1
By the end of 1973, Adam had graduated, not without pain, and achieved the credible title of Bachelor of Dental Surgery. He found employment almost immediately, but only lasted there for three months, becoming disillusioned quickly, realising that he was very much his own man who needed to do his own thing.
One day, not more than four months after graduation, and only one week after he quit his first job, Adam received an invitation to a private dental function. There he met a fifty-year-old dentist who owned a well-established practice in the heart of Sydney. The dentist’s father, who owned a medical-equipment importing company, had suddenly and unexpectedly died and it had fallen upon the dentist to take over the management of the company. He was looking for someone to take his dental surgery off his hands and he was prepared to sell it at any price to get rid of it fast. One might have been much smarter than Adam, and one might have scored a much higher and more commendable pass in university, but one still had to be lucky to get on in the world.
The dental surgery was located on the tenth floor of Culwulla Chambers, an older building near the intersection of King and Castlereagh Streets. It was well equipped and operating at leisurely capacity. Adam only had to sit in the chair and take over the controls.
A friendly and very competent young nurse, named Michelle, was running the surgery for the dentist. She helped Adam ease into the practice. She made a perfect interface between Adam and the patients as she knew them all well and they all relied on her to organise their dental affairs. Michelle was worth her weight in gold.
About eighteen months before Adam purchased the practice, construction commenced on the new MLC Centre building, which was designed by the famed, Australian architect, Harry Seidler. The technically-advanced construction grew out of a deep hole in the ground, right across King Street, right outside of Adam’s surgery window.
Michelle gave Adam a fairly comprehensive brief on the functioning and day-to-day goings on of the practice. There weren’t many things she omitted, however there was this one small detail that Adam found out about almost immediately after commencing his new job.
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There he was, drilling away at some patient’s decay, with Michelle assisting him, when they heard a knock on the window. Adam looked up and nearly fell off his stool as he saw a young, scruffy man levitating outside of it, grinning from ear to ear. They were ten storeys up. What was this guy doing there?
‘Oh, I’m sorry, doctor, that’s David,’ Michelle explained calmly. ‘I think he’s brought me my lunch. Excuse me for a moment.’
The patient just stared, goggle eyed, unable to comment because his mouth was full of dental equipment. Michelle stepped to the window, opened it, leaned way out of it, gave David a big, juicy kiss on the lips and thanked him for the delivery. Adam still hadn’t worked out what was going on and thought he was really seeing things when the young man literally floated away from the window into open space. Michelle waved the levitating man goodbye, closed the window, placed her lunch on the desk, sat back down on the assistant’s stool, picked up the high-speed suction, looked at Adam and said,
‘Terribly sorry doctor … ready …’
It turned out that ‘David’ was in actual fact ‘Dave the dogman’ who worked on the giant crane on the MLC Centre construction site across the street. His job was swinging on the end of the long cable and signalling the crane driver high up in the control booth.
A few months before Adam arrived on the scene, Dave swung by the surgery window and noticed Michelle working inside. He thought that she looked like a pretty good sort, so he signalled the crane driver to swing him over to the window.
‘How ya goin? You work here? I’m Dave.’
With those romantic first lines, a new friendship sparked itself into existence. The very next day, Dave swung by the window with a beautiful bunch of flowers and handed them to her. Since then, he swung by many times during the day, waving hello through the window as he did so. At lunch times, he brought her her lunch and collected his daily kiss. He called it his ‘pucker for the tucker’. Dave became a legend amongst his work mates because of his remarkable achievement. Michelle, being a hopeless romantic, only saw a diamond in the rough in Dave and was totally swept off her feet by his novel approach. ‘Like something out of a story book,’ she thought. Adam, too, was most delighted when Michelle finally told him the full story. He laughed and laughed.
A few years later, Dave and Michelle got married. A couple of decades after that, Adam bumped into Michelle in the street. They sat down at a café and had coffee. Michelle
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told Adam of her happy marriage, of her two beautiful children and how her life with David was as perfect as the way they met each other.
2
One of the first things Adam did, after purchasing his practice, was enrol in a three-day, relative-analgesia course for post-graduates. He got talked into it by some of his dental colleagues who were all attending the same course.
Relative analgesia, ‘R.A.’ for short, was rapidly gaining in popularity, both among the practitioners and their patients. It offered an unprecedented comfort to the patient during the usually traumatic dental procedures. It involved the administration of a controlled, variable mix of Nitrous Oxide, Oxygen and air through a rubber mask placed over the nose.
Nitrous Oxide was also known as ‘laughing gas’. Adam learned that the gas was completely non-toxic and that it was highly soluble in blood, rapidly dissolving into and out of the bloodstream. It was ingested by breathing and completely eliminated by breathing. No one had any idea of the mechanism by which it worked, but it was generally believed that the gas didn’t combine with anything in the body, and that it didn’t require any enzymes for it to be eliminated from the body. That virtually made it the perfect drug.
