencing any headaches? Blurry vision?’

Adam shook his head.

‘You’re remembering things okay?’

He nodded.

‘That knock, although giving you mild concussion, was more the final straw than anything else.’

A buzzer sounded out in the corridor and the nurse gestured in that direction. The doctor lifted two fingers and she left.

The doctor widened his stance and put his hands behind his back. ‘I can see you’ve been through quite a bit, young man. I suspect you haven’t felt well for a long time. You had an untreated kidney infection and a high fever due to that. We’ve dealt with the infection intravenously. Doing it that way we were able to get on top of it quickly. You would be feeling quite a lot better, I would suspect. Your general health will take more time sorting out. You’ve had some setbacks, and we need to work on turning that around. Your stay here will depend on the results of your blood tests, and the results on some other tests I’m going to get done, and getting your weight up to a healthy level. You’ll be here with us for awhile.’

The nursed returned, took up her position next to the doctor.

‘I’m organising a kidney function test,’ he said to her, ‘and X-rays, head to toe. We’ll go from there. Light exercise in the meantime, a high-calorie diet – full menu, no holding back. We need to organise a time I can sit down and talk with the parents. That will need to be co-ordinated with the relevant authorities, I imagine, I’m pretty sure the tests are going to confirm some things.’

The nurse touched the doctor’s arm, she whispered in his ear. The doctor looked at Adam while she spoke. The nurse stopped whispering and stood back.

‘They can’t speak to him without a guardian present, can they?’ the doctor asked.

‘I think they’d like to.’

‘Give me his chart again.’

Nurse Judith handed it to him.

‘Why haven’t we got his full details yet? I thought this was sorted out. Has someone been assigned? What’s the hold-up in reporting him?’ He checked his watch. ‘Where’s the head nurse?’

‘She’s with the police now.’

‘Well, they can’t talk to him in the children’s ward, and not without an adult or guardian present.’ The doctor turned to the first page of the chart. ‘Adam,’ he read, and looked up, ‘the police are here and would like to talk to you about a stolen car. It seems there was a traffic accident and the ambulance picked you up a few streets from it. As far as I know you need a guardian present for that kind of questioning . . . A stolen car is of no interest to me.’ He looked at Adam’s few belongings, only then seemed to notice the way Adam was sitting so high on the bed. ‘I’m happy to go and explain to the police that you’re not well enough to talk to them, but do I need to explain it to you too?’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘Away from here, I imagine they can question you. We don’t have to worry about you going, do we?’

Beside the doctor, the nurse’s expression was mild, but below that Adam sensed that she was scowling.

‘The man before . . .’ Adam ventured carefully, ‘he came and he —’

‘It’s a misunderstanding,’ Nurse Judith interrupted. ‘The pastoral visits. Teenage patients often don’t like them.’

The doctor stared blankly at her. It was as though he hadn’t taken in what she’d said. Then he snapped, ‘The obvious solution would be for the teenage patients not to be visited by the clergy. Is that really only glaringly apparent to me? You might be feeling better,’ he said to Adam, ‘but you are not well. Use your time in here as an opportunity. There are resources available to you. This nurse,’ he shot her a sideways glance, ‘is going to sit down with you and explain those resources, and get some details.’ He dropped the chart on the bed. Checked his watch again. ‘I’ll go and talk to the police. I expect a surname, parents and some clarity when I return. If a family member does turn up, I’d like to be informed.’

Nurse Judith bobbed her head. The doctor left. The nurse yanked the curtain back. Out in the corridor the younger nurse was over by the desk, looking across.

The two women met in the doorway and discussed Adam. He couldn’t hear what they were saying, but it was clear he was the topic. The young nurse walked to the desk and then over to Adam. She had some stapled pages and a pen. She used Adam’s bedside table to lean on.

The tip of her pen rested on the top of the first page.

‘Full name, please.’

She waited, not looking up. The part in her hair was straight. There was a little bluebird on the thin silver chain around her neck.

‘Unknown,’ she said as she wrote. ‘Address?’ She looked off towards the door, over to the nurses’ station. She blinked as though bored and gave a small shake of her head. ‘Address unknown. Date of birth?’ she asked. After waiting a moment, she collected up the papers. ‘Someone from child protection will come and see you.’

‘Excuse me.’

She stopped, kept her back to Adam. ‘Yes?’

‘Can I please talk to the other nurse? She was here yesterday when I woke up. She was big and had grey in her hair.’

‘Are you being rude?’

‘He means Nurse Rosie,’ the boy in the bed next to Adam’s said.

‘She isn’t on today.’ The nurse went and straightened the sheets on the boy’s bed. She gave him a sparkling smile and a tweak on his chin. ‘If this young man upsets you in any way or makes you feel uncomfortable, you buzz and don’t be afraid to say. Tell us if he bothers you, won’t you, Michael?’

She strode off and deposited the forms on the desktop with a slap.

‘I tried,’ she said.