Chapter 06

At the Hospital

The ambulance pulls into the hospital and both of the kids are taken into the Emergency Room. The staff start to take details and they run into their first problem as the girl identifies herself as being nearly nine years of age, name of Jun Bao Wáng, and she’s not prepared to leave the side of her saviour for any reason. The one attempt to drag her off results in one senior nurse being severely beaten about the upper body by the girl while she screams her lungs out. The Registrar responds to the noise and he tells them to leave the girl with the boy until the parents arrive and decide otherwise. Jun stays by Hal’s side through all of his treatment.

The boy is under age and unconscious, by law the doctors can do what they need in non-intrusive procedures and what’s needed in the way of intrusive procedures to save his life, but no more than that. From the identity documents he has on him, including his Medicare card, they can get most of the information they need to register him as himself and get his assessment started. They organise full body x-rays and MRI scans so they can assess the damage to the bones and the soft tissue. Armed with the details of the damage the doctors set about the job of cleaning him up while they set out a treatment plan.

Mrs Smith arrives about then and they tell her what the situation is. She gives her permission for their plan; she doesn’t like it, but she can see she has no option. Jack is no better at these decisions than she is and Hal is unconscious. At the moment the doctors are glad he is because it makes their current job easier. They administer a general anaesthetic and they get on with the job of cleaning up his shoulder and foot right now. They’ll leave the knee until an expert arrives as he’s on his way.

The shoulder blade is cracked but not a full break so the doctors think the hit there must have been at an angle. There’s a large section of skin torn and lots of badly bruised muscle, which adds to their thoughts on a glancing blow. The whole area is cleaned up, hit with everything they can think of in the way of germ killers, and sewn back into place. A bandage covers the whole shoulder area so it also covers the few grazes on the other shoulder.

Theatre

About the time the surgeons are taking Hal into the theatre for the surgery to his foot the police are wrapping up their investigation at the station and clearing the last of the train tracks open to run again. Soon after they arrived they gave approval to open the other platforms and tracks again, but they kept the two at the scene closed. Now the train is being sent on its way, the passengers are long gone, so all is returning to as close to normal as it can get at the moment. All should be back to normal running for the evening peak hour traffic.

Based on the x-rays and MRI scans the doctors have a plan ready to deal with Hal’s foot. But a visual inspection when they open the remains of his foot up shows things are much worse than they thought. After a quick consultation with Mrs Smith she gives them instructions to cut away. They offered two options with expected outcomes, but she tells them to use the one that’s the most extensive surgery. She knows her son so she knows which he’ll be more able to live with.

The doctors remove all of the foot forward of the ankle. They leave just enough bone to give Hal something to walk and balance on. They also leave just enough muscle, ligament, and skin to work the remains of the joint and to make a good pad around the remaining bone. The result looks like a club foot by creating a blood and bone equivalent of a club foot with a working ankle. This will be easier for Hal to use than a half foot or a full ankle and foot prosthetic.

While they have him in the theatre they take the time to sew up some of the large cuts on his legs and to set things ready for the knee specialist who’s due to arrive about the time they finish with the foot.

The knee specialist, Dr Wells, arrives and looks over the scans. He talks with Mrs Smith and he confirms what the doctors warned her what the case may be. She gives him approval to operate to have a visual of the situation first. He opens up the knee, and again the situation is worse than expected in some ways, but better than expected in others. The bones in the joint are gone and Hal will need a full knee replacement, but the ligaments are still good. Wells’ biggest concern is Hal’s age and growth cycles. So he goes back out to speak with Mrs Smith.

After a long talk with Doctor Wells and Hal’s regular doctor Mrs Smith tells him to go ahead with the knee replacement. Hal is already big for his age and about the maximum height his regular doctor expects him to hit, based on some old measurements that are indicative of final height. The worst case scenario would mean another operation in five or six years’ time when he reaches his full adult height. Dr Wells goes back to do the operation. The whole knee is replaced with a titanium one and Hal is sewn back up. They bandage the knee with a stiff bandage, but not a cast. The knee is immobilised but they can’t put a cast on because they need to examine the knee each day.

Jun sits beside Hal holding his hand all through the operations. They move him to the recovery ward and she walks alongside him. When they set him up in the bed with monitors she climbs up on the side of the bed to lay her head on his chest. She’s soon asleep.

Both sets of parents smile when they see her, and they organise for the situation to remain that way. They recognise she needs time with her saviour and talisman before she can reach a new mental balance. The girl’s grandfather, Chéng Wáng, organises for some security guards to keep an eye on them both.

Next Day

Hal wakes up feeling very hungry about mid-morning the next day. Looking around the room he can tell he’s in hospital. It takes a moment for the memory of yesterday to catch up with him and he jerks a little. He feels a weight on his chest so he looks down. He smiles at the girl asleep on his chest, but she’s stirring as his jerking about must have disturbed her sleep.

