Rain May and Captain Daniel (8 page)

I'll have to have an operation, but only when my surgeon comes back from overseas.

I'll have to have an operation.

The Doctor says that the statistics are well in my favour. The Counsellor tells me I have the constitution of an ox. They both tell me I am brave and strong. They both tell me I will come through this with flying colours. They both tell me how much they love me. They both look scared.

I'm scared.

I try not to be. I went on the Intensive Care Unit tour and asked careful questions and nodded at everything that was said, but all I could see were sick children with tubes coming out of them. That's all I could see and that was all the Counsellor could see, I know, because she held my hand very tightly the whole time and I couldn't pull away from her.

It's not so bad when Mum's here. She brought in the
Enterprise
model and we're making it on a little table that's set up near the window. The nurses come and help sometimes. When we're bored we take a break and go down to the canteen and outside to the playground.

The Doctor says we've made my bit of the ward look like home. But even though it is all very interesting being here and I do feel I have learnt a lot, I long to go home, back to my own bed and my own room.

Most of all I miss hearing them talk at night. The darkness and stillness of our country nights. Here there is always noise and bustle, right through the night.

And I miss Rain. She was going to come and see me today but didn't. She sent me a note instead. It wasn't her fault they didn't make it. It was Julia's fault, the note said.

By the time I get back to school, they'll have taken her. Becky and she are already friends. I watched her the other day. I knew she would rather have been playing basketball with the girls than sitting talking to me.

By the time I get out of here, I'll have lost the one friend I've had in years.

I don't want to write any more. I'm not feeling well.

Aliens Everywhere

Maggie got up early and made her date and chocolate surprise muffins for morning tea. When Julia and Dad arrived, the breakfast dishes were all washed, incense was burning in the lounge room and everything else smelt of muffins. She insisted on taking Julia right through the house, showing her the renovations we had done. Julia admired the paint work and the old dresser the Counsellor and Maggie were stripping and even ate two muffins. If it had been up to me those muffins would have been date and poison, not date and chocolate, surprises.

Dad apologised to me. ‘I'm sorry, Rain. Work's been unbelievable lately with this upgrade we're doing, but I promise nothing like that will ever happen again.'

I thought he was going to kiss me and I wasn't ready for that yet, so I scooted backwards and held out my hand instead.

‘Peace?' Dad asked taking it.

‘Peace,' I said and we shook on it. And Maggie gave me the biggest muffin with my hot chocolate.

Hospitals smell. And everyone whispers, except for the nurses who talk more loudly and cheerfully than they should. Even though Daniel's ward had a big colourful wall mural and the kids had their own things hanging above the beds and on their bedside chests of drawers, it was still a hospital full of sick children.

When we walked in Daniel and the Counsellor were leaning over a model of something.

‘Oh Rain,' the Counsellor said, ‘how lovely of you!'

‘This is my dad, Brian,' I said, ‘and his girlfriend, Julia. Hi, Daniel.'

The Counsellor looked tired but Daniel looked pretty much the same as usual. Diana said she might take the opportunity to slip out for a while, make some phone calls and buy some fruit, if that was okay with us.

‘She's here all the time,' Daniel said.

‘What are you making?' Julia asked. ‘That looks like — it is! It's a model of the
Enterprise
.'

‘Mum got it for me,' Daniel said. ‘I'm into
Star Trek.

‘So am I,' Julia said, and held up her hand in the Vulcan salute. ‘Live long and Prosper. What's your favourite,
Next Gen
or
Deep Space Nine??

After that, we all relaxed and the visiting hour flew by. I kept sneaking looks at Julia, wondering how anyone with such perfect fingernails and hair could be a secret Trekkie, but she wasn't faking. I remembered Dad saying how he knew someone with every
Star Trek
video and I wondered why I hadn't worked it out then, that he had meant Julia. After all, Dad didn't know all that many people. It had to be her. I had just been too angry with him to really listen.

‘What a great kid,' she said when we got in the car to go home again. ‘I do hope he romps through that surgery and makes a full recovery. So intelligent! You are lucky to have a friend like that, Rain.'

She insisted that Dad drive to Minotaur Bookshop where she bought three
Star Trek
lapel pins, one for her, one for Daniel and one for me. ‘For good luck,' she said. ‘You can tell Daniel I'll wear mine and think of him every time I see it.'

I stuck mine through the band of my hat so I wouldn't lose it in the wash, and put Daniel's away so I could send it with the ‘get well' card our class was making.

Or should have been, except that all our time was taken up with listening to and admiring Becky and Tom's American cousin, Madison, who was now over her jet lag. She was tall with bouncy hair and a perfect smile. And Becky was right, she had an opinion on everything.

