TURBINE | KAPOHAU

There is a whole screen of emails on her laptop, including one from her sister, whose emails are always marked urgent. Moira reports that she is now home in Adelaide but has arranged for their dad to be transferred from rehab to a nursing home. Can Jack PLEASE be there to make sure it goes smoothly. With a start, Jack realises that the email is three days old and the move is happening tomorrow. She picks up her phone and finds three missed calls from Moira this morning. Lately, Jack has parked her phone on silent with notifications turned off.

Jack decides to call the rehabilitation facility first. No point calling Moira without news. However, the person who answers can’t find her father. After much confusion it turns out that he was moved that morning because a bed came up earlier than expected in the nursing home, which is in Nunawading, a place Jack has barely heard of and never visited.

She replies to Moira’s email, says she’ll go today and see how Dad is at the new place. But when she calls the nursing home to check visiting hours, they say wait until tomorrow, that Mr. Malone was agitated on arrival and has been sedated. Oh, that must have been messy, thinks Jack.

In the morning, it’s easier than she expects to get a train from Richmond to Nunawading. The station is one of those huge new monstrosities the state government has spent billions on recently. It’s even got a mini police station integrated, which makes Jack wonder what kind of suburb this is. Acres of concrete carpark creates a heat sink that shimmers in the distance as the train pulls in. Thundery clouds start gathering as she sets off on foot beside a ten-lane highway past generic chain stores with underground car parks. It’s a twenty-minute walk to Brooke Lodge, following her GPS in a haze of hot petrol fumes. Not a trip she would want to repeat often.

There are gardens around the entrance and the foyer is like a tacky mid-range hotel, with pink-velvet settees and twiglet light fittings. The intensely cold air chills the layer of sweat on her skin. She shivers. The groomed receptionist smiles with unnaturally white teeth and summons an assistant.

The hotel vibe degrades as she is led through a warren of narrow corridors painted pale green. Odours of disinfectant with undertones of stale food and shit. Her father is in a small room containing a hospital bed, an adjustable armchair, a plain chair and a television on the wall.

‘Your daughter, Mr Malone,’ the care assistant announces. Then she turns to Jack, ‘The doctor has done his rounds for today but will get in touch with you.’

‘Hi Dad.’ Jack raises her voice because the television has the sound turned up loud. Her father’s face is ghostly pale and his frame seems insubstantial under a coarse, white sheet.

‘Oh Dad, what’s going on?’

He stares ahead at the television as she sits by the bed, staring out the window at a bush in front of a red-brick wall, mesmerised by the thought of all that heat separated only by a pane of glass. She sits there for a while to recover from the journey, listening to the sports report like a refrain from childhood.

When she turns to her father, there are tears on his cheeks. She takes the remote from his hand and turns the volume down.

‘Don’t Dad – things could be worse.’ She immediately regrets trying to make light of the situation. And she hasn’t brought him anything, no little treat. ‘I can bring some of your things from home, if you like.’

He takes up the pencil and pad at his side and writes painstakingly slowly, Get me out of here. Shaky but unmistakable.

‘And how am I going to do that, Dad?’

The trademark shrug and a wave of the good hand.

‘I’ll talk to the doctor and see what I can do. And I’ll call into your place if you give me the key. Has Dawn been looking after it for you? Has she been to visit you?’

Two nods here.

‘Dawn seems nice. I’ll check in with her too.’

A doctor from the nursing home calls her the next day, speaks curtly and does not offer an optimistic outlook for recovery. Her father didn’t cooperate with rehabilitation efforts at the previous facility and treatment will be less intensive now. The possibility of a return home is unlikely. Jack can’t think of anything to say as she absorbs this report.

*

Jack drops in on Dawn when she goes to her father’s unit. A cleaner from the council services had been coming once a week so the place isn’t too badly kept. Together, they cobble together his clothes and toiletries in a boxy blue valise found on top of the wardrobe. He hasn’t got much. She wanders around the shabby rooms, recognising the green vinyl dining chairs, the old settee. On the mantelpiece is a faded black-and-white photo of her grandmother holding a flower. Her father’s features recast in female guise. She pops the picture on top of the clothes in the case, then fastens the lid.

The food cupboard is lined with tinned soup. A loaf of bread. She fills a rubbish bag with the contents of the bar fridge: a carton of eggs, bacon and cheese in opened packets, a carton of sour milk.

‘I’ll take those things to him tomorrow,’ says Dawn, picking up the valise Jack has left at the front door, next to the bag of rubbish, ‘since I’m going anyway. But you should take the car. It’ll go flat if it doesn’t get a run.’

