Burn Patterns (3 page)

‘No.'

‘Yeah, I heard. Sorry.'

Iris stood, shaky at first, having to hold the gurney. She didn't want this conversation. They had taken her shoes.

‘They won't believe me,' he said. ‘This was him. I found the big zeds down under the stage. I got photographs. They were there, before it all blew.'

‘I need to find my handbag. Get to work.'

He stood up with difficulty, putting all his weight onto one leg, grabbing the gurney. He saw her looking. ‘No, I didn't get a scratch this time. Old wound. I saw you at the school. I wanted to touch base. Charles Koch. You can call me Chuck.' His hand was out, to shake.

Iris fled down the corridor, where parents were starting to crowd around the lying and walking wounded. Uniformed police were taking statements. Others were sitting in bloodstained clothing. She heard tones of comfort, of teasing, forced laughter. She heard someone say into a phone, ‘The burns victims are being sent to St Clement's.'

The foyer was crowded. Mostly school students, with nicks and cuts. Others were dazed, distant, sitting in the waiting-room chairs, or three abreast on more gurneys, the side rails down. They'd be in shock. The television sets in the waiting area showed news from the school. Helicopter shots of the two burnt-out appliances next to the hole where the gymnasium had been. They might want to turn those off, thought Iris. It was too soon for perspective. They would need counselling. A program to move them through the trauma, individual enough to allow for the different resilience or frailty of each child's psychological make-up. They'd all need support, mostly, importantly, from their families. If the fire investigator upstairs
was correct, this was not the work of a group of sick kids, which would mean less self-blame. On the other hand, the human mind did not cope well with the random. Until the cause could be discovered and fixed, fear was natural. The mind would try to find ways to connect selected dots. The human mind craved the comforts of cause and effect because it suggested the world was understandable, controllable and therefore safer next time.

The police at the truck would need more support. If they'd accidently set something off, they would need serious rebuilding. Especially the person who told them to investigate the truck. ‘I thought …' ‘You thought what?' Blame. There are no accidents, only gross negligence. Someone would need to be blamed, not merely the perpetrator. An American word, perpetrator. Offender. Transgressor. Killer.

The group of people around the booking area was seven deep. Iris wasn't getting her purse any time soon. She considered the dried blood on the back of her hands. She thought of Lady Macbeth, the quote about spots, then considered her own mind striving for the distance of irony. The healthy brain could put layers of ideas and points of view between itself and hurtful things. She took a plastic cup of water from amongst many others on a table, taking a sip before splashing some on her hands, wiped them on her grimy skirt.

Iris went out of the foyer past the arrivals, through parents asking an incident officer how to get to their children. Mildly injured people were still being led into the hospital. Ambulances were still arriving. Kids in wheelchairs, with blankets over their legs, answered roaming doctors and nurses. Two soldiers were in the drive, sending off the empty ambulances, the occasional police car, like an aircraft carrier jumping its jets. Another large press pack was being held way back amidst parked cars. A woman reporter, vaguely familiar, called, ‘Iris, what's happening? Give us a comment.' Some cameras swung towards her. Someone called, ‘Hey, Fire Lady!'

Iris walked barefooted along the curb of the hospital emergency driveway to the street. Delivery trucks rumbled past. Business folk were purposeful. Shoppers meandered past another line of media vans with satellite uplinks aimed to the
sky. She found a taxi. The driver looked Sudanese. Iris didn't ask him about the traumas of civil war or driving taxis in her country. She explained her plan to pick up money, her spare car keys, a pair of shoes, before heading back to the practice to pick up her car. His eyes flicked to her in the rear-view mirror as he drove. Too much information, thought Iris.

According to the radio, the explosion may have been a gas leak, yet police were questioning students about a possible student link to the fire trap. Early reports suggested that no schoolchildren were badly hurt. There were cuts, bruises, very few broken bones. Nine firefighters were dead and two members of the bomb response unit were missing, presumed perished in the explosion. The question was asked as to why people had gone back into the gymnasium after the first evacuation.