‘You're so cute, Rain,' she said, when Becky introduced me. ‘In the States we'd say you were a real individual, the way you dress.'

I had on my blue wig, the one I'd bought at the Royal Show. It was hot and scratched the back of my head but I didn't care. All the other girls were pulling their hair back like Madison's, into pony tails that flipped at their shoulders.

‘Well thanks, Madison.'

‘And your name, too. Fancy naming anyone after the weather.'

‘It's a poem, Madison. I'm named after a poem.'

‘Whatever.'

When she saw my hat, though, she shrieked, ‘Are you a Trekker?'

‘Live Long and Prosper,' I muttered, doing the strange v salute I'd been practising.

‘Oh girl, you should have told me! The one thing I'm just sick about is that I'm missing
Enterprise
, the new series. Back home everyone's watching it. Scott Bakala is a total stud puppy.'

I didn't have a clue what she was talking about, but I was interested to note that she now considered me her girlfriend. That's what she said when she hopped into Becky's mother's car at the end of school: ‘Bye, girlfriend.' Becky was right, she was so American.

‘I think Americans are actually aliens,' I told Maggie when I got home. ‘I think they've been beamed up from somewhere really strange and far away.'

‘You're probably right,' Maggie said. She was kneading bread dough in time to one of her celtic folk cds. Every time the Irish hand drum banged, Maggie thumped the bread. It was soothing.

‘Any news?' I asked.

‘Diana has taken Daniel down to Rosebud for a few days,' Maggie said. ‘They're waiting for his cardiologist to come back from that conference. And your father sent this up, special delivery.'

There was a computer sitting on Maggie's corner desk.

‘Dad sent it?'

‘Well, apparently it was chucked out at Julia's work. She scavenged it. Surprised?'

I nodded.

‘It all works,' Maggie said, ‘and I got us on the Internet straightaway so you can email Daniel anytime you want — they've got their notebook with them.'

I emailed Daniel before dinner about Madison and the new
Star Trek
series,
Enterprise
. And just after dinner I checked the email and found a reply from him. Reading it I could hear him talking and I missed him so much I got a pain under my ribs. I told Maggie and she said I shouldn't have had two helpings of butterscotch self-saucing pudding, but then she hugged me so my pain hurt worse.

‘I know what you mean,' she said. ‘I know just what you mean.'

I emailed Emma in Sydney, too, to give her our email address. I had only had a short note from her talking about the boys in her new school and how she didn't know which one to go out with. As if her parents would let her go out with anyone! Still, I guess I'd fibbed to her, too, about Daniel. Maggie emailed Fran and then we surfed the Internet for a while. Maggie checked out yoga sites and I looked for kids chat rooms, but the problem was that it just went on and on. As soon as you found one good place, there were a dozen links to follow. My head was spinning when I went to bed.

At school everyone talked about the disco and what they were going to wear. There was a rumour that the first prize for best costume was the new Circus Ponies' cd and everyone wanted to win it.

Becky and Madison were going as
Lord of the Rings
characters.

‘Have you read the book?' I asked, surprised.
Lord of the Rings
was a big book and I couldn't somehow see Madison reading it.

‘I've seen the movie. It was, like, awesome.'

‘I've read the book,' Becky said, ‘or at least part of it. Mum's making us these great long dresses. What are you going to wear?'

I couldn't make up my mind. Fancy dress was difficult. I wanted to be beautiful and glamorous. I wanted to be wild. I wanted to be mysterious and spooky. I didn't want to be anything from Harry Potter. I didn't want to be anything Halloweeny. I knew half the kids were recycling their Halloween costumes but I couldn't see the point.

‘You'll have to make up your mind,' Maggie said, ‘you're running out of time. But make it easy, will you, Rain? I'm going to start on that downstairs room tomorrow and I don't want to break off and make a complicated costume for you in the middle of sanding the floor. Can't you go as Alice in Wonderland, or maybe — hey, I've got it. Go retro — go as Dorothy, you know, from
The Wizard of Oz.'

‘Maggie, puhlease! That is like, so yesterday!'

In the end I emailed Daniel and asked his opinion and got an email back from Diana: ‘Rain, I was making Daniel a costume. If you want to, you're welcome to wear it. Ask Maggie — she's got a spare key. It's in the sewing room hanging up under a plastic coat cover. Do wear it, Rain — it would make us all feel so good to know it was being worn.'

This was followed by an email from Daniel: ‘Rain, I was going as Data but you could use the costume to go as Tasha Yar. Go to the video shop and see if you can get the episode, ‘
The Next Generation: Encounter at Farpoint.
You'll see them both. Data's great — an android but he loves humans. He quotes, and writes poetry. But Tasha Yar is a girl. She got killed though. Your choice. I don't mind.'

