The Byron Journals (15 page)

‘Oh…I didn't realise she needed an anaesthetic… Heidi hasn't told me much.'

The nurse stood, put her arm around Heidi and smiled at Andrew. ‘Okay then…The surgery will only take half an hour or so, but it will take an hour or two for the anaesthetic to wear off. We'll call you when Heidi wakes up.'

He was glad to get out of there. Surgery? General anaesthetic. It wasn't fair that she hadn't told him about any of this.

He approached the receptionist to make an appointment. She was on the phone, so he sat down and tried not to make eye contact with anyone. He thought of his obese, sweaty Biology teacher pointing out parts of the reproductive organs on an overhead projector. Testicles. Ovaries. Uterus. She'd stuttered and gone red every time she said clitoris, and the class had erupted with laughter. In Sex Ed they'd all been given the chance to roll a condom over a banana. And, of course, his mum and dad had talked to him about contraception and reproduction too; he understood how it all worked. But somehow, everything he knew about STIs had nothing to do with Heidi and him. STIs were for old, crusty people who'd had unprotected sex with multiple partners. Or so he thought. Where had Heidi picked it up? How many other guys had she slept with before him?

When the receptionist ended her call, Andrew made his way over. She'd just had a cancellation, so he could see Doctor Singh right away if he wanted. He nodded and returned to his seat to fill in a form and wait.

Twenty minutes later, a tall Indian man with steel-framed glasses and moist eyes called him into his office.

It was a small room and Andrew sat in the chair beside the doctor's desk. There was a framed photo of The Devils Marbles in the Northern Territory on the wall above his computer.

Doctor Singh reeled off a list of questions in a melodic, bored voice. How many sexual partners had he had? How many different people had he practised unsafe sex with? Had he had sex with men as well as women? Had he ever injected drugs? Until now, Andrew's sex life had been straightforward, so he found it easy to answer the doctor's questions.

‘What can I help you with today?' Doctor Singh asked.

‘Well…my girlfriend is getting treated for warts on her cervix. I'm worried I might have them too.'

‘Do you have any symptoms?'

‘No…umm, no. I don't know.'

The doctor nodded and instructed Andrew to remove his pants and move onto the examination table.

‘What?' Andrew looked sideways at the doctor. ‘Now?'

‘Don't worry,' he said, unclasping his hands. ‘I do this all the time.'

Gingerly, Andrew dropped his shorts and moved onto the examination table. With his back to Andrew, Doctor Singh slipped on latex gloves and switched on a high powered lamp. Moments later, he was fondling Andrew's penis. Andrew prayed he wouldn't become aroused and was relieved when it didn't happen.

‘Well,' Doctor Singh said after a minute or so. ‘You don't have any physical signs of the human papilloma-virus infection.'

‘Thank god,' Andrew said. He reached for his shorts, pulled them up, swivelling on the examination table, and dropped to his feet.

‘But that doesn't mean you're not carrying it. Or that you won't develop symptoms down the track.'

Andrew frowned and returned to his seat beside the desk.

‘But don't worry,' he said nodding and smiling. ‘Many people carry the virus without even realising it. In fact, it's one of most common sexually-transmitted infections. In most cases, your immune system will clear the virus. But it's important that if you do develop symptoms, you get them treated. I'd recommend that you start using condoms too—even if your partner is taking the contraceptive pill.'

After pissing into a sample jar, and having some blood drawn from his arm, Andrew returned to the waiting room and slumped into a seat. He wanted someone to blame.

Two and a half hours later, Andrew was directed through to the recovery room. Seeing Heidi sitting on the hospital bed, with her legs tucked in awkwardly, he realised how serious the procedure had been. She sat up, still groggy from the anaesthetic, and started crying.

‘It hurts, Andy,' she said.

He wrapped his arms around her and pressed her to his chest, but she didn't hug him back. She leaned against him and cried, her arms limp beside her. He wanted to be strong for her, but he didn't feel strong, he just felt angry and confused. It all seemed too serious.