It needed to be combined with Oxygen, though, or the patient would die of asphyxiation.
Mixed correctly for the individual patient, a state of relative analgesia could be induced and sustained for an extended period of time.
Part of the three-day course was for the post-graduates to administer the gas to each other. This gave them practise in the administration of the drug, as well as an appreciation for what the patient was experiencing.
Some of the post-graduate students weren’t exactly saints when it came to drugs.
Many of them found relief from alcohol in pot smoking. It was Ed, ‘the head’, a medicine student Adam used to know back at uni, who coined the phrase, ‘organ rotation’. He used to say,
‘First you cain your liver with grog, then you give it a rest and cain your lungs with dope. Then, when you start coughing your guts out, you revert back to liver damage again.’
Ed was actually a really good bloke. After he graduated, he went to New Guinea to do volunteer work. One night, as he was walking back to his room, he unfortunately got
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whacked over the back of his head with a cricket bat, for his wallet. Tragically, he never woke up.
3
For the first few months after Adam graduated, while he had that job he didn’t like, he continued to live at home because the job was very close to his parents’ house. Maybe that was part of the reason for his discontentment. After purchasing his surgery in the city, he felt that he needed to make a move, closer to his work, further from his parents.
‘Who will wash your clothes?’ pleaded his mother. ‘Who will cook your food?’
‘Ahh, leave him alone,’ growled his father. ‘He’s mister big-shot now. He doesn’t need his family anymore.’
‘But who is going to look after my baby?’
‘He’ll be back; he’ll be back with his tail between his legs. It’s no picnic out there, sonny boy! ’
Adam knew it was time. He loved his mum and dad, but he craved independence.
He found a most unlikely place to live. It was a small bed-sitter, with a tiny kitchen and bathroom, located at the end of Elizabeth Bay Road.
Elizabeth Bay is a quiet, harbour-side suburb of Sydney. It is located just behind the more colourful, and busy, King’s Cross. Adam chose this place due to its proximity to his work. He could walk it in thirty minutes or he could catch a bus into town right from his front door. His tiny unit was situated on the fourth floor of a building named Ercildoune, which just happened to be another one of Harry Seidler’s creations. The back wall of the tiny apartment was all window. Looking out of the window, Adam had a panoramic view of Rushcutters Bay with all its yachts tied up in the Cruising Yacht Club marina. The rent was low and there was undercover parking for his car. He was also close to some of his old university friends who lived in the nearby Eastern Suburbs.
Adam could never have foreseen it happening, but he had blundered into one of the finest urban lifestyles in Australia. There was nothing quite like living really close to the water of Sydney Harbour. There were so many pleasant places to go, so many nice parks and cafes, and the water always seemed to calm everything down. It made Adam feel like he was a hundred miles away from the city, even though he was right in the middle of it.
That was one of the magic things about Sydney that people loved so much. His heart was always lifted by the morning light of a crisp, autumn day when the air was clear and the
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city somehow felt more tranquil. He could take a few deep breaths and shake out the stress, and it truly wasn’t hard to feel some gladness about life on days like that.
On some mornings, Adam left early for his walk to work and on the way stopped and sat down for coffee and toast, or sometimes, on the cooler mornings, bacon and eggs, at either The Fountain Café or The Bourbon and Beef, right in the middle of King’s Cross.
He liked to sit in the sun and watch the people around the fountain. It was funny how different ‘The Cross’ seemed to him now that he was a local. He figured that it was all about perception. He found the place to be friendly and full of interesting, colourful people. He mainly walked through it during the day, but even at night, when all the establishments were in full business-mode, it all seemed OK to him. He figured it was all about what you were there for and what you wanted to look at. Locals were there because they lived there, so they saw something completely different from the customers.
There seemed to be an invisible line delineating Elizabeth Bay from King’s Cross, and the difference between the two was like day from night. The serene, tree-lined streets of Elizabeth Bay could have been ten miles away from the twenty-four-hour frenzy of The Cross, but they weren’t, they were only about one hundred yards down the street, just past the invisible line.
4
After the relative-analgesia course, Adam bought a machine and installed it into his surgery. He gradually introduced his patients to the new technique. He learned early that some of them had a natural need to retain control. This worked against them when attempting a smooth transition into R.A., because it was all about letting go. For some of his patients, this was an impossible thing to do. For others, they just lay back, closed their eyes and let Adam send them off into ‘cloudland’. He watched his patients closely and carefully adjusted the flow meters, sending some deeper than others, depending on their nature. He asked Michelle to make a note of each patient’s gas-flow settings and their musical preferences. He had installed a fine sound system into the surgery and, whenever possible, played something appropriate for his patient’s taste. He found that the music had a profound enhancing effect on the quality of the patients’ analgesia and they just loved it.