A nurse alerted by the monitors comes in to check up on him. He conveys his hunger while she takes some readings then makes some notes. She leaves, and a little later a nurse’s aide walks in with some soup for him. He’s surprised to see it’s a top quality chicken and corn soup, his favourite. He eats it and he asks for more. She smiles and leaves. She soon returns with some more. It’s then he learns they have several servings in the fridge for him and it just needs to be heated up in the microwave to be served to him. He knows this isn’t normal, but he’s too busy enjoying the food to care. After three servings he goes back to sleep.

In the early afternoon Hal wakes up again to find his chest warmer is sitting on the side of the bed while she eats a bowl of soup. She smiles when she hands him hers and calls out for another serving. A nurse’s aide comes in to check on things then she goes to get another serving while the two share the soup after the girl introduces herself to him as Jun Bao Wáng. She already knows his name. They finish off two more shared soups before the nurse’s aide has to help Hal with a bed pan.

About mid-afternoon two detectives arrive to ask his version of the events. He describes what he saw and he gives a detailed description of the man who shoved the girl. Hal is the first person they’ve spoken to who can give a clear description of the attacker, so they’re very excited about it. Jun smiles at him when he finishes his statement. One of the detectives makes a call on his mobile phone. Twenty minutes later a computer expert is on hand with his computer, a wide-screen flat monitor, and copies of the video records from the railway station that day. The videos of the platform aren’t clear on who did what. They go through them and Hal points out the man just before the shove, then again just after it.

Hal asks if they have any good shots of the people entering or leaving the station, they acknowledge they do. So Hal goes through them. The images are played at normal speed, but Hal has no trouble pointing out two sets of images where the man involved is shown while he walks about the station. He also picks him out in the footage of where he leaves just after the incident. All three shots are from slightly different angles but Hal makes a clear identification each time. The lead detective has the computer expert send copies of those shots back to the main forensics lab so they can run them against known villains. About fifteen minutes later he gets sent a file with about sixty pictures of people who look a lot like the man in the images they sent in.

They show all of the images to Hal in sets of four at a time with a new set coming up on the screen every five seconds. About a third of the way through he stops the show to point to a man as he says, “That’s him.” They restart the images and he stops them again a little later to say, “There’s another shot of him from another angle.” The detective smiles as in both cases Hal has pointed out the same man. The police leave.

They arrest the man Hal identified, but he claims to know nothing and has witnesses to say he was elsewhere when it happened. But he made one mistake, and they get him with it. By sheer luck the only people to make contact with the back of Jun’s clothes on the day were the person who pushed her, Hal, and the nurse who held her. The man Hal identified signs statements he didn’t know the girl, never met her, and wasn’t there or at the hospital. So the DNA evidence of some skin cells left behind when he pushed her back with his bare hands is good evidence he’s lying, and the only reason he would lie is if he did it.

Faced with the forensic evidence he pleads guilty to attempted murder before the magistrate. He does this solely to reduce his sentence since pleading guilty means the magistrate has to deliver a sentence then and there, if he pleads not guilty it goes to judge and jury. Under the laws of New South Wales the maximum penalty a magistrate can give as a sentence is much lower than that from a judge and jury. So if you’re sure you’re going down pleading guilty before a magistrate puts a much lower limit on the potential sentence. He knows this and he uses it to his advantage since he figures he’ll cop the maximum term, which he does.

Facing the Music

About an hour after the detectives leave Hal’s room is full of visitors: his parents, sister, Jun’s parents and grandfather, plus four doctors. His mother starts the discussion, “Hal, you need to be told the extent of your injuries. The doctors can give you the full details if you want them, or would you rather just know the effects?” Jun sits up to look at all their faces. She notices the careful expression on her grandfather’s face and she wonders what he knows to put on what she calls ’his hiding mask.’

“How long before I can get back to training, Mother?”

She gulps, “Oh, you’ll have a lot of training as part of your therapy. But your athletics training is over.” He stares at her. “Your foot in front of the ankle had to be removed. I realise that wouldn’t be a big issue, but you now have a titanium knee. The doctor says you’ll never be able to run worth a damn, in the future.” Hal gulps.

Jun turns to look at him. He has no expression at all as his face is very stiff. She snuggles up his chest to lay her head on his left shoulder while she hugs him harder. She has no idea why, but that information has hurt him a lot. His mother notices the look as well. She waves everyone out of the room, and they leave. She goes last and leaves Hal with only Jun hugging him. She closes the door behind her. Jo has a sad expression, so do both of Hal’s parents. The rest look puzzled except Chéng Wáng.

Jun’s father, Zhu Wáng, asks, “What have I missed?”