Heidi wanted vodka. Andrew tried to talk her out of it, but she yelled at him until he agreed to get her some. It was early evening as they pulled out of the drive-thru bottle shop and Heidi cracked the bottle of Smirnoff.

‘I can't believe the only thing you could think to ask the nurse was—how long until we can have sex again,' she said. ‘Do you realise what an arsehole you sounded like?'

‘How am I supposed to know what to ask? You only told me about the…warts…this morning. I had to get a check-up too, you know.'

‘And?'

He paused. ‘Nothing. Well, no evidence.'

‘How fucking typical.'

‘He said we should start using condoms.'

‘I hate condoms,' she muttered.

He shook his head. ‘Obviously.'

She glared at him. ‘Arsehole.' She drank straight from the bottle and started singing along with the radio, deliberately out of key.

Andrew looked at the sky. The clouds had disappeared without any sign of rain. No release. The drive seemed to take forever and the landscape was gouged and ugly—tunnels bored through hillsides and fences stapled across the land. The sugar-cane stood loaded in the fields, rigid with energy, waiting to combust.

Halfway back, Heidi lowered the volume on the radio and turned to him, tears in her eyes. ‘Don't be angry with me, Andy.'

‘I'm not.' He kept his eyes on the road ahead.

‘You wouldn't say if you were, anyway.'

‘Yes, I would.'

‘You think I'm dirty, don't you?'

‘No, that's not what I think at all.'

‘Yes, you do.' She leaned forward to adjust the radio dial and winced. ‘Jesus! I just want to forget this ever happened.'

He stalled for a moment too long, sensing how charged their words had become. ‘Okay. Let's just forget it ever happened.' He placed his hand on her back and massaged the tense muscles around her shoulder blades, but she slapped his hand away.

‘Yeah, great,' she said. ‘Fucking great.'

They drove without talking for the next twenty minutes and he felt a surge of relief when they reached the turn-off to Byron and he saw the lighthouse, that distant white beacon on the cape. Heidi had drunk a quarter of the bottle by the time they pulled to a stop, and she was starting to slur her words. He prayed that Jade and Tim were home, but when he walked through the front door and called out, there was silence.

He made cheese on toast and convinced Heidi to eat some. But after two bites, she stood up and limped into her bedroom.

Andrew pushed his chair back and followed. ‘What are you doing?'

‘Dropping a pill,' she said.

‘You're still drunk, Heidi. And mixing it with the anaesthetic, it's not a good idea.'

‘You don't think anything I do is a good idea.'

‘You have plenty of good ideas—but this isn't one of them. The nurse said no sex for a month or more—and if you take Ecstasy you'll want to have sex.'

‘Jesus, Andy, I've had my insides lasered, I can barely walk—do you really think I want sex?'

‘I don't know, Heidi. I don't know what you want.'

‘I want you to look after me and make me feel special. I want you to love me.'

‘I do love you.'

‘If you love me, then you'll do what I want you to.'

‘No, if I love you, I'll do what's right for you.'

‘You don't know what's right for me!'

‘I don't think taking Ecstasy is right for you right now.'

She opened her bedside drawer, picked a small green pill out of a plastic bag and swallowed it before he had time to stop her.

He stared, furious. ‘Why did you do that?'

‘Because I hate feeling like this.'

‘Like what?'

‘Like this! Guilty and dirty and horrible.'

He nodded, frowning, and held out his hand. ‘Fine.'

She took out a second pill and passed it to him, and he swallowed it without water, letting the metallic bitterness settle in his mouth.

She put on an old funk album by The Meters, and they sat on her bed to wait for the drugs to kick in. They talked about the upcoming trip—about recording in Sydney, the song for her mum, the new drum kit she was planning to buy with the dope money when they returned to Byron. Andrew played with her hands, tracing the faint life-lines on her palms, and avoided any further talk about warts or the clinic on the Gold Coast.

They were about to shoot through the stratosphere, and he knew how risky it would be to mention anything that would set them off-course.

seventeen

Andrew and Heidi woke foggy-headed the following morning and made a pot of coffee for breakfast. Heidi called in sick for work and sat down to roll a joint.

‘Maybe we could take some liquid acid to round off the morning?' he said.

