The Meekering Incident

Jimmy had appeared before the Magistrate on the charges resulting from our altercation, and was remanded to appear at a later date. The intervening time did not go well for him. His mates grew tired of his constant rants against me and began to leave him to his own private hate world. Jimmy did not take this rejection well, and sought solace in, firstly alcohol, and then back into drugs. The combination of his mental state and his ice addiction soon got him into even more trouble with the cops. When the time came for his court appearance, he had to be brought to the courthouse from a gaol some hundred kilometres away.

The courtroom was quiet as we waited for the trial to begin. The Magistrate looked at Jimmy, seated with a policeman on either side of him. "James Bourke, you are charged that on Thursday the 13th of April last, you did assault Benson Stanforth, how do you plead?"

"Not fucking guilty!" He shouted at the shocked Magistrate.

"Mister Bourke, I will not stand for that kind of language in my court!"

"I don't give a flying fuck what you stand for, I'm still not fucking guilty."

"Did you or did you not assault Benson Stanforth?"

"Sure I decked him, but I'm not fucking guilty, he fucking deserved it. He fucked my wife and got her up the duff, and then pissed off and left her. It was me that married her so that she didn't bring a bastard into the world, so yeah I decked him."

"Your Honour, may I approach the bench?" The police prosecutor asked. The magistrate motioned him forward. "Your Honour, you may have noticed that the prisoner has bruising on his forehead and has lost skin on his knuckles. This is a result of his violent rage on the trip over from the gaol, he continually head-butted the sides of the cage car, and punched the partition between the rear compartment and the cab of the vehicle. He has an addiction to crystal methamphetamine, and this on top of his already evident anger toward the victim, is an indication as to his mental condition. While his prior record is inadmissible, and this offence is of a minor nature that would result in little more than a rap over the knuckles, I believe that it is pertinent that you be made aware of it. He has a prior record of assault occasioning bodily harm, He has unresolved anger issues. He assaulted his wife several times, the last of which resulted in permanent injuries, and quadriplegia. I believe that the best course of action would be to remand him to a secure mental facility for a thorough psychiatric assessment. He most certainly should not be allowed to walk free in society in his mental state."

"Is this just your opinion, or do you have another opinion to support it?"

"The Correctional Services staff have already lodged complaints against him and his behaviour while on remand. He was observed by a Psychiatrist while in confinement, and I have his assessment with me." He handed over a file. The Magistrate scanned it before looking over to Jimmy.

Jimmy glared at the Magistrate as if to dare him to rule against him. "James Bourke, based on this preliminary psychiatric assessment, I hereby remand you to a secure mental health facility pending a further, more detailed assessment of your mental condition, the result of which will determine if you are to be sentenced to a period of incarceration in gaol or be detained indefinitely in a mental health facility. Whichever way the decision goes, you will be facing an extended period locked away from society."

Jimmy lashed out at the policemen on either side of him, knocking one to the ground, who he proceeded to kick. The second produced a taser that he applied to the back of Jimmy's neck, immobilising him. He was restrained with heavy duty zip ties on his arms, just above his elbows, which had been pulled behind his back, and around his ankles in such a way as to allow him to shuffle, when he recovered from the affect of the taser.

The courtroom was cleared while a stretcher was brought in to carry him in restraints out to the waiting transport.

I stood and walked over to the Police Prosecutor. "You knew that was going to happen, didn't you?"

"Yes, if I hadn't provoked him by producing his previous court documents and Psych report, he would probably have got off with a slap on the wrist. As it is, he will be off the streets for some considerable time."

Rosalie and I walked from the courtroom, both of us shaken by what we had seen. We now understood the ferocity of Jimmy's anger and how Cecelia got to be in the condition that she now found herself in. "That was probably the culmination of a build up in his anger over the years, and seeing me was the catalyst of focussing that anger into the violent rage. She had no chance against that, did she?"

"When you consider the size difference between them, no, she had no chance."

"What are we going to do?" I asked her.

"What do you mean?"

"I have to decide on my future, do I go off and leave you here to look after her, or do I stay here and help you?"

"Whatever you do is fine by me." She said softly, her faced bowed as if counting the cracks in the concrete footpath.

"Jane is looking after her, so you can come with me."

