Rosie's Son

Seeing my brother this way is trying to break my heart, but I steel myself rather than fracture. For a moment I imagine jumping into my huge work ute with its steel chassis and taking a comfortable ride away, right away, from this moment.

It should be the end for him.

Will he soften towards his brother? I stand some distance away to watch if the oil I have dripped upon them both morning after morning does its’ work. I hold in each hand a glass bowl in which is a candle. Those who pass by think I am a lamp stand.

I look up and there are a group of three suits watching me as I kneel beside the broken man, the one I think could be my brother. One is shaking his head and pointing. The one next to him wears a skull cap and a suit that probably costs a month’s worth of my wages. The third is ignoring the other two but his sneer is just for me. The sneer and the back to front collar don’t seem to go together but it isn’t my business. The one who is shaking his head flips me off, and I feel my brother’s shoulder tremble. I look back at his face.

I notice the only light in this rough street lined with dilapidated housing, where stick injuries and viruses probably wait for you inside any peeling, splintered door, is a tall and elegant lamp stand. Despite its’ unmarked appearance it seems older than the stinking, rubbish-strewn neighbourhood.

I feel a hot breath on my cheek, and I think about the tonne of sorrow my brother has brought to our family. We don’t think much of him. If his name is mentioned at Christmas, everyone is silent, then someone will tell a joke and the conversation hurries on. The wall of silence around him and the pain he has caused is one brick higher.

Will he stay a long time in this neighbourhood? Though I have been following him for years on and off such things are hidden from me. I just follow orders because I want to ,mind, but it’s also part of my job to do my work seriously without curiosity or haughtiness. But these ones being different, sometimes twisted, creatures bemuse us.

I look at his face covered in red scabs, and the bruises appearing down one side of his face. Is it him? Or just someone who reminds me of my longing and pain, my rage and fear, my unforgiveness that’s been eating the lining of my stomach for the past two years?

The broad nose, the dark brown hair, the pale marks splotched across the brown of his left arm, poking out from under the greasy stinking faux leather jacket, remind me of the photo Mum took of him. She decided she needed to see him before she died. After being away from home for two days with Aunty Margaret she returned with this photo of him, sitting on a low rendered fence in a neighbourhood that looked better than this one.

Now, it looks like his right arm is broken, and he has fallen and hit his head. He had some help I’d say. What if I’m wrong and it’s not him? Does it matter?

Will he do what I am told he will do? One of the candles gutters and smokes leaving a grey ring on the glass. A wind blows around my legs hidden in the faux dressing of the lamp stand. A wingtip escapes from the stillness of visual cast iron. Even I have heard whispers of the list of his brother’s sins. Colton. Drug dealer, wife seducer, heartbreaker, paid thug, Cocaine addict, loose cannon…

Why do I remember our mud fights and bike races? Chalking the stairs with pictures of cartoon superheroes until Dad told us he’d keep us away from the footy game if we didn’t get in and do our homework. I feel the bond, the place where every sin hurts more because you are my brother. We have the same eyes though I’ve looked after mine better.

You stink, bro

I can’t take you far. Even in your beat-up undernourished state you weigh more than I do. You often defended me from others. I used you and hit you sometimes too. It was sibling rivalry.

But you really are a disappointing brother.

Will he make up his mind soon? The flame gutters further and seems to lose mass. The wind around my legs is a clammy coldness. I long to move my wings and hover over the street but I obey orders.

Stacey sat on Colton's bed in her bridal lingerie. That’s a hard one to get past. True I’d been away fighting for six months, but my own brother looked so smug as he slid the strap down her shoulder. The smugness disappeared the moment he heard the thud of boot at his back, and then my fist slammed into the left side of his face.

Stacey cowered, whimpered, left…

It was a long time ago. I know it took two, she didn’t fight him. However, it is the loss of his loyalty that stings like acid in my gut day in, day out. I shake my head and feel for a pulse, it is faint. I stop. This might be a stranger that just reminds me of him. Duty of Care.