Iris didn't listen to the answer. They wouldn't be able to say, yet. She asked that the radio station be changed to something bland without news. She watched lawns being mowed, children being picked up from school. Tradies were packing up. The traffic was building towards peak hour. The local IGA had a special on tomatoes and mangoes.

Iris promised the driver she would not abscond, although he seemed more mollified by her prestigious street address than her assurances. She went round the back to get the spare key from under the pot by the pool. It was nearly four pm according to the oven clock. She wrote a note to Mathew who would have heard about the explosion, but not know her connection. She decided to leave that until later. ‘Retrieving the car. Not working late.' She added ‘possibly'. She went upstairs to find cash, comfortable shoes, a reasonably stocked handbag. She checked herself in the mirror, deciding she could repair most of her face in the taxi. A headscarf would hide the blood in her hair until she could take a bath. A long bath.

*

There was a parking ticket under the windscreen wiper of her car. Iris left it there. She headed into the practice, thinking she might write up Hannah's case file.

Downstairs were a couple of smaller consulting rooms, various amenities including a largish conference room, cramped
kitchen, clerical office, reception alcove. A lone patient still sat in the waiting room, not one of Iris's.

Anna, a severe Dutch matron, looked up from reception as Iris tried to creep up the stairs. ‘Iris, you're here.'

Pamela, who did accounts, watched over her narrow glasses.

‘Good evening ladies,' said Iris breezily, tramping up the noisy wooden stairs.

‘I'll let Patricia know,' Anna called after her.

I wish you wouldn't, thought Iris.

Mary stood up in her island at the end of the waiting room.

‘Iris!'

‘Mary.'

‘Oh, I've just sent the last patient home. Another one is with Gillian. I didn't know … You were at the school weren't you?'

‘They wouldn't let me call. Then I lost my handbag with my phone in it.'

‘Was it awful? Was it just awful?'

‘But here I am, back. Could you unlock my door? My keys were in my bag too.'

‘OMG.' Mary, in her mid-twenties, sometimes spoke like a tweet. She came around with her spare keys.

‘I know I've missed the clients and I'm sure you've rearranged things beautifully. I have “thickening letters” to do and I thought I should write up Hannah.'

Mary opened the door. ‘You've got a cut, Iris.'

Iris tugged her scarf forward. ‘Only a nick. Not even stitches.'

‘There's blood on your shirt.'

‘I should have changed. All good, Mary. I don't need anything. You're good to go. Night.' Iris stepped into her room, closing the door, before she flicked on the light. It was not her room. It belonged to Dr Irene Chew, a champion of narrative therapy who was currently on sabbatical interstate, collating newly discovered papers from Michael White's estate. Dr Chew's honours degree, doctorate and other qualifications hung on one wall next to an enormous painting of a tranquil sea.

The desk faced the door. Two soft-backed chairs sat before it, one still facing the green couch where Iris had left it in the morning. Behind the couch hung a painting of orange and
yellow hibiscus. Irene clearly favoured colourful pictures of neutral representational detail.

In a large, colourful box were children's toys. During counselling, a child could demonstrate certain things using dolls, and secrets might be told to a teddy bear. There was magic in the box too. Wands, fairies, toy cats could witness private victories or help defend against scary things. A toy dog could be named, borrowed to defend against ‘the problem', whether it be night terrors or bedwetting or problems with fighting at school.

Iris looked back towards the couch, trying to conjure Donna and Hannah, to return to the morning before 8.55 when the police came for her. She marvelled at the hibiscus painting, how similar the colours were to the moment the gymnasium exploded. Iris imagined the gymnasium superimposed, saw the station officer too, fixed in the frozen time of the painted canvas on the office wall.

That's how Patricia found her, still standing in the middle of the consulting room, when she entered in a flurry of impatient concern and jasmine scent.

‘Sit,' commanded Patricia, pointing to the couch.

Iris did, watching Patricia inventory her wounds and dirt.

‘Is your head cut, Iris?'

‘We were very lucky. Firstly they'd moved us all back, quite a long way. Also, there wasn't much glass. Very few windows. The brick pieces which reached us were all quite small. They'll need trauma counselling. The schoolkids, especially. I should have stayed at the hospital, I suppose. I could go back. I can talk to the relevant hospital staff.' Iris tried to get up, but Patricia laid her hand on her shoulder, pushed her back down onto the couch.

Patricia had strong arms, Iris supposed, from the kayaking. She favoured dresses with lots of colour in ethnic themes – African, South American, Australian Indigenous. Iris tried to focus on the Zulu shields rather than the orange.

Patricia sat down at the other end of the couch. ‘So, the doctors have seen you?'

‘Yes,' lied Iris.

‘Do you want time off?'

‘No.'

‘Counselling. You need to talk about this.'

‘Patricia. It's nothing. I mean, compared to …'

‘Which is exactly why you should talk about this one. To Frank?'

‘Okay. Yes, good idea.'

Patricia studied her.

Iris smiled.

Patricia patted her hand.

Iris smiled a real smile. She could see Patricia trying to think of a way to chastise her for being a problem, without saying it.

‘When you came to us, Iris,' she finally began, ‘what was the plan? What was the journey we decided to embark on?' Patricia was a practising clinical psychologist as well as the manager. Her areas of expertise were relationship counselling and life-potential actualisation.

Iris didn't want to play. Yet she tried. ‘I'm sorry, Patricia. I want to work in an area where I can make a difference to people. I want to treat people who are only mildly ill, who can be nudged to a better life. I don't want to be part of the life-and-death stuff anymore. I really want to make this work.'

Iris watched Patricia struggling to stay neutral, her lips tightening ever so slightly at the corners.

‘I mean all people's lives are, of course, life and death to them. I do value this opportunity. The sanctuary here, the chance to work …' Iris stopped. She wouldn't plead. ‘You saw what happened. They kind of nabbed me, Patricia. I was dragooned. Shanghaied, kidnapped. I tried to say no, but, you know, it was the police after all. You saw. Talk about flight or fight, I keep trying to flee these guys and they keep dragging me back in.'

Patricia remained grim and focused.

Iris said, ‘From their point of view, it was an emergency. Well, from any point of view, as it turned out. They still regard me as useful. Just to give them some quick profiles, but then things … escalated. As they do sometimes. I explained they can't keep doing this. I explained I don't do that kind of work, any number of times. I was leaving when things really went pear-shaped.' The building did go pear-shaped, thought Iris. It took on the shape of a pear as it began its evaporation.

‘Of course.' Patricia squeezed Iris's shoulder. ‘I'm sorry, Iris. This isn't about the practice. It's your welfare. This is exactly why you wanted to move away from dangerous work.'

‘Yes. Ditto.'

‘Will you go home now?'

Iris bowed.

‘Will you not come in tomorrow?'

‘I have a lot of work. I feel fine, Patricia. I mean, sure, a bit bent out of shape. No worse than a spill on the rapids, I imagine.'

Patricia smiled.

Iris thought she'd finally reached her.

Patricia headed for the door, stopping to say, ‘I think it's one of the ways we're different, Iris, and I need to learn to understand. You see, I never go on the rapids. I have enough trouble paddling on the flat stuff. You take care.' She winced, then was gone.

Frank's Jaguar was parked on the front verge outside Iris's house. He was waiting for her on the front step under the movement sensor light, which shone whitely on the veranda.

Frank Silverberg was a rumpled man of sixty-something in a rumpled coat, shirt, corduroys. With his unruly beard he reminded Iris of Francis Ford Coppola. He raised a hand at her, still sitting on the top step.

‘Jesus Christ, Frank. Give me a fuckin break.'

‘You offend, Iris. Firstly, you reject my concern. You do it by reaching for your firefighter register and swearing at me? You also hit me with Jesus, even though you're not religious and you know I am. Are you angry with me?'

‘Can we not do this? I've had a big day.'

‘Patricia telephoned.'

‘Of course.'

He stood with a great show of effort as Iris went up the steps. Before she could move past he hugged her to his big soft body. She started to pull back but he wouldn't let go so she let her head rest on his chest. She smelled dog and the faint whiff of cigar. The security light timed out and it was dark for a second or two before it switched itself on again when Iris stepped out of the bear hug.