Walking to the Moon (6 page)

‘How do you know? We should never have let him go.'

‘Looks to me as if you didn't have much choice,' says Dr Orzasky conversationally, not looking up from the boy. ‘How old did you say he was? Nineteen?'

She turns to me. ‘He could have stayed here. He had an apartment of his own we'd bought him. Nothing big. It wasn't anything embarrassing. Just a little place over in Coogee. There's a good singing school here too. He knows that. He would have been in already. Wouldn't you?' She looks down at the young man on the bed, shaking her head, looks away as if she might start crying. Martin clears his throat as if about to speak, and she turns, silencing him, face held, gaze blank. ‘Not just me, Martin. Lucy says the same. That's his girlfriend,' she adds. ‘Was. She's in Europe now on a scholarship. Beautiful voice. Lovely girl. God. You know. They could've—'

She pauses again, then accelerates. ‘And instead he has to go off to Melbourne and live in some dump. Yes, Martin, it was a dump. And join some godawful rock band with those feral greenies. And get mixed up in all that. Where's the sense in that? I really would like to know if there's some sense to it all—' She stops at last, teetering on some edge. Chewing her top lip. Dr Orzasky steps in.

‘Okay, what we're doing here is trying to establish some baseline data to help us monitor Hugh's progress. Although to be honest I'm not all that interested in data, baseline or otherwise. I'm interested in results. And the sorts of results I tend to get don't seem to have much to do with what the data says. Still, it helps to have something down in writing for the cynics. And there's no shortage of them.'

Laura nods quickly and rhythmically, lips clamped.

‘So Hugh, in the interests of science, I'm just going use a little needle to prick your legs and arms a few times. I'm just looking for what sort of response you've got.'

He reaches into his bag as he speaks, and draws out what looks like a normal sewing needle. ‘Now, I won't do anything without telling you first. So get ready for a prick in your right leg— now.' He pecks the needle swiftly into Hugh's right calf. The leg seems to twitch, and Laura jumps. ‘Okay buddy. That's great.' He repeats the procedure on the other leg, both arms, and stops to make more notes in his striped exercise book. There is a knock on the door. Tina enters. Seeing me, she raises her eyebrows a fraction, then speaks to Martin and Laura.

‘Your daughter just rang. She said to tell you she'll be on a nine a.m. flight, and she'll be here by lunchtime tomorrow. She'll hire a car in Sydney.'

‘Oh God, she shouldn't do that,' Laura turns to Martin, speaking quickly. ‘She can use the Mazda, it's just sitting there, is she still on the phone?' She turns to Tina, who shakes her head. Martin moves around the bed and puts his arm around his wife's shoulders. ‘It's all right, we'll sort it out.'

‘But when will we? Chris's bloody phone's on the blink again, and she won't get a mobile. I wish she'd just get a mobile.' Her voice rises. ‘Why is it that none of my children will speak to me?' Martin turns her to face him, puts his hands on her shoulders. ‘Laura. Come here. Listen to me. We'll sort it out.'

She lets out a long, shuddering sigh and leans her head against his chest.

‘Okay,' says Dr Orzasky. ‘Why don't we all take a break? Go downstairs, grab a coffee. They do do coffee here I hope?'

‘There's a machine,' says Martin, over Laura's head. ‘I don't know that you'd call it coffee.'

‘Lead me to it! Hugh, we'll take twenty minutes, then I'll come back and finish off these procedures. And we'll start the real work in the morning, when we're all fresh.'

In the corridor, I turn towards my room, and Martin steps quickly ahead and opens my door. ‘Thank you,' he says.

‘That's all right, I didn't do anything.' I shrug.

‘Yes you did,' says Laura, recovered now, ‘you gave us moral support.'

Dr Orzasky is already heading down the corridor. He stops and turns back. ‘Come by tomorrow morning. After breakfast. That's when it gets really interesting.'

All through spring the ants have been finding their way inside. Sometimes at the end of the day I've found them in the empty shower cubicle, gathered around stray droplets of water, heads lowered like cattle to a trough. They drink with diligence. I lick my fingers before I turn on the shower and press them gently against each ant, one by one, just enough to hold them to my skin for a moment, then, leaning over the sink, I flick them out the window. It must be like falling from the moon. Sometimes I find the sink full of droplets; in each droplet a drowned ant. As if they have been engulfed by their own glistening reflections.

As if the water is drinking the ant.

T
he next morning I wait until I hear their voices moving along the corridor before I leave my room, heading towards them as if I might be on my way down to breakfast. Laura and Dr Orzasky are walking together, in conversation. Martin, behind them, the third point in the triangle. Laura quickens her pace when she sees me, opens her arms, kisses my cheek. ‘Wonderful. You're here.'

I nod quickly, unable to think of anything to say.

The doctor grins at me.

‘We're just up from breakfast,' says Martin.

‘I'm late today,' I say. ‘I didn't sleep very well.'

‘Nor did we. Nor did we,' says Laura. ‘The motel had fleas, I'm sure of it. I was more comfortable in my sleeping bag.'

‘You slept nearly nine hours,' Martin tells her. Then to me, ‘I persuaded her to sleep in a proper bed. Paul says it might be a long day.'

‘All I got was a sore back,' continues Laura. ‘Though the shower was nice.'

She reaches her hand out and places it lightly on my forearm.

‘Will you come?'

Inside the room the boy is silent, a thin stream of spittle leaking down one cheek, which Laura wipes deftly with a tissue. His hands above the cotton bedspread are clenched slightly inwards from his wrists like claws or dried flowers. The chair near the head of the bed has been pushed back against the wall, and Dr Orzasky pulls it forwards again, scraping it over the lino, to sit next to Hugh's head. He says nothing at first, again aligning his breathing with the boy's, then speaks on the out breath.

‘Hello Hugh – this is Paul – Orzasky – again – I'm here with – your father – and your – mother and – a new friend – of yours – called Jess – who is – very – pretty.'

He glances at me quickly, winks, and continues, while I look at the woven bedspread and away from Laura's smile.

‘In a – moment – I am – going to – touch you – gently – on your arm. – Now you – can feel – the pressure – of my hand. – I am – pressing – in time – with your – breathing. – Wherever – you are – right now – whatever's – happening – in your world – I want you – to just go – with it – to feel – how it feels – and don't – be afraid – I'm here – with you.'

In the silence that follows, Martin examines his fingers, and Laura keeps her gaze fixed on her son. Dr Orzasky goes back to his breathing. And for several minutes there is just the rise and fall of breath. Slow in. Slow out. It is a comforting, familiar sound, and soon I notice that my breathing falls in with theirs, my shoulders loosen. And then Hugh coughs. At first I think it is the doctor clearing his throat. We all glance quickly towards him. But he has leaned in closer, looking intently at the young man's face, frowning in concentration.

‘Oh, I heard that,' he says approvingly. ‘I know what you mean.' And then he too coughs. A deeper, fleshier sound. He waits half a minute and coughs again. In the silence of the room Laura and Martin exchange glances. Dr Orzasky closes his eyes and from outside a magpie's cry bubbles up and up and I remember suddenly sitting in a classroom as a child, the gouged wooden desks and the scrape of pencils on paper; outside, blue sky and bitumen and beyond that the oval, and somewhere beyond that Hil's house and knowing that she will be there at three to get me.

There is another cough, and another, longer, and then a third that stretches into a rasping sound and gagging. Laura starts, and reaches towards the boy's head, as if to raise it. The doctor places his free hand on her forearm and holds it until she looks at him. He shakes his head a little then clears his throat loudly, a full, phlegmy vowel sound. ‘Ah, that's better,' he says, expansively. ‘It's good to clear the throat. Isn't it Hugh?' And he does it again, louder still. The boy lies still. From across the bed, Martin raises his eyebrows slightly at Laura. We have all stepped back except the doctor, who is once more looking intently at Hugh; bent, almost hunched, towards him, matching him again breath for breath.

The room seems hot and heavy with small irrelevant sounds, the vacuum cleaner from downstairs, the
b-b-b
as Martin, gazing now at the ceiling, forces tiny bubbles of air through his pursed lips, like a fish. I wonder if I should turn on the ceiling fan, or maybe just leave. Laura clears her throat as if to speak. And this time Paul Orzasky makes a sudden swift chopping motion with his hand in front of her, shakes his head and mouths the word ‘no'.

Laura's shoulders stiffen. She takes a breath, closes her mouth and turns away, and suddenly from the bed comes a low growling sound.

‘Yeaaah,' sighs Paul Orzasky, ‘that's great.' Without looking away from the bed he reaches his hand towards Laura again and takes her wrist, patting it softly, rhythmically with his thumb, as if to both soothe and restrain.

‘Yeah,' he says again, full voiced now, and then close to the boy's ear, rasping, almost growling himself, ‘it's good to clear it out, isn't it? Good to get it out.'

The boy growls again, a long, stuck sound, like a car revving in neutral, that dies with his breath. And then the arm closest to Dr Orzasky, his left arm, lying bent across his chest, starts to twitch.

The doctor lets go of Laura's wrist and takes Hugh's arm lightly with both his hands, one above, one below the elbow. At first he holds the arm loosely, just following its motion.

‘Yes, yes,' he says to the boy, ‘that's a wonderful movement.' And then gradually he begins to enlarge on the movement, or perhaps the movements just increase. It is hard to tell. It goes on for another minute or two, the arm opening a little wider each time, until the doctor has to move his chair back and take his hands away to avoid being hit.

‘That's a big, open movement,' he says, sounding impressed. ‘That feels fantastic.' He pauses, then adds deliberately, ‘That feels fan-fuckin'-tastic.' Almost immediately the other arm starts to twitch, then jerk, away from the boy's chest. The movement increases rapidly, in staccato bursts, guided by Dr Orzasky, until it is matching that of the other arm, both open, stretched forwards and out, like a child. And there they seem to get stuck, still jerking rhythmically, but rigid, neither opening nor closing. Hugh is sweating, tiny raised bubbles across his forehead. And I am momentarily aware that all of us are giving off odour. It hangs above and between us, a clumped human smell of breath and perspiration and focus.

‘Whoa there. Hey buddy I'll just give you a hand. Okay Hugh, I'm with you.' The doctor stands and turns to face the boy, his back to Laura, and reaching across Hugh's body takes his wrists in his hands. He stands like that for a few seconds and then gently but firmly begins to press the outsides of the boy's forearms, as if to fold them back on to his chest. For a moment the boy's arms appear to relax, as if about to subside towards each other, but then they tense again, pressing back against the doctor.

The two men seem to stay locked there against each other, exerting an equal, even force, until suddenly the boy's mouth moves. A quick spasm. He grimaces, lips pulled back, the blood vessels beginning to stand out on his arms and temples. Even now, weeks after the accident, the skin of his arms is a soft brown, the muscles clearly defined. Laura takes a step forward, hesitates, glances at the doctor, her husband, her son, and speaks.

‘Is this necessary? I really don't see—' she begins, ignoring Paul Orzasky, who frowns, and opens his mouth as if to remonstrate. Perhaps he does. At the same moment Hugh lifts his face now towards the ceiling, arches his neck, opens his mouth and lets out a cry so loud it startles the pigeons on Viv's elm, a band of sound so clear and wide it might have come from a trumpet, a horn, a conch. Steadily he opens his arms, pushing Dr Orzasky's apart and finally away, all the time holding that long, pure note that keeps on and on, fading at last with the breath, only to be followed by another, and another.

*

Afterwards I go downstairs. In the garden, a young woman sits on a wooden bench with a pram in front of her, the child propped and plump. The woman pulls the pram close and then pushes it out to arm's length, the baby laughing in hiccoughs of delight as it comes close again. ‘Bah,' says the woman, and the pram goes back. ‘Bah, bah,' a breath in his face each time they are near.