Bob waited for the tall, imposing nurse to check where Chris was. Sitting down, she called someone on the phone, then said. ‘He’ll be ready in a minute. They’re just getting him dressed for his physio session.’ 

‘Okay,’ Bob replied. He had to say something.

As he went to turn to find a seat, the nurse got up again and winked at him, catching Bob off guard. ‘Your brother’s doing a lot better,’ she said. ‘We’re all so glad for him.’

‘Yeah, right.’ Bob tried to sound enthused. 

After five minutes they wheeled Chris out. The nurse gave Bob a look as if to say he should follow. Bob shuddered. Chris was still frail after many months in hospital.  

As Bob trailed his older sibling, he could see enough of him to perceive colour flushing across Chris’s face and a smile lifting it. Chris’s hair had grown back too. Shocks littered his head, whereas last time a jagged pink line ran across an unfamiliar shaved skull.

The physio room was a large, all-white hall of mirrors and horizontal exercise bars. A young physiotherapist with a blue collared shirt and neat haircut met Chris at the door. His name was Matthew, according to his name badge. 

Matthew rolled Chris over to hip-high parallel bars and stood watch while Chris struggled to get up. 

Chris huffed as he walked. Using his upper body strength, he swung and slid his feet to form steps. His track pants billowed like there was nothing inside and his t-shirt dripped with sweat.

With frequent stops for rest, Chris made two ten-metre lengths in five minutes. He looked at Bob. ‘See that?’ 

He was making progress. Bob’s chest tightened and he scrambled for his asthma puffer in his pocket, which he rushed to get to his mouth to take a hit. While Chris slumped back into his wheelchair, Bob tried to fill his lungs with air, looking for the exit. 

An orderly entered and wheeled Chris out of the room, which prompted the physio to turn to Bob, ‘So, how do you think he is?’ 

Bob remained silent. Three months since he’d been in here and this guy wanted to know how Bob found Chris.

The image of a torn brown McDonald’s bag Bob had seen being blown across the road a few weeks ago flashed to his mind. Until he got close and realised what it was, to Bob the bag resembled a person laying on the street, their arms flailing as they tried to drag their body out of the way of cars speeding past.

The physio went to his desk to shuffle some papers and look at his computer. It looked like he was retreating from his inquiry until he said, ‘Given what he’s been through, I think Chris is doing really well.’ 

Bob’s mind went back to the bag. He’d had the strongest urge to run and stamp on it. 

***

Out of the Melbourne gloom, the tram looked like one of those tall lit-up drinks fridges flipped on its side and made to scuttle along. 

It couldn’t take Bob away from the hospital fast enough, not to mention the people assisting Chris. Bob shifted his weight, unable to calm himself. 

He turned his head to see if any of his fellow travellers noticed his unease. At least twenty minutes until he reached his neighbourhood. Bob wished the time and the thoughts of his brother would pass quickly.

His phone lit up in his hand. His mother. He sent it to voicemail. She tried once more. Again, it went to voicemail. 

She sent a text message: ‘Can you please answer your phone. I need to talk to you.’

She called again, and this time he picked up. 

‘Hello, hello,’ her voice coming through loud from the phone’s speaker. ‘Did you see him?’

The device went silent, and Bob waited for her to talk about Chris. When it came to her eldest, she always waited.

‘Yes,’ Bob said.

‘I should have come. How do you think he was?’

The tram crept forward in traffic, taking longer than usual. At the other end a woman repeatedly tapped on the driver’s window, even though a big sign said, ‘DO NOT TALK TO THE DRIVER WHILE THE TRAM IS MOVING.’

‘Mum, I can’t talk now. I’m on the tram.’ Bob’s stop was still ten minutes at least. He narrowed his eyes until the colour evaporated and his surroundings greyed. No faces; just figures. The woman was lost in the blur. 

‘Robert, why do you always get funny about your brother?’

Closing his eyes, Bob’s vision blackened. There was nothing to register—the people fidgeting, rocking back and forth with the motion of the tram, everyone staring at their devices, the woman a couple of metres away inspecting herself on her phone, the two big guys opposite with bulging muscles—until his mother’s voice brought him back, ‘Bob, I’d like to know how he is.’

Bob opened his eyes and looked uncertainly about the tram. His mother always seemed to catch him at the worst time. ‘Mum, I can’t talk about it now.’ 

‘I don’t care where you are. I just need to know. I was going to see a friend, but if he’s not well, I’ll go see him instead. I’d call the hospital but it’s impossible to get through. Besides, I just don’t have faith in those nurses.’

So typical of her to say something like this. But also, when was the last time she had dropped everything to visit Bob? When was the last time she had paid him a visit at all? ‘I’m not going to talk about it, not here.’ 

He could feel his breath become short, and forehead get hotter but was sure his voice was normal, and no one around had sensed his distress.

‘This thing you have about your brother, you’ve got to let it go.’

Wow, and there it was: this was all Bob’s problem. Would she say he was imagining things again? 

She followed up with, ‘Now can you please tell me how he is.’

