Harold Thistlethwaite, known as Cec, was one of G5’s frequent flyers. I lost count of the times I saw him wheeled into the ward with his cardboard port tucked between his knees. What could one do but wave and smile?
“G’day Cec. Be with you in a tick.”
The problem was Cec’s breathing. After a life time of smoking, his lungs, or what remained of them, were a mess. We suspected oxygen reached his brain only by diffusion through the scalp. His ongoing survival through bouts of respiratory failure was a source of unexpected delight and wonderment for his family and amongst the medical staff, a matter for hospital wide speculation and general head scratching.
Over the years I knew Cec, he never seemed to change. Tufts of snowy white hair protruded from beneath his black and white Magpies supporter's beanie. He had a fondness for “Breathrite Nasal Strips” which he applied each morning. The narrow plasters were supposed to open the nasal passages but on Cec’s broad nose, they lifted and curled at the edges as though trying to form new nostrils.
The nurses always gave Cec a bed on the solarium. The large fifth floor windows gave a good view of the railway tracks and the Boggo Road jail as well as a glimpse of the pretty city lights and the freeway.
One day, there was a breakout from the jail. Seven inmates had skipped. The morning paper was full of pictures of police scouring nearby Dutton Park. Cec quietly told us he had seen the whole thing. The escapees had timed their scaling of the barbed wire to the minute. As the 1am goods train passed, heading west, the men strolled down a grassy slope, hopped on a car and were away.
For Cec, the prison escape was a mere diversion. Of far greater importance was his lack of oomph. He couldn’t walk to the phone at the end of the ward. It was way too far. Every evening at around 6.30, he would try to get to the phone, wobbling on matchstick legs, lips turning a deep Prussian blue. Homeless George, known as ‘Jacko’, in the next bed, would alert the nurses by calling out, “Cec’s up! Cec’s up!”
It wasn’t that Cec was senile or silly. He just wanted to talk to his wife and he really didn’t want to bother anyone. Mrs T was the light of Cec’s life. In the evenings, she would sit in her lounge room watching the tail end of the news, awaiting Cec’s call with the phone pulled close beside her. I never saw Mrs T but Cec told me all about her. A stroke had left her all but paralysed down her left side. She had as much difficulty reaching the phone at home as Cec did in the ward.
Cec’s time in hospital (and therefore separation from Mrs T) became slightly easier for him when his RSL mates got him a set of army surplus CB radio walkie talkies. You have to remember this was in the days before mobile telephones. As we approached Cec on ward round, he would heave the brick sized transmitter to his ear and wheeze into it, “The docs are coming, Love. Over and out.”
“10-4, over and out,” came Mrs T’s stroke slurred reply.
When Cec wasn’t on the air, he was drawing on a dinner tray serviette, with all the concentration of a great master. One day I interrupted and asked what all the lines and circles meant. Cec explained that Mrs. T loved bubble baths. Since her stroke, she hadn’t been able to safely lower herself into the bath and then get herself out again.
In his own inimitable way, Cec was going to make it happen by having an electric winch and pulley system installed. There was a strong girder in the roof straight above the bathroom.
Cec planned to sit on a stool in the corner of the bathroom holding a lever, which, according to the diagram, looked a bit like a tiller on a boat. With it, he would swing Mrs T over and down into the bath. Rescuing Mrs T would take a simple push downward on the lever to set the winch into reverse gear. When he talked about it, a tear came to his eye.
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