‘What?' Surprise flickered through her eyes. ‘Who told you about that? Tim?'

He shook his head and watched the coffee plunger sink beneath his hand.

‘Jade?' she asked.

He didn't reply.

‘Bitch,' she muttered, scowling as she continued with her joint.

‘Can you really make much money selling it?'

‘Enough.'

‘How much?'

‘None of your business.'

‘Who are you selling it to?'

‘Do I have to explain every part of my life to you now?'

‘No, but—'

She picked up her joint and shoved her chair back. ‘So stop asking dumb questions.'

‘Where are you going?'

She slammed the bedroom door, flicked the lock and turned on The Ramones, full volume. Andrew knocked and waited, but she didn't open. He practised keyboard for ten minutes or so, tried knocking again, practised some drum patterns Tim had shown him, then knocked again. Eventually, he grew hungry and walked to town to buy a pie.

He bought Heidi a salad roll and left it on the kitchen table when he arrived back. The door was still locked and the music just as loud. As he bit into his pie, the music cut out amid a series of violent crashes. This time, instead of knocking, he shouldered the door with all his weight. The lock broke and the door swung open. The room was a disaster. She'd swept everything off her dressing table onto the floor and smashed the stereo against the wall. He spotted the bottle of vodka they'd bought on the Gold Coast, almost empty on the floor.

She looked at him, unclenched her teeth and drew her hair back off her face. ‘What?'

He stepped forward. ‘Are you okay?'

‘Of course I'm okay. I'm fine!'

They looked at each other. Andrew's hands hung loose at his side. ‘I bought you a salad roll.'

‘Oh! A salad roll will fix everything, won't it?'

He gestured towards the kitchen. ‘It's on the table if you want it.'

She stood there, arms crossed. He turned and walked out. And, to his surprise, she followed. He picked up the salad roll and held it out to her, but she didn't look at it. He placed it back on the table, picked up his pie and headed outside. She followed and the screen door slapped closed behind her.

‘It's so easy just to walk away, isn't it, Andy?'

‘I came outside so I wouldn't annoy you.'

‘It doesn't solve the problem, though, does it?'

‘What are you talking about?'

‘I want you to stop tiptoeing around me. I want you to stop walking on fucking egg shells. I want you to give me something real, something that I can be angry at.'

‘Maybe I could buy you a punching bag?'

She slapped him. ‘You arsehole! Do you realise how shit my luck is?'

He hesitated. ‘Yes.'

‘No, you don't. You don't know anything. Look at you, eating your pie in the sun la-di-dah like everything's fine and fucking dandy. You haven't suffered anything;

I'm the one who's suffered.'

‘So you want me to suffer?'

‘Yes! I want you to suffer.'

‘Well, I'm suffering right now with you carrying on like a freaking maniac.'

‘That's not suffering! Going to a clinic and having your insides lasered is suffering. Having to go through this with someone as oblivious as you is suffering. Being made to feel dirty and guilty by someone who supposedly loves you is suffering.'

‘I don't know what to do,' he said, his voice louder than he meant it to be. ‘I don't know how to help you. You don't want to talk about anything.'

‘That's it, Andy! It's all my fault, isn't it?' She slapped the pie out of his hands and it splattered across the verandah. ‘Hit me.'

‘What?'

‘I want you to hit me,' she said, biting off each word.

‘You're joking.'

She shook her head. ‘Do it.'

‘You're crazy.'

‘Stop telling me I'm crazy and hit me.'

‘No.'

‘Hit me! Slap me across the face!'

‘No, I don't want to hurt you.'

‘Just do it! Fucking hit me!'

He stood to get away from her and she slapped him across the side of his head. He made for the back door, but she tackled him from behind and started slap-ping him around the face. They fell onto the deck in a tangle. He struggled to roll her over, but she bucked and screamed. Finally, he got on top and pinned her arms with his knees.

‘Calm down, Heidi! Just calm down!'

She struggled until her body sagged, then she started sobbing. He felt like an idiot, sitting on top of her like that. He kissed her cheeks and tried to stroke her face, but she drew away and refused to look at him.