Zac and Mia

  A shout won’t penetrate her Gaga-thon. How else can I communicate through a six-centimetre-thick wall?

  I get up off the bed and notice my hands are bunched into fists. So I use one.

  I knock. Politely at first, as if I’m a visitor to someone’s house. I knock, hoping the message gets through.

  No. It doesn’t seem to.

  I knock again, in sets of three, insistent as a courier this time. Knock knock knock. Wait. Knock knock knock.

  The song reaches the chorus I’ve come to hate so much. Worse, I now know all the lyrics.

  I bang harder, like a brother locked out. My fist thumps every beat in time, banging them so loud she must be hearing them in stereo. The wall on her side has to be bouncing with the impact.

  The music stops—success!—and so do I, noticing how easily skin has peeled from my red knuckles. I rub it away and realise I’m grinning.

  Perhaps it’s because this is the first contact I’ve had with anyone since I’ve been in this room. Nurses, doctors and my mum don’t count. The new girl is young—someone my age. My heart pounds with the effort. I’m dizzy with it. My room throbs. Whir. Drip. Hum.

  Then, tap, the wall says back to me. Tap.

  The tap isn’t angry like the music had been or the words she’d shouted earlier. The tap is close. She must be near now, puzzled, a curious ear against the wall, as if listening for alien contact.

  I crouch.

  Knock, I reply to the wall, down lower this time.

  Tap.

  The wall sounds hollow. Is it?

  Knock.

  Tap.

  Knock.

  Tap tap? In the quiet, the tap is raw. I think it’s a question.

  Knock.

  In the gaps in between, there’s nothing but the whirring of my IV machine and the anticipation of the next cue. My quads ache as I wait. My feet feel cold on the lino.

  Tap?

  Knock.

  It’s clear neither of us knows Morse code, and yet something is being spoken. I wonder what she’s trying to ask me.

  Knock. Silence. Knock.

  And I wonder what I’m saying.

  Then that’s it.

  Whir. Hum. Buzz. Drip. Whir.

  On my knees by the wall, I’m ashamed. I shouldn’t have complained about her music on her first day of admission. There are too many things I don’t know.

  She doesn’t tap and I don’t knock.

  I just kneel, imagining she’s doing the same, six centimetres away.

  2

  ZAC

  I know that dual-flush buttons are good because they’re environmentally friendly and all that, but sometimes they’re confusing. Do I press the half-flush or the full? Some days I need a button that’s in-between.

  I stand thinking about this for too long. Again.

  I wash my hands, amused by the reflection in the mirror. My head is bald, lumpy and asymmetrical, but my eyebrows are thicker than before. I appear to be morphing into one of those creepy guys from Guess Who.

  I leave the ensuite and return to the room, where Mum’s opened the blinds and pulled the pink reclining chair into sitting. In the morning light, her bed-hair resembles a bird’s nest with wiry twigs of grey.

  ‘Well, how was it?’ she asks.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You know …’

  How many times can a seventeen-year-old discuss his crap? With his mother? I reached the limit eighteen days ago. At least she doesn’t say, Have you opened your bowels? the way the nurses do.

  ‘How’s yours, Mum?’

  ‘I’m just asking.’

  ‘You want me to photograph it next time?’ I manoeuvre myself and the IV pole past her. She whacks me gently with a pillow.

  ‘You want me to keep a log book?’

  ‘A bog book.’ Mum impresses herself with her word play.

  Documenting my bowel movements—now that is an excellent use for the so-called ‘diary’ that Patrick gave me. He thought I’d benefit from expressing my emotional journey, or something like that. Instead, I could use it as a Bog Log, plotting frequency and consistency. I could colour-code each page, drawing big, brown pie charts with annotations.

  ‘How about: December ninth. Twelve days post-transplant. Semi-diarrhoea. I chose the half-flush.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s what the diary’s for.’

  ‘Not poo and spew?’

  ‘It’s for your feelings.’ Having raised two boys and Bec, Mum knows better than to use the ‘f’ word in earnest.

  ‘December ninth. I feel … lighter.’

  She smiles. ‘See, that’s better.’

  I don’t need to write about crap. Of any kind.