Occasionally, one or two friends popped into the surgery at around five o’clock, to visit Adam after work. Almost always, they ended up staying back. Adam put on a favourite cassette and turned up the volume. He locked the front door and switched on
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the machine. They all sat around in a circle passing the mask to each other, often completely hysterical with uncontrollable laughter. They called them gas parties. It was so new and so much fun, and much healthier than smoking or drinking. Sometimes they got so rocky and hysterical that they fell off their stools onto the floor. That just set everyone off laughing even harder. The big joke was that they couldn’t feel anything when they fell down because they were so numb all over. In the end they decided to start their gas parties sitting on the floor because they figured that they couldn’t fall any further from there.
5
Early one cool morning, mid-September, 1974, Adam set off for his walk to work. He took his usual route. He always tended to look straight ahead when he walked, but on this occasion, something caught the corner of his eye as he passed one of the narrow alleys that exist in the area. He noticed a man, dressed in a long coat, apparently trying to help another man who was lying on the ground. Adam stopped and, with a raised voice, called out to the man in the coat.
‘Are you OK?’
A raspy voice echoed back out of the alley.
‘I’m OK, but this kid is ratshit.’
Adam turned into the alley and walked over to look. He bent down next to the man in the coat, who noticeably reeked of body odour, and proceeded to check the pulse of the boy sprawled out unconscious on the ground.
‘Ee’s white as a ghost. I think that ee might ave karked it.’
‘No, I don’t think so,’ Adam replied. ‘This kid’s still kicking.’
‘Look at im. So young an so lost. Ee’s gotta be a junkie.’ The man looked around the alley. ‘Check all the bloody needles.’
Adam replied with some urgency, ‘He’s got to get to a hospital, fast! What’s your name?’
‘Bob. Me name’s Bob.’
‘You’re a good bloke, Bob. Stay here with the boy and I’ll get a cab. We’ll take him to the hospital.’
Adam raced out of the alley into the street. He stepped in front of the first cab he saw and waved it down. It had a passenger. The cabbie was about to start a tirade of abuse at Adam, but he never got the chance.
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‘A boy is dying. You can save his life. He’s in there.’ Adam pointed into the alley. ‘I’ll give you fifty bucks if you help us take him to St. Vincent’s.’
He took a fifty-dollar note from his wallet and held it out to the driver who sat there temporarily stunned. Finally, it was the passenger, an elegantly-dressed, well-spoken, middle-aged lady that spoke first.
‘Take my taxi, sir. I can easily hail another one. Driver, how much do I owe you?’
‘Thank you, ma’am,’ interjected Adam, ‘but I’ll be happy to cover the fare. Time is crucial here.’
The lady quickly exited the cab while the driver pocketed the fifty bucks. He then turned his cab around and backed it down the alley. Bob was still there talking to the unconscious boy.
‘How’s he look, Bob?’
‘Like death warmed up, mate. Never got your name.’
‘It’s Adam. Let’s put him in the back of the cab.’
It was awkward for the two men to manoeuvre the unconscious boy’s body into the cab in the narrow alley. They wanted to be quick, but they didn’t want to hurt him in the process. The cabby sat there like this was just another job.
‘I’ll give you another twenty bucks, on top of the fare, if the kid gets to the hospital alive. Speed is everything here, driver.’
The cabbie squealed his tyres and raced out of the alley, and through The Cross, like a man possessed. He sat on his horn the whole way, drove on the wrong side of the road, went straight through a red light and once drove over the footpath. He was going to get that ‘twenty bucks’.
The five minutes it took to get to the hospital seemed like an eternity. Every obstacle, every delay, tortured the two men who were fighting for the young boy’s life.
They swung open the taxi door and dragged the limp body out themselves. They carried it into the casualty department together, with Adam supporting the boy under the armpits and Bob holding him up by the knees. A nurse came over almost immediately.
Initially there were no words exchanged because none were necessary. All the communication happened in a nanosecond through eye contact alone. She recognised in their eyes the pleading for the unconscious boy’s life. Adam spoke first.
‘I think it’s heroin overdose. There were all these needles.’
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A doctor appeared in seconds and they took the boy away to do what they probably did a dozen times every day.
A few minutes later, the taxi driver showed up.
‘Did the kid make it?’
‘We don’t know yet,’ Adam replied.
About five minutes later, the nurse came back out. Adam asked her if the heroin boy made it. She said that he did, but only just.
‘He may not be so lucky the next time,’ she said matter-of-factly as she turned and walked away.
