Broken Dreams (5 page)

Next morning, I woke up with a headache that would kill a horse and paralyse an elephant. Of all the nurses, it had to be Kingy who was on duty that day. He came into the room and said, “How's lover boy this morning?” Gee, I copped heaps that day. A little later, as I was sitting outside in my wheelchair telling Crimmie how well-behaved I'd been last night, I heard Kingy yell out: “Has anyone seen Billy Dodd? Tell him there are two girls here—they said they met him at the pub last night!” As soon as I heard this I took off in my wheelchair, and in my haste to get away I pushed myself over a hump in the doorway. That was the only time I ever managed to get over that bloody hump—quite an achievement. I soon found out, to my relief, that Kingy was bullshitting me. Seven years later, he still hasn't let me forget that night when I was almost led astray.

My last outing before I left PA was to a place on the outskirts of Brisbane known as O'Reillys'. This was arranged for a few of the wheelchair patients by the hospital. I don't think I've ever seen country as pretty as that around O'Reillys'. We used to sit out in front of the guest cabins and flocks of brightly coloured parrots would appear. We were given birdseed to feed them. The parrots would fly down and sit in your lap or on top of your head. To tell the truth I couldn't stand those birds—I just
sat there, stiff as a board, cursing them under my breath. I mean, they'd fly down, pick up the birdseed, shit on your head and fly away.

The people who ran O'Reillys' were very kind. They were so interested in me, a complete stranger to them. I really enjoyed my few short days' holiday there.

I had now completed my six months at the Princess Alexandra spinal unit. It had been tough. Now it was time to leave the hospital and move on.

After my rehabilitation at PA, I was put on a plane and flown to Roma. (The only other flight I'd ever experienced was when I went from Katherine to Auvergne station—all that now seemed like another world to me.) I was booked to stay at a nursing home called Westhaven, because there was nowhere in Mitchell with suitable facilities for a quadraplegic. I knew that Westhaven was really a nursing home for old people.

I arrived there in April 1984. I felt a bit scared, and I found that Westhaven was very different to the way I'd pictured it in my mind. That first night I ate supper in the dining-room all by myself. I felt a real stranger; for the first time in my life I was really alone. Westhaven was to be the place I called “home” for the next five years and eight months. The next youngest patient to me was aged about fifty.

I was eighteen, and apart from the fact that I was in a wheelchair I now felt as fit as a fiddle. When I arrived at
Westhaven I still hadn't accepted being confined to my wheelchair; I still thought I could go out partying all night. I used to get away with quite a lot; sometimes I did go out until the early hours of the morning. I would have been in strife if I'd done that in Brisbane. I guess I was still as mad as a cut snake.

Gradually I got used to the other people at Westhaven, and came to understand that many elderly folk tend to become a bit confused, with loss of memory. Had I come to Westhaven just as a visitor, I might have thought differently—but in almost six years I learned a lot. Even so, some of the things that happened there I found hard to believe. There were about four people I could have a decent conversation with. It was really a pretty sad place; some of the patients would quickly slide downhill and chuck it in after they arrived there. You couldn't afford to get too close or take a liking to any of those old people. If I hadn't had the help of some very sympathetic nurses I don't think I could have handled my long stay there too well.

I recall that soon after I arrived I was sitting outside my room one day, talking to Sister Ramage, when this old lady came walking towards us with no clothes on. I went as red as a beetroot—no matter where I looked she seemed to be there, and in the end I ducked outside.

Another time, as I was eating lunch in the dining-room with my back turned to the door, a big hand came out of nowhere and I watched a potato disappear off my plate. The hand belonged to a lady called Nell, who stuffed the potato in her mouth and took off. I learned a valuable lesson that day: never eat with your back to the door. (It was a lesson I'd already learned in that other world, Auvergne, when we were drafting wild bullocks.)

Then there was Connie, another patient. She was a real nice lady, always trying to help others. Sometimes, as I made my way in my wheelchair along the hallway,
Connie would come over and start pushing me. She'd push me until the wheels got stuck against a wall or some other barrier, then take off and leave me stranded. For a joke, one of the nurses told Connie I ran the taxi service in Roma, and after that she used to come up to me and say: “I'll give you two shillings to take me home.”