  I conquered toilet training at three years of age. I wasn’t a prodigy, sure, but a solid student. From then on, toileting was supposed to remain a private thing behind a locked door, far from a mother’s queries. Mum’s job was to monitor other things, like the kind of food going into my mouth in the first place. And she had. She’d done a good job.

  And then this. At my worst, Mum wasn’t only asking about my output, she was witnessing it. I’d tell her to leave the bedpans alone, which she did, but she often stayed in the room when the nurses cleaned me up or washed me down, even if she was pretending to do crosswords. I’d become a baby all over again, but with testosterone and pubic hair and nurses sponging me in shifts. Sometimes I was so out of it I couldn’t get embarrassed.

  Before they could give me new marrow on ‘Day 0’, they had to take me close to death. Five days of four chemo drugs, then three days of total body irradiation. I felt as if a truck had run over me. Then reversed, tipped sideways, and landed on top of me. There was nothing to do but be pinned underneath. Breathing was hard work. Controlling my sphincter was beyond me.

  I can handle that end of things myself now. Post-transplant, my symptoms are down to occasional vomiting, mouth ulcers and dubious turds. To be honest, spending time in the ensuite has become one of my favourite pastimes. For ten minutes or so, no one’s watching or prying or probing. I can just sit and think about things. It’s not up there with solving world poverty, but it’s an achievement. It’s progress.

  Mum closes her Woman’s Day and gapes at me. ‘Have you been squeezing that zit?’

  ‘I didn’t touch it.’

  She’s got a paranoia that I could trigger a massive explosion of pus and blood too powerful to be fixed by my measly platelets, ending with an emergency transfusion, which might not save my life. Death by pimple? Now that would be a stupid way to die. I wouldn’t take the risk.

  How is it fair that I can have leukaemia and zits? If my hair grows back ginger, I’ll be really pissed. My brother Evan’s on the ranga spectrum, but he dyes his hair in secret. He thinks no one can tell.

  ‘So what do you want to do today?’ Mum asks.

  ‘Go base jumping?’

  ‘We could play CUD.’

  Mum makes me laugh out loud, whether she means to or not. ‘COD,’ I correct her. ‘As in Call of Duty. And no, not really.’ All she does is camp around then shriek when killed, using made-up swear words like Fff … irewood and Shh … ipwreck. Mum’s not cut out for armed combat.

  ‘So what do you want to do?’

  ‘Breathe. Eat. Sleep. Repeat.’

  She pokes me. ‘Come on, Zac, you don’t want to be bored.’

  My mother: Activities Coordinator, Unofficial Welcoming Committee, Diarrhoea Detective and Happiness Police. She ricochets from one role to the next, plugging gaps, swapping props, prodding, checking, doing.

  I sense her antennae twitching, seeking out signs of melancholy. We both know there’s a whole squad of reinforcements on standby: Patrick the psychologist, art therapists, teen mentors, Prozac and, if desperate, clown doctors called over from the children’s hospital.

  ‘Do we need to use the ‘f’ word?’

  ‘Fuck no.’

  She laughs. ‘Then help me do the puzzle from today’s paper. Ooh look, we need thirty wor
ds to get to genius.’

  The ‘f’ word troubles me but it’s Mum’s feelings I’m worried about, not my own.

  ‘Mum, go home.’

  ‘Zac—’

  ‘You don’t have to stay. Anymore. I’m getting better.’

  It’s true. Days Minus 9 to Minus 1 were hell. Day 0 was an anticlimax. Days 1 to 3 I can’t recall, 4 to 8 were foul, 9 to 11 were uncomfortable, and now, twelve days after transplant, I’m starting to feel human again. I can handle this.

  ‘I know,’ she says predictably, turning a page of her magazine. ‘But I like it here.’

  It’s bullshit and we both know it. Mum’s not a four-wall kind of woman. As long as I can remember, she’s always had a straw hat and a sheen of sweat. She’s hazel eyes and sun spots. She’s greens and browns and oranges. She’s a pair of secateurs in hand. She’s soil and pumpkins. She’d rather be picking pears or fertilising olive trees than stuck in this room, with its pink reclining chair. More than anything, she’s my dad’s soulmate, though she won’t go home when I ask her—even when I beg her.