Adam reached into his wallet and pulled out another fifty. He handed it to the cabby, looked gratefully into his eyes and said, ‘That’s for the footpath and the red light, mate.’
The cabby pocketed the money and, as he turned to walk out of the hospital, replied,
‘Any time you wanna save somebody else, mate, look me up. It’s been a pleasure doin business with you.’
Adam turned to Bob, who sat down in a corner as far away from everybody as possible, and said,
‘Hey, Bob, how about some breakfast? I’m starving. All this saving lives has really given me an appetite.’
Bob just looked at the floor and didn’t say anything. Adam paused for a moment. He recognised that his normal state of cheerfulness wasn’t quite appropriate around Bob right at that time, so he toned it down somewhat. He sat down next to Bob and spoke to him more quietly.
‘That was some ride.’ … He paused … ‘You know, when I spotted you, I was actually going for breakfast at The Fountain.’ … Another pause. Adam was feeling his way … ‘Come on Bob, a coffee for the kid, on me. What do you say?’ Adam patiently coaxed Bob to come with him, until he finally agreed.
6
They sat down at The Fountain Café. Adam made sure it was a warm, sunny spot.
He ordered coffee and toast, with jam and honey, and then he ordered more coffee and bacon and eggs and even waffles for dessert. Bob ate like he hadn’t eaten for a week. When Adam was sure that Bob wasn’t going to run away, he got up to make a phone call to Michelle.
‘Good morning, Michelle, how is the best nurse in the world?’
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‘Where are you doctor? You’re fifteen minutes late for your first appointment. The patient has been here for nearly half an hour.’
‘That’s what I’m ringing up about, oh great nurse.’
‘What’s with all the buttering up? You’re not going to …’
‘You won’t believe what happened to me this morning, but I’ll have to tell you about it this afternoon. Ahh, Michelle, oh great one, I think that I’m going to have to scratch the morning. Is that OK?’
After the call, Adam sat back down with Bob, who was still furiously shovelling food into his mouth, kicked back in his chair and started to relax. He was free till two o’clock.
He took a sip of his coffee and took in the sights. He began to make light conversation.
‘I love looking at all the people around the fountain.’
‘I’m usually one of the people around the fountain lookin at all the people stuffin their faces in these cafes,’ Bob replied.
‘Huh, it’s funny that I’ve never noticed you.’
‘It’s cause I’m a blender. I blend in, an become invisible.’
‘Gee,’ replied Adam feigning amazement, ‘I wouldn’t mind being invisible sometimes.’
‘I learnt it in Vietnam. It kept me alive.’
Adam’s face instantly took on a more serious appearance. His gaze focussed on Bob who was still busy with his meal. He enquired,
‘Really? You were in Vietnam? How long for?’
‘Three years. But I’ve been back for three years now.’ Bob looked over at Adam’s plate of waffles. ‘You want that waffle?’
‘Please, Bob, be my guest. I can get more.’
Adam pushed his plate of waffles across the table looking directly into Bob’s lowered eyes. Thoughts flashed through his mind about the time he phoned his mother from Byron Bay when she told him, crying tears of joy, that he had missed out on being conscripted.
‘Were you conscripted?’
‘Yeah!’
‘I’ve heard that you blokes did it pretty tough over there.’
‘Tough ain’t the word, mate.’
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Bob gave a deep sigh as he made the last statement. Adam began to sense an aura of deep, chronic pain surrounding the dishevelled man sitting opposite him. He noticed that Bob avoided all eye contact, constantly looking down at either his plate or the ground around the café table. He was permanently subdued, like a man who had all his spirit beaten out of him. Adam felt his heart reach out to Bob.
‘I am truly sorry to hear that.’
Bob felt something he hadn’t felt for a very long time. Kindness. It might have been that, or perhaps it was the first proper meal he’d had in months, or maybe it was because he sensed that Adam was the simple kind of soul that wouldn’t prejudge him, whatever it was, it opened something up in Bob’s heart and he began to tell his story.
‘I had a best mate in Vietnam. His name was Frank. He saved me life once. He put a bullet through the head of one of them little yeller bastards just before he got the chance to put one in me. I never had a mate as good as Frank an I never will again. We wouldn’ave survived if it weren’t for each other. Trouble was, the place an the war made us lose our sense of what was right an what was wrong.’ Bob paused and had a sip of coffee. Adam noticed Bob’s hand shaking as he brought the cup to his lips. Bob continued. ‘The war made ya lose your sense of what was real … an what was important. There was so much killin goin on … so much butcherin. Me an Frank, we got caught up in some situations. We did stuff … stuff that was … God … stuff that was … bloody inhuman. I d’know mate, I d’know if I ougt’a tell ya the stuff we done, but mate,’ Bob shook his head from side to side, ‘it weren’t good.’ He paused to breathe, then continued. ‘An once ya done stuff like that … an ya know there was no way of knowin … once ya done stuff like that, it buries itself inside yer head, an … an ya can’t get rid of it. It’s like ya went to hell an played games with the devil, an ya thought it was all a bit of a wild time, but … but the dark demon was fuckin with ya all the time an makin a fuckin home for hisself right inside yer fuckin head.’
Adam noticed that Bob was having trouble breathing.
‘You OK, Bob?’
‘I’ll be OK, mate. Just need a sec.’
There was a pause while Bob regathered himself. Then he continued,
‘When we got back, we were both bad … an nobody gave a rat’s arse about us. We couldn’t sleep. We kept seein the burnin kids …’
Adam could see that Bob was getting very upset. He didn’t really know what to say, his mouth just started talking.
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‘It’s OK, Bob, it’s OK. Remember? Remember?’ Bob looked up. Tears were streaming down his face as he looked into Adam’s eyes for the first time since they met. ‘You saved a boy’s life today. That’s one for you, and screw the devil. Stick it right up him, mate. He’s done his worst to you and you’re still standing. The pendulum has started to swing the other way, Bob, I’m sure of it, I’m positive, cause look, you saved a young life today. That cancels out one of the ones you might have taken. And tomorrow, Bob, or the day after, you’ll save another one, and that will make it two, and eventually you’ll save enough to cancel them all out, and that mongrel devil, mate, you can bury that tormenting, son of a bitch forever.’
‘I don’t know, Adam, your talk is the best thing I’ve heard for years, but mate … mate
… me an Frank, we burnt kids alive, mate.’
Adam tried to conceal his shock at what Bob had just revealed to him. Bob continued,
‘I know it’s shockin just to hear it. Imagine havin to live with it … shit mate … anyway
… the only way we could handle it was to get pissed an stay pissed. But even that weren’t enough for Frank. A couple o years ago, he walked out in front of a big truck, just down there,’ Bob pointed down the main street of King’s Cross, ‘just down from the big Coke sign, an got splattered all over bloody William Street. I’ve been alone ever since.’
Adam needed to compose himself. He sat there in the sun and didn’t say anything for a long time. He guessed that it was more important for Bob to just confess his transgressions. There was no call for a judgement, or even a comment. A silent interlude seemed most appropriate. After a long pause,
‘Would you like another coffee, Bob? I’m going to have one.’
‘Yes please, Adam, that would be most appreciated, thank you.’
As they sat there in the warming sun, not saying anything, just relaxing and sipping their coffees, Adam thought how easily the roles could have been reversed. It all hinged on the roll of a dice, or a marble, or something. He wondered how Vietnam would have affected him. He might have reacted the same as Bob, or even worse. He looked at Bob and saw that now Bob was looking straight back at him, right into his eyes, and for a fraction of a second Adam hallucinated that he was looking into a mirror, at himself, living the other potential destiny, which would have unfolded had his birthday been chosen in the conscription lottery all those years ago.
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‘I might go an see the kid tomorrow,’ Bob mumbled between sips of coffee. ‘Reckon they’d let me see im?’
‘Can’t see why not.’
‘I’ve been goin down the mission lately. They been helping me ta dry out a bit.
They’re pretty good down there. They got good hearts an they don’t want nothin. I thought maybe the kid might wanna come down there with me. There’s other junkies there an they help em stay alive. I want im ta stay alive, Adam. What you said, about savin a life makin up for takin a life, ya reckon that works?’
Adam thought about it for a while, then replied, ‘I reckon it does. It has to.’ They both thought about it some more, then Adam asked,
‘More waffles?’
‘Mate, I couldn’t eat another crumb. Ya mind tellin me what ya do?’
‘I’m a dentist.’
For the first time since they met, Bob smiled, showing a set of teeth that could best be described as Bob’s version of Stonehenge. Adam only now really noticed all the scars and past injuries traversing Bob’s face. He understood that they were typical of a chronic alcoholic. He glanced around the café and caught the eye of the waitress and asked for the check. He looked inside his wallet. There were two-hundred dollars left in it. He pulled out his Visa card and handed it to the waitress. He then pulled out the two-hundred dollars and one of his business cards and handed them over to Bob. He spoke warmly to him.
‘Bob, it’s been good to meet you. Thousands of people would have walked past that kid and let him die. I’m ashamed to admit it, but God knows that I might have done the same. I would be honoured if you could ring my secretary, the number is on this card, and I’d like to fix your teeth, for free. Think of it as your country saying thanks for what you’ve been through.’
‘Jees, thanks mate, but dead set, you bastards scare the shit outa me.’