Will he pull out his phone ? There’s a few embers and I huff toward them, still not released to fly over. I realise he has done it when I hear the ambulance wailing at the bottom of the street. My legs and wings twitch. The smell of hot breath and foul blood fades.

I did help the paramedics by describing the injuries I could see on the phone call, and they’re all business. "Are you coming with us?” says the shorter woman with the pale curly hair, as she steps in beside him.

“I’ll follow,” I say as I race to my truck. Someone must make sure they care.

Will I be allowed to catch the end of this story? I fly and open my mouth in a roar that makes the foul, red-eyed beasts drop away to their hiding places behind the beat-up stinking bins and doors with special entrance codes sent by text. There’s a pulse between my ear and shoulder that tells me he breathes still. Still for this world beneath the flashing red and blue lights. The siren wails and the vehicle races through the red light between two vehicles from which pagan beats pulse into the polluted air. I wave to a rainbow wearing shining faced brother who signals a change of course.

There is a slick of sweat on the wheel beneath my hands. I gape as I pull up at a light and the ambulance turns left. I was expecting straight ahead. I follow the wail and we head two kilometres west and up a ramp to the freeway. I see the sign seven hundred metres ahead for the hospital; we are heading to a closer hospital.

Will the High One let me see the outcome? I raise my hand towards heaven, and then wave as I make eye contact with two blue clad soldiers who slip through the roof of the racing ambulance. I must go back to the neighbourhood and wait. It has been declared. I turn and cruise back over the rooftops and drop to the street two blocks from where I stood as a lamp stand.

Two sandwiches and a hot cup of soup appear in my hands, and there’s the man lying shivering beneath some cardboard on a step two doors away. As I stand over him, he looks at me fearfully. “It is OK” , I say in his mother’s tongue and half-asleep his child brain answers with him sitting up smiling, looking at the food I offer, then taking it. He sips from the cup and says, “ Ahh, this chicken soup is good. Where you get this from? “

I sit on the step beside the hungry man.

I stand in the ambulance bay as they check his pulse. They push the gurney on which he lies away fast. The short woman directs me to the public entrance,” It’s to the left around the corner of the building.”

I run to the waiting area. After 45 minutes when I get to the nurse, I say, “I came in with the beat-up man that was brought in by ambulance three-quarters of an hour ago. Can I have news?”

She sighs, “Are you a relative?”

“He’s my brother , Colton Smythe. Head injuries. A broken arm. I found him in a bad way.”

She nods, “Sit over there.”

After another ninety minutes pass, the door opens and I see a blue-clad dark-haired nurse, looking around. She looks to the nurse behind the counter, who nods in my direction.

“Are you the brother of Colton Smythe, the injured man brought in about two hours ago?”

I wonder why she is saying it slowly as if I am an idiot. I do feel dizzy.

“You look like you’re in shock. Sit down.” She moves me to a chair closer to the door that goes to the treatment rooms. She takes my pulse, then grabs a blood pressure monitor. After checking, she says. “I think you’ll be OK.”

I try to smile.

“ I’ll get you a cup of tea. Sugar?”

I nod. I haven’t drunk a cup of tea in years but hey I feel shivery and weird. I figure Rosie, my late Mum, would recommend it.

While I sip it, she says Colton has two lower arm breaks on the right – radius and ulna.

I think, OK, whatever you say.

“We’re most concerned about his head injuries. We’ve had to revive him twice, but he didn’t stop breathing long enough for us to fear lasting injuries, but we can’t be sure at this stage. He is in an induced coma . You can see him if you want.”

She invites me into a room behind the waiting room that is full of monitors, and there lies Colton attached to a couple of techno things with screens, and a drip line.

“He’ll have surgery in an hour. It’s a good idea to see him beforehand. He can probably hear you even if he can’t respond.”

I sit for a few minutes by the bed. His left arm twitches and I startle. He goes still and I am tempted to check his pulse. But there are no piercing alarms from any machine, so I take a deep breath.

“ I was really angry when I realised it was you Colton. To be honest I wasn’t completely sure until now, but I can see the banana birthmark across ya left calf.”

I found it bizarre that the leg twitched at that moment. A nurse was going by in the hall, and I wanted to call out and tell her. “Look.”