My hair grew really long while I was at Westhaven. Once, as I was sitting in my room doing a crossword puzzle, Connie and two other old ladies walked past my door. They were looking for the toilet, having forgetten where it was. “Don't worry,” Connie told the other two ladies, “I'll ask the nice little lady in this room where it is.” And one morning, as I was being wheeled to the shower without a shirt on, Connie called out that she was pretty disgusted that I wasn't wearing a bra. Believe it or not, I took a real liking to Connie.

Another Westhaven patient was an old fellow named Tom. He was known as the “pug” of Westhaven. He wouldn't take a backward step from anyone, and carved quite a reputation. I found it safer to keep out of his way. One day I saw Tom throw a left hook at one of the nurses, and even though it missed, she fell over with fright. Poor old Tom's reputation received a setback, however, when he was ko'd by another patient, Bronc. But Tom had a bit of fight, a bit of spirit and plenty of character.

One of my mates was a little dark lady, Vera. I now had two 12-volt batteries on the back of my wheelchair which made it much easier to get along. The first time I met Vera was at lunch one day. A nurse was wheeling over a small table for my meal when it clipped the top of the joystick I used to manoeuvre the chair. I had forgotten to press the on/off button, and the chair promptly went into reverse and came to a halt right on poor old Vera's foot. Suddenly I heard this voice from behind me: “Get off my foot, you bloody bugger!” Who got the bigger fright, Vera or myself, I don't know. I managed to get
the heavy wheelchair off her foot and her reaction was straightforward: she clipped me under the ear. The nurse thought it was a great joke. Vera used to tell me that Banjo Paterson was her son, and she used to collect cigarette lighters—in fact, she would enter anyone's room and take anything that wasn't nailed down. The sad part was that poor old Vera didn't know she was doing this; for her it was just part of growing old. While I was at Westhaven I was only too aware that one day I might end up like Vera. It made me think long and hard. One night I was lying in bed watching television when Vera came in and picked up the water jug on my bedside table. I plucked up a bit of courage and said, “Don't take that jug, Vera, bring it back here.” She brought it back all right—and threw the water all over me. From that day, Vera had me bluffed.

Annie was a patient who had a bad habit of getting into other people's beds, even if they were still in them. Once, as I was lying in bed watching the Balmain Tigers play a match on TV, Annie came into my room and started to climb into bed with me. Somehow I managed to persuade her to go. I was very glad I didn't have to sing out to one of the nurses—boy, I would have copped heaps. As it was, Annie went away, taking one of my pillows with her. Unfortunately it had been propping me up so that I was able to see the TV set. Being a real keen Balmain supporter, I was pissed off at missing the rest of the match.

I liked to lie out in the sun sometimes, face-down on a mattress. I would lie there with a sheet over my head. One day I felt liquid coming through the sheet and running down the side of my face. “One of the old buggers is peeing on me!” was my first awful thought. For someone who couldn't move his fingers, I had that sheet off my face in a real hurry ... to find a nurse standing there with a grin on her face and a garden hose in one hand. I
was one relieved Murry: a bit of clean water never hurt anyone.

At Westhaven I had some good times and a few that weren't so good, but no matter how hard things got, I always managed to keep it together. Each morning after my shower I used to go back to bed to exercise for at least one and a half hours. This helped me to get rid of a lot of frustration and to feel better in myself. But if I was feeling really down I used to keep it bottled up inside. Some days I got so pissed off that I didn't want to talk to anyone. But today I can look back at the good times and laugh.

Most of the nurses at Westhaven treated me really well, and helped me to sort out my problems. I still keep in touch with some of them, and every year I get a birthday card from the staff. I know that I made a few enemies at Westhaven, too. Soon after I arrived, I was pushing my wheelchair along the hallway when I heard one of the wardsmen say: “I don't know why they sent him, he doesn't belong here.” At that moment I wanted to be at the nursing home about as much as that wardsman wanted me there. It doesn't matter who, how or what you are, you'll always find people who will put you down and try to make life hard for you. There was also one nursing sister who gave me a hard time at Westhaven. She had that habit of ordering me to do something rather than asking me—rather like Weasey, on whose account I had left home. I had to stand up to that nurse, and one day I finally told her, very politely, to piss off and get out of my room. She reported me to the matron, but it was worth it, as she laid off me for a while after that.

While I was at Westhaven I had a job as a clerical assistant with the Community Youth Support Scheme and went each weekday to the centre in Roma. My bosses were two senior project officers, Ken Skinner and Bernadette Clarke. The main role of the CYSS was to train
young people and hopefully find them full-time employment. My job was to answer the phone and also to take a few of the trainees through a word-processing course on the computer. I liked the people I worked with and they were very helpful to me. This job was really the best thing that ever happened to me—it made me realise there was more to life than doing crosswords and watching videos.

Occasionally I would persuade a nurse to let me go outside the Home in my electric wheelchair. One day I was just two blocks away when I hit a patch of sand and sank right down into it. I sat there helpless, and thought about signalling to one of the cars driving past and asking someone to pull me up and push me out of the sand. I watched one car come up and thought, “I'll signal this driver”, then I thought, “No! I'll sing out to the next one instead” ... But I wasn't game to sing out to anyone. Even when the postman came by on his motor-bike I found I was lost for words. Then a nurse appeared on her way to lunch. I did sing out to her, and I felt a real mug as I asked her to push me out of that sand. It felt somehow shameful to get bogged like that. A car, fair enough—but not a wheelchair! Another time I got bogged on a wet track. I'd gone out at six o'clock in the evening and two hours later I was still in the same place. I was scared of the dark, but by the time a nurse found me I was almost asleep.

I guess that falling out of my wheelchair was just as bad as falling off a horse. I'd fallen off plenty of horses in my time. After my accident, I remember thinking that I never imagined I would break my neck diving into a river—something I had done so many times before. Something so simple. To date, I've fallen out of my wheelchair eight times in about seven years. My first fall was in Mitchell. It happened when I went home for a weekend. I met one of my mates who was drunk, and he came over and tried to
tackle me—he hit me around my neck and down I went. Well, if you hang around people who drink I guess you sometimes pay the penalty.

My second and third times were when I got tipped out of the back of my chair twice in the space of one hour. The fourth time, I was at a twenty-first birthday celebration out in the country. This girl was pushing me backwards, using my knees to steer, but as we reversed we hit a big hole and my chair tipped over backwards.

The fifth time was at a Bachelor and Spinsters' Ball, when I got rolled going down some steps. I saw the steps for the first time as I landed arse-up at the bottom. The sixth time I was sober. I was being lifted into bed by a nurse and a wardsman. The nurse lifted my legs before the wardsman lifted the upper half of my body, so that all the weight went to the top of the wheelchair and it toppled over backwards.

My seventh fall happened one day when I was having a few drinks with some mates. I was parked on a bit of a slope outside the pub. Everything was going well until I came to the last drop of beer in my can. When I tipped back my head my wheelchair reared backwards just like a mad horse. My head hit the cement, but I was okay. The eighth time I was partying at the nurses' quarters when I just fell out of my chair in a beautiful forwards motion.

I never thought I would leave Westhaven to come back and live in Mitchell. I have nine nephews and nieces. While I was in Roma I never went home to Mitchell very often, so that I was more or less a complete stranger to them—except for my eldest sister's kids, Damon and Trent. Narelle, my sister, was living in Roma with a real nice bloke, Danny Halpin.

Damon is eleven now, and one of the quietest and best mannered children I know. When Narelle was still living
in Mitchell, and before I broke my neck, I used to baby-sit Damon for her. I recall the first time I ever changed a nappy. I ran around in circles a few times, and found that the nappy I'd put on kept coming off. I didn't realise that I'd put it on back to front. Finally I decided to wrap insulation tape around and around it. The nappy stayed on all right—but it didn't want to come off.

Trent, at nine, is a funny little fellow and a real outlaw. One day when he was giving his mother cheek, he pushed her too far. Narelle took a thong off one foot to flog him. When Trent saw the size of his mother's thong, he yelled out: “Wait on, Mum, wait on!” Narelle asked him what was wrong. Trent replied: “Could you please use my thong—it's smaller.”

One of my nieces, a pretty little baby girl called Shannon, died of cot death syndrome when she was five months. I had only seen her twice during her short lifetime. It was Shannon's death that really made me want to leave Westhaven.

On 29th June 1989 I returned to Mitchell. In a way I was sorry to leave Westhaven, in another way I was glad to get out. I looked out of the window of my room for the last time. It had been my home for five years and eight months. In that room I had shed a few tears and had a few laughs. I came into Westhaven a boy; I left that place a man. I think I matured a bit as I got older. I will never forget Westhaven nursing home, nor some of the mates I made there. Westhaven: a little place on top of a hill in Roma.