Both men rose from the café table. They looked directly into each other’s eyes as they shook hands and parted company. Adam headed down towards William Street, while Bob thought he might rent a room for a night, clean himself up a bit and maybe buy a new, second-hand pair of pants and a shirt at the op-shop. He thought about buying a bottle of Old Timer to celebrate his good fortune, but after some consideration he decided to go down to the mission to see what the good pastor thought about the idea.
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7
Adam leisurely strolled down William Street towards the city. He was in no hurry.
His first appointment wasn’t until two. He cruised through Hyde Park and paused at the big chessboard. There was always a game in progress, surrounded by a crowd watching the combatants animatedly waging their war. He wondered, as he watched the game, why countries couldn’t resolve their differences with chess instead of guns. Instead of armies of child soldiers, they could send their chess champions into battle.
He looked around the park. It was a sunny, spring morning and it had warmed up enough for him to take off his jacket. He was still early, so he decided to take a seat on one of the park benches. In the distance he could hear the sounds of the traffic and construction sites, and the occasional siren racing through the busy streets. But all that noise was being pushed back by the serene tranquillity of the park. It had the ability to wash the stress right out of his body, if he let it. He thought that sometimes he could actually feel the tension seeping out of him if he just sat there and closed his eyes and focused on the ambience of the park.
He was young and strong. His life moved at a rapid pace. It always had. University was frantic, with 8.00am lectures and so much study. Now he was in the city, in charge of his own business, and still only twenty-six years old.
As he thought about the afternoon to come, a gleam appeared in his eyes and a smile on his face. He remembered a girl who told him that she was going to drop into the surgery at five o’clock that afternoon. Her name was Nancy. He had known her for a while by then and they were becoming quite good friends. He visualised her in his mind. She was tall and skinny with fire red hair that was cut short and very sexy. Her exquisite form was wrapped in perfect, Celtic skin. When she walked, ‘God help me,’ Adam thought, ‘that’s not a walk, that’s a dance.’ He smiled again as he closed his eyes and imagined her walk.
He thought that she moved like ‘spaghetti in the wind’.
Nancy worked in the city, in a record shop that Adam used to frequent. She always wore way-out clothes. Her favourite colours were maroon and olive green. She loved to wear lots of beads and bangles, which made all her movements audible. Whenever Adam thought of her, he thought of ‘ wild Nancy’, the girl so full of life that just being with her felt like being at a party.
It turned out that they had a friend in common. His name was Robbie, the wealthiest guy Adam knew. Robbie lived in his parents’ house, right down at the end of Wunulla
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Road, right on the point of Point Piper. That’s how Adam and Nancy got to be friends.
They remembered each other from the record shop, when they met at one of Robbie’s parties.
‘I didn’t know you knew Robbie.’
‘I didn’t know you knew him either.’
Nancy had many male friends, who would have quite willingly thrown themselves across a puddle of mud for her, but she never dated any of them. She met them in different places, or she visited them. She never spoke about her men and she never let any of them ever think, even for a second, that they somehow ‘ had’ her.
And so it was with Adam who philosophically accepted her as a friend and felt mighty lucky just to get to share time with her.
Nancy was one cool chick.
She arrived early and sat down in the waiting room. Michelle greeted her.
‘Hi, Nancy. Doctor won’t be long. Cup of tea?’
‘Hi, Michelle. Doesn’t matter how many times I’ve been here I can’t get over the style of this waiting room. How are you? It’s fine about the tea. I’ll just read and let you and Adam finish your work.’
Michelle returned to assisting Adam while Nancy enjoyed immersing herself in the detail of the art deco.
Before long, they were finished for the day. Michelle knew what was going to happen after she left. Adam didn’t conceal anything from her. She was as loyal and true as anyone could be, and even though her conservative upbringing meant that she had never had any contact with any kind of drug-taking activity, she behaved as if everything that was going on was perfectly normal. Her working life had been transformed with the arrival of Adam. Every day at work was now exciting and she looked forward to being there. There was now music all day, all new music that she’d never heard before, and her new boss was so refreshingly young and full of life, such a contrast to the miserable, boring-old cadaver that she had to work for before.
‘Will I lock the door on the way out, doctor?’
‘Yes please, Michelle, and Michelle ...’
‘Yes doctor?’
‘Thank you for this morning. You are a true gem. You have a nice night. See you in the morning.’
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‘Night doctor, night Nancy.’
‘Good night, Michelle,’ Nancy replied.
Michelle stepped out of the waiting room and locked the front door behind her.
Nancy rose from her chair, walked up to Adam, placed her long, slender arms over his shoulders and gave him a juicy kiss right on the lips. He knew that that was Nancy just being good friends. She reached into her ethnic, shoulder bag and produced an audiocassette.
