Three Times Dead (8 page)

I stood between the two wooden parallel bars, one hand on each supporting my weight as I looked down at my feet and willed myself to take a step forward. It wasn’t happening. I didn’t trust the plastic and metal contraption at the end of my left leg. It felt heavy, and I hadn’t even lifted it up yet.

“Take it slow, Bevan,” said June the physio, who stood just behind me also between the parallel bars.

“It’s going to be a different type of movement from what you’re used to,” June continued. “The usual bones and muscles have gone, so you have you retrain your body and mind to work differently. Lift from the knee, shift your weight forward and place it down in front of you. Don’t be scared. I’ve got hold of you.” She had hold of a webbed belt around my waist. The physios had used the same belt in the hospital when I first started moving around. If I fell, they would hold me up with it.

I took a deep breath and lifted my left leg, bending it at the knee and hauling up the prosthetic leg. It felt so heavy, and I wondered if I was ever going to get used to the weight. I had no control over its descent, and I wobbled as it landed about five centimetres in front of me. The jolt of it landing on the floor rippled through me.

“Well done, Bevan, first step,” June said. “We’re on our way.”

I was glad she was so confident. I saw that this was going to be way harder than I expected, and it was going to take a long time.

“So that’s what a prosthetic leg looks like,” Mark said as he examined the metal and plastic gadget at the end of my leg. “Looks bionic.”

“Doesn’t feel bionic,” I said. “Sometimes I think I will never learn to walk on it.”

“You’ll get there. Although I believe it can take some time.”

“Sounds like you’ve been reading up on it.”

“A little,” Mark said with a shrug. It was Monday, and Mark always came around on a Monday, even though it was supposed to be his day off. “We missed you at church yesterday.”

I was silent. I hadn’t been back to church since the accident and I had no intention of doing so any time soon.

“Now that you’ve got your car, and your mobility, I thought we might see you sometime,” Mark continued, ignoring my silence.

“Yeah, well, I think I’ve finished with God,” I said eventually.

“I don’t think He’s finished with you.”

“Well, I really hope He has because I’m sick of all the shit He’s been handing out to me lately.”

The reply had come out more strongly than I intended but it summed up the way I was feeling right then.

“I’m sorry you feel that way, Bevan,” Mark said quietly. “And I can understand that you would blame God for all that has happened, but we’ve yet to see His purpose in all this.”

“Purpose? You mean, this was meant to happen?”

“God gives us free will, and sometimes free will means things like this happen. God gives us the strength to cope.”

“You’re as bad as my Mum with her psycho stuff, talking about what’s going on inside my head, when you’ve really no idea. Look, I appreciate that you come around and visit, but I’m finished with all this religion stuff, it’s really not my thing.”

“You should know that God won’t let you go that easily. You’re on His radar now.”

“And I can just as easily fall off. You need another crusade, Mark, I’m a lost cause.”

Mark looked at me with concern, the deep sorrow in his eyes making me turn away. I heard him stand up.

“I don’t think you’re a lost cause at all, Bevan. Maybe a little lost, but not a lost cause. You know I’m around if you ever need me, just call me any time – you have my number.”

”Don’t forget to take those library books,” I called after him.

He walked back in, picked up the books on the New Zealand Wars and left.

I almost called out after him; I knew that I had lost a friend.

But I had others. Mitch and Scott were supposed to be at school but they spent most of their time at my place. They brought games around and we’d spend hours smashing things or shooting things in virtual reality, which allowed me to forget actual reality. They brought dope too, and, although at first I refused to join in, I was soon lighting up as much as them, although we had to time it just right – to make sure most of the smell had gone by the time my folks came home.

Besides helping with the pain, the dope gave me courage to use my prosthetic leg around the house. I was to start with half an hour every three hours or so and build up from there, but at first I was reluctant. I didn’t trust myself on the leg and worried about falling and hurting myself. On dope, however, I couldn’t give a toss. I fell often and the boys would roll around in laughter while I picked myself up and tried again. I was proud to show off my bruises at the Artificial Limb Centre.

I was on first-name terms with everyone at the limb centre, but that was the case with most of the people I saw in the waiting room at each visit. You could spot the newbies first off, looking apprehensive and scared, but I watched as they too got their limbs and started calling everyone by their first names.