Jack puts the rubbish bag in the boot of the old Toyota and drives home. It’s such a bomb of a car, the same as every car her father owned. As a kid, pushing Dad’s car to get it started was a common morning chore: she and her sister out on the road in their pyjamas, her mother at the rear in a shabby dressing gown, red-faced with embarrassment. Neighbours might give a wave, swinging their gates closed and climbing into their late-model cars. Sometimes they smiled in a way that made Jack feel ashamed too.

*

The nursing home is not working out so well. Mr Malone is smoking in non-designated areas. He has been rude to some of the staff. The doctor thinks he should be tested for dementia. There is, however, an improvement in compliance with physiotherapy. In fact, he is demanding more therapy and longer. Unfortunately, staff shortages and the difficulty of getting funding mean there have been no extra sessions available.

Jack finds it hard to keep a straight face while she is being told all this by the doctor. Motivation is the key to effort, she thinks. He is back to his old self, making demands.

‘Just up the dose of diazepam and he’ll be manageable,’ she instructs. ‘Dad’s used to a minimum daily ration of one flask of brandy. And he’s always been cranky. But he’s not demented.’

Today, and on every visit, Jack is given the Get me out of here note by her father. As a reward for good behaviour (in terms of physiotherapy, at least), Jack offers to take him for a spin outside. Vigorous nodding and a ‘yep’ to that. She has just hunted down a wheelchair when the assistant she roped in to help her move her father points to the window. The afternoon has turned dark: there’s a storm not far off.

‘Stay under the front veranda – it’s going to pour,’ the assistant advises, shaking her head.

But once out the front door, her father says, ‘Go!’ and points to the left, away from the main road, into the wind. It’s only spitting rain and he’s got a jacket on, so it seems safe enough. Almost immediately, the wind swings around and a cold southerly sits at their backs. Jack buttons her denim jacket and looks down to check her father – hair flying upwards, head in constant adjustment like a nervous bird, eyes alert. He looks quite mad. His jacket is zipped up, however, and his slippers are sturdy.

‘Go, go!’ he grunts.

There is parkland at the end of the street. First they have to navigate a kerb, where the chair nearly topples as it lands.

‘Whoa!’ says her father, as if he’s on a feisty horse, and opens his small eyes wide as he squints over his shoulder at her. Jack decides to stay on the road where there are fewer obstacles. A woman in an Audi four-wheel drive beeps her and Jack gives her the finger.

‘So rude. You’re on the road,’ the woman leans out to inform her with her bright pink lips and her hair that doesn’t move in the wind.

‘Yes, I know. Fuck off you flap-mouthed harpy,’ says Jack, not slackening her pace.

They are in a cul-de-sac. Where it ends, a path winds through trees to an open space with a sports field. A few dog walkers, three kids playing kick to kick.

Half the sky is black now, driven by the wind. The sky lowers before it closes over them. They are inside a cloud. The rain comes in a wave, drenching them in seconds, scattering the other people.

Her father raises his palms and turns his face to the sky.

‘No!’ he grunts as she attempts to turn the wheelchair. When she tries again, his ‘No!’ becomes more vehement. He pushes himself up, wobbles and sits down hard. At her third attempt, his strength fails and he can’t lift himself.

‘Argh!’ he cries out each time he falls, raging at the cage he finds himself in. He can no longer make his body obey his commands.

Lear in the storm, past misdeeds catching up with him. Jack is obviously a bad daughter. Still, she’s here and maybe she has been punished enough. Blame Moira, the neglectful one – no, that’s too harsh.

Jack moves around to face her father. He is sitting up very straight, comically sodden, his eyes blinking at the raindrops. The wheelchair seems to have grown bigger around him.

‘Okay. Okay, Dad,’ she says and kneels down to put his left foot back on the footplate. She looks him in the face, something she has rarely done in her life. His eyes flinch with apprehension. He’s not scared of rain but of this end-of-life fiasco. She’s glad there is water streaming down her face.

‘May as well go out with a splash,’ she says and pushes him along. Sure, they can’t get any wetter. Jack makes a complete circuit of the field as the rain gets heavier and finally eases. By the time they are back under the veranda at the nursing home, the wind has dropped, the sky to the west is pristine and the sun is a yellow ball dipping low. Jack parks the chair for a few seconds facing the sunset before she pushes it inside. Once inside, there is a fuss, which neither Jack nor her father acknowledge. It was worth it.