Peter Corris - Deep Water

I woke up in an intensive care unit in San Diego, California. It was a beautiful day-the blue sky San Diego was famous for filled the window. But any day would have been beautiful because I was alive.

‘Mr Hardy,’ the tall, tanned man in the white coat said, ‘how do you feel?’

‘As if I’ve been hit by a truck. What happened?’

He reached for my hand and shook it in a firm but cautious grip. ‘I’m Doctor Henry Pierce. I’m a cardiac surgeon.’

‘Yes?’

He flipped through some notes in a ring-bind folder. ‘It seems you were walking along our pier-’ he said it the way a Sydneysider might say our harbour bridge-‘and you bent to pick something up, or move it aside.’

‘I remember. A box of bait,’ I said, ‘heavier than I expected.’

‘You stood, shouted and then fell headlong. You suffered a head wound but, more importantly, a massive coronary occlusion.’

I heard what he said, but I was groggy, with some pain and discomfort in my upper body, and I had trouble taking it in. ‘I was looking for Frankie Machine,’ I said.

‘Excuse me?’

I sucked in air with some difficulty, as if my ribs were preventing me from filling my lungs, but I grasped his meaning. ‘Doesn’t matter, Doctor. A heart attack, you’re saying. What am I looking at-medication, that balloon thing and the bit of plastic?’

He smiled. Dr Pierce had the sort of urbanity that goes with skill, success and money. ‘Mr Hardy,’ he said, ‘you’ve already had a quadruple heart bypass procedure.’

Over the next few days, Dr Pierce, cardiologist Dr Epstein and a nurse helped me to piece it together. I’d been very lucky, especially considering the strictures of the US health system. One, I’d been carrying my passport and my wallet with a fair amount of cash in it, a Wells Fargo ATM card and a card showing my top level of medical insurance in Australia. Two, an off-duty paramedic had been fishing near where I fell and knew what to do. He got my heart started and I was in the hospital hooked up to machines within half an hour.

The diagnosis was unambiguous: a major blockage in a crucial area. My daughter Megan’s name was in the passport as the person to contact in an emergency. They called her. I wasn’t in a condition to sign consent forms, immunity undertakings, stuff like that. They got her OK, prepared me, took a punt on things like my susceptibility to medications, unzipped me and got to work.

‘It was a four-hour operation,’ Dr Pierce said. ‘Pretty simple really, and very satisfactory. I was able to use the two arteries in your chest, which gives the grafts a longer lease of life, and I only needed a bit of vein from your upper leg to complete the. .’

‘Re-plumbing,’ I said.

He smiled. ‘If you like. The internal structure of your heart was very sound so I was able to make good, solid grafts. You’ll make a full recovery. In fact I think you’ll feel a new surge of energy. You were quite fit apart from the damage to your heart. What sports d’you play?’

‘I used to box and surf. Haven’t done much lately. I walk a lot, play a bit of tennis. Go to the gym when I’m at home.’

‘Keep it all up. It stood you in good stead. I see that you were in the military.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Wounds.’

‘I got those mostly in civilian life. I was a private detective.’

He shook his well-groomed head. ‘I can’t think of a worse post-operative occupation.’

‘I don’t do it anymore. Aren’t I a bit young for this? My check-ups were always OK.’

‘It was almost certainly congenital. You must have had a propensity for a cholesterol accumulation to sneak up on you. Still, you’re right. This sort of event often needs a trigger, other than the last physical effort you made. This is a research interest of mine. I believe emotional factors play a part. Have you had a major emotional upset in recent times?’

My lover, Lily Truscott, had been shot dead in Sydney five months before, shattering some dreams and half-formed plans. I’d played an unofficial part in the investigation that led to the conviction of the killer. There was some satisfaction in that, but I’d stepped on a lot of toes and crossed over some hard and fast police lines. There was no chance I’d ever be licensed as a private investigator in New South Wales again. You could say I’d taken two hard knocks-one personal, one professional-and that wouldn’t come anywhere close to describing the emptiness I’d felt.

I’d come to the US to help Tony Truscott, Lily’s brother, prepare for a fight in Reno leading to the WBA welterweight boxing title. He won. I’d trained hard with Tony, maybe overstretching myself. The loss of Lily was like a constant ache so maybe Dr Pierce’s research had something to it, but I wasn’t about to become one of his subjects. Congenital would do me-I could blame my father. Put it on the list of my other gripes against him.

‘My father died in his fifties,’ I said.

Dr Pierce looked disappointed but clicked his pen and made a note. ‘There you are.’

Megan arrived three days after the operation. She looks like me-dark, tallish, beaky-nosed. She bustled into my room, bent over and kissed me hard on both cheeks.

‘Hi, Cliff. Sorry it took a while. Complications.’

‘Good to see you, love. You said the right things when it counted.’

‘Shit, I couldn’t believe it-Mr Fitness.’

‘Not really, as it turned out. What complications? You and Simon?’

It was spring in Sydney, fall in California. Megan had dressed for somewhere in between, which was about right. She ran her fingers through her hair, a mannerism she’d inherited from her mother, before answering. ‘Kaput.

History. Not a problem.’

‘I’m sorry. He seemed OK. You all right?’

‘I’m better than all right. So, I saved your life, did I? That makes us even.’

I hadn’t even known about Megan until my wife Cyn was dying and told me about her. Cyn was pregnant when we split and put the child out for adoption without telling me. Fair enough-back then I would’ve been the world’s worst parent. Megan had tracked Cyn down when she was close to the end. She was keeping bad company and I took her clear of that. I hadn’t exactly saved her life, but I’d stayed in her corner ever since. So we’d each been there for the other, and the feeling was good.

‘The thing is, what’s to be done with you? What’s the drill?’

‘They’ll keep me hooked up like this for a while, they say, checking on the ticker and other things. Then they’ll get me moving. A week at the most in the hospital and then out.’

‘Jeez, that’s quick. What’ll you do then?’

‘First thing-have a decent meal and a drink.’

‘I’d have guessed that. Then what?’

‘I don’t think I’m supposed to fly for a bit. I like this place from what I’ve seen of it, and I have to stay in touch with the doctors and the physios for a while. How long can you stay?’

She shrugged. ‘A week, I guess, ten days.’

Megan and I never pressed each other for details.

‘Maybe you could line me up a furnished flat to rent for a month. Somewhere near the beach. Use it yourself to start with.’

I told her where my cash card was and the PIN. She gathered her bag and the discarded jacket and vest. ‘I’ll get right on it. Anything you want now?’

‘A Sydney paper.’

I walked the corridors, did the exercises, took the medications.

Progressively, drains, canulas and the heart monitor were removed. They x-rayed and ultrasounded me and pronounced me fit to leave the hospital. I had leaflets on cardiac rehabilitation, diet and lifestyle choices. Appointments with the various medicos had been lined up. I thanked everyone who’d treated me. It cost eight hundred dollars to get out of the hospital-my meals and phone calls-but they assured me that the health insurance would take care of the rest. I’d resented paying the insurance for decades but now, not wanting to even think about what American surgeons and anaesthetists charged-I was grateful.