I had no power left. If the hands had let go I’d have dropped to the ground like an imploded building. The pain had taken over. I was drunk with it. No other part of me functioned.
Then things changed again. The hands suddenly got more gentle. Instead of dragging me along they were holding me up. I still didn’t realise what had made the difference. I don’t think I realised until I was in the back of their truck. Through the haze of pain and sweat and terror I sensed that someone was directing the whole operation. Someone was in charge. Before, it had just been a rabble.
I couldn’t see him but I became aware of his voice. He sounded calm and quiet. It was a relief after the yelling and screaming of the soldiers. I couldn’t understand what he was saying to them of course, but after a minute I suddenly heard his voice right at my ear. He was speaking English, easily and confidently, with only a faint accent.
‘You will be treated properly now. I have made sure of it. I will get a doctor for your leg. For now, you go to a holding area.’
I tried to nod, to show my thanks, but I couldn’t move my head. Sensing that he was moving away, desperate not to lose my chance, I croaked, ‘Water’.
‘What is it you want?’
I tried again but the word wouldn’t come out.
‘What is it you want? Something to drink?’
‘Yes. Yes. Please.’
I think I only made meaningless sounds, but he got the drift, because a minute or two later I felt a water bottle at my lips. I couldn’t get much of it into my mouth. I didn’t care: the feeling of it running down my chin and onto my body was enough. The man was patient though, and held it to my lips, pouring in little sips, one by one. I was very grateful to him.
My eyes seemed stuck together. I tried to open them but then gave up and just lay there. Sensing him still near me I had another go at speaking, and this time, thanks to the water, did a little better.
‘Excuse me . . .’
‘Yes? What is it now?’
I wanted to ask about Homer and Lee and Fi and Kevin and Gavin. I tried to formulate a question about them. But even in my blear of pain and fear and exhaustion I had enough instinct left to avoid talking about them to an enemy soldier. With a groan I gave up and let my head roll away.
Chapter Eleven
The first time I saw myself was as a reflection in the sunglasses of a soldier, when they took me off the truck. By then I could open my eyes, but straightaway I was sorry I had. At first I had absolutely no idea I was looking at myself. What I saw was a head the size of a Halloween pumpkin, and about as attractive.
A pair of black eyes stared at me out of the mask of a face. They were like squash balls, so big that I couldn’t understand how they could still fit in their sockets. My whole face was bruised and black and swollen. There were red and purple streaks across it. I’ve never seen a human face like it. I couldn’t believe it was mine. But army boots are pretty hard of course.
I don’t know how long I’d been on the truck. A long time. A lifetime. It had jolted and swayed and bumped for hour after hour. I didn’t know where we were going and I didn’t care; I just wanted to go somewhere. I wanted to crawl into a hole and stay there and go to sleep and never wake up. All my ambitions had come down to that. No more dreams of going to uni or travelling the world or marrying some gorgeous guy. Just a hole and no-one to disturb me. I wanted nothing more. A kind of grave I guess.
When I saw myself reflected in the sunglasses and finally registered it was me, I shut my eyes again. I didn’t want to know what was happening. I didn’t want to know anything.
It actually hurt my eyes to close them.
I lay on the ground. After a while I heard the man again, the one who’d saved me.
‘The doctors are coming now,’ he said. ‘I have arranged this. It was very difficult but it is arranged. I will come and see you later, in a day or so. You understand?’
‘Yes,’ I said. I didn’t understand a single solitary thing but it was easier to go with the flow than to ask questions.
Then a couple of doctors were crouched over me. I heard their soft voices murmuring away. They were like waves of sound, quite gentle, washing across my body, slipping back into the sea again, fizzing and foaming.
I think I slipped away like the waves. The next thing I knew I was being lifted onto a bed. I cried out and groaned with the pain, clutching for someone to hold, begging them to leave me alone. No-one answered. There was no-one for me to hold. They just kept lifting, then arranging me on the bed. Although I had protested so much, it was a relief to feel the firm mattress under me. Every part of my body throbbed with pain, but at least the bed gave some kind of support.
Later a woman was standing next to my bed giving me an injection. She didn’t say anything. Neither did I.
I think they operated on me then, because when I woke up the pain in my leg was virtually gone. The rest of me still ached almost as badly as before, but I was grateful that the pain in the leg was better.
I was desperate for a drink. My tongue felt as big as a whale, and about as good as a dead fish. I tried to groan for water, without success: this time not a sound came out. But I kept trying, and eventually some sort of mangled noise emerged, like Kermit the Frog with a bad case of flu.
At first I thought no-one had heard, so I kept making the noise, and after a few more minutes someone came and put a hand on my forehead. It felt soft and small and cool, a woman’s hand. She made a remark to someone else, but not in English. I tried again: ‘Water’, and in English she then said: ‘Can she have a drink, Doctor?’
He replied in English: ‘A hundred mils only.’
This time when the cup was held to my lips I took great care not to spill a drop. It was too precious. A hundred mils wasn’t much, but it did make my lips and mouth feel better.