  My room has two windows. There’s the small round one in the door that looks into the corridor, and there’s the large rectangular one that looks out over the hospital entrance, car park and nearby suburbs. That’s the one she sits beside most days, like a flower tracking the sun.

  ‘List three things you like about hospital. Apart from the puzzles and gossip.’

  ‘I did like my son’s company … once.’

  ‘Just go home.’

  After my first diagnosis, the whole family would drive up to Perth for each round of chemo. Mum, Dad, Bec and Evan would stay in a motel room three blocks away, visiting each morning with games and magazines and more conversation than I could follow. Dad was bigger and louder than usual. He’d make jokes with Bec, as if the two of them had suddenly formed a slapstick comedy duo. Mum would shake her head in mock disapproval, while Evan hung back, eyeing the drips and nurses with suspicion. ‘Hospitals make me sick,’ I heard him say once. ‘The smell …’ I didn’t blame him—he didn’t belong here either. At least he was honest about it.

  Then each time they left in the evening, I would stand at the rectangular window and watch my small family trudge back to their motel. Dad would hold Mum’s hand. Seven stories down, each of them looked sadder than they should have, especially Dad. To be honest, their visits made me feel worse, and this time I made Mum promise to keep them all away. Fortunately, Bone Marrow Transplant Protocol forbids more than one official visitor at a time, so Mum nominated herself. The only catch is she never leaves.

  ‘They don’t need me at home. Bec’s got the store under control. The pruning’s been done so the men have it easy.’

  ‘But Dad—’

  ‘Can look after himself.’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  ‘I’m your mother,’ she reminds me, as if she’s taken a vow to love and to cherish, to protect and to irritate, in sickness and in health (but especially in sickness) as long as we both shall live.

  And with military focus, she begins the daily word puzzle from the newspaper. Mum approaches it as though something bigger could be at stake, as if our success with it would bring about a success in my treatment. Through the course of the day, as Nina, Patrick, Simone, Suzanne and Linda enter and exit the room for various offerings and takings, obscure words are added until we reach thirty. Mum is over the moon and writes on the calendar under December ninth: Genius!

  And that’s why I agree to do the word puzzle, and Scrabble and ‘CUD’ and every other activity she suggests. I do it to see the confidence in Mum’s handwriting. Genius. Another success; another day passed.

  It’s during the six o’clock news that I realise I’m being watched.

  Someone in the corridor is peering through my round window. She’s young, maybe sixteen or seventeen, with big eyes, dark eyeliner and thick brown hair that probably rolls on past her shoulders, further down than I can see.

  She’s not a nurse, though. She’s someone like me and I feel her eyes latch fiercely to mine.

  I can’t pull free. She’s stunning.

  Then I blink and she’s gone.

  Strange. She didn’t look like a girly-pop lover. Not that Lady Gaga’s been played again. Since she turned it off two days ago, all I’ve heard from Room 2 has been occasional arguing—the mother, I’m guessing, and the girl—followed by the predictable whoosh of the door. There hasn’t been a trace of music or television or anything else.

  Is that my fault? Because I knocked?

  Mum and I watch the news but, right now, it’s not the outside world that interests me.

  3

  ZAC

  Status: Need new tunes in here. Suggestions??

  ‘I need new tunes,’ I tell Mum after four rounds of Mario Kart and a torturous half-hour of Ready, Steady, Cook. With my tastebuds screwed up from chemo I’ve lost any interest in food, so watching so-called celebrity chefs prance about with artichoke hearts has no appeal. Mum, however, considers it compulsory viewing. ‘I know my iPod playlist by heart.’

  ‘You want me to go to the music store?’

  It’s perfect: sending Mum on a CD-buying mission will give me at least an hour solo.

  ‘Only if you have time …’

  Mum finds her purse and smudges on lip gloss. She washes her hands again and checks her face in the mirror.

  ‘What should I get?’

  ‘Ask the store. Tell them it’s for a seventeen-year-old. Male.’

  She shakes her head. ‘No way. Write down some titles.’