My socket had to be remade after two months as my stump shrunk, and they told me that it was possible that this process would be repeated many times for the rest of my life. I also got another model that gave me a bit more flexibility in the ankle, so that I was able to walk with less of a limp. I was starting to feel normal.

The car spun around on the rain-soaked road at speed as Mitch worked both the accelerator and the clutch while pulling on the handbrake. Clouds of acrid smoke filled the interior of the car while I hung my arm outside the open passenger window and banged against the side of the passenger door, egging Mitch on as the car roared. We were in the middle of a residential street, late at night, disturbing the peace. It felt good.

Abruptly Mitch lost control, sliding on the rain-soaked road, and the car slid over the pavement and smashed a post box off its stand. The impact brought the car to a stop.

“Yeah!” I said as I high fived Mitch. In the distance we could hear sirens. “Let’s get out of here!”

As we exited the side road, we could see the cop car approaching, the red and blue lights creating a strobe effect on the buildings as it raced towards us. Mitch shifted down and the car jumped forward, sliding and skidding on the slick road surface, but gaining traction in the end and taking off down the road at speed.

I swore we weren’t going to make the next corner, but we did, heading down the straight piece of road at over 100km an hour. The police car’s sirens faded in the distance. We reached the end of the road, and Mitch threw us around the next corner. The sirens were lost in the screech of the tyres and when we straightened out, we couldn’t hear them any more.

“Abandoned pursuit,” Scott said in glee from the back seat. He had an open bottle of beer in his hand. He hadn’t spilt a drop.

“Time to dump the car,” Mitch said from the driver’s seat.

We agreed. It wasn’t his car anyway. I’d been at Scott’s place drinking when Mitch pulled up in the car. He’d “borrowed” it, he said. I took one look at the bare wires hanging down from the steering column and knew that he’d stolen it. That didn’t stop me from getting in.

We parked the car in a deserted reserve and cut through the bush, splashing through a creek in the gully and climbing the bank on the other side. The cold winter wind cut through us, but we were warmed by adrenaline. We made a decision to split up and go off in opposite directions, agreeing to meet up at Scott’s place unless we got caught. I wondered if they wanted to split because they knew that I would slow them down. I couldn’t run – the best I could do was a fast hobble, and I’d soon be brought down in a foot chase if there was one. There wasn’t.

Later we kicked back at Scott’s place, drank beer and smoked pot, laughing at the way we had hooned around in a stolen car and got away with it. Lately the other two had been getting into heavier stuff than cannabis but I decided to stay away from that shit as I was still on prescription medication and I didn’t think it was a good mix. Besides I didn’t like what happened to them when they took it and resolved that it wasn’t for me.

I stumbled into my house at four in the morning. My bedroom was still downstairs so I didn’t have to worrying about creeping around upstairs, which was good, because with the booze and dope, plus a wonky leg, I was fairly clumsy. I slipped off the shoe from my good foot, eased my leg out of the prosthesis and collapsed onto my bed. But I couldn’t sleep.

I didn’t know if it was having died twice, or the fact that I had suffered major trauma, but I was no longer the old Bevan; the one who would have done the things we did that night and not thought twice about it. Now I lay awake, reliving the evening’s events, and regretting them. I wasn’t comfortable with this new Bevan, the one with a conscience; neither was I comfortable with the old Bevan. Neither seemed right – I didn’t even know if there was a right, although I knew deep down that what I had done that night was wrong, as were all the other things we had done.

I felt empty inside, like there was a hollow space in my chest where my heart should have been. I was like a funnel where stuff went in at the top and just drained out the other end. “Garbage in, garbage out,” as my brother Rhys would say. I was getting tired of the antics of Mitch and Scott and their drug taking, but I couldn’t stop hanging out with them. I was addicted to the adrenaline rush. It proved I was living instead of just existing. Mark tried to talk to me, but I stopped him by shutting him out of my life. I knew I was on the steep downward slope that was going to take me nowhere, but I couldn’t help myself. I needed to be jolted out of it. And what a jolt I got.