I tried to open my eyes while I was drinking, but they hurt so badly. When I’d emptied the little metal cup I let my head fall back onto the pillow.
A few minutes later the pain in my leg came back, worse than before. I gasped at the fierceness of it, and started panting, like I was going uphill in a cross-country race. After a while I got the idea that if I moved my head backwards and forwards it would somehow ease the pain. The trouble was it hurt my head, but it still seemed better than just lying there. Then there was another injection, in the fold of my elbow, and I roamed away into a nothing world again.
How long did I lie there for? I don’t know. There weren’t many highlights. In fact the only highlights were the breaks from the pain that the needles gave, and there were never enough of those.
A few moments stood out though. One was seeing my face again, reflected in a stainless steel bowl that the nurse used to wash me. It was still a horrible sight, only now the bruises had changed colour, from purple and black to red and green and grey. Once again I looked away. The swelling had gone down a bit; that was the only good news.
Another memory was asking the doctor if he had cut my leg off. I’d read a book a few years ago about a guy whose leg was amputated but he didn’t know until days afterwards because the phantom pain in his missing leg was as bad or worse than real pain.
The doctor said: ‘We think we can save it’, which wasn’t very confident, and sounded like he was answering a different question to the one I’d asked.
I didn’t have a clue what they were giving me in the injections, but it was potent. I spent so much of my time somewhere up around the ceiling, bumping gently against the light fittings, my mind held there by millions of cotton wool balls. Then one day it all became too much. I had the weirdest feeling that if I didn’t stop this right now, if I didn’t cancel the drug, I’d never get off it; I’d be hooked forever. So when the nurse came along with another needle I waved her away. She said, in poor English: ‘Doctor saying you have.’ I said: ‘Send the doctor here—I want to see him,’ and she hesitated then went off again.
I soon regretted turning down the injection. The pain got so bad that I took to b
iting the blanket so I wouldn’t bite my tongue or lips instead. Everything hurt, minute by minute, hour by hour, with no relief. My leg was the worst. I panted and moaned with it, and I think I upset the other patients in the ward, because three times the nurses tried to get me to have the shot and three times I refused, getting quite aggressive, trying to make them scared of me.
At last a doctor turned up, a small serious man with tiny rimless glasses.
‘You know you must keep having the pain-killers,’ he said. ‘You are still in quite a dangerous post-operative state. You are putting too much strain on your body.’
‘I don’t want any more,’ I said. Talking was difficult; my mouth and teeth and jaws and neck all hurt. ‘It made me float away.’
‘You are keeping the other patients awake.’
‘I’m sorry. I won’t make any more noise.’
‘You know, we are not putting anything bad into the injections, if that’s what you’re worried about.’
‘No, I never thought that.’ I had, briefly, but my gut feeling was that they weren’t doing anything sinister.
I didn’t say any more, and after a few moments he said: ‘I will try you on Panadeine Forte tabs. But if they are not strong enough, or if you can’t keep them down, I will put you back on pethidine.’
A couple of minutes later a nurse arrived with two white tablets, which I swallowed. They did make a difference, I think. Anyway I didn’t go back on the injections.
The medical staff were fairly good to me, I have to say that. I was given good care, even if it didn’t come with chocolates and flowers. They treated me a bit like I was a robot, but overall I had no complaints. Considering what I’d done to their soldiers, they would have been within their rights to chuck me straight in the nearest cemetery.
It seemed like I owed my life to the mysterious man who’d intervened to save me, back in the bush. He kept his promise to come and see me, too. He was an officer, with three gold crowns on his shoulders.
He was around thirty-five I’d say. A balding man with a sharp nose and old acne scars. He had the thinnest moustache I’ve ever seen. His English was excellent, but he pronounced ‘hospital’ as ‘hospitable’, which always made me want to laugh.
I don’t know how many times he visited, but I’d say at least three or four. He even woke me if I was asleep, as though he was anxious to let me know that he was still around, protecting me. I had no idea why he’d be doing such a thing, why I wasn’t being hauled away for interrogation, punishment, execution, but I sure wasn’t going to complain. This guy seemed my best hope of staying alive.
A few times another man in a suit came to interrogate me, but I just made like I was too sick, which didn’t take a lot of acting, considering how hard talking—even thinking—still was. At least I had the sense to give him a false name. I told him my first name was Amber—I got that from the word ambulance, because I could hear them squealing and wailing as they arrived at the hospital at regular intervals—and I gave my family name as Faulding. That came from a bottle of tablets I saw on the nurse’s trolley.
I quite liked it as a name. It sounded glamorous. Sounded like a character in a soapie.
At first I didn’t realise that they had me under guard, but I shouldn’t have been surprised. By the time I worked it out I was starting to make a bit of a recovery. I’d learned I was on the second floor of a hospital in Cavendish that had been taken over for the military. I’d become aware of the other patients in the ward, five of them, all women, all enemy soldiers, although their faces kept changing, as different ones were admitted and discharged. None of them seemed anxious to make friends with me.
