You're Never The Same

2

2The trip home the next day was a lot slower than the drive up. Not that Warrnambool was Vince’s home—anything but. On the journey back he noticed everything around him, each farmhouse, the little towns with their railheads and silos, and the slow build of activity as the small communities woke for another day. He focused on all the mundane details of the passing scenery—anything to distract him from the turbulent thoughts in his head and the ache in his heart.

The bottle of water and sandwich Trisha had given him lay untouched on the seat. Zero appetite. Nausea gnawed at his stomach and he was close enough to vomiting. He turned on the radio and listened with intense concentration. Infighting in the federal government, bush fires in Queensland, and Nick Kyrgios misbehaving at the tennis. While he was on the road, Vince could escape reality. For now.

In a trance-like state, he arrived back at the ‘Bool, pulled up outside the surgery, and glanced at the time—just before midday. He eased himself out the car, rubbed his stiff back, and pushed open the rear door. The Timor Street Clinic was housed in a once-majestic sandstone home close to the hospital. It had been modified over the years but still displayed some of its former grandeur. Vince’s boss, Shirley Tiang, an ebullient sixty-something-year-old Malaysian-Chinese GP, had started the clinic several years before and it now boasted four doctors.

Vince walked straight to Shirley’s consulting room and knocked on the door.

‘Come in if you’re good lookin’.’

She was sitting at her desk—a tiny elfin figure, head bobbing and dangly earrings dancing. Shirley was between patients—good timing.

‘The return of the proverbial son,’ she said, looking up. ‘What’s going down, Rooned? Sort out your family stuff?’

Shirley’s eclectic combination of Sino strine and malapropisms was acquired growing up in Western Sydney after moving with her family from Kuala Lumpur as a child. She’d borrowed the ‘Rooned’ moniker from ‘We’ll all be Rooned, said Hanrahan,’ a bush poem she’d encountered at school. ‘That Hanrahan was a miserable cove,’ she’d told Vince, ‘just like you, eh?’ The same author had also penned ‘The Old Mass Shandrydan’, about a horse-drawn cart used for taking a large country family to church on Sundays, hence the nickname for Leo Hanrahan’s abandoned caravan.

Vince flopped down onto the chair on the other side of the desk, damp clothes clinging to his tired body.

Shirley peered at him through her purple, oversize Edna Everage glasses. ‘You look like something the dog dragged in, buddy.’

He hadn’t shaved for days and was still wearing the same crumpled jeans and polo shirt he’d left in.

‘I’ll be getting all suited up tomorrow. Got a funeral up country.’

She gave him a Puckish look, eyebrows raised.

‘My little brother Joey.’ Saying it out loud for the first time, the words stuck in his throat. ‘Took his own life.’

Shirley jumped up, her mouth open. ‘Jeez, poor beggar! What the deal?’

‘Isolated farmer, drought, marriage breakup.’ He shrugged. ‘You know the stats for rural blokes, Shirl.’

‘This was your blood and flesh, no stat.’ She came around the desk, arms out for an embrace.

Vince stood and backed away. ‘I’ve just got to tidy up some stuff here, check on the dog, and pick up my suit from the house.’

‘Don’t worry about this joint,’ said Shirley, waving her arm around in a circle. ‘I’ll check your results and hospital patients, take your times. Suicide is serious shit.’

Hearing the word was like a kick in the guts.