Rose Leopard by Richard Yaxley Read Free Book Online Page A

had started to rain.
    â€˜I think you’ve broken my ankle,’ she told me with remarkable civility.
    We stared at each other for a moment, then the rain got heavier and we began to laugh madly, out of control. We clutched each other, connected, giggled and hooted, watched the raindrops form lines down our cheeks and necks, shoved our faces gloriously towards the blackness above.
    â€˜But yer hands’re okay,’ I slurred eventually. ‘Thank God — yer hands’re okay.’
    It was Bruce Dawe, I remember later. Why, at a time like that, did my ridiculous mind flicker to a Bruce Dawe poem?
    Blink, blink. HOSPITAL. SILENCE.
    Garten has left the office. His beeper called him away, this lantern-jawed reaper.
    â€˜Who’s going to peel the vegies?’ asks Otis quietly.
    I stare at her, not comprehending.
    â€˜Maybe,’ says Milo, ‘they’ll give Mum a claw. Like Captain Hook. Except hers won’t be for sword-fighting. Hers will be for holding potatoes and sprinkling Milo on ice-cream.’
    â€˜They’re not taking her hand,’ I tell them forcibly. ‘I won’t let them.’
    â€˜We could keep it in a jar,’ Otis suggests. ‘Mum could look after it.’
    â€˜Imagine picking your nose with a claw. That would be so cool.’
    â€˜They’re not taking her hand, all right? All right?’
    There is a knock at the door. It opens a crack and Stu shoves his bovine face through.
    â€˜Vince. What’s happening?’
    Part of me, I suppose, is glad he’s arrived. He’s stupid and too boisterous sometimes, but beneath it all I know that he cares for me. So many things about Stu are BIG — he’s BIG-hearted, BIG-headed, a BIG spender, who desperately seeks the BIG-time. All of his movements are BIG too: he crushes people in eponymous hugs, shakes hands like he’s strangling a boa constrictor. Alone he still looks like a crowd, with people he’s a BIG luxury cruiser in a harbour full of half-cabins.
    But BIGness can occasionally provide a welcome perspective. When Stu wants to help someone, he does so with a wholeness and conviction that is as warming as it is irritating.
    I tell him details.
    â€˜Be buggered,’ he says eventually. Then: ‘What are you going to do?’
    â€˜I don’t know. Bow down and tug my forelock to specialist opinion, I suppose. Not much else I can do.’
    â€˜Have you seen her yet?’
    â€˜No.’
    He grabs my shoulders, clamps me in a BIG but endearing embrace.
    â€˜Why not? For Chrissakes, Vince — she’s your wife!’
    â€˜I know that, but —’
    â€˜But nothing! No excuses — you have to see her!’
    â€˜I know, I know … ’
    He lets me go then, steps back, levels me with his gaze.
    â€˜You’re scared — is that it? Scared of what you might find? Vince? Is that it?’
    I can say nothing. Stu nods slowly, thinks for a moment then leans forward, whispers into my face.
    â€˜Vince, this is Kaz. Love of your life, for richer and for poorer, in sickness and in health, all that stuff. You have to go and see her. Be together, then make a decision.’
    I notice that he is trembling and there are sweat patches leaking from his armpits and his breath smells — but there is a sincerity and strength in him that makes my brain pop with gratitude.
    â€˜Go and see her,’ he insists.
    So that is what I do.
    Stu takes Milo and Otis for ice-creams. It is 11.23 — they’re glad for a diversion. Stu drives a red Mazda MX-5. When they zoom away from the front entrance of the hospital, I can almost smile at his BIG florid head, waggling furiously as he regales my children with tales of the world-famous gut-busting triple-cone double-decker banana-split surprise.
    I creep down corridors that stink of chemicals and pain.
    In Ward 14C,Kaz lies still. I see drips, tubes, buttons, swaddles of bandaging, a machine that