“I’m late,” Gina said to me as we lay in her bed. Her flatmates were out so we had the place to ourselves.

“Late?” I was in that dreamy afterwards state and I was wondering why she was telling me she was late for work, when it was obviously night-time and she didn’t need to be there until the morning.

“You know – late.”

I was missing something here. Late? What was she on about?

She sat up and sighed. You know that when a girl sighs like that, you’re in big trouble. I pushed myself up, knowing that some response was required of me, but not what that it should be.

“You really don’t get it – my period is late,” she said. "Like - I could be pregnant - late!"

“Ah,” was all I could say.

I tried to think. She couldn't be pregnant, her period was late – so what? It would come: it was just taking its time. I really didn’t want to think about it. It was girls’ business.

“I’m never late,” she said as she sank back on the pillow.

“You taken a test or something?” I asked after a pause.

“I’m scared to. I mean, I bought one at the chemist but I’ve hidden it in my drawer. What am I going to do if it’s positive? My mum will kill me for a start, and I’ll have to leave my job – and where am I going to stay? How will I be able to look after it? I’m too young to have a child.”

From the way she was speaking I knew that she had been holding onto this for a while and chasing the thoughts around in her head. No wonder she’d been a bit distant when I had first come in through the door. I needed to calm her down. I put my hand on her stomach and was instantly reminded of my dream and of how proud Haki had been when he felt the baby kick under his hand. For a second I imagined that I felt that kick myself, but if there was a baby in Gina’s tummy then it would be too small for me to feel any movement. Looking at Gina, I thought that Reka had to be about the same age as her … and yet she was not too young to have a baby.

“It’s all right, Gina. We’ll handle this together. You need to take that test though, or else you’re just going to get yourself worked up for nothing.”

She opened up the drawer beside her bed and took out a rectangular box. She sat in bed, turning it over and over in her hand.

“If I am pregnant, would you leave me?”

“No, never.” I remembered Haki promising to protect his wife and his baby. I would do the same. “I will keep you safe.” I kissed her shoulder. “Go on, take the test. What do you need to do?”

“I have to pee on it,” she said, and laughed.

“Yuck!”

“Wait here,” she said, jumping out of bed. I heard her in the bathroom next to her room. She seemed to take ages, then I heard her swear loudly. I grabbed my boxers and reached for my foot, but decided that there wasn’t enough time to put it on, so I crawled along the floor. I made my way out of the bedroom and knocked on the closed bathroom door. I heard Gina crying on the other side. I turned the handle, the door opened and Gina was sitting there, looking at the white stick thing in her hand and crying.

“It turned blue,” she said.

“Does that mean it’s a boy?”

“No, it means I am pregnant!”

I crawled into the bathroom and over to the vanity, using it to pull myself up. Leaning against it, I looked down at the plastic stick she held in her hand.

“Is this thing reliable?”

“I hope it isn’t.”

I continued to stare at the plastic, my thoughts and feelings muddled up. Like her, I thought of the implications of that thin blue strip, but at the same time I couldn’t help but feel joy because I remembered the joy that Haki had felt when he held his son for the first time. I pulled her up and took her in my arms, running my hands through her hair and placing my lips against her forehead.

“It’s ok, Gina, it really is. We’ll get married. I’ll get a job. We’ll have this kid. It’ll be all right.”

I’m not sure if I was really thinking straight, but I wanted to ease her sadness. Like Haki, I was going to be a father and I wanted to do the right thing. She howled into my shoulder. Great, I thought. Is the rest of the nine months going to be like this?

Once she had calmed down a little, she helped me back into her room where we lay down on her bed. She snuggled into my arms, shuddering now and then as a sob escaped her throat.

“We’ll see a doctor in the morning,” I said when she had stopped crying. “Then we’ll know for sure. We can take it from there.”

She nodded into my shoulder and, with a sigh, fell asleep. I lay awake for a while, thinking, planning, with my hand on the flat of her tummy, imagining it swollen and mobile as Reka’s had been. Maybe this was why I’d been having the dreams – so that I’d welcome this new life instead of rejecting it. The old Bevan would have run for the hills; the new Bevan looked forward to the arrival of a baby.

I fell asleep with a smile on my face.