A television was hanging from the ceiling in the reception area and the usual early afternoon shows were on. "The Bold and the Beautiful" finished just a few minutes after he arrived and this was followed "Wheel of Fortune". People could be amazingly stupid in front of a television camera - at least that was Greg's considered opinion.
While he was aimlessly thumbing through an old magazine, the double doors slid open and a middle-aged bloke in really shabby clothes walked in. He looked like he had been sleeping in his clothes. He looked over at the nurse, whose eyes directed his attention to Greg, and in an uninterrupted flow of motion he wheeled round towards Greg and made for the seat beside him.
"So you were one of the kids that rescued the lad from the shark, then?" he led with, without even introducing himself.
"That's right. What's it to you?" Greg didn't mean to be disrespectful even though the tone came through very clearly.
"Oh! Sorry son. Tony Cassidy from The Tribune. Gotta get a few details for tomorrow's paper, and I have to put it to bed by 7 or it won't get in. Do you want to tell me what happened?"
"Yeah, right! Well me and my mate Dean had just arrived at West Beach and there were a few others out already. Some guys were on Boards, but my mates were all on boogies. We could see a great set coming in and got out as quickly as we could when just as we got there we saw this shark fin. I have played with dolphins before so I knew it wasn't a dolphin.
"My brain seemed to switch into slow motion as I heard someone call out 'Shark!' real loud and a split second later it rammed into this kid and almost lifted him out of the water. I didn't know what to do - I sorta froze, watching it all. He seemed to shake the kid like a rag doll and then he just let him go - dunno why; maybe he tasted awful.
"As soon as it let go, it seemed to swim away from us - I could see his shadow in the next wave that came through. So me and Dean and Kenny got over to him as quick as we could. He was screaming and swearing, but he was going under and coming up all the time - that shut him up.
"When we got to him, I just told him to shut up and let us hold him so he wouldn't drown. I saw some guys on Boards coming and knew that with their boards we could get him in to shore. We just had to hold him up till they got there."
"Was he cut up bad?" Tony want to get some of the gorier details.
"I suppose so, and there was a lot of blood in the water, but his wetsuit wasn't shredded - just holes in it from the teeth, like they just went straight in and then out."
"So what did you have to do to get him back to shore?"
"One of the guys is a member of the Surf Club so he knew how to get him onto the Board and then we just all paddled and pushed him till we could walk in the water.
"One of the chicks on the beach ran up to us as soon as we got in and said she had called the ambos on her mobile and within a minute we could hear the siren coming round the headland. Once we got out of the water, the kid just went all quiet - I guess it was the beginning of shock.
"The Surf Club guy said the best thing we could do was just push our hands into the holes and stop as much bleeding as we could. Sharks have got lots of teeth, but when everyone was in close we could cover most of the big holes. One of the chicks got a towel for him to rest his head on. The Surf Club guy seemed to take charge and began asking people who the kid was. He wasn't one of my mates, but one of the chicks said his name was Kai Brenna and that she had called his mum on her mobile - I think it was same chick who had called the ambos.
"The ambos arrived very quickly and then the cops, and when they saw what we had done, they told us it was terrific. They took lots of wadding from their kits to stuff into the holes, and then they just wrapped him up over the top of the wetsuit as tight as they could. They put him in the ambulance and then took off for the hospital."
Tony was smart. He knew when to leave someone to think. He just waited.
"What did you come here for, then?"
Greg seemed confused by the question. Why wouldn't he come here? He didn't want this kid to die. Somehow, being there seemed to reassure him that it would be alright. Much better than sitting at home just wondering.
"I just wanted to make sure he was alright." Tony let silence reign for a few more moments.
"I think I have got all that," said Tony, folding his notebook to put it away. Then he asked, as if it was a complete after-thought, "What's your name?"
"Greg de Luca. My Mum and Dad run the Trattoria in the Wildflower Arcade."
"And was there any interesting reason why you weren't at school today."
"Well not really. I just got suspended for a week - a joke that backfired."
"I'd really like a picture. I've only got my mobile, but these new iPhones have 8meg images. Come outside with me and I'll get you near the sign into the Emergency Department."
While Tony was showing Greg his professional tricks, Kai's mum, Maureen Brenna, was getting a detailed report from the doctor who had just finished stiching up 42 puncture wounds, some nearly 5cm deep, but all of which missed the major arteries and veins.
"Your boy was very lucky today - twice," the doctor said. "Firstly, the shark seemed to let him go before he was able to do too much damage, and then those kids on the beach did a great job stopping the blood loss - that's what kills people, you know. blood loss."
"Do you think there will be any permanent damage?" Kai's Mum knew that her ex, Kai's Dad, would give her heaps for this, but she was not worried. She knew that he had no desire to take Kai off her. He just liked messing with her head - after all these years.
