Page Utilities
Glenys Carl, Pan Books (page 4 of 13) Page 4 of 13
Scott's old apartment on Potts Point is still available as the rent has been prepaid, and I persuade Jonathan to move in. We devise a schedule of twelve-hour shifts. Night or day, one of us will always be at Scott's side. When the apartment rent expires, my friends Rollie and Robin offer Jonathan their spare bedroom. Every day he rides a borrowed bicycle twenty-five miles from their home in the suburb of Sutherland to the hospital for his shift, then rides back at night or the next morning after I take over. Jonathan's a very strong bicyclist.
Jonathan passes the hours reading to Scott. Over the next several weeks they manage to consume the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy. Sometimes he straps Scott into the wheelchair and takes him to the hospital roof for a small amount of sunshine. When we leave Scott at night, we always make sure a tape is playing so he has at least a half hour of music.
For the first time in months, I am able to enjoy a few luxurious days of freedom. On my days off, Julie Clarke's mother, Johnnie, invites me to her home near the beach in Gymea. Rising early in the mornings, I walk the sand, inviting the sun and breeze to restore my depleted spirit. After a long nap I return to the beach to swim and swim until I can barely crawl from the surf. I didn't know how exhausted I was, how close I was to an emotional breakdown, until I experienced the freedom of the sea. How does one express gratitude to another for the simplicity of their friendship, a private room, a soft clean bed and a hot cup of tea? Whom do you thank for a swim in the ocean, for the luxury of solitude on a deserted beach, for your health and serenity? I am beginning to love life again.
After five weeks Scott graduates from the tilt table and a staff psychologist comes round to assess my son's mental competence. Mid-height, in his late thirties, unsmiling in a sterile white coat, he enters the room under a halo of gloom. One can tell so much from a person's eyes – warmth, humour, sincerity, fear – but his are flat and empty. I wonder if he isn't depressed himself. Certainly he lacks the most essential ingredient of happiness, a sense of humour. Sitting on the side of Scott's bed, the psychologist methodically runs through a battery of questions in a monotone voice while I sit tight- lipped in a chair against the side wall.
'What time of day is it, Scott?'
A long pause. Finally Scott answers. 'It seems I've lost my watch.' The psychologist frowns and makes a mark in his file. I know Scott has no clue – there are no clocks in the room, and even a glance out the window reveals little more than filtered daylight. I say to myself, I must get Scott a watch.
'How did you get here?'
Scott's face creases as he vainly searches his mind. With the short- term memory loss that comes with head injury, I already know there will be no answer that satisfies.
'UFO, and they're not coming back,' Scott finally says with that crooked, half-frozen smile that signifies a joke, a smile the psychologist misses as he frowns and makes another mark. But I am amused. Scott knows he doesn't know, so why not throw out something wild? He chooses humour over despondency.
The third question: 'Do you know where you are?'
'The Ritz Hotel.' I've forgotten to tell him the name of the hospital he's in.
The psychologist grows agitated. His patient is not cooperating. The questions continue for another twenty minutes. Scott's answers are short and off the point, perhaps slyly so, and to me humorous. When the man leaves, I am sure Scott has flunked his mental test. But then I realize that might be a good thing. Wouldn't the hospital be less inclined to release someone detached from reality? Unknowingly, Scott may have bought us some more time.
I have just pulled my chair to the bed and am about to read to Scott when Jonathan unexpectedly appears, pushing a wheelchair seating a young man with a badly disfigured face. They are on their way to the roof for some sun, Jonathan tells me, but he wanted to swing by to say hello and introduce his friend Tim. I have seen the young man before. Often I look up from one of my daily tutorials with Scott to see Tim at the door peering in, but before I can say anything he is gone, leaving me with that uneasy feeling of having encountered another lost soul.
Tim was one of the nineteen other patients in Scott's old ward, Jonathan later tells me, the one whose face was swaddled in white bandages after he put a gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger. The bandages are gone now, and even after several reconstructive surgeries, his face remains shattered. His upper jaw is mostly gone, as is his nose, cleanly shot off leaving two gaping holes for nostrils. Tim is deeply depressed, and bitterly angry with the surgeons who saved him, for they rescued him from one hell only to thrust him into another. Knowing his disfigurement and his visceral impact upon others, Tim hides in his dark room, refusing to be wheeled outside or to meet others. For some reason, however, he has found a friend in Jonathan and allows himself to be taken to the roof.
After Tim is introduced to Scotty and me, he appears more often at our door, sometimes even wheeling himself in to quietly observe. I talk to him obliquely, but not directly facing him, as I soon learn this drives him away. Years later I will find myself thinking back to the bitterness of Tim, a victim of his own hand, and to the bitterness of Ron Kovic, victim of a war that left him a quadriplegic. And I think of other victims I've met, who cope not with bitterness but with smiles and soaring spirits. Why is it some people emerge from adversity with a will to conquer, and others with a will to die? The great tragedy is not our death or disfigurement, but what dies inside us while we are living. Sometimes we forget our responsibility to ourselves and drift through life into nothingness.
If it hadn't been for a phone call from Stefan in Germany, Christmas might have passed with scant notice. 'I'm flying into Sydney to see you and Scott,' he tells me. It is strange hearing that distant voice after so long, and I'm unsure how to respond. But I can't say no. Not to someone I have known so well. A firm anchor to my past might be just what I need. When Johnnie hears Stefan is coming, she kindly invites us to spend Christmas with her. Stefan arrives, and with some foreboding, Jonathan, Ulla and I check Scott out of the hospital and move to Johnnie's for three days.
It is a wonderful time, and a bright spot into what my future may be like with Scott at home, finally.
From Hold My Hand: A Mother's Journey by Glenys Carl. Pan Books, Pan Macmillan LTD, England, 2005. All rights reserved.
