The Wild Australia Stories

Chapter 7

Chapter 7

Charlie looked up as two people entered the room. Mum and Sam? With those ridiculous gowns and masks on, it was never immediately obvious who anybody was. A figure leant over her. ‘How are things, sweetie?’

Mum asked the most stupid questions. How did she expect things to be? The deadly routine was killing Charlie. She dreaded waking up just to take a gazillion more pills. If she turned on the TV, she was too weary to keep track of the program. She couldn’t see the sun, didn’t even have a window. Breakfast had looked crappy, and she wouldn’t have eaten it even if she could. She was so tired she’d gone back to sleep, and woke up puking her guts out. Nurses come in and out of her room taking vitals – blood pressure and temperature and a million other things – God knows how many times a day. She felt awful all the time and didn’t see anybody except Mum and Sam. Had it only been a week since she’d started on this high-dose chemotherapy treatment? It felt like months. The days were a miserable blur, and she wanted to rip out the central line snaking from her chest, delivering its cell-destroying venom. Rip it out and break its back. Charlie wanted to say all this, but she could hardly speak at all. Her mouth was like sandpaper, and she had ulcers all over her tongue, inside her cheeks, even down her throat.

‘I’m fine, Mum,’ she said.

Mary placed a few ice chips and a little lozenge in her mouth. ‘Peppermint, powdered ginger and violet petals,’ she said, for Sam’s benefit. Her brand-new sister was quite taken with Mum’s mumbo- jumbo. It was a pity Mum couldn’t whip up a herbal remedy for leukaemia.

Sam reached for her hand. ‘I can’t wait for tomorrow.’

Charlie nodded. Tomorrow, the fifth of December, was D-Day, peripheral stem-cell transplant day – the day she’d begin to get her life back.

Sam yawned. It was a bit of an anti-climax really. She was hooked up to the Dalek machine that had so frightened her the day she’d first met Charlie, just ten short days ago. Not that the machine was any fun, but it wasn’t all that bad either. Not compared to the horror stories people liked to tell about the alternative – surgical bone-marrow donation. That involved an enormous needle, sucking a litre or more of warm liquid marrow from deep inside your hips. Sam clenched her pelvic floor involuntarily just to think of it.

That same afternoon, Sam’s stem cells were transplanted into Charlie. Sam waited anxiously for news. When Professor Sung came to see her, she knew it had gone well – the doctor couldn’t stop beaming. The transplant had been textbook perfect. Mary performed some sort of pagan ritual of thanks in the hospital car park, with chalk circles and burning beeswax. Charlie was exhausted, but smiled weakly at Sam when they were finally able to see each other. ‘Here’s to a shared future,’ she said.

The only person who didn’t seem overjoyed with the news was Faith. ‘I can’t understand why you didn’t want me there,’ she said that evening after Sam arrived home. ‘I’d have been your support person. But no, you had to go straight to that Mary woman.’ This last remark came with a theatrical flourish.

Sam took a deep breath. ‘It was something I needed to do, Mum. Mary was only my support person in hospital. You’ve been here for me the whole time at home.’ And about as supportive as a wet dish-cloth, thought Sam. ‘And anyway, it’s given me a chance to get to know Mary.’

Faith snorted her displeasure. ‘And what’s she like then, this Mary?’

Sam wouldn’t answer. Couldn’t answer. Mary was a contradiction. She’d never met anybody quite like her. Sometimes Mary didn’t seem any older than Sam herself. Sometimes she was selfish and childish. Sometimes she was patient and wise. She was far too direct. At times she was just plain rude, especially if she had a complaint about Charlie’s care. Sam smiled. Faith would approve of Mary’s fearless advocacy on her daughter’s behalf. She had scant respect for hospital rules and regulations. She’d been thrown out, more than once, for smoking in the toilets. But when she wasn’t with Charlie or Sam, she spent her time reading to children in the paediatric ward, or visiting a growing army of elderly patients who didn’t seem to have any family. None who cared, anyway. Mary never seemed to have any money, except to buy cigarettes and Charlie’s beautiful scarves. Sam had bailed her out a few times already – ten dollars here, twenty dollars there, but she didn’t mind. Although Mary never had enough money, she always had enough time for her daughters.

‘She’s nothing like you,’ Sam said to Faith. ‘It’s difficult to explain.’

‘Hmm,’ said Faith sniffily. ‘I’ll take that as a compliment, shall I?’ She swept out of the room and began clattering about in the kitchen. Being at the hospital, although frustrating and worrying, was no hardship compared to being at home. Since Faith had revealed the truth about Sam, she had grown brittle, defensive – paranoid, even. And for someone who’d rarely cried before, she was making up for lost time. Despite claiming she wanted to help, Faith had turned the whole thing around so that she was the victim. The victim of an unfeeling, ungrateful daughter, willing to toss her aside after eighteen years of love and self-sacrifice. This dynamic allowed Sam no leeway to ask the questions she most needed answers to.

What Sam wanted most was to sit down for an entire afternoon and hear her mother’s side of the story. She fantasised about it, and even wrote a list of questions in her journal. How had Faith found Mary? Had she wanted both girls or not? Why had she wanted a closed adoption, a confidential arrangement allowing for no interaction between birth mothers and their children? Had she ever wondered about Charlie? The list was endless. And of course, the most burning question of all - how could she justify having never told Sam the truth? In Sam’s fertile imagination, this illuminating afternoon always ended up with Faith’s teary apology. An I’m sorry would go a long way to help make this mess right. Of course, Faith didn’t really do sorry, but for once Sam wouldn’t be emotionally blackmailed into taking the blame.

Sam spent more and more of her time at the hospital. She abandoned the few friends she had. She even neglected her horse, Pharaoh, ringing the stables and telling them to turn him out.

‘But he’s in top condition,’ protested her coach. ‘You can’t spell him now. You’ll miss the national squad trials.’

‘I won’t be trying out for the squad,’ said Sam. ‘And I’m quitting as coach of the juniors. Just do as I say, please.’

‘Fine,’ her coach said. He sounded disgusted. ‘But I’ll have to clear it with your mother first. She pays the bills. It will mean cancelling your training contract and altering Pharaoh’s terms of agistment.’ He hung silent on the end of the phone for a long time. ‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ he said at last. ‘It’s a waste of a fine young horse, at the top of his game.’

‘I’m sure.’ Sam ended the call. She had no time for Pharaoh right now. She had no time for anybody but Charlie.