"To his body? Well, no, not really. None of the major nerves or tendons have been damaged and they are usually the hardest thing for us to repair. As far as his body is concerned he has a couple of hundred sutures that will dissolve or be removed soon once nature takes its course in healing the gashes. He will have a nice crop of scars, although I have tried to make the external sutures as light as possible. In a few years' time they will probably only be visible when he gets sunburnt.
"The story in his head will stay with him, perhaps even trouble him, for much longer. I don't think he needs a psychologist just now. Some people these days think the psychological debrief after traumatic events does more harm than good for many people. But you watch him. If he gets a bit more moody than usual - yes, I know, he's a boy and he's 13 - but if he moves into a different level of moodiness than usual, or if he starts taken much greater risks than usual, a good psychologist might help him get back on an even keel."
"It's funny how we think so much about the physical before we consider the mental." Maureen's voice was almost whimsical as she reflected on this. She wanted the best for her boy, and without Kai's dad around, the weight of that responsibility fell squarely on both her shoulders.
"Now Mrs Brenna, Kai will be my patient here for a little while yet. Let's both of us keep our eyes open as well as our ears. He has a little way to go before he will seem to be back to normal, and we can take it all from there, then."
As she left the hospital, the sun almost setting, she noticed Greg just finishing up with Tony who seemed happy with the few photos he was able to take with his phone. He was still in his half-unzipped wetsuit so she guessed he had been at the beach when it all happened. She walked over to him with an enquiring look.
"Hello Mrs Brenna. Is Kai all right?"
"Yes, I think so. The doctor is rather amazed at how little serious damage was done - mostly just puncture marks that have all been stiched up. Were you one of the boys who brought him back in and tried to stop the bleeding? The ambos told us all that you had done a marvellous job."
"I was right near him when the shark attacked him. I suppose it could have been me just as easily."
"You were very brave not to high-tail out of there."
"Or stupid! But no, really. We all saw the shark let go of him pretty quickly and it was obvious it wasn't going to stick around, so we all rushed in to help him. We all reckoned the shark didn't like the taste of him - that'll be a joke you can have on him for a while."
"Well, I'm just glad you were there and that you were able to help Kai. Maybe later we will have a proper get-together to say thanks - proper, like." Maureen gave him a discreet kiss on the cheek and headed for the door, just as Eula and Alfeo came in, looking for Greg. They had seen his bike out front so they knew he was still there.
"Are you all ready to go, mate?" There was a warmth in Alfeo's voice that reassured Greg that he was not in any kind of trouble for nicking off to the beach when he was supposed to be at home working in the garden.
With a nod from Greg, Eula asked, "Is the boy going to be alright?"
"Yes, Mum. He's going to be fine. He might even go surfing again - although his Mum won't like that."
"From what I heard," Eula continued, "you were a bit of a hero out there today." She wrapped an arm across his shoulders, gave a gentle squeeze, and led him towards the door. They picked up his bike and pit it in the back of the car and as they piled in to go home for tea, Eula asked a leading question. "Have you thought about what you want to do when you finish school, Greg?"
It was a funny sort of nearly formal question but it was a question they had made into a sort of game in the past - flowing on from his childhood declarations that when he grew up he wanted to be a fireman, or a policeman. In the past, Greg had treated the game as a game and had never really said what he wanted most, for fear that he would be discouraged. If he was pushed a bit, he would give some vague response in the direction he thought his folks would want him to aspire to - maybe go to uni or something and become an architect or something equally unattainable for a boy from Quarabup.
"I've got a while before I have to think about that, don't I?"
"Maybe. Maybe not!" Eula was wondering how to broach the subject when they were really just dealing with possibilities. Nothing was settled. They didn't even know if Mike Faragher was going to take up Mother Superior's suggestion.
"Mother Superior came to see us today. She is very concerned about how you are going at school. She was just wondering if rather than sticking at it in school, which you don't seem to really like, it might be better to see if we could get you a job, maybe an apprenticeship, and you can do some work and some classes at the TAFE and in the end you've got a trade. Sounds much better than school to me. What about you?"
"You think it would be good? I thought you and dad wanted me to go to uni and get a degree or something."
"Did we ever say that?" Greg's dad chimed in with the question, but he knew how it all happened because he had felt the same when he was growing up. By all the social norms in Italy, he should have been a stonemason, like his dad, but he wanted to work on the sea, and a fisherman became his lot - his own choice. "Well maybe we gave that impression," he continued, "but when Mother Superior spoke to us today, it all seemed to make a lot of sense."
"If you had a choice, what would you like to do?" Eula was really curious. She thought she knew her boy, but at times like this she knew she should be prepared to be surprised.
"Well, I really like mucking around in the shed, making things. If I was a brickie or a carpenter, I could maybe one day get a builder's ticket. Or maybe I could be a motor mechanic. They can get jobs all over the place so I could travel."
Eula was surprised by the consequences Greg had obviously thought through in these choices. "Well, all that sounds pretty good and normal," she said. "Let's see what tomorrow brings. Something like that might just fall into place for you.
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