There was silence as I watched one of the monitors.

“Bro, I’ve been so mad at you for so long, I hardly know what to do. Lucky for you, I have this policy I don’t beat up on half-dead blokes. Colton, I don’t,” I swallowed, “ I don’t want you to die. Live, mate, live and we can work something out.”

The nurse who’d spoken to me earlier appeared at the door. “We have to prepare him for surgery now. I’ll let you know how it goes when he’s out.”

My hands are trembling. I stand up awkwardly shoving my hands in the pockets of my pants.

“ You can wait in the room two doors to the right if you like. There’s drinks and snacks available there and a TV. Someone will come get you when they’re finished.” She nodded and the next thing two helpers in blue are with her, and Colton is pushed away.

It feels like ages, but I look at my watch and only forty minutes have passed since the nurse let me in to talk to him. I punch the remote and a talk show comes on . The blonde host is excitedly introducing a celebrity who looks familiar. I switch channels and start channel surfing. Tension is digging into the side of my neck . A woman in a navy business dress and jacket comes into the room. I wait for her to sit down, then I realise she is wearing a name tag.

She looks at me and says, “Are you the next of kin for a gentleman we’re calling Colton Smythe, currently in surgery?”

I stand.

“Can you tell me his date of birth please? We need his full medical records if we can trace all of them.”

“ I believe it’s the 1st December 1977.” She taps away at a tablet with a stylus.

“I’ll double check it’s him. Can you give me his current residential address?”

“No, tonight was the first time I’d seen him for a while.”

“ Can you tell me anything that might appear in his medical record?”

“When he was 14, so around 1992, he broke his collarbone in a fall. He would have been treated at Westmead hospital.”

“Ah, yes, here it is,” she said, eyes fixed on the tablet. “So, I’m confident this is Colton James Smythe born on the 1st of December 1977.”

She stood up, “Thanks. Don’t hesitate to help yourself to a drink or something.”

She waved at a bench complete with canisters I assume hold tea and coffee next to a sink, located behind me. She walked to the door and opened it, then I heard it click behind her.

Alone in the room, I shiver as if someone’s walked over my grave.

I can’t explain the change since I knelt beside his body at that stinking dumpster. I had a choice too, whether I stopped and if I stayed. Those other three guys, they decided he wasn’t worth the trouble. I wonder why I took that detour, and why I no longer see the past as an unbearable obstacle. Until tonight I thought anyone would help him before I would.

I go to the drink counter and make myself a coffee with three sugars. I take a sip and then go back to the couch and put the cup on the side table. Flopping down I rest my head against the back of the couch.

If he lives, I want to know his story.

At the halfway point in the coffee, I am startled by a strong memory : Rosie Dalton-Smythe. She used to laugh about the way Dad said the Smythe part so proudly. On my fourteenth birthday she whispered to me, “It’s just a fancy way to say Smith.”

Whatever I was called, Mum made me feel like she was proud of me.

I decide then I’ll help Colton as much as I can.

After another long and unsatisfying surf through the TV channels I see it’s one am. I may as well go home. There’s an optimism despite having no news, and the knowing that I’ll want to be here for a long time tomorrow.

The nurse who took Colton away meets me in the hall outside the room.

“ You’re the man wanting to hear how Colton Smythe went aren’t you?”

She smiles though her eyes are tired, and this means good news.

“It all went well, but we’re putting him in ICU overnight.”

I notice two orderlies in blue behind her standing patiently as if on guard duty. I take my eyes off them and smile at her, and when I look up, they’re gone. The hospital is eerily quiet.

I go back to the emergency ward counter and wait until the receptionist is free. I ask if I can pay the upfront fee they require at this hospital and leave my phone number for news of my brother Colton. As I walk toward the car park I think, there will be a lot more to do for him, but Aunty Margaret’s widower, Doug, might help. The couple always seemed to understand how Mum felt about Colton and anyone else who needed “God’s love.”

The sense of warmth coming over me feels like when you first warm your back after a long cold walk. My heart beats faster, as if Rosie would be prouder of this moment than any other.

The END