"Where are you taking me?"

"Home, I need to have a family conference."

The conference had to wait. There was an ambulance parked in the driveway.

"What's happening?" I asked Mum as we walked through the front door.

"It's your father, he's gone." The tears welled up in her eyes and she slumped against me. Rosalie came and placed an arm around her as her sobbing body shook against mine. Mum and Dad have been together almost their entire lives, they became what is now known as 'an item' in their mid-teens and were never separated. They both qualified as Teachers, he at the High School and she at the Junior Primary. They were both posted Meekering and to chose to stay, rather than pursue higher positions in a city school, preferring instead the relaxed country lifestyle here. They were part of the furniture in this place, and Dad would be sadly missed.

I would especially miss his wise counsel. It was he that encouraged me to reach for the stars, so to speak. When I auditioned for the small part in the soap, it was his idea that I should audition for a place in NIDA (National Institute for Dramatic Arts) so that I could audition for bigger and better parts. It was a combination of the money I earned doing the soap and his savings, that had kept me from penury during my student years. It was he that paid my fare to the US when I wanted to try my luck in Hollywood. I had a lot to thank him for.

The formalities over, and the body removed to the funeral parlour, Mum, Rosalie and I sat at the kitchen table, that centre of so many family discussions, and each of us pondered our position over a cup of tea.

"We had a good life, your father and I. It was a full life and we were happy probably ninety-nine percent of the time. He was a good man, a strong man, but a kind and gentle man, and I loved him totally."

"Your father was a good man," Rosalie said, "and a great teacher. He had a way of encouraging students to achieve the best, and even when they chose not to try too hard, he never gave up on them. People like Jimmy must have saddened him, knowing that even his best wasn't good enough to get through to him. I owe him a lot, I have a job that I am proud of, and even though it is very hard at times to cope with what I see, I still love it, and I have him to thank for that. It was him that told me that when I came to look for a career, my starting point should be to do the thing that I enjoyed doing the most. I wasn't smart enough to get into medicine or a nursing degree, so I chose to be an Ambo. I love that I am in some way helping someone."

"This leaves me with a ginormous problem."

"In what way?" They both asked.

"I love what I do, and I'm relatively successful at it. The money's great now, but the lifestyle can be a bit ordinary, what with the bullshit that we actors have to put up with. But what I really miss is the lifestyle that I grew up in, and the people around here, with one notable exception. Lately I have come to realise that there is one person in particular that I will miss if I go back to LA."

"You've always got Caitlyn, you do know that she fancies you, don't you?"

"Not enough I would think, not as much as a certain person. Rosalie, you do know that I'm in love with you, don't you?"

"Now hold on a minute mate, before you go getting a young girl's heart aflutter and then piss off and leave her on her own, I have a life here that I'm not about to leave any time soon. You remember that I am looking after Cecelia, and I'm not going to abandon her for some muscled up hunk."

"When you say muscled up hunk, you can't possibly be talking of me. Rosalie, I have no intention of asking you to abandon Cecelia. I've been thinking. . ."

"What have you been thinking?"

"What I plan is to live here, and commute to Hollywood or wherever for filming."

"And what am I supposed to do while you're away from here in the clutches of nubile young girls like Caitlyn. Can I trust you not to fall for their charms?"

"Of course, particularly as we'll be married, and there is no way that I would ever cheat on my wife."

"So you say."

"What can I do to convince you otherwise?"

"I don't know. I want to be able to trust you at all times, but I've never been put into this situation, boyfriends have been thin on the ground as far as I'm concerned, and there never has been one that I felt that I could settled down with, until now. I want us, that's you and me by the way, to work. I don't want our lives to be a constant source of amusement for the masses. I want to be able to walk around this town and not hear sniggers because of some alleged affair that you might or might not be having while you're away."

"A solution has sprung to mind, that's if you're interested." Mum said. We both looked expectantly at her smiling face. "It's early days yet, and will take a quantum shift in your priorities, Ben."

"Don't keep us in suspense, what is your solution?" I asked.

"What I'm thinking is, that this town could do with a drama school."

"What!" I said, "Are you suggesting that I could run a drama school?"

"I know you well enough to know that, if you were to put your mind to it, you would be very successful. Then there would be the other motivating factor, you won't have to leave Rosalie here wondering if you had fallen into the clutches of some bimbo."

"There's that to it, I suppose." I turned to Rosalie. "What do you think?"

"Even if you're half the teacher that your father was, I think that you'd be great, and I'd have you to myself." As if to emphasise the benefits of such a prospect, she leaned over and kissed me, her hand hidden under the table reached for my cock. I had to admit that she made a compelling argument.

"I guess that's it then, I give my movie career the flick and settle down in sleepy old Meekering."

"No, you're contracted to do this movie and you should honour that contract. I'll have to trust you to not get up close and personal with Caitlyn for the duration. I can trust you, can't I?"

"Of course you can. You could always come with me so that you can fight them off."

"You're forgetting Cecelia aren't you?"

"We could always fly her over with us."

"I don't think that would be a good idea. For a start the cost of her treatment in the US will be beyond even a multi-millionaire such as yourself, here it's free because she was a victim of a crime."

"This will require a little more thought, I can see that."

Rosalie looked at her watch. "It's time that I got home to relieve Jane."

"I'll come with you."

"Okay." I notice that she made no attempt to stop me.

Talk about going from bad to worse. Jane met us at the door. "I've called the doctor, something is bothering your sister and I can't get any sense out of her."

Rosalie ran into the house to where Cecelia sat in her chair. Something was definitely wrong with her, her arms were twisted and rigid, even more than normal, her face contorted more than normal. "Eb er, eb er." (Head hurts, I think) She slurred over and over again.

Rosalie took her phone out and dialled the ambulance station. "Guys, it's Rosalie, I want an ambulance immediately, I've got to get Cecelia to hospital as soon as possible. The doc's on his way but I'm not waiting for him. We'll probably need a Care Flight transport to the big smoke, our local isn't equipped for something like this."

The doctor arrived a couple of minutes before the ambulance. He took a close look at Cecelia and turned to Rosalie. "It doesn't look good, get an ambulance here as soon as possible, we've got to get her to a hospital that has an MRI." His instructions were interrupted by the sound of a rapidly approaching ambulance. He looked at Rosalie. He was obviously not used to his orders being anticipated. "I have a horrible suspicion that it is an embolism in the brain, it could be one of several that were in that part of the brain that affected her fine motor abilities, and it might have worked loose and headed for a different part of the brain." He took out his phone and rang the city hospital and ordered an urgent MRI scan. "We'll know as soon as the specialists can get a look at her, just what it is and how bad it is. In the mean time there's little more that you can do but keep your fingers crossed."

The ambulance arrived and the crew quickly got Cecelia out of her chair and onto a gurney. "I'll come with you, we need to stabilise her quickly and get her ready for the trip to the city."

"Can I come with you?" I asked.

"There's not enough room for all of us in the ambulance, why don't you drive my car to the hospital, I want you with me for support. I'm scared for her."

"Sure thing." I took her keys and headed for her car as they loaded her into the ambulance and headed for the hospital.

We had to wait for nearly an hour, the medical staff constantly monitoring her worsening condition, before we heard the helicopter land in the hospital grounds. Within seconds a medical team hurried into the room.

We almost didn't even get off the ground. As she was being loaded into the helicopter we settled ourselves for the flight, the monitors were sounding more agitated. It would take something like thirty minutes, all being well, before we touched down at the hospital.

I have never actually seen someone die in real life. It's nothing like you see in the movies. Cecelia was, as far as we could tell, not feeling any pain, but the messages from the monitors told a different story. Suddenly they went ballistic for several seconds and then nothing.

"She appears to have had a massive stroke, I'm afraid that there's nothing that we can do for her, she's gone." The Care Flight doctor said.

Rosalie turned to me and I drew her to me. I held her as the emotion of the moment took hold. "You would think that I would be used to death by now, I've seen it often enough, but when it's this close to home, it's completely different. First your Dad and now Cecelia, all we need now is for this chopper to fall out of the sky and wipe us all out."

"Sssh, don't even think that." I told her as I kissed her. "We'll get through this." I placed the emphasis on the 'we'.

"I know, I just had to let go and have a good cry."

"We did our best, it just wasn't good enough."