‘Tonight, Adam, while you are blowing my mind, I’m going to blow every neurone and synapse out of yours.’
Adam’s eyebrows shot towards the ceiling in anticipation as he glanced at the cassette in Nancy’s hand.
‘Don’t look at it,’ she said hiding the cassette behind her back. ‘I want it to be a surprise. It’s a new album. I recorded it for you at work. It arrived this week. I don’t want to say any more.’ She reached into her bag. ‘I’ve got a couple of joints. You wanna blow a joint?’
‘Oh, no thanks. I get so off-my-face on the gas as it is. Maybe later, when I take you to dinner. How about I make us a nice cup of tea first?’
‘Great.’ She looked around. ‘I just love this place, and listen, I’m taking you to dinner tonight, OK?’
‘Gee, a joint and dinner. How lucky am I?’
Adam made the tea while Nancy inserted the cassette in the player.
‘This music’s got to be played loud, Adam.’
‘So, what’s so new about that? All your music’s got to be played loud.’
‘Oh, Adam, I can’t wait for you to hear this. It is soooo classic. We should start it just as we’re getting stoned. Wait till you hear the words, just wait. You won’t believe the first line on the album. You’ll think it was written just for us.’
Adam knew that Nancy liked her tea black, but not strong, with one sugar. When he brought it out, she was already stretched out comfortably in the patient’s chair. She’d figured out the controls and liked to set it up just right for herself.
They’d had some great gas parties before, some by themselves and some with Robbie. Nancy took a sip of her tea as Adam switched on the machine. They looked into each other’s eyes, deeply and warmly. They knew that they shared a secret. They had a drug no one else had. They were doing stuff no one else did. They were going places no
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one else went. They felt like they were doing trips that people weren’t going to do for, maybe centuries. They felt like they weren’t just looking into the future, they were the future.
‘I’ll tell you when to switch on the cassette.’
‘OK.’
Adam pulled the mask off the hoses and handed one hose to Nancy. He set the gas flows at seven litres-per-minute Nitrous, and three litres-per-minute Oxygen. They put the hoses in their mouths and, while still looking into each other’s eyes, began to breathe the magic gas. Nancy waited a minute, then said, ‘OK, turn it on now.’
As they drifted into the marshmallow mind-space of the gas, Adam heard the speakers slowly come to life. First he heard what sounded like a heartbeat, then the sound of a clock, then someone saying something about being mad, then the sounds of cash registers and a woman screaming, then the sounds rose to a climax only to gush out of the speakers in a beautiful electric guitar wailing a slow, existentialist anthem, then the words, the words Nancy was talking about. She raised her hand, as if conducting the band, as the ethereal voices sang,
‘Breathe, breathe in the air …’
They were some of the first people in Australia to hear the futuristic, classic album, Dark Side of The Moon, by the English band Pink Floyd. The album wasn’t due for general release for another week.
‘This sounds like Pink Floyd,’ Adam commented.
‘Yes, it is.’
‘It reminds me of Echoes.’
‘Me too.’
‘I’ll never forget those classic lyrics: Two strangers passing on the street, perchance two separate glances meet, and I am you, and what I see is me.’
‘Absolute genius,’ Nancy affirmed.
Adam suddenly remembered his encounter with Bob that morning. He thought out aloud,
‘Now I remember looking into Bob’s eyes and seeing myself. God, that’s what they were singing about, a person’s empathy with another person, and how we’re all connected.’
‘You’re not listening, Adam,’ she interjected, ‘and you’re not breathing.’
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‘Oh yeah, I forgot.’
Adam took a couple of long, deep breaths to take himself back deeper into the mind-void, and as the music played, Nancy asked,
‘Can you hear the echo? What is that?’
‘I don’t know,’ he replied, ‘I think it’s the gas.’ After more breathing he asked her,
‘Do you think that Pink Floyd might have tripped on this gas?’
‘I think it’s quite possible,’ she said. ‘They only needed to be friends with a dentist.
Actually, I’m starting to think that it’s quite likely. Just listen to the words. Roger Waters wrote all the words, I think. Maybe it was just him. He couldn’t have got that insight on any other drug, and who doesn’t go to the dentist? Don’t you imagine that such a cool guy wouldn’t have an occasional blast with his dentist?’
‘Now you’re not breathing,’ he reminded her.
‘Oh yeah.’
‘It’s like they’re singing about us …’ He paused as an idea came into his mind. The idea verbalised itself as it arrived. ‘Oh, oh … I just got this concept. Imagine if we all live in our own universe, separate from everyone else’s, and we’re in the centre of her. And she’s alive. And she communicates with us. And she wants to communicate more with us.
She wants to speak to us in her own language. And everything that is, for us, including Pink Floyd, is part of her and part of her way of speaking to us … Nancy? Hey, who’s out of it now?’
Nancy closed her eyes and allowed herself to slide deeper into the mysterious, echoing, beating space of the gas. She felt herself separate from her body and drift, as pure consciousness, in a place which, so far, she had been unable to define.
She heard Adam’s words, and the music, but they were becoming distant, with a distinct echo. She was drifting away from them, consciously and voluntarily. She wasn’t really listening anymore.
Adam continued his monologue.
‘Maybe there’s a connection between us all. Doesn’t matter where we live or the time we live in. Maybe that’s why we feel so attuned to this music. Maybe we all really exist outside our universes, where there is no time and space, like it’s all the same place, and two strangers can pass in the street and look into each other’s eyes and recognise each other … hey Nancy? I better breathe some more … I think … I think … I think I definitely feel an empaa … with aaa … with aaa … what’s their aaa … Pinkaaa …’
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Adam began drifting deeper into the gas. He was sitting on his operator’s stool, facing in the opposite direction to Nancy, facing the back wall of the surgery. It had been an intense day. The music coming out of the speakers began drifting into the distance, with a distinct echo, when suddenly the whole wall on Adam’s left side literally melted away, revealing a huge lecture theatre full of people watching them. No, not watching, but studying. It appeared as though the surgery was a stage and that Nancy and he were some kind of guinea pigs being studied in some kind of experiment. The enormous theatre had rows upon rows of seats sloping up towards the back. There were about two to three hundred people watching them. It was so totally real. Total, clear, full-colour, full-sound reality. He could hear the ambient sounds of the theatre, including the sound of the occasional cough.
Adam suddenly became startled by the experience and turned toward the audience.
Just as he did that, the wall re-materialised in front of him, concealing the lecture theatre and its audience behind it. It was not unlike the curtain coming down on the stage.
‘What the …?’ he exclaimed.
He pulled the hose out of his mouth and threw it on the floor. He sat there, momentarily frozen motionless, as his brain desperately searched for an explanation to the reality-expanding experience he just had. He whispered to himself,
‘What was that? What the bloody hell was that?’
He noticed that the music had stopped. He realised that he must have been gone for over an hour because the whole cassette had played through. He had completely lost all sense of time. He looked at Nancy. She was gone, but not asleep, because she was still holding the hose in her mouth, breathing the gas in a smooth, controlled fashion. Adam gradually brought down the Nitrous level, slowly bringing Nancy back to the reality of the surgery.
He stroked her hair affectionately as he waited for her to return. She opened her eyes and gazed into distant space. After a few minutes of silent contemplation, she spoke.
‘Boy, was I a long way away that time. How long has it been?’
‘Over an hour.’
She lay in the chair looking at the ceiling and began to philosophise.
‘You know, and I never thought that I’d be the one to say it, but I think I’m starting to believe that there is a part of me that can live without my body. I know it sounds crazy
… but … but … do you realise the implications of that? … When we die, I mean. Could it
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be? … I’m only going by my own experience here with you. This is profoundly changing the way I think about things.’
‘You won’t believe what just happened to me,’ he whispered.
‘Really? What?’
Adam still felt somewhat disturbed. He suggested, ‘Look, how about I tell you later, over dinner. I’ve had enough of this place. Let’s pack up and take off.’
‘Oh, come on, Adam, you always get my curiosity going and then you don’t tell me.
Come on … OK, OK, I guess that I’m pretty hungry as well. Don’t let me forget anything. I’ll clean the cups.’
She paused for a moment, moved close to him, placed her arms around his waist and whispered,
‘Look, don’t take this the wrong way or anything, but I do love you, you know.’
‘I love you too, you crazy girl, I love you too. Times like these I’m so glad I met you.’
‘Me too. Hey, let’s hit The Gelato Bar, down at Bondi, for some schnitzels. I just love their schnitzels. And then we can get a gelato and go for a walk on the beach. What do you reckon? Where are you parked?’
‘I walked to work today.’
‘You walked?’
‘Yeah, but we can take a bus to my place and pick up my car.’
‘Great. Hey, we could smoke those joints in Hyde Park, on the way.’
‘Mmm. Is it good stuff?’
She gave him a smug look.
‘Is the Pope a Catholic?’
‘Sounds good, you wild woman you. Wait till I tell you about my trip. Hey, we mustn’t forget your tape.’
‘No, we mustn’t, dear Adam. Except it’s your tape now.’
‘Gee, thanks. We can play it in the car.’
As they tidied up, she remembered something.
‘Adam …’
‘Yes?’
‘Did you know that today is the equinox?’
‘You don’t say?’
…….
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