Michael certainly had doubts. About seeking help, about this guy, this room, this hospital, about everything really. If it were his decision, he would get up and leave straight away, check out before he had the chance to check in. He turned to Angie in the hope that she’d grab this opportunity to make a graceful exit. Their eyes met and he was immediately disheartened. She’d been sold. There was no way they were going to leave. She had already checked in while he wasn’t looking and there was only one real eventuality from now on.
“No,” he said with a sigh, turning back to the doctor, “we don’t need to think about it anymore. We’ve been doing that for too long.” He paused, almost unable to say what was on his mind. “You have our full support.”
The tension in Dr. Rouben’s face seemed to fade away like the light shining through the window behind him. He relaxed into his chair, and said, “Excellent. We’re here to help you start a family, and that makes us extended family, does it not?”
Angie glanced at Michael and then at the doctor. “Well, then,” she said, in what Michael recognized as her professional tone of voice, “let’s get down to business.”
TONIGHT MICHAEL IS dreaming of the black shadow again. As before, everything is in black and white, the trees, the houses, the street, and there are no other people. It’s like time is nonexistent – all the cars are stationary, the birds aren’t flying – everything is at a standstill, except him, he is running. His chest feels like exploding and his heart is galloping. Suddenly, he realizes that he’s on a street he recognizes. It’s not his street, Christopher Street, but it’s a street somewhere in the neighborhood. His legs feel heavy, like two logs, but he must run faster than ever before. He wonders why.
A mysterious voice answers his thoughts. From where it’s coming, he doesn’t know: You have what they want. You have what they need.
He is confused as to who they are and what they want. He begins to slow. Turning, he sees the black shadow, huge and dark and menacing, not too far behind. He is terrified. He tries to run but his legs are too weak to carry him further. Now he feels as if he’s not moving at all, as if the pavement has turned into a treadmill: his legs are moving, but he is going nowhere.
Then he hears the whispering voice again, warning him: Quickly! They’re after you. Run, Michael. RUN!
It fades, like a child’s cry as it is being carried away… slipping away… into silence, as if abducted by the shadow. He feels alone and scared. He must run. He must, because now he knows the chase is on. They are after him
– they, and the black shadow.
AROUND NOON THE following day, Michael stirred from his thoughts of last night’s nightmare. The whole morning had passed in a blur. He couldn’t stop thinking of the black shadow, and only now in the open air could he clear his head and focus on what he was doing. It was Friday, November 24th. It was lunchtime. He and Norman were on teacher’s duty, and they had even managed one complete circuit of the oval before he had snapped out of his daydreaming, before he returned to the land of the living, as Angie often said. He figured they would have to do at least another two more laps until the bell signaled the end of lunchtime.
All around him children cavorted on the grass, shrieking with delight. One girl was doing summersaults, her yellow dress flipping over her head revealing a pair of white knickers each time she rolled over. Few, mainly girls, were sitting cross-legged on the ground in groups of three or four, chatting animatedly, but for the most part kids were running and squealing in one game of chase or another, for no particular reason it seemed except to run.
Norman asked him a question, which he didn’t completely hear. Michael slowly turned to him with blurred, half-dazed eyes. Norman was wearing a pair of brown corduroy trousers and a tan, V-necked sweater with large, mustard-yellow squares, raiments Michael associated with retired executives dawdling on the golf course. Norman clutched his belt and hoisted his trousers over his belly, looking somewhat impatient, as if he was envisaging slapping Michael in the face or throwing a bucket of ice over his head to wake him up.
“Are you going to tell me how it went last night, or not?” His voice had risen to a low squeal. “You told me this morning you went to the fertility clinic at St. Mary’s with Angie after work,” he said. “That’s why you didn’t make it around for dinner, which, by the way, you missed out big time. Bridget cooked up a gorgeous feast.”
Michael only now remembered that he was supposed to have phoned Norman after the clinic appointment. He had simply forgotten when he and Angie got home. They had flopped in front of the telly for a while and then went to bed, too exhausted to do anything else. He apologized to Norman for not ringing.
Norman shrugged, seemingly not too upset by his forgetfulness “Anyway, you were telling me about last night,” he said.
Michael glanced to his right, pondering his reply. A small creek ran past the oval’s southern-most edge, lying just beyond the wire-mesh fence that encircled the school. Its bed was sandy and dry, barely visible through the wattle shrubs and eucalypt trees lining its banks, and he wondered if Angie felt that way about her body, dry and barren. From the treetops a galah squawked and took off in flight, momentarily startling him. Within seconds, the sky was filled with a maddened flurry of grey and pink as fifty or so of its feathered companions joined it in flight. They seemed without a care in the world, and he briefly thought, if he had wings, would he bother with all the earthly problems of human existence?
“It went quite well, I guess,” he said, watching the birds fly overhead. “Dr. Billy told us not to feel guilty about our situation. He said lots of couples have difficulty conceiving,” and then he lowered his head, sighing. “We’re not the first, I guess, and we won’t be the last.”
Norman’s neck was craned to the sky as he too watched the parrots fly by. “What’s this Dr. Billy like then, you know, apart from being the god of fertility?” he asked, now looking at Michael.
Michael quietly grunted, as he would if Norman had trodden on his toes. He let his thoughts return to the previous evening and the initial reaction he had to the doctor and his plush office. “Angie likes him,” he said, running his hand through his hair. “She thinks he’s charming.”
“But you don’t?”
“I don’t know,” and now Michael was feeling as awkward as when he was sitting in the doctor’s office. He took several deep breaths with his head to the light-grey heavens. The last of the noisy birds flew over. “I just get a strange feeling from him. It’s like he’s got an ulterior motive to be so pleasant.”
“Of course he has,” Norman said. “He wants to make money. Isn’t that what every doctor wants? It’s how he pays for his three cars and five houses. He has to be charming and nice so you’ll give him money and tell all your friends what a lovely guy he is and how he solved all your problems. He’s also thinking about your second and third kids as well. Money, money, money, that’s what it’s all about.” Norman rolled his thumb and fingers together, pretending to feel the wads of cash in his hands. “Anyway, what’s wrong with that?”
“That’s not what’s bothering me,” Michael said, now running a hand through his hair and returning his gaze to the children running on the oval. “I know he has to make his money, but it’s, well, I don’t think I like my wife calling other men charming and nice.”
