Girl in an Empty Cage Read online

  Chapter 12 – The Children and the Crocodile Stone

  Two days after Sandy visited Susan was notified of a doctor coming to visit her and examine her baby. Sandy arranged this visit; the doctor was someone she had met through medical circles.

  Susan was unsure, but in the end agreed, thinking it was not about her comfort, it was insurance that her baby got the best treatment. Once she had met the person she could decide on what to do and how to pay.

  At ten o’clock she was escorted to the visitor’s room to meet the doctor, Christine something, a gynaecologist who had qualified last year and joined a busy practice at Darwin Private Hospital. This doctors’ formal role was unclear as she normally saw private patients not prisoners and had only made these arrangements as a favour to Sandy.

  As Susan came in a pleasant lady in her early thirties rose to greet her. Susan liked her instantly, the no nonsense professional competence, and a ready smile.

  She had a portable ultrasound machine which she plugged into the power in the visitors room. She asked Susan to liey down on a towel on the table and checked her carefully by palpation and ultrasound. She soon had a picture of her baby on a laptop screen attached to the ultrasound. She asked Susan if she wanted to know the sex?

  Susan nodded.

  “As best I can tell it is a girl, you will have a beautiful daughter.”

  Susan was thrown; she was so sure it would be a boy. She asked, “Are you sure? I was certain it was a boy.”

  Christine reworked the image, zooming in on the child again and going to the lower body. “Well it is hard to be 100% at this stage, between five and six months, but it is pretty clear. You can see the place and there is nothing there where the penis and testicles should be. It seems a bit small for your date and how big your tummy is. I think we should run a few tests just to confirm everything is OK, bring you in to hospital for a day next week to check it out more thoroughly.”

  Susan nodded, not wanting to take a chance with the health of her child. They discussed the tests for next week. Christine left the ultrasound head resting on Susan’s belly, the laptop screen facing her.

  There was a movement. Something that looked like a leg zoomed into view, showing a tiny foot with five toes. It seemed to come from a different place than from the baby they had been looking at. Susan pointed, open mouthed. Christine’s eyes followed her finger.

  “Oh my God, that leg does not belong to the child we have been looking at. There is a second baby.”

  After five minutes of further checking it was clear, there were twins, a boy and girl. Now the sizes were right.

  Christine finished a few minutes later. Susan said she had some cash to pay her for today, but would need to work out how to pay for future treatment. Christine waved her aside. “Plenty of time to sort that out later and Sandy told me she would pay if needed.

  “First things first! With two babies there are extra risks. I need you to come in to hospital next week for more tests. I will arrange this with the prison authorities.”

  By the time Christine left it was arranged. The hospital visit was booked for the next Monday. A prison van would take her and she would be escorted by a warder for the day. Not that she was considered a significant risk, having returned to Australia voluntarily, but appearances must be maintained.

  Susan woke early on the Monday, feeling an eager anticipation to leave her cell and walk in the open air. It was the first time she had left this place since her court appearance over six weeks ago. That seemed like an eternity ago. She walked outside in handcuffs acutely aware of the shame of being treated like a wild animal.

  Someone must have tipped off the press. Several journalists and camera men were gathered in the car park, long telephoto lenses pointing her way, trying to get her picture. Her protruding stomach was there for all to see as she walked the few steps from the prison door to the waiting van. She was whisked away, glad to be hidden inside the van’s windowless sides.

  It was a day of waiting between different tests and procedures, enclosed in a locked room on a high floor. At least there was a TV she could watch, her first real taste of the happenings in the outside world since her arrest in England.

  In between procedures she sat with her eyes glued to the TV. The morning passed slowly, a rolling rotation of chat shows and soap operas. The midday news came on. She felt disconnected from it all and decided to flick back to a soap opera. There was too much pain as she watched normal people go about their real everyday business.

  She was about to push the channel button when she saw a headline.

  “Remnants of missing helicopter found.” Now the TV had her full attention. The report was to the point. A fishing trawler picked up refuse floating in the water about 100 kilometres west of Darwin yesterday and brought it to port last night. This morning experts from the Department of Aviation confirmed it appears to be an extensively damaged fuel tank of a Bell 47 helicopter.

  The reporter stated, “It is likely to have come from missing helicopter of Vikram Campbell, whereabouts unknown since 30th December. It is considered most likely to have been washed out to sea from the rivers of the Joseph Bonaparte Gulf following the cyclone in that area in the days after Mr Campbell’s disappearance. A new search of this area for any other crash evidence will commence tomorrow.”

  Susan felt profoundly depressed. She had had a little hope before, despite Buck’s optimistic unwillingness to concede the likely; but now her hope was extinguished. The helicopter really had crashed and with this damage which had broken the machine apart, the outcome was obvious. She knew they must go through the formalities of the search but there would be no happy ending, even if further wreckage was found. It just reinforced her determination to keep on the path she was following. She sat musing on the way her life was going, drifting onwards, further and further into darkness.

  Suddenly her own image on the TV pulled her attention back. It was her, at least a telephoto image of her taken this morning; a woman with a bloated belly walking the few steps to the prison van. Now she turned her attention in to the sound.

  “Breaking News, Crocodile Man’s lover and alleged murderer was taken to Darwin Hospital this morning for medical tests to confirm her pregnancy. Is Crocodile Man the father of her child?”

  She remembered the grainy images seen of Lindy Chamberlain’s pregnancy, replayed from when Lindy was in prison and the awful speculation that had gone with it, all the Devil child rubbish. Was that to be her fate – mother of another devil child? Susan now wished she had stayed in prison and let the prison doctor deal with her.

  She just wanted to return from this hostile place to her cage again; it kept the outside away. It was better to be alone than to have to watch this feeding frenzy as the public took delight in the news of one tragedy after another.

  She realised her mind was slowly being refilled with the missing crocodile spirit, she had left the crocodile stone in her cell, and with it her defence was gone. So now, as the day wore on, she could feel it pushing and insinuating its way back into her mind.

  She realised she did not care anymore. It was easier this way, lost in a mindless oblivion. As she let the crocodile spirit take her she again felt Mark’s presence, he seemed real again inside her mind. She had missed him so much and here he still was. In her search for freedom all she had found was an empty place where nothing and no one lived. Here, in her mind, she had a companion again, and it had less power to hurt her than what lay outside.

  Suddenly she was glad she was carrying two children. They could continue her life, and Mark’s, in the outside world. They would be company for one another and grow up strong and healthy, with no taint from this past. Her parents would take good care of them.

  And when they left her she would say goodbye. Not just goodbye to them until she saw them next, but a final goodbye to them, her parents, and all that this awful life had dealt her.

  It was simple, she would leave this world. She would write a si
mple will and ask that they put her body in the ground next to what was left of Mark’s, she would return to him and, as two crocodile spirits together, they would watch from afar. That was as close to heaven as either of them could get and it would have to be enough.