15

So this is what it’s like to die … Hmm, interesting. Floating somewhere, feeling weightless, like I’m an astronaut in flight. But of course I feel weightless; I’m dead. Zilch. Zero. So it’s finally happened. My heart must’ve conked out after all. Maybe I just died on the footpath outside Roxy’s. I hope Doctor Brad isn’t too disappointed. I bet he was looking forward to doing a little valve surgery. But maybe now he’ll get together with my mum. He’ll comfort her, because she’ll be so sad about me being dead, and eventually he’ll move in and they’ll play Happy Families. Though he’s got his work cut out with Ryan. Anyway, that topic is boring. Let’s see, where I am … heaven maybe? Limbo? The big film production house in the sky? Hmm, everything’s white. Yup, I’m definitely dead. Wait, what’s that down there? Oh God, that’s gross – is that what I think it is? A body with its chest cut open. People in white gowns, wearing gloves. Blood everywhere. My God, that’s horrible … though actually, kind of interesting at the same time. And what’s that guy got in his hand? It looks like a peeled aubergine wrapped in blood. A piece of offal? That’s disgusting. No wait, it looks like a heart. Yep. They’re doing something to a heart in that guy’s chest. Shame it’s not me. My heart needs fixing up. Well, needed fixing, past tense. I won’t need anything now, not wherever I’m going. And where exactly am I? It’s like a room, except there are no walls, if that makes sense. And wait, what’s that smell? Hmm, hamburger … I’m dead but I’m drooling? Now that really doesn’t make sense. Hey partner, git on over here with that little pony, I mean, burger. I could eat a horse. No, take that back (there might be horses up here, and I don’t want to offend anyone in this death place, and especially not horses, which are very nice creatures); but I could really do with a hamburger …

 

The first thing I saw when I opened my eyes was Ajax. He was leaning against the wall over by the windows, eating a hamburger. Man, that guy was really chowing down. I’d never seen him eat like that before. In two more seconds there wouldn’t be a shred left. He was eating so fast I thought he’d asphyxiate himself.

‘Uurk,’ I groaned. I didn’t know what had happened to me, but it obviously had something to do with my vocal chords.

Ajax looked up guiltily. Ha, caught in the act.

Then he faded out. I had to concentrate. It was like I was still in the dream, except I could smell the hamburger.

The edges of Ajax got clear again. I raised my hand to signal him over to the bed. It felt really heavy, but at least it was still working. Ajax took an uncertain step forward. I pointed a trembling finger at the hamburger, then at me.

He looked at what was left of the burger he was holding, then he looked at me – was he acting dumb, or something? or maybe he just didn’t want to share – then a big grin broke out on his face.

‘Dude!’ he exclaimed, as if I’d just told him I’d won Lotto.

Just then somebody crashed into the room. Maybe this really was a dream. I turned my head on the pillow and saw my mother looming over Ajax. It looked like she was boxing his ears. ‘What are you doing with food in here, young man?’ It was surreal, like watching sci-fi. ‘You’ll contaminate him.’

‘It’s just a burger, Mrs G., it’s not catching. Besides, James … ’

But she was hustling him out of the room like I was in danger of catching the bubonic plague.

‘But Mrs G., he wanted to eat my burger!’

Both of them stopped. My mother grinned down at me. ‘Really? He did?’ she said in the soppy voice usually reserved for her baby patients.

Actually, maybe I was still dead, because people were acting very strangely around here. But the moment evaporated, and my mother hustled Ajax and his hamburger out of my room. Damn. And I was starving. That was one missed opportunity.

Mum came around and sat beside the bed. ‘How are you feeling, James?’

Hungry. ‘Uhk-kry.’

She gave me her soppy smile. ‘Hey, it’s good to see you again, mate.’

And what did she mean by that? She sees me every day. Actually, several times a day. Then tears were squeezing out of her eyes, and she turned away to wipe her face. When she looked back she had that bright manic look on her face that says, I am not going to cry!

‘It was touch and go there for a while,’ she continued.

I tried to work my face into a querying expression, but it was too hard to focus. Her face was melting and her hair looked like a halo.

‘But Brad will tell you all about that later,’ my mother sighed, patting my hand. ‘You get some sleep now.’

And I must have gone to sleep then – dropping into it like a rock chucked into a pond – because I didn’t remember anything else.

 

When I next woke up it was night and there was a nurse doing something over in the corner of my room. It looked like she’d caught a little pony and was tethering it to the lamp. Was I still in la-la land? There was a metronome beating as well. Why would they have a metronome in my room? Then I saw the nurse was just drawing the curtains. She turned round and smiled then she came over and started tidying my bed.

‘And how are you feeling, James Griffen?’ she asked.