Maggie and I went next door. It was weird going in when they were all somewhere else.

In the sewing room, just as the Counsellor had promised, was Data's suit. It was a top and pants in black with a mustard kind of inset in the top and the
Star Trek
badge, of course. It should have been a jumpsuit, but Diana had made the two pieces separate so you could more easily go to the toilet.

I thought it would be too small for me, but it fitted perfectly. I could see what everyone meant about Daniel having a growth spurt. I'd been taller than him when we first got to Clarkson and now it seemed we were the same height. The costume looked good. It looked like a proper costume, the sort you hire, not make yourself.

‘Cool,' I said. ‘It's really cool, isn't it, Mum?'

‘It's fantastic,' Maggie said. ‘Like it's so tomorrow! I really must do more than curtains with my sewing machine.'

We looked up Tasha Yar and Data on the Internet. Tasha Yar was a devoted Starfleet officer and a strong warrior. She was also quite beautiful. Data was an android with yellow eyes and pale skin. He knew everything but couldn't feel any emotions. Of course, I wanted to be Tasha Yar but I knew Daniel would have gone as Data.

‘I haven't got yellow eyes,' I told Maggie.

‘No, that's true. We could do the pale skin though, with face paint. Look, it's a pity we didn't make a Seven of Nine silver catsuit for you. Look at the face paint she's wearing! Next fancy dress party, hey? Maybe your birthday?''

‘Would you?'

‘It wouldn't be a catsuit,' Maggie said. ‘We'd do it the way Diana did, as two separate pieces. I don't see why not, Rain, if you want. Although by then you might want a different costume. Now, who is it to be — Data or Tasha Yar.'

‘Data,' I said. ‘I'll email Daniel. He'll give me all the facts.'

Daniel's surgery was scheduled for the day after the disco. I knew it wouldn't really make any difference who I went as, but it seemed important to have as many things piled up on Daniel's side as possible.

‘You know,' Maggie said, the day before the disco, ‘if we wanted to, we could give this costume a dress rehearsal.'

‘What?'

‘Well,' Maggie said, ‘it would be possible for you to get dressed up after school as Data, and then we could drive down to Melbourne to the Royal Children's and show you in all your android glory to Captain Daniel. What do you reckon?'

I thought about it. I thought about walking in those huge hospital doors dressed as Data and I cringed. And then I thought of Daniel's ward, the beeping heart monitors and the pale kids, some of them only toddlers, and how hospitals always look like hospitals no matter how many wall murals there are, or mobiles.

‘Okay,' I said.

I did look just like Data except that my hair was lighter and Maggie had had to tie it up in a little pony tail at the back.

When I walked into the ward Daniel gave me the biggest smile I'd ever seen. He looked fine, hardly even pale. I almost thought we'd got it wrong, that he didn't need surgery at all and they'd be sending him home.

When the visiting hour was over, Diana walked us out to the lifts, just as she used to walk us to the front door of our house.

‘I hope everything goes well,' Maggie said, giving her a hug. ‘You know if there's anything at all —'

‘Thanks for what you have done,' Diana said. ‘And Rain, thank you, too. Your emails have meant everything to Daniel, connecting him with the other world, with home.'

‘I'm sure he'll be fine,' I said and allowed her to hug me, too.

Maggie and I walked back to the carpark in silence.

‘I wish there was more we could do,' Maggie said. ‘I feel powerless, you know?'

‘You could make soup,' I said, ‘for when they come back. You could make your famous roast pumpkin soup, huge vats of it, and freeze it. Diana was going to make soup for us, you know, when we moved in.'

‘Oh Rain, what a fantastic idea! Yes, I'll do that. Pumpkin soup and some celery soup and —'

‘Maybe not just soup,' I said quickly before she got carried away. ‘Maybe some casseroles or something.'

‘I'll check with my yoga teacher,' Maggie said. ‘Strength-building healing things, that's what they'll all need.'

The school disco was a huge success. Madison's eyes popped out when she saw me dressed as Data. Mind you, she looked pretty cool herself. Becky's mum had made her and Becky matching Elven princess dresses, with long drooping sleeves. They weren't good to dance in, though, and Madison fell over doing the Nutbush dance and the hems trailed in someone's spilled drink. I was pleased I had gone as Data, even though I didn't win the most original costume prize. That went to a little Year Two girl dressed as a dragon.

‘You should have got that,' Becky said, looking a bit hot and flustered in her long medieval robes. ‘You look so fabulous. I wish I'd thought of someone who wore pants. This skirt's giving me the creeps.'