His father, Chéng, explains, “My son, if anyone but that boy had been trying to save Jun we would be burying her.” All turn to look at him. “Once I had his name and address I had some people check up on him. One assistant recognised the details and told me about him. Henry John Smith has been involved with Little Athletics since he was eight years old. He’s won every race he’s ever entered. Even timed events against older runners, that’s races based on time groups in earlier events, not age. For the last three years one of the local organisers has been asking all the other Little Athletics groups for the times of their fastest runners, all in Hal’s age group or size are several percent longer times. Some members of the Australian Athletics Olympic Committee are already interested in what they call ’the fastest boy alive.’ They already have plans to get him into the squad for the first Olympics after he turns fifteen. They won’t risk him before that age. He has, I should say, had great speed, but his take off and great acceleration had them all mesmerised. They just couldn’t believe how fast he went from dead stop to full speed in only a few paces. If anyone else had been trying to save Jun they both would have been still on the tracks when the train arrived. One of this country’s best future Olympic champions has just given up all of his dreams and his career for Jun.” They all stare as not even Hal’s parents knew about the top athletics people watching their son. He turns to Mrs Smith, “Please, I need to publicise the main details of Hal and what he did yesterday. I’ll keep his name out of the papers, but we need to make it known a young man of Western descent risked all for a young girl of Chinese descent he’d never met. This will lower a lot of the racial tensions many are working at bringing to a boiling pitch to start riots.”

She looks at Jack, he nods, and she nods. “Yes, go ahead, and please don’t have any photos where he can be easily recognised.”

“I intend to use some of the photos from the railway station. Their security cameras aren’t all that good for identification at the range concerned, but they do show him to be Caucasian and what he did. They’ll be a lot better than any of just him.”

Mrs Smith looks around the group, “For the moment, I think it best we leave those two alone. All of his dreams, plans, and the only career he knew just got ripped to shreds on him. I’m sure he’s crying in there right now. Jun is with him. She’ll give him the support and unconditional love he needs at the moment. He’s her hero so there’s nothing he can do to lower his esteem in her eyes, but his crying will make him seem more human and not a God or superman to her.” They all nod their agreement.

Soon after that many of them have to leave for various reasons. Only both of the mothers are left outside the door. About an hour later Jun opens the door to ask for a cousin to come visit her at the hospital. Her mother hands her a change of clothes and Jun goes for a shower in the room’s attached en-suite. They’d put Hal in a private room. The women walk in to look down at the sleeping Hal with tear streaks marking his face. Both are saddened by the sight of him like that.

A showered and changed Jun returns to the bed and she goes back to her position at Hal’s side. An hour later the cousin Jun asked for arrives with the sketch pad and pencils she was asked to bring. She and Jun have a long quiet conversation before she draws something. She shows it to Jun who points at parts and makes some comments. A new version is drawn up and Jun agrees to it. The cousin agrees to show it to her father and to make a full painting of the drawing. The mothers watch with interest, but every time they go to see what the two are up to the drawing is hidden from them. Realising they aren’t to know yet they leave the two girls alone.

The Following Months

Hal’s injuries heal and he commences therapy, first in the bed then in the hospital’s pool when the doctors approve it. He has to learn how to walk again. The knee works just a little different to the original and that changes the motions. Also, the ligaments have been damaged and need to be worked in again. He makes slow progress and Jun doesn’t leave his side. Her grandfather hires a tutor for them both and they do their class lessons together in the hospital room.

The publicity around the attempted murder both raises the racial tensions due to it being a murder attempt of a child, and then it lowers them a lot due to who saved the girl and how he saved her. The full extent of the damage and how the rescue has destroyed his future also helps to lower the tension all round.

The time comes when Hal can leave the hospital to go home for care. Mrs Smith smiles when she finds the transfer to her home includes a nurse, a tutor, and Jun. The Smiths recognise Jun is a force of nature and they accept her staying with Hal until he is well enough to suit her.

One day during the second week of Hal’s home care Jun addresses the whole Smith family. She looks around the faces watching her while they sit in Hal’s bedroom. She says, “I’m very much a traditionalist and my culture is full of tradition. We have many myths and magical items. One of the most recognised is the Chinese Dragon. Unlike the European Dragon the Chinese Dragons are seen as being helpful beings of primal natural forces, and they are very powerful totems.” They all nod their understanding while they wonder where she’s going. “One of them is the White Dragon that’s the spirit of virtuous and pure kings, the ’Bailong.’ This is a very powerful Dragon and a very good Dragon. One other aspect of our myths and spirits is we often see them at work in people who have the qualities of the spirit involved. In those cases we often call the people concerned by the name of the spirit.” She looks over her audience as they nod understanding of what she’s said, but they still don’t see where she’s heading. “I’ve spoken with my family and others of the Chinese community. We agree Hal has the spirit of the Bailong so that is now his name within the Chinese community.”