hands me a $20 note. ‘When you’re done ’ere, you get yourself a cab back to your old man’s, all right?’ he says. He points to a cupboard beneath my hospital bed. ‘I brought your shoes and a fresh set of clothes for ya.’
Slim hands me a slip of paper and walks for the door. An address and a phone number on the paper.
‘Your old man’s address,’ he says. ‘I’m not far from you boys, just past the Hornibrook Bridge. You call this number if you need me. It’s the number of a hock shop beneath the flat. Ask for Gill.’
‘Then what do I say?’ I ask.
‘Say you’re best friends with Slim Halliday.’
Then he’s gone.
*
Dr Brennan reads a chart on a clipboard. She sits on the side of the bed.
‘Give me your arm,’ she says. Around my left bicep she wraps a velvet cuff attached to a black pump shaped like a grenade.
‘What’s that?’
‘Checks your blood pressure,’ she says. ‘Just relax now.’
She squeezes the grenade several times.
‘So, you like Star Wars?’
I nod.
‘So do I,’ she says. ‘Who’s your favourite character?’
‘Han. Boba Fett, maybe.’ A long pause. ‘No, Han.’
Dr Brennan gives me a sharp eye.
‘You sure about that?’
Pause.
‘Luke,’ I say. ‘It’s always been Luke. Who’s yours?’
‘Oh, Darth Vader all the way for me,’ she says.
I see where she’s going with this. Dr Brennan should join the fuzz. I’ll bite.
‘You like Vader?’
‘Oh yeah, I always enjoy the bad guys,’ she says. ‘You don’t have much of a story if you don’t have some bad guys. Can’t have a good, good hero without a bad, bad villain, right?’
I smile.
‘Who doesn’t want to be Darth Vader?’ she laughs. ‘Someone pushes in front of you when you’re lining up for a hot dog and you give them the ol’ silent Force choke.’ She makes a pincer grip with her thumb and forefinger.
I laugh, making the same grip in midair. ‘I find your lack of mustard disturbing,’ I say and we laugh together.
Out of the corner of my eye I catch sight of a boy standing in the doorway of my hospital room. He wears a light blue hospital gown like me. He has a shaved head but for a long brown rat’s tail stretching from the back of his scalp and draping over his right shoulder. His left hand grips a mobile IV stand holding the drip bag that’s plugged into his hand.
‘What is it, Christopher?’ asks Dr Brennan.
Maybe he’s eleven years old. He’s got a scar across his top lip that makes him look like the last eleven-year-old boy with a mobile drip I’d ever want to come across in a dark alley. He scratches his arse.
‘Tang’s too weak again,’ he spits.
Dr Brennan sighs. ‘Christopher, there’s twice as much powder in it than last time,’ she says.
He shakes his head and walks away.
‘I’m fuckin’ dyin’ and yer givin’ me weak Tang?’ he says on his way up the corridor outside.
Dr Brennan raises her eyebrows. ‘Sorry about that,’ she says.
‘What’s he dying from?’ I ask.
‘Poor bugger’s got a tumour the size of Ayers Rock in his brain,’ she says.
‘Can you do anything about it?’
‘Maybe,’ she says, writing my blood pressure numbers onto a sheet on the clipboard. ‘Maybe not. Sometimes medicine’s got nothing to do with it.’
‘What do you mean? . . . God?’
‘Oh, no, not God. I’m talkin’ about Gog.’
‘Who’s Gog?’
‘He’s God’s cranky, more impatient younger brother,’ she says. ‘While God’s off building the Himalayas, miserable ol’ Gog is off puttin’ tumours in the heads of young Brisbane lads.’
‘Gog’s got a lot to answer for,’ I suggest.
‘Gog walks among us,’ she says. ‘Anyway, where were we?’
‘Vader.’
‘Oh yeah, so you don’t like Darth Vader, do you?’ she says. ‘You and your brother wanted to chop him in half with an axe, I understand?’
‘We were pissed he killed Obi-Wan.’
She stares into my eyes, rests her folder on the bed.
‘You ever heard the saying, Eli, “Can’t bullshit a bullshitter”?’
‘Slim loves that one,’ I say.
‘I bet he does.’
‘I see some shit in this place,’ she says, her Irish accent making that sentence sound like she’s talking about a fine dawn sunrise. ‘I’ve seen green shit and yellow shit and black shit and purple shit with polka dots and shit so thick you could plop it over your mother-in-law’s head and fairly knock her out. I’ve seen shit come out of holes you didn’t know existed. I’ve seen shit tear the arseholes out of women and men, but rarely have I seen shit so dangerous as the bullshit pouring