farewell and left his friend to pick up his coat and attend the meeting. “Mikey, I almost forgot,” he heard Norman say before he exited through the main doors. “Bridget’s cooking for Thanksgiving tonight. She asked if you and Angie would be interested in coming over later.”
“Thanksgiving? Who celebrates that?” Michael said with his hand on the door.
Norman shrugged. “We do. Bridget’s father was a US Marine. He settled in Sydney after the war and we’ve kind of kept up the family tradition.”
Michael took a moment to consider the offer. “I don’t know, Norman. I’m not sure how long this thing’s going to take. Can I call you later?”
“Sure, if I’m still alive to take your call.”
Rolling his eyes, Michael waved goodbye and strode outside. The main entrance opened onto the basketball court-cum-quadrangle. Beyond and to the left was the teachers’ parking lot. The threatened drizzle he had seen from the classroom had materialized into light rain and he was forced to break into a trot. He cursed. This incessant weather was beginning to really get on his nerves of late. He was beginning to feel permanently damp, as though his clothes were always wet.
As he reached the parking lot, the sky visibly darkened and the rain began to fall in heavy drops. He cursed again. He spied the faded yellow paintwork of the VW parked between two other cars and began running to it. He jumped in and slotted the key in the ignition, grateful to get out of the rain. Annoyingly, the steam lifting from his soggy clothes fogged the windows almost straight away, and when he turned the key he felt a sudden chill, more than he expected wet clothes should, like he had just sat down inside a freezer. He began to shiver and his teeth chattered uncontrollably, and right at the moment the engine sputtered into life the image of Angie twitching and drooling on the ground flashed before him.
Once again the unnerving premonition of dread washed over him. A voice suddenly popped into his head, hushed and frightened, as if narrating the image: Someth’ns wrong with Angie. I think she’s dyin’, Mikey.
He slammed the gear stick in reverse and accelerated back. “Please don’t let anything be wrong with her,” he mumbled. Except, to his dismay, no matter how hard he tried he couldn’t erase that image of her from his mind.
He sped through the gates out of the school grounds. The idea of going to the hospital suddenly didn’t seem so bad.
CHAPTER 3
MICHAEL DROVE EAST in the fast lane along ANZAC Highway, heading toward the city from the coast and pretty much against the flow of rush hour traffic. The windscreen wipers swayed back and forth, sweeping away the drizzle that blurred his vision. The streetlights were already on and every car was driving with their headlights blazing.
Out of habit, he glanced at the dashboard clock. It hadn’t worked since Angie passed the car on to him when she inherited the Corolla from her parents, permanently stuck at three seventeen, but he didn’t need to know the time to know that he was running late. Hoping he wouldn’t encounter any speed traps, he pushed the throttle and weaved in and out of the traffic until, elbow-like, the road kinked northeast and he came to a halt at a red light.
The opposite side of the intersection was a vista of green. Michael had read in a guidebook that one of the charms of Adelaide were the vast parklands that completely framed the city, enabling the visitor to escape the bustle of the city center and experience the serenity of the countryside. ANZAC Highway forged its way through this sylvan rim like a grey river slicing through a forest. Lining both sides were imposing eucalypts, which were now swaying haphazardly in the gusty, drizzly wind. About a kilometer or so further on, the road abruptly terminated at a jagged wall of glass and cement. Of all the city buildings, the State Bank Building where Angie worked on the nineteenth floor was by far the tallest. It reminded him of a jutting middle finger on a hand in which all others were bent at the knuckle, that petulant one-finger gesture favored by most teenagers when the teacher’s back was turned.
The traffic arrow turned green and Michael turned off the highway. For ten minutes he drove east, keeping the south parklands and the cityscape to his left. Until now he had made reasonable time, but slow moving traffic merging from the city center and uncooperative traffic lights were combining to make the journey all the more frustrating. When he finally arrived at the fourth major intersection, which formed the southeast corner of the parklands, he turned left and progressed northward, once again against the rush hour flow.
As expected, on the opposite side of the road, St. Mary’s Hospital rose into the bleak sky out of the serrated horizon of suburban rooftops. Its twin, eight-story buildings reminded him of two giant tombstones rising out of a cemetery. He stared at them as he waited for a break in the traffic to cross over. How on earth had he let himself be talked into this? he mused, running a hand through his hair. Angie knew how much he hated hospitals.
You know damn well why you’re here, he answered himself. Because of what happened this morning. Someth’ns wrong with Angie.
The outward-bound traffic slowed and he crossed into a side street toward the main gates. An unsmiling security guard waved him beneath an upright boom and into the visitor’s parking lot, which, to his chagrin, was looking quite full. He passed a sign welcoming him to St. Mary’s Hospital, yet the very thought of walking inside was making him suddenly apprehensive. The hospital complex was the third largest in Adelaide, though never once had he stepped foot inside its gold-brick walls. Thousands of times he had passed this hospital, and thousands of times he had wished he would never have to pass through its doors. He was not relishing the prospect of doing so now.
Three rows from the gate he found a space, parked the car, and got out. Head down, he began to trot through the drizzle toward the eastern building until he realized it was the nurses’ residence. He halted, momentarily disorientated, then saw a sign above the sliding glass doors of the western building: ST. MARY’S HOSPITAL MAIN ENTRANCE. He hastened there now.
Inside, the lobby was busy with patients and staff. He immediately felt irked and crowded. A woman was speaking animatedly on a payphone in the far corner near the florist and the news agency. A man was struggling on a set of crutches with his leg in plaster. A young child with a scabrous rash all over her face was holding a woman’s hand, crying. Closer, an old lady in a nightgown was wandering this way and that with a note pinned to her back: PLEASE RETURN ME TO WARD 1C. I AM LOST. It was just as he imagined a battlefield in the First World War, hectic with the traffic of wounded humanity. But it was the smell he disliked most. The lobby reeked of disinfectant and foreboding.
He eyed the clock above the entrance. Five minutes past five. Not as late as he originally thought, but late nonetheless. He quickly scanned for his wife. She was nowhere to be seen. He tried to look behind two stern looking women with white coats and black stethoscopes heading in his direction, but as he stepped back to let them pass, he inadvertently bumped into a nurse carrying several patient files, some of which dropped from her arms and spilled onto the floor. Feeling culpable and a little foolish, Michael at once bent down to help her pick them up, but in his haste he accidentally banged his head with her elbow, causing her to lose grip of the remaining folders. This only furthered his embarrassment. Resting on his hunches, he gathered some of the loose pages together and handed them back to her, apologizing for his carelessness.
She too gathered up the sprawled files. Like many in the room, she was stern and unsmiling. Michael briefly wondered what it would be like to work in such an environment where people were perpetually angry and depressed, and then figured he would probably end up with a long and dour face before too long. Picking up a loose leaf of paper that had slipped from a file, Michael wasn’t sure whether her brusqueness was due to frustration of being delayed or plain