  Thanks to Facebook, I suddenly have a list of sixty-seven recommended albums. My one status update led to a barrage of suggestions, many of them sugar-coated.

  Skrillex! Get better Zac

  I’ll send you the latest Rubens and Of Monsters and Men. Proud of you bro, love Bec

  Macklemore & Ryan Lewis. Can’t hold us ;-) take it easy Helga

  Cancer is a Facebook friend magnet. According to my home page, I’m more popular than ever. In the old days, people would have prayed for each other, now they Like and Comment as if they’re going for a world record. I’m not knocking it, but how can I choose a couple of albums out of sixty-seven?

  ‘Surprise me,’ I tell Mum. ‘If they’re crap, you can always swap them tomorrow.’

  This is genius. I could have Mum back and forth between here and the music store for the remainder of my admission, giving me valuable hours of freedom and her some much-needed exercise. Finally, my chemo-brain is starting to clear. I hope she never learns about iTunes.

  Mum dries her hands with paper towel. ‘We could do with more ice-cream …’

  And with a wave, she’s gone.

  Halle-bloody-freaking-lujah.

  Whir. Buzz. Hum. Drip.

  I throw off the sheet and step onto the lino.

  It’s the new girl’s fourth day in. From what I hear—and don’t hear—she’s still alone. Her mum visits in the mornings but never stays for long. She doesn’t sleep overnight the way mine does.

  This morning I heard the clack of coathangers in the girl’s wardrobe. After four days, she was finally unpacking her clothes. It sounded like surrender.

  She’ll have a port in, below her collarbone. It’ll be raised and numb from surgery. The nurses would have needled it already and she wouldn’t have felt a thing. She won’t be nauseous from chemo yet. Depending on which drugs she’s getting, maybe she never will. She’ll only be here for another three days, then home for five, before her next cycle—that’s what Nina told Mum. The girl’s got osteosarcoma.

  Gender: Female

  Age: 17

  Location: Lower leg

  Stage: Localised

  Shit, if I was her I wouldn’t be sulking. Her stats are awesome. Hasn’t she googled them? Doesn’t she know how lucky she is?

  Suck it up, I want to say. You’ll be home soon. Play your crappy music and count down the days.

  But the song she’s pl
aying now is more hip-hop than girly-pop. I push my IV pole closer, hoping to make out the lyrics. With one ear pressed to the wall, I keep check on my round window, not wanting to give anyone the wrong idea. Nurses walk indifferently past, as does a guy with a hat. He’s younger than the typical visitor. He’s carrying a helium balloon with a small white bear.

  I hear him enter Room 2. He walks to the window side of her bed, I think. I can’t understand all of his words. They come less often than the girl’s, whose voice sounds lighter than ever, as bubbly as soft drink. I wonder what he says to make this happen.

  ‘Gross, take it off,’ she laughs, and I guess he’s doing what all dickheads have done before him: using a cardboard bedpan as a hat. It’s so obvious, I can’t believe she falls for it.

  He recites tomorrow’s menu options from the blue card, and helps her tick the boxes. I hear him describe a party she missed, and how Shay and Chloe had asked about her.

  ‘Don’t tell them—’

  ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘Good. I’ll be out of here soon.’

  ‘What’s that?’ His voice is nearer to our wall. I imagine him touching the lump beneath her collarbone.

  ‘It’s a port.’

  ‘Freaky. Does it hurt?’

  ‘No. Yeah.’

  ‘Will it leave a scar?’

  It’s ages before she cries. I hear each gasp and each long interval between.

  ‘Hey … Hey. You said you’ll be fixed soon, yeah?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘So don’t cry.’

  He leaves soon after. When he cruises past my door, his brow is crinkled in a way that reminds me of my brother Evan, keen to be elsewhere.

  Whir, drip, hum, my room says.

  Room 2 says nothing. Her silence is sadder than ever and it pulls me in.

  I crouch down and knock on our wall. How else can I speak to her?

  I knock three times. My knuckles say, Go on—put some music on. Put it on repeat, if you want. I can handle it.

  But I’m left unanswered.

  ‘What are you doing, Zac?’ Nina’s beside me.