Her name is Jilly, she is just 18 years old and she is lying supine on a hospital bed in a windowless room in a small, dusty hospital in Denpasar, Bali. She used to have beautiful blue eyes. She only has one now after the accident, torn out by a branch on the side of the road along with three of her toes that were ground off her left foot by the asphalt. The amount of skin she has lost is horrible.
With that one eye she stares up at the fluorescent lights on the ceiling and listens to the lonely sounds of the hospital hallways and feels her memory sluggishly coming back. Her concussion is making her eye tear up over and over. Or maybe it’s just her numbing sadness.
It was night and, as usual, her boyfriend was maggot on shrooms and beam and they were tear assing around Uluwatu from booze up to booze up. Coming into a sandy curve too hot on their crappy scooter and the blinding high beams of a water truck was all it took. Christ, she thought, what were we thinking? She in a bikini and sarong, and the idiot barefoot, boardies and a cigarette.
She moves under her bandages at the thought and the searing pain of them coming loose from her raw skin on her hip makes her draw air in between her clenched teeth. She closes her eye and let’s the pain settle. She is still not sure how she feels about his death. Anger certainly, rage really, she told him a hundred times to slow the fuck down. It was never love, just a schoolie hook-up. She questions who she really is, what kind of person she is, feeling nothing for him. And God, she thinks, Mum and Dad on the way, what the fuck am I gonna say to them and how the fuck are they gonna handle the cops? This is gonna cost a fortune, oh fuck me. And one eye? Jesus. I’m done.
She knows the numbers now. She has been given a pamphlet that a silent nurse has handed out to everyone in the ward on this Sunday night. She knows now that over ten thousand tourist scooter accidents are reported every year in Bali. Twice that if you think about the unreported ones and at least a thousand deaths. One thousand and one now, She thinks, that idiot. She winces at her cold heartedness, but forgives herself a moment later, it was all the dumb fucker’s fault and now she’s fucked. And she barely knew him. Coupla drunken roots is all.
She had always been told she was so pretty, with the perfect figure and now he has ruined her. That makes her wince again. What the fuck is Mum gonna think? And fuck, am I gonna cop it from Dad. And I reckon netball is over for life. I guess I could swim? This last random thought makes you wonder what the hell she is thinking and so she moves again and hisses in pain as all the bandages seem to stick at once.
She strains and absorbs the hot pain and reaches up with her good arm and hits the button for the nurse. The pain is really throbbing now, half the skin on her left side is gone and all the sutures feel too damn tight. Like feeding black caterpillars all over her left side and the one snaking up her chin to her lost eye.
It’s the freedom of the goddamn things, she thinks. You get over here and you hop on a scooter and the wind in the hair and the sun on the skin and the things feel like an amusement park ride. You can’t believe you are allowed to behave like this and drive like this and everybody is doing it and the surfboard racks and the ripping up to surf spots and the fun and freedom of it all. Problem is you’re no good at it. And you have no experience and the goddamn things are awkward on the road and the roads are kinked and potholed and awkward too and trying not to get hit by cars is like being inside a video game and then the booze and the shrooms and the speed and the freedom of it all tailor made for fun and sex games until it all comes crashing down in a scraping, agonizing, heart wrenching instant and someone is dead as a coffin nail and you’ll be all scarred up and have to wear a black eyepatch for the rest of your life. And you were always told how perfect your skin was. Fuck.
She watches the silent nurse approach and reach up and open up the painkiller I.V. drip a little more. A number of the other patients are signaling for the same like defeated zombies. She feels the nurse lay a gentle hand on her forehead and hears her say, Tidur, cantik, Tidur. With that the nurse steps over to the other patients. Jilly watches her go out of the corner of her one eye and thinks about how a person’s greatest regret is knowledge learnt too late. Had she’d known. Had she only known. She never would have got on the back of the goddamned thing. The tears have come again and Jilly stares through them at the fluorescent lights on the ceiling, staring at nothing. Nothing.
FROM THE STRAITS TIMES:
Bali- Popular Tourist Destination Bali has had enough of unruly motorcyclists. Foreign tourists will not be allowed to use motorcycles or scooters to get around the Indonesian island after string of accidents led to injuries and deaths.
“They are disorderly and they misbehave” