John Marsden - Incurable

Then Gavin, wet and slimy and dripping, wrapped himself around me and folded himself into me and we sat together and rocked and hugged and somehow warmed each other. Two colds make a warm sometimes. It’s that old body heat. Works every time. I felt very tired and could have fallen asleep on the spot. An ambo finally came over to us. I hadn’t seen her arrive. She was a blonde girl with so many curls I didn’t know how her cap stayed on her head. She asked us how we were and if we had any injuries. Well, she probably regretted asking that question.

Suddenly she called to her partner for back-up and a second later there was a stationwagon right at the fountain, with ambulance markings all over it and two more ambos who I hadn’t seen before and a couple of stretchers on wheels and Gavin and I were covered by blankets. He was already in the back of an ambulance and I was being wheeled to it. I hadn’t seen that ambulance either. I was confused that they had all got there in one second but I think I was getting a bit confused about everything. It’s possible that I wasn’t entirely conscious for a while there.

The blankets started to work and I felt that I could let go of the last of my coldness. I did so, gradually, and lay back and opened my eyes. The sky was grey but becoming blue in the distance. A grey-white cloud was just above us and if I craned my head I could see a bank of clouds behind me. I didn’t know which way the weather was heading. Sometimes you do need a weatherman. I asked the blonde curly-haired ambo where the wind was from but she just smiled at me and said, ‘Now why would you want to know that?’

‘Just a country girl I guess,’ I said.

Well I don’t think there is much wind at the moment,’ she said, and they started putting my stretcher up into the back of the ambulance.

‘Are you going to use the siren?’

‘Everyone always wants to know that,’ she said. What do you think, Col, will we need the siren for these two?’

‘Might give it a burl if we run into a bit of traffic,’ he said. ‘Don’t want to be late for smoko, do we?’

‘Gavin’s deaf,’ I said, and closed my eyes.

‘Oh is he?’ I heard the blonde girl say. ‘Col, the little boy’s deaf

‘Uh, that would explain it then,’ Col said. I didn’t know what it explained but I guess they’d tried to have a conversation with Gavin.

‘How is he?’ I asked.

‘We think you’re both going to be fine.’ But I had the feeling they said that to everyone. Like what else are they going to say: ‘We expect you to be dead by the next intersection’?

The ambulance began to move and I opened my eyes again. She was sitting between Gavin and me so I figured Col was driving. She gave me another of her extremely nice smiles. ‘You’ve both got penetrating injuries but they don’t look too bad. And you’re both in shock.’

‘Is that all?’ I yawned. I couldn’t get used to this idea that when you were in the middle of a terrible fight the police arrived and fixed it up for you. And when you got injured, ambulances came and they wrapped you in blankets and took you to hospital. Where were they when the war was on?

The blonde girl said, ‘There might be an issue with that terrible water in the fountain getting into your wounds. I’m guessing the doctor’ll have a look at that. It’s not the healthiest place to take a bath when you’ve been stabbed!’

‘No.’

I reached for Gavin’s hand but couldn’t find it.

What are you looking for?’ the girl asked. Well, she wasn’t really a girl of course.

‘Gavin’s hand,’ I said.

She connected us up. He immediately gave my hand a big squeeze which made my eyes water (a) because we were friends (b) because he was still alive and (c) because it made me think the ambo girl hadn’t been lying to me and he probably was going to be all right.

I didn’t think I could cope with any more deaths of anyone even remotely close to me. These days I was perfectly capable of sobbing over the death of a heifer or someone’s pet guinea-pig, or a dead rabbit on the road.

OK, I’m lying about the rabbit.

At the hospital we weren’t given nearly as much attention or treated like royalty the way the ambos had looked after us. A doctor checked us and sent us both to X-ray but she said our wounds weren’t life-threatening. She did give us a blast of antibiotics in a big needle — well, she got a nurse to give us a blast of antibiotics in a big needle — and then we waited in a corridor for ages for the X-rays.

When we came out a cop was there, in uniform. He said he’d been sent to look after us. It didn’t occur to me till we were back in the main Emergency section that he might have been sent to stop us escaping, until the nurse who was washing grazes on my arm with disinfectant said, What have you two been up to?’

She asked in that quiet voice, the one that means, ‘Just between you and me.’

Of course I had been busting to ask Gavin what the hell had been going on. I’d been wanting to ask him from the moment the whole thing started, but I’d had no hope. And even now it was impossible. In the corridor we’d been twenty metres apart and now he was on the opposite side of the room. What had we been up to? Just trying to save our lives from a complete maniac who wanted to kill us. Was that so bad? But it wasn’t a random attack. The guy knew Gavin and wanted to take him out. He must have had some reason.

So all I could say was the old favourite: ‘I don’t know.’

Then she asked: ‘Are you in a gang?’

‘What?’

I nearly choked on the word. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry or call for a psychiatrist. For her. That’s when I realised the cop might be there to stop us tying our sheets together, end to end, and climbing out the window. Good grief! I didn’t expect medals and the keys to the city. That was one of my dad’s favourite sayings: ‘I’m not asking for a medal and the keys to the city but it would be nice to get a little cooperation once in a while.’

I wasn’t asking for a parade but it would have been nice for someone to say, ‘Hey girl, you saved a couple of lives today, even if one of them was your own.’

‘No, I’m not in a gang,’ I said.

Nothing much else happened for at least two hours. The cop made himself right at home and was soon getting coffees for himself and the nurses. I was ‘nil by mouth’ so no food or drink for me. I dozed quite a bit, then they came and took the ‘nil by mouth’ sign away and ten minutes later I got sandwiches and cordial. I suddenly realised how hungry I was and gobbled the whole lot, even if the sandwiches were mostly white bread with occasional traces of chicken and wisps of lettuce. And the cordial tasted like they’d held a glass of water in front of the cordial bottle for five seconds and then taken it away again. I like my cordial strong.

A different doctor arrived and started stitching me up. He was a chatty guy who looked like he came from India or Pakistan and who spoke in this nice musical voice. He said I was fine, the knife had missed my vital organs, I’d been very lucky, I could go home but I had to take antibiotics because they told him I’d been in water that was probably full of dangerous organisms.

He had me roll over and he put a couple of stitches in another wound. I knew something on my back hurt but didn’t realise it was a second stab wound. I hadn’t properly registered that the guy had stabbed me twice — I’d thought the pain was from another graze.

Gavin was a bit more complicated. While I lay there having a snooze no-one told me that he’d been wheeled away for an operation. I went into total panic when I heard a nurse say something about ‘the deaf boy who’s gone to surgery”, surprising myself by how hysterical I got. It’s embarrassing, but they had to hold me down and then the nurse hit me with another needle and ten seconds later, out I went.