I didn’t say anything because I could tell she wasn’t real, and I didn’t want to get sucked into talking to a hologram. Besides, I felt like crap, and there was a hairy doormat in my mouth in place of a tongue. The last thing I felt like doing was talking.

The nurse carried on chatting while she patted and smoothed. Then she was talking about somebody I knew. ‘Doctor Brad is so handsome,’ she was saying, ‘he rides an antelope to work every day …’

Uh-ha. Her face loomed into my sight-line.

‘He’s coming along in a minute to see you, James, we wanted to leave you as long as possible, but we’re all very happy to see you again …’

Ah, that made more sense. But what did she mean by happy to see me again? Suddenly it seemed I was Mr Popular. I had an image of people waving and smiling as I walked in and out of big airy rooms.

The next time I swam back into consciousness, I knew exactly where I was. I was hooked up to an intravenous drip and the heart monitor was beeping quietly beside my bed. Doctor Brad was checking the chart, just like they do on medical dramas. Had I died and woken up on the set of Shortland Street?

Doctor Brad picked up my wrist and checked my pulse, looking down at me the whole time as if I’d developed something curious on my forehead. For my part, I could see right up his nose, and it wasn’t a pretty sight. Then finally he sat down in a chair beside the bed.

‘How are you feeling, James?’ he asked.

I wished someone would ask something more original. ‘Okay,’ I croaked, ‘I guess.’ And in fact, aside from the feeling that I’d just swum through the ocean for a month, I didn’t feel too bad. ‘What happened?’

‘You’ve had your heart operation, James,’ he said, watching me closely.

And how had that happened without me knowing about it?

Doctor Brad gave a cautious smile, as if having a little inner debate with himself as to how much to tell me. ‘Yes, open-heart surgery. We’ve given you a new valve. You’ll feel a bit groggy for a while; we’ve got you on some pretty strong drugs at the moment. But we’ll soon have you feeling right as rain.’

Okay, so he was going for the minimalist approach when it came to information. Doctor Brad was getting ready to leave.

‘The nurse is just going to top up your morphine to help you sleep.’

‘But I don’t want to …’ I meant to say the word ‘sleep’ – there was so much I wanted to know! This was no time for sleeping – but the lights were already going out.

 

The story turned out to be a little more complicated than Doctor Brad had initially let on. Yes, I had had open-heart surgery. Yes, I’d got my nice new valve after all. But before that happened, I’d had a heart attack, trying to save Roxy’s father. They rushed me to hospital, pumped me with morphine, and got me stabilised. Then they cut my chest open. And then I died – on the operating table.

How corny was that?

It all came flooding back to me. Well, the part about Leo, at any rate. The shouting, Ryan hitting him, Leo on the ground, me running. Running, huh! The rest of it was pretty much a blur.

‘What was Ajax doing here?’ I was pressing the open/close button on my Discman, which Mum had just brought in, trying to decide whether I felt like listening to a CD.

‘Well,’ she said slowly, ‘straight after the operation we weren’t sure if you would be all right or not, so I called Ajax in. In case he wanted to say goodbye …’

That was a sobering thought. The fire came back into my mother’s eye. ‘And then that young man had the temerity to start eating a hamburger in here!’

I cracked a smile at her outrage. ‘I guess he got hungry,’ I said, cheering up. ‘Probably would’ve done the same myself.’

‘No doubt,’ she said, crossing her legs (and for somebody’s mum, she actually had pretty good legs). She’d brought some books, too, and a bunch of grapes. You’d think a nurse of all people would be able to avoid hospital clichés. ‘I just can’t believe what a close call you’ve had, young man. You are incredibly lucky to be alive!’

I reached over and snaffled a grape. ‘So how long was I dead for?’

My mother gave one of her unhappy sniffles. ‘About a minute,’ she said. ‘Thank God I didn’t know about it until afterwards.’

‘A minute, wow. Maybe I’m a zombie now.’

She put the bag of grapes on the bed so I could pick at them. ‘Actually they weren’t sure whether you’d be all right when you woke up. You could’ve suffered some brain damage. Woken up as a vegetable.’

She had a great way of putting things sometimes. ‘What kind of vegetable?’ I wondered. ‘A radish, or a cauliflower?’

Mum cuffed my arm. ‘You’ve been a very lucky boy,’ she said firmly.

I guessed that might be a line I’d hear for the rest of my life. At least now I had a good chance of having a rest-of-my-life.

‘What are you grinning about?’ she asked

‘Oh, I don’t know …’ I popped a grape in my mouth. ‘Maybe that I’ve got a new, improved heart.’ The grape was very sweet and juicy. But there was something I didn’t feel so great about. I was thinking about Roxy’s dad, and Ryan, and how it had looked like they were going to kill him. ‘Is Leo …?’