‘Give me five minutes, can you. I’ll call you when I get off the tram.’

She seemed to know he wouldn’t come through on this promise, like he’d done many times before. She raised her voice down the line at him, ‘Robert Moyles, can you please stop all this silliness.’

The tram halted, and the doors opened, which gave Bob the opportunity to jump off. ‘God mum, you think I have a thing about Chris? You never shut up about him.’ 

‘I really don’t know what you mean,’ she said. ‘Now, I’d like to know how he is.’

Bob looked about. People jostled passed him as they walked away from the stop. Even now that he was off the tram, he still didn’t want to tell her. He felt like hanging up, disappearing, and never speaking to her again.

The tram departed, which left Bob alone and waiting for the next one. His mother stayed on the line too. 

‘Okay, mum. He’s getting better. He was walking today.’ 

‘Oh, that’s amazing,’ she said, her tone immediately fresher. ‘Isn’t that amazing?’

He didn’t answer, but it didn’t matter. She’d hung up on him. 

***

Six weeks passed before Bob went back to the hospital. 

In the middle of the day, he rode the tram with families, young children and their grandparents. Bob imagined them going to museums, art galleries, zoos, playgrounds, aquariums. 

The tram rattling reminded Bob of Chris chatting to him the day just prior to his accident. Bob had gone to visit Chris at his house. Chris had promised to cook dinner but had instead ordered Domino’s. 

He’d also promised he’d be nice to his younger sibling. ‘Sorry if I get overexcited sometimes. I’m just a big clumsy mutt, you know that, don’t you?’ Chris said. 

The meal was okay—Chris had ‘splashed out’, as he said, getting sides of garlic bread and Pepsi—but Bob rapidly sensed this was only an entrée to what would come next. 

As if Chris was led by his thumb, he started scrolling on his phone and out of nowhere the overexcitement he’d just mentioned resurfaced. ‘Dude thinking he’s surfing a big wave. That’s not big!’ Chris yelled. Bob stared at him and wondered why he’d agreed to visit. 

‘Hot woman, shaking it pretty bad, wants to get together with someone mature. I’m forty-two, that must be old enough, right!’ Chris got ever more animated as he stood and gyrated his pelvis back and forth. 

Chris flicked more. The way the sinews in his hand tightened and made his digits recoil, it was like… 

‘Come and watch,’ Chris said. 

‘I really don’t want to,’ Bob said in the most non-confrontational voice he could muster.

‘No, you should watch.’

‘I said don’t want to,’ Bob said. He knew standing to leave would provoke Chris but what choice did he have?

‘Don’t be like that, come and watch.’ Chris blocked Bob’s path out of the room.

‘Jesus Chris, I really don’t want to. Can you just stop already!’ Bob, like many times before, lost his temper for an instant. 

‘You should watch.’ 

‘Just let me go, will you.’ 

‘Not until you watch.’

Bob tried to surge past him, and it was almost as if this gave Chris permission to pull his little brother into a headlock holding the phone in front of him. 

‘I said watch.’

Chris had hit on a feed featuring women: women and their arses, women and their breasts, women and their nipples through light or no clothing, women dancing, women simulating sex, women answering questions about how they liked to fuck. ‘Oh yeah!’

Bob tried to relax, instead of break free or curse himself that he’d been stupid enough to put himself in the same room as his older brother. 

Chris kept scrolling with his arm wrapped around Bob’s neck. Why Chris did this Bob never knew. Why Bob always fell for it was something he’d never really gotten to the bottom of either. 

Bob started to squirm until he howled in pain. He thought he’d never break free. 

‘Come on mate, we’re having fun, aren’t we?’

‘Stop it!’ Bob screamed.

Chris giggled. It was funny, so fucking funny. But then it wasn’t as Chris eventually let him go, annoyed that Bob wasn’t finding it as enjoyable as him.

A car screeched to a halt in front of the tram, stopping it abruptly. The feeling of being flung, a man hitting a panel of glass with a thud, Mothers screaming as their children were tossed, shook Bob from his trance. 

As everyone settled back to their seats, a new thought rippled through Bob’s head. The brown paper McDonald’s bag and running to stomp on it. It visited above Bob like a spectre. He held it on the periphery of his mind for at least a minute, but he couldn’t stop it forever and finally it came inside and swirled around for a few seconds. 

He didn’t feed it. It had its own energy. Still, when it headed off into the distance, Bob ran after it for a minute. The idea was so strong it burned a pus-filled scab into the back of his psyche. 

Bob looked about him. Could anyone on the tram see what he was thinking? The notion felt good—even if Bob sensed something foul in it—as he got off the tram and walked into the hospital. 

When he got to Chris’s room, his older brother lay in his bed. 

A nurse hovered. Light blue scrubs, a stethoscope around her long neck accentuated by her hair pulled up. Even from the entrance to the room, Bob could see her complexion was without a spot or wrinkle, highlighted by large blue eyes. 

Chris looked up at her which stopped Bob. He thought he was about to witness another scene where his older brother hit on an attractive woman, drawing a positive reaction, possibly even a date. 

The image of the paper bag that Bob had on the tram which had disappeared momentarily, came roaring back.

With her arms crossed, the nurse arched over where Chris lay like some invisible force pulled her toward him. He was showing her something under his bedclothes. Was Chris inviting her to do something?

The idea of the paper bag grew stronger. It could become reality. 

Chris stayed silent as the nurse looked at whatever was under the sheet, almost like she was drawn to it, even if she dared not touch. 

Bob stepped forward, his notion pulsating through him. After three or four steps an invisible presence hit him, attacking his nose, polluting his mouth, and plunging down his oesophagus. Bile erupted from his gullet, and he gagged, almost vomiting. 

The sheet dropped and Chris and the nurse looked up startled, as Bob struggled to interpret what he’d smelt. Chris turned away and the nurse rushed toward Bob with her hands in the air. ‘Oh, sorry, someone should have told you, now’s probably not the best time for visiting.’

Bob continued. He trudged three or four steps forward, but the nurse stood her ground in front of Chris like she was protecting him. 

‘Let him look,’ Chris said. 

‘Look at what?’ What was Chris talking about?

The nurse walked around the bed to the position she’d been in when Bob first got to Chris’s room. ‘One of his injuries,’ she said, lifting the bedclothes like before. ‘He had a fall about ten days ago which opened up one of his wounds and it’s not healing.’

She pulled back the sheet to reveal Chris’s leg. A large patch of discoloured bandages from which oozed a blackish red colour. The stench overpowered Bob. 

‘They’re saying it might have to come off,’ Chris said, tears filling his eyes looking up at his younger brother. 

***

Like a silent alert had been sent out, the tram Bob got on to go home from the hospital was empty. This happened sometimes. Evidence of people everywhere—rubbish, papers, scuff marks, chewing gum, food, the odd personal item like a hair band, even lingering aromas—but no passengers. 

Bob second guessed himself as he decided where to sit. He would normally go to the back, but that would indicate something to someone watching from outside, or the driver, wouldn’t it? 

The front was no good. It just didn’t feel right to sit there, it never had. It was too exposed, and people who sat up there thought too much of themselves. He opted for the middle, but the back of the middle. 

The tram departed the city, rattling as it ran over perpendicular tracks. It passed two stops. No one got on. 

Had everyone read his thoughts about the McDonald’s bag, and were avoiding him? There were seven stops until his. The seventh came and went. So did the sixth. If no one got on, what did that mean? That everyone knew he hated his older brother? 

The houses he’d seen a thousand times slipped past. Was there a sign to be found, a clue in the graffiti on the fences and walls? Bob stared at them but nothing. They approached the next stop, but like Melbourne was deserted, the tram swept by, trailing a dust cloud. 

So, what if Bob harboured an ill feeling toward his older brother? He’d always, always provoked Bob, riling him up to the point of violence, which Chris seemed to get off on. What was more, no one ever saw this, or took Bob’s side. No one. 

The fourth stop until Bob’s house appeared but the tram didn’t pull up there either. The emptiness on the tram, the feeling that everyone was avoiding Bob started to get inside his head. Maybe his mother was right. Perhaps he did build things up too much. Chris never hurt Bob, not really. He just liked to mess with his younger sibling, which got on Bob’s nerves and made him want to avoid his older brother, which Chris could smell a mile away. 

Their mother said he’d never been able to cope with rejection and she’d used this excuse as to why Chris had made a wreck of his life. The explanation seemed to cover a lot: awful with money, going from relationship to relationship as he did with jobs, busted up in an accident because he’d been on his phone, and now about to lose his leg. Bob could give a simpler reason. Chris thought too much of himself, which their mother encouraged.

The tram hurtled toward the third stop until Bob had to get off. Not a soul in sight. Bob probably did make this all worse: getting uptight with Chris, telling his mother to stop the favouritism, hating on Chris because he got preferential treatment—after all, that wasn’t his fault. Bob should just devote himself to helping his brother or leaving, right. He’d wanted to skip town a thousand times but could never bring himself to do it. He needed to stop living in the colourless zone of wondering why they had to be siblings and then fantasising about hurting Chris when he thought life unfair. 

Two stops. Just as the tram looked like it might sail past this stop too, half a dozen male high-school students in dark blue uniforms scooted across the road and flagged down the tram. It slowed to a halt and the doors whirred open to let them on. 

As the tram got underway again the kids behind Bob began to make a commotion, laughing and yelling. A couple of the students started to run up and down the aisle, swinging off hand holds, play fighting, egging each other on. 

Bob closed his eyes, trying to darken the scene and keep his focus on being a better brother. But the noise was too much and started to irritate Bob. Their jumping about everywhere made the tram tremble at odd intervals which startled bob. And a few times they came a bit too close, invading Bob’s personal space as they dashed past. 

Couldn’t they just sit down and let everyone ride in peace. The image of the MacDonald’s bag popped back into Bob’s head. 

contemporary family hospital realism loss