The people doing the dirty jobs around the place, the cleaning and bed-making and meal serving, were my own people, prisoners I guessed, although they weren’t allowed near me. The nurses made my bed. Still, one hot afternoon, a lady who looked a bit like my mum, and who was mopping the floor of the ward, gave me a big cheesy smile and a wink, when no-one was looking, and that was the nicest thing that happened the whole time I was there. I watched for her each day, hoping she’d do it again, but it was difficult, because she could only catch my eye when everyone else, staff and patients, was distracted, and that didn’t happen often.
The first really ugly moment came when I was sitting up for the first time, helped by a nice young nurse who could have been younger than me. As I struggled up onto the pillows, trying not to cry with the pain, determined to get upright, one of the other patients in my ward, a middle-aged woman who looked like a dung beetle in a body-building contest, glared at me as she walked past and yelled something accusing and spat, hitting me on the forehead, just below my fringe. I know I went red, and I stared at her, trying not to let any tears come into my eyes. She stared back, even when she got to her bed, and kept staring at me as she flung herself onto the mattress. There was nothing I could do. The nurse looked embarrassed, but she didn’t say anything. How could she? Siding with the enemy wouldn’t be a good career move.
I realised the nurse wasn’t going to wipe off the gob of spit so I took a tissue from her trolley, tensing my hand to stop trembling, and wiped it off myself.
Two days after sitting up I walked for the first time, ten or twelve steps across the ward and back to my bed. It was a big moment, even if it took a quarter of an hour and I moved like an old lady with arthritis. But for a long time I hadn’t known if I would ever walk again.
Each day I tried to go a little further, and that was how I learned I was under guard. On the day I got to the door of the room and took my first step through it a young sulky-looking male soldier got up from a chair outside the door, and pushing his long black hair away from his forehead told me to go back inside.
When I turned around I noticed for the first time the bars on the windows, and realised that I was in every sense a prisoner.
I still didn’t figure out the full extent of the situation straightaway though. The next day, when the doctor with the small glasses came in I asked: ‘Can I walk up and down the corridor outside?’
‘That’s not up to me,’ he said. ‘But I doubt if they’ll let you. No-one else is allowed.’
It took me a moment to connect with what he’d said. Then I asked: ‘You mean no-one in here?’
‘That’s right.’
He was looking through my charts, and not really concentrating on my questions. But I kept asking. I had the feeling he was quite proud of the progress I’d made. Considering how limited the facilities in the hospital seemed to be, he probably had done a good job on the operation. Anyway, I sensed that he felt friendly towards me, so I took full advantage by asking him questions whenever he came in.
‘But aren’t I the only one under guard in here?’
He gave me his full attention then, lowering the notes and looking at me in surprise.
‘No. Oh no, whatever made you think that?’
I still hadn’t made all the right links in my brain. ‘Is everyone in here under guard?’
He gave me a strange look and glanced down at the charts again, made a brief note, then left. But I already had the answer. We were all prisoners. I couldn’t figure out why, but I was sure I was right. The next time the young nurse was changing the dressing on my leg I said to her, as quietly as I could: ‘Is this like a prison ward?’
She looked at me sharply.
‘Prison, yes.’
‘What did these other women do?’
She shrugged and ignored me, concentrating on the dressing. I gripped the base of the mattress, knowing how much pain I was in for. To help distract myself I asked her again, ‘What did they do?’
‘All different,’ she answered, not looking up from my leg.
‘They did different things?’
‘That right.’
‘Like what?’
I paid the price for being inquisitive as she ripped the dressing off. If the ceiling had been any lower I would have hit it. I took a sideways glance at the wound. It was big and ugly b
ut at least it was clean.
‘Any infection?’ I asked.
‘Little bit. Not too bad.’
‘So what did they do to get put in here?’
But she wouldn’t answer, just bent her head over the dressing and ignored me.
I couldn’t imagine what crimes the women had committed, although I guessed that I was probably the only one who’d blown up trains and ships and planes and service stations. But it helped explain the bad moods of the other patients; the way they lay there sullenly. I didn’t know what injuries or illnesses they’d suffered to put them in hospital. I don’t think they’d been beaten up like me. Most of them seemed sick, with bronchitis or heart problems, stuff like that. I guess prisoners can get sick just like anyone else. Probably more than anyone else.
Being prisoners together didn’t create any good feelings between us though. Like, we didn’t exactly bond. There were no ‘getting to know you’ games. The one who spat in my face was the extreme but the others weren’t much better. Come to think of it, they didn’t show much friendliness towards each other either.
As I got better physically I paid a price that I didn’t welcome. The thoughts about my friends, that I’d pushed behind me while I was semiconscious, started to take over. I’d lie on the bed, holding my head with both hands, wishing with every molecule that I could see and feel and hear and smell them, and be with them again. I ached with loneliness.
I still hoped I could find a way to ask the officer who had helped me what had happened to Homer and the others. But I couldn’t figure out how to do it without giving away my identity, and I knew that no matter how friendly the man was, I’d sign my death warrant if he associated me with the teenagers who’d been doing so much damage around Wirrawee and Cobbler’s Bay and Stratton.