‘He’s fine,’ Mum said, as if I was going to argue the point with her. ‘He’s got a couple of broken ribs, one helluva black eye, and he needed some stitches, but it’s nothing that won’t mend.’ She paused for a moment, as if she was planning on saying something more. ‘He’ll be by fairly soon to see you.’

I closed my eyes, feeling tired all of a sudden. Little coloured lights flashed behind my eyelids and once again I saw the scene outside Roxy’s house – and that empty, savage look on my brother’s face.

‘You must be tired, James,’ my mother said quietly. ‘I’ll leave you to rest for a bit.’

‘No, wait,’ I said, summoning up a smidgen of energy. ‘What about Ryan?’

She was standing at the end of the bed, her bag over her shoulder, looking down at me. One second there was a really sad look in her eyes, but then she blinked and it was replaced by something a lot harder. Something really flinty. Ryan, I could tell, was in a shit-load of trouble.

‘You’re not to worry about your brother,’ she said ominously, doing her Saruman impersonation. ‘He is being taken care of.’

 

‘Taken care of’ was what you’d call a euphemism. It was the kind of line you’d get in a movie like Billy Bathgate, where that mafia dude played by Dustin Hoffman tells another mafia dude to go take someone out. It was an unfortunate phrase coming from a woman who takes care of tiny defenceless babies.

But anyway, Ryan was being taken care of – by the police. They’d decided he needed a better direction in life, so he was having to go along to all these courses, like how to be a better person, and how to make woven baskets and garlic holders. Actually, I didn’t know what the courses were, but Mum said he was coming along. At least he was ashamed of what they did to Roxy’s dad that night, and he’d made a formal apology to Leo (helped along no doubt by the presence of Sergeant Grunt). She also said Ryan’d be swinging by the hospital soon with a great big brotherly bunch of grapes.

Take your time, bro. Right now, Ryan was the last person I wanted to see.

The other guy, Brent, had disappeared. The police thought he’d taken off up north, and maybe he was staying with an uncle. I didn’t really care either way. They could both roast in hell, for all I cared.

 

One thing about being in hospital: you sure didn’t get much rest. The next visitor who appeared was a huge bunch of flowers. No, really it was Leo. I’d never been given flowers before but I got a really warm feeling when he turned up behind that bouquet. There were sunflowers and big orange flowers, and some huge spiky green things (also flowers). They sure looked impressive.

‘Hi, James,’ said Leo. A sweet scent filled the air. ‘Thought they might brighten up your room.’ He put the flowers down on the bedside table, and I got a good look at his face.

‘Whoa,’ I gasped.

He gave a little cough. ‘Yep. I look like something the cat dragged in,’ he admitted.

‘More like brother of Frankenstein,’ jumped out of my mouth. ‘Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean …’

He gave a dry chuckle. ‘No, it’s all right. It is a bit dramatic-looking, I know.’ He touched a hand to his bandaged head then sat down next to my bed. ‘So how’ve they been treating you in here?’

‘Pretty good, you know.’

For a while he just sat there holding his hands. It was kind of embarrassing, so I didn’t say anything either. Finally I asked: ‘How’s Roxy?’

Leo glanced up with his bloodshot eyes, then nodded. ‘Yeah, she’s okay,’ he said. ‘She had to talk to the police. They wanted me to lay charges.’ He made a funny noise in his throat.

‘And what did you say?’ I was curious.

‘I couldn’t do that,’ he said quietly.

Yeah, I thought, that would’ve been a hard call.

‘How could I,’ he added, looking at his hands again, ‘when I was partly to blame?’

Then Leo cleared his throat: a sure sign something embarrassing was going to come next. ‘Look, James,’ he said, ‘I just want to thank you … for, you know, stepping in when you did.’

My face went hot. ‘No worries,’ I said, hoping he wasn’t going to belabour the point.

‘No, I mean it,’ he said, giving me a really staunch look. ‘If you hadn’t stepped in when you did …’ He cleared his throat again. Then he said some more stuff that I found hard to take on board. Big, important stuff. I looked at my hands. Now both of us were embarrassed. ‘Anyway – thanks, mate. And you with a bad heart like that, too. Your Mum’s told me all about it. There’s not many guys, in your position, who would’ve done the same thing.’

Then he stood up and held out his hand. We shook, real men. It was cool. Clint would’ve been proud of me.

‘Anyway, I’ll let you get some rest.’

Leo made for the door. Then he stopped, shoved his hands in his jeans pockets, and looked back at me.

‘I wanted Roxy to come too, but …’

I held my breath, afraid of what he might say next.

‘She isn’t quite ready yet.’ He ducked his chin. ‘But she’ll be along eventually,’ he added in a firm tone, ‘I promise you that.’ It sounded like a threat.