"Don't blame yourself, we could not have done any more for her. My pragmatic side tells me that, just maybe this would be the best thing for her. I don't think that I could have put up with not being able to make my body work like it's supposed to, and having to rely on others just to survive. I could see that she was aware of what was happening around her and could do fuck all about it." I had never heard her swear before, but understood her frustration at not being in control.

On landing, her body was wheeled straight to the mortuary so that her death and its cause could be formalised. Rosalie and I walked behind her, deep in thought.

Somehow or other the media got to hear about our mercy dash to the city, and were waiting for us to land. 'No comment' just didn't cut it as far as they were concerned. "Can you tell us what happened?" We were asked.

"My sister Cecelia suffered from thrombosis caused by an embolism in her brain shifting and blocking a major artery. That's it." We quickly followed Cecelia as she was pushed inside. The autopsy revealed that this was the case. The next thing was to arrange for the transport of the body back to Meekering for her funeral.

I rented a car and we drove home. We said little over the several hours the trip took, both of us lost in our own personal sorrow, while allowing our closeness to each other to ease the pain.

Mum was waiting for us as we pulled into the driveway. She hugged Rosalie for a few minutes before releasing her to give me a hug. "We have a lot of work to do, what with two funerals to organise. I'm not looking forward to this, the media has been hanging around like a bad smell, and I'm sure that they will all want to be here."

"We can't help that. I think that the best thing will be to throw ourselves on their sense of dignity and ask that they allow us to grieve in private."

"I don't think that will be possible," Mum said, "I've been screening calls, listen to this." She pushed the replay button on the answer machine to hear Caitlyn's voice announcing that she would be attending both funerals.

"That's all we need, the international media getting in on the act."

A lookout must have alerted the media that we were home, because the road outside was crowded with cars and cameras. I walked out to them, held up my hand for silence. "I am going to ask you to do something, and I know that you are going to ignore my request, but here goes. We are going to be going through a trying time over the next few days, what with two funerals to arrange. These are both going to be private affairs, restricted to family and a few invited friends, no media allowed. Both will be cremations, so there will be no graveside photo opportunities. We ask that you respect both our wishes and privacy. Thank you."

"Ben, we've heard that Caitlyn Bonner will attend. . . "

"News to me."

"What are your thoughts on this?"

"She hasn't been invited, so I have no thoughts. That's all for now." I made it to the front door and the silence inside.

I placed a call to Benjy Meisnner. "Was it you that decided that Caitlyn should attend my father's funeral?"

"That's what the studio wanted, and in this game, what the studio wants, the studio gets."

"I want you to get onto the studio and ask them to contact her and ask for her to turn around and go back to LA."

"Listen buddy, you don't know how the studios work, the right to privacy of the individual takes second fiddle to the rights of the studio to exploit the individual's rights for its own benefit."

"Then you had better be prepared for the shit to hit the fan as soon as the funerals are over."

"Now don't do anything silly, do you hear me?"

"I hear you, and choose to ignore you." I hung up.

"It sounds as if you are going to turn your back on your movie career." Rosalie said as she kissed me. "Does that mean that I will be seeing more of you?"

"As much of me as you can handle." I kissed her this time, and then we kissed each other.

The decision was made that because, apart from Rosalie, Cecelia had no immediate family, the funerals would be combined, and that would halve the opportunity for media intrusion, my major concern was what to do about Caitlyn, if and when she arrives.

She helped us there, timing her arrival, by car, the driver sworn to secrecy, to coincide with the media's congregating at the hotel dining room for dinner and drinks. Even her appearance had changed, gone were the film star looks, now hidden in department store sports clothes, and topped off by a hoodie. "I had to come," she said as she took off the hoodie, "Not to see you, but to pay my respects to Cecelia. In the short time that I was here, I became very fond of her. I respected her for her desire to live regardless of her disabilities. I admired her, she never allowed them to destroy her will to live. We had long chats as I walked beside her chair as we did literally hundreds of laps of the back yard. It was hard for me at first to understand what she was saying, and my not being able to understand was very frustrating for her, until I managed to decipher her. She was happy that you and Rosalie got together finally. She was aware just how much Rosalie loved you way back when, more than she could ever have. That was the main reason that she decided to break up with you."