You Don't Even Know (9 page)

Vicky watches me for a moment. “How's your head?”

“Not bad, thanks.

“Much pain?”

“A bit.”

Vicky nods.

“Got to expect that I guess. They say I was hit by a bus – broke my arm, couple of ribs and my head.”

Vicky runs her finger along the edge of Mackie's scrapbook. “They say? You can't remember?”

“No.”

I dredge through the things I remember – the cold, sitting outside the library, feeling sad. No, that's not strong enough. Desolate. Alone. As though a heavy weight was dragging me down. Then nothing. The dull ache in my head spreads to my fingers. I scrunch up my face.

Vicky rushes to my bedside. “God, I'm sorry. Heaven knows I've been in enough hospitals to know better. It's an unwritten law. Never ask why someone is here.”

She's younger than she looked across the room.

“Everything was shit. My sister …” My throat clogs up. “She was only four.”

“I'm sorry.” She squeezes my left hand.

I nod, hoping the movement will dislodge the sorrow struggling to burst from me.

“What–”

“Hello, darling,” Mum bustles into the room, all make-up and perfume and jewellery. She has my gym bag over her shoulder. She stops when she sees Vicky.

“Vicky, this is my mum, Christina. Mum, this is Vicky, Mackie's mum.”

Mum looks puzzled. “Mackie?”

“My roommate.”

“Oh.”

Vicky reaches out to shake Mum's hand. “We kind of met when the kids were in the high dependency unit.”

Mum takes a step back towards the flowers. It's then that I notice how garish my side of the room is compared to Mackie's.

“Think I'll grab a coffee. Would either of you like one?” says Vicky.

“No, thank you.” Mum's voice is clipped.

“I'm right, thanks, Vicky.”

The moment she leaves, Mum wrenches open drawers, placing clean pyjamas inside.

“Do you reckon you could bring in T-shirts and shorts? Or a tracksuit, please? And socks? My feet are cold. Maybe thongs too.”

Mum doesn't answer. She pulls the chair close to the bed and looks around, as though searching for a waiter in a restaurant. “Surely there's a private room available by now.

Exhaustion seeps into my bones. “Leave it, Mum. Please.”

“But it's not right, Alex. We pay our health premiums; we are entitled to a private room. In fact, I'll enquire about having you moved to a private hospital as soon as possible.”

“Bloody hell, Mum, leave it!” Pain hums round my head.

Mum raises her finger. “I won't, it's …”

Vicky returns, holding a coffee mug.

Silence fills the gap between me and Mum.

Mum waved as she pulled away from the kerb. I flung my sports bag over my shoulder and walked through the automatic doors into the rec centre. My muscles softened as the wave of thick chlorinated air engulfed me. I normally trammed it to work and training, but Mum had insisted she drive me. The moment I had closed the car door as we left home I knew why.

“Alex, this tension between you, Ethan and your father. I want it to stop.” We drove the length of the street in silence. “I can't help if you don't talk to me.”

“What's the point?” I muttered, watching the cars flash past. “Any chance of you ever sticking to the speed limit?”

“Don't deflect, Alex. Why do you always bait them?”

I twisted in my seat to face her. “Serious? Me bait them? They gang up on me all the time. Make me feel like a piece of crap. Why don't you ask them why they do that?”

Mum stared straight ahead, face blank. “Can't you please try to do things their way? Try–”

“To be more like them?” I shook my head. “No way.”

“Alex.”

“I don't want to hear it.” I stuck my earbuds in and turned on my iPod. The Broken drowned out Mum's bleating.

Mum driving me to training meant I was first to arrive. I changed and was on my way to do warm-up laps when Benny called out.

“Hey, Buzz. Dory can't make it tonight. Give me a hand, would you?”

Benny and I took balls, training gear and caps from the storage cupboard near the change rooms to the deep end of the pool. We placed “Training – no access” sandwich boards on the pool deck.

“You're quiet,” said Benny.

“Am I?” I forced a smile.

“Everything all right?”

I watched a small boy in huge boardies run in and out of the spray spewing from the top of the giant mushroom sprinkler in the middle of the little kids' pool. “Yeah, fine. Family crap.”

Benny nodded. “So you could do with a bit of good news then?”

“Training is enough to work it out of my system.”

“Shame. I had pretty sick news. I was going to wait until everyone was here, but …” Benny rubbed his chin, making a big show of pretending it was a tough decision, but I could tell by the sparkle in his eyes he'd already decided he was going to tell me. “Ahh, stuff it, Buzz. You've been chosen to go to Canberra for a training camp.”

I heard the words, but they didn't make sense. “What?”

Benny's face was alight with excitement. “A training camp, in Canberra, with the national team. Australian Institute of Sport. For a week during the holidays.”

My blood fizzed and popped like soft drink. “Serious?”

“Deadly.”

I stared at my feet, white against the cement pool deck. “Me?”

“Yep, you and Smurf.”

“What about Bart and Pumba? They're way better players than me, and they've been on the team longer.”

“You deserve it, Alex.” He clapped his hand on my bare shoulder, which felt kind of awkward, but good at the same time. “If it's okay with you, I'd like to ring and tell your parents,” he said. “Let them know what a big deal it is.”

Bart rolled up and flicked his towel, which snapped the air around my thigh. “So, Benny, Alex, what's cooking?”

“The usual.” Benny winked at me. “Right, you two. Cordon off this section of the pool with the lane rope.”

I dived into the water and freestyled to the other side, smiling so hard, water rushed into my mouth.

It's rest time. The room is eerily quiet. The curtains are drawn and somehow they've dimmed the fluorescent lights in the corridor. I'm lying on my back, left hand sitting on my plastered right arm, tired, but I don't want to sleep. If I sleep, I'll dream. My dreams are always about Mia.

I move my legs. The rustle of my tracksuit against the bedspread fills the room.

Across from me, Mackie lies still and quiet. I watch the drip, drip, drip of fluid into the tube connected to her hand. The same two cards sit on the shelf over her bed. A coffee jar now filled with only daisies, sits between them.

On my side of the room car magazines, a bottle of juice and a windcheater lie on the overbed table near my feet. Cards are strewn on the shelves and hang from the silver bar above my head. Flower arrangements cover shelves and the floor. Even in the dim light, it looks like a rainbow has taken a floral dump over here.

I sit and ease my legs off the bed. My head begins to pound and the room spins. I grip the edge of the bed with both hands until the sensation passes. The moment it does, I stand and again wait for the swaying and pounding to ease before tottering to the flowers on the floor. I reach for a bouquet of irises, and carry it in my left hand to Mackie's side of the room. I place them beside the daisies on the shelf above her head.

The pain in my ribs doubles me over.

“What are you doing?” asks a nurse in the doorway.

“Can you help me for a minute? Please?”

She comes closer, arms folded. “That depends.”

“I'd do it myself but …” I raise my plastered right arm, while checking her name tag. Deb Foran. “I need to move stuff, Deb, to Mackie's side of the room.”

Deb frowns. “Why?”

“Because the flowers are wasted on the floor. And besides, girls love flowers.”

Deb sucks in her bottom lip. She looks from my side of the room to Mackie's. “Okay, but then you must rest.”

“You're a legend.”

I collect the cards from the arrangements before Deb carries them across the room where she places them on the shelf and bedside cabinet. While she works, Deb talks about gardening, shopping and her nieces. I grunt and mumble replies.

“Can you make sure her mum's flowers stay at the front?” I say, as Deb makes room for one more arrangement.

When we're done, Mackie's side of the room is brighter, but I'm completely knackered. I slip into the seat Vicky sat in yesterday.

“Looks better, eh?” Deb's smile fades when she looks at my face. “You okay?”

“Sore.”

“Right. Bed now and rest.”

Before I answer, a buzzer sounds in the corridor. Deb bustles from the room. I stay where I am, watching Mackie's sunken face and cracked lips. Her breathing is slow and shallow. She looks sick. Seriously sick.

The scrapbook Vicky showed me lies on the overbed table. It's one of those big, spiral sketchbooks. The front page has been covered in floral fabric. The reds, blues and pinks remind me of Mum's many scarves.

When I touch the cover, it's soft, as though it's padded beneath the material. Letters, cut out in darker material and glued to the cover, read “Mackie's Projects and Dreams”.

I look back at her pale face and wonder if she is dreaming.

With great care, I lift the scrapbook and open it. The first page is covered in a collage. There's a photo of a girl holding two flop-eared rabbits, drawings of birds, and magazine pictures of knitted scarves, felt birds and handbags made from coloured jeans.

I turn the page and see another collage, but this one is photographs of skirts, T-shirts, scarves and hats. The background is the same in each picture – a pink, striped doona. Written at the bottom of the page, in thick black print, is “Completed projects”.

The next page has more craft: a long skirt, a woven belt, painted canvas shoes, bows and more clothes. At the top is written “To Do …” and added in blue pen above the ellipses is “BEFORE”.

Before what?

I hear movement in the corridor and close the scrapbook. I wait, heart pounding. When no one enters the room, I open the book again at the completed projects page. The largest photo, a chunky scarf, isn't completely glued down. When I lift it, there's a list written in black, purple and blue ink. The list is surrounded by stickers and drawings of smiley faces, flowers, skulls and cartoons.

R
ANDOM LIST OF STUFF TO DO BEFORE
I
TURN
30!

*
Fly somewhere, anywhere, but preferably overseas, in first class
.

*
Stay at a five-star hotel
.

*
Learn to surf
.

*
Stand under the Eiffel Tower and kiss a really hot guy (Johnny Depp-hot, only younger) who is really into me
.

*
Have romantic, candle-lit, perfect “movie sex”, with same hot guy
.

*
Marry same hot guy and have fat-cheeked babies with chubby fingers and heart-melting giggles
.

*
Buy a weatherboard cottage, with wisteria hanging down from the verandah (and picket fence to keep in babies and animals) and renovate it
.

*
Own a brown labradoodle called Sampson, and a Himalayan cat called Miffy
.

*
Breed lop-eared rabbits to donate to kindergartens, child care centres etc
.

*
Design and make the winning dress in Melbourne Cup “Fashions On the Field”
.

*
Watch turtles hatch on a remote Queensland island
.

*
Climb Uluru
.

*
Holiday at the snow
.

*
Visit Disneyland
.

*
Backpack around the world with Tammy
.

*
Go to London
.

*
See Kings of Leon in concert
.

*
Meet Daniel Radcliffe. (And the guy who plays Snape.)

*
Watch Rafael Nadal play tennis at Wimbledon. Or Paris
.

*
See elephants, rhinos and giraffes in the wild. (i.e. Africa.)

*
Fly in a helicopter
.

*
Bungee jump
.

*
Lie under an ice-cream machine, have someone turn it on and then eat!

*
Shower under a waterfall, like they do in TV ads
.

*
Go to a music festival – Falls or Big Day Out. Damn it – both!

*
Volunteer at the RSPCA
.

I lower the scarf picture, and with my palm resting on the page, stare at the closed curtains. My head swirls with … what? Shame? Embarrassment?

About half of the things on Mackie's list, I've done, sometimes more than once. I've been in a helicopter, visited Disneyland, Paris, London and Uluru, holidayed in the snow, slept in plenty of five-star hotels and watched Rafal Nadal play a final, though it wasn't overseas, only the Australian Open.

“Alex, you promised.” Deb's voice is gentle.

I close the scrapbook and return it to Mackie's table. “Sorry, I …”

“It's okay, but you need to rest.”

Settled back into bed, I'm unable to fight the tiredness engulfing me. Facing the closed curtains, I shut my eyes.

I shut my eyes as the plane's wheels left the runway. Maybe I'd sleep all the way to LA. God knows I was completely stuffed after this morning.

Even though our flight didn't leave until nine, which meant we didn't need to check-in until seven, and despite the fact we'd spent the night in a family suite at the motel linked to the airport by a walking bridge, Dad had us all out of bed at five. Five!