In your new bedroom, furnished with the nursing home’s signature varnished pine, you rise from your bed.
Pick the skin around your blackened, blue-collared fingernails, wondering why your daughter has brought you here. Her stuffed bear, which she’d cuddled as a kid, grins next to the framed strangers on your bedside table.

Dark clouds bathe the room in sombre grey, like your mood. You can’t remember why you stood up.

Scratch-scratch-scratch the eczema in the crook of your arm. Bladder throbs, bladder throbs. You remember why and hobble to the toilet, christening the bowl in fire-orange piss from the myriad of medications you take every day.

You shuffle out the door and down the corridor, your arthritic foot dragging behind you on the way to the entrance.

‘Where are you going, Victor?’

Out of the corner of your eye, a blonde woman with a moon face approaches you. You stop. ‘I don’t know.’ Elderly men and women shuffle by with walkers. ‘I want to see my wife.’

‘Your wife passed away, don’t you remember? Your daughter is back in two weeks to visit.’ Her hand presses into your back. ‘Go into the dining hall and watch TV.’ She nudges you into the room, her sharp fingernails tracing your back.

There’s a man with woolly grey hair, sitting alone and a glassy-eyed woman in a wheelchair drooling. Tables and chairs are scattered about in the same varnished pine as your room.

‘Dinner will be served soon.’

‘Can’t I eat now?’ you mumble.

Her face reddens. ‘No. Soon.’

Stomach rumbling, you sit in front of the TV. Pick at the scab on your hand. You can feel the blonde woman behind you moving about, arranging things. The TV flashes on. Then the remote crashes onto the table and the blonde woman with sharp fingernails is gone.

Afternoon Australian Rules football blares from the TV’s small speakers. You never liked the game, even after sixty years living in Australia – it’s not proper football.

A scraping sound causes you to turn. It’s the woolly-haired man, dragging and grunting his heavy armchair towards you. You don’t know why he doesn’t just get up from his seat and walk over. Then you see the belt across his pelvis, strapping him to the chair.

‘Hello there,’ you call out.

The man in the chair grunts. Stops, out of breath, in front of the TV.

The full head of curls blocking the TV seem familiar to you. As do the broad nose and rich olive skin. You squeeze your eyes shut, trying to place him in your memory.

The clatter of plates announces mealtime. Residents shuffle into the room wheeling walkers or walking sticks and sit at the tables. The TV is switched off. You find yourself alone at a table, staring out the window at the garden – neat hedges, white flowers – the name escapes you. It must be summer because the sun is still out this late in the day.

The meals arrive with assembly-line efficiency, much like the assembly line at your first job off the ship at the Holden car factory in Dandenong back in the late fifties. At the filthy end with you were the Greeks and Italians. Metal finishing, panel beating, grinding and polishing the cars, prepping them for paint. At the clean end were the dent knockers, the Anglos and Brits, working less for more money. The Greeks resented the Italians for World War Two, and the Anglos stoked the hate because competition meant more output, more cars. You kept your head down to avoid trouble. Then they moved you up the assembly line.

A plate crashes in front of you. Two warm party pies, a tablespoon of potato mash and shrivelled green beans. The past falls away as you clean up your plate. The mash sticks in your throat. You thump on your chest, cough, and gulp a glass of water until the mash goes down.

Stomach rumbling, you put up your hand. A uniformed woman strolls up to your table.

‘Can I have more food?’ you ask.

‘No. That’s it.’

You rise from your chair.

‘Sit down. You’re disrupting everybody.’ The uniformed woman moves behind you. Pushes you down into your chair. ‘Sit there until mealtime is finished.’

Some residents look your way. Your face burns with humiliation. You watch a Noisy Myner by the window make a racket until the bell signals the end of dinner. Uniforms hassle the elderly from their chairs, some while still spooning the muck into their mouths, and hurry them back to their rooms because there is a schedule to keep. Their plates disappear as quickly as they’d arrived.

The woolly-haired man is freed from his chair by a Uniform. He stands, wobbling from having sat for too long. You hobble towards him. Take the woolly-haired man’s arm to help steady him, to steady yourself. ‘I got you. I’m Victor.’

The man looks up at him with watery eyes. ‘Giovanni.’

The name hits you like an ocean wave. The memories follow. ‘Giovanni from the Holden factory?’

‘Yeah?’ Giovanni gapes at you. ‘How…?’ He blinks rapidly.

‘I was the Maltese Falcon.’

‘Hah! That was you?’ He slaps your back. ‘You always breaking fights.’

A Uniform nudges you. ‘Move on, please.’

Giovanni snaps. ‘This place is hell. Always different people.’ He leans closer to you, pointing to his temple. His breath smells like spoilt milk. ‘They drug me. Half the time I can’t think.’

‘Why?’

‘Why? Why you think? To stop me getting out. Let’s go.’ Giovanni shuffles ahead. He is surprisingly quick once he picks up the pace.

You both slip away from the crowded corridor to the entrance. The receptionist’s back is turned, and pretty flowers spill from large terracotta pots at reception. The glass doors open and you both stagger out. Grey clouds have rolled over for the late evening sun, so bright and hot you hold your liver-spotted hands over your eyes.

The scent of jasmine wafts your way. You talk of the Holden factory and the grease you could never quite wash off your skin, the metal filings you could never quite brush out of your curly hair. The insults the Anglos and Brits dished out, you filthy this and filthy that, you could never quite erase.

Giovanni grips your arm. ‘Remember Daniel that foreman?’

You nod but you can’t remember.

‘He move us to top of line. Tin hares he call us like we bloody greyhound racing rabbits. “Keepa the line a-moving, keepa the line a-moving,” he yell. He throw spanners on my head.’

You make it as far as the end of the driveway before you’re taken back to your rooms and strapped to your beds.

***

Sometime later you wake, bladder aching, in darkness. You rock yourself, trying to pull yourself up but you are strapped down to the bed. You slip in and out of nightmares.
Can’t breathe. Can’t breathe.

The Uniforms find you soaked in piss. Grabbing your arms and legs, they turn you over. Rough hands wipe you down. Pain bullets down your body. You struggle. One of them smacks your face. You cry out.

‘You’re upsetting everyone,’ the Uniform hisses, poking your shoulder.

‘I call the GP tomorrow,’ the other Uniform adds. ‘Give him something to quiet him.’ They laugh.

***

You pull your head up from your chest. The brain fog dissipates, and the room pulls into sharp focus. You’re in a plastic chair, collapsing onto yourself. There’s a belt across your lap. Piss pools on the floor and dried shit trails down your back to your arse.

There are others like you in the room, strapped to chairs. Those who wake from their stupors might hear the footfalls of a visitor but tucked away in this room at the end of the corridor, you’re all mostly unseen.

A Uniform enters. Forces tiny pills into all your mouths with factory efficiency. Your unwashed bodies keel over as far as the restraints allow and sleep takes you.

***

Broken and blurred words you can’t grasp fill the room. It might be your daughter kneeling by your chair. You can’t tell. A bear lands on your lap. Your mouth opens but you can’t find your tongue, your mind is locked inside a dark room, and you can’t find the door.

***

You wake in your room, body strapped to the chair. The fog fades. You hold your breath for ten seconds, just to hear your heartbeat, to hear anything but the shouting from Giovanni’s room. A tree billows outside, knocking the window. You squeeze the side release buckle until the lap belt falls away. Your arms are bruised but you can’t remember how. Your legs won’t obey when you stand. They are frozen, bent into the shape of the chair. There’s a stink coming from you. You slide your feet into the scuffed slippers by the bed. A gnarled toenail pokes from a hole.

As you walk out, you stop to gaze at the stuffed bear now grinning from atop the TV until the memory of your daughter’s visit unfurls. You pick up the bear and squeeze it. The soft brown pile comforts you. Shuffling out the bedroom door, you follow the screaming to Giovanni’s room, holding the bear tight. From the doorway, two Uniforms, a man and a woman, swing Giovanni onto the bed. Giovanni tries to pull himself up, only to be pushed back down by the man with thick arms. He points at you. ‘Get back to your room, Victor.’

You freeze, the words stuck to the roof of your mouth.

‘Victor. Go to your room.’

Your voice shakes. You splutter, ‘Leave him alone.’ Surging rage makes you tremble. ‘Leave him alone,’ you shout.

The man storms over and drags you back to your room. A gold cross dangles from the man’s neck as he straps you back into the chair. He places the bear on top of the TV. From a pocket, he brings out pills and pokes them between your pursed lips. When the door shuts, you spit them out, unstrap yourself and wait for their padded footsteps to fade before tiptoeing back to Giovanni’s room. The room is dark. You can make out a lump under the covers. ‘Giovanni. Wake up.’ You open the curtains. There are old and new bruises on Giovanni’s arms and a wound you hadn’t noticed before, festering on his leg.

Giovanni moans.

‘We have to get out of here. Get up.’ You grab Giovanni’s hand. Grit your teeth and pull him with all the effort you can muster. ‘Remember how we fought back, us filthy Wogs, eh? Got them to respect us? Remember? We were lions, Giovanni. You showed the foremen. You showed them all. You fought for us.’ You shake your friend. ‘Fight back.’

Giovanni mumbles.

The nursing home waits a week to call the ambulance. You watch the blue and red lights flash through your window as they take your friend away.

***

The strap falls from your waist.

‘Can you hear me? A cool hand touches yours. ‘Squeeze my hand if you hear me.’

His name rolls on your tongue. ‘Giovanni.’

White fluff fills your lap. You follow the strip of sun beaming onto your bedspread before gazing up at her holding the bear, its fur gutted, its eye missing. In her hand is a tiny video camera, no bigger than a key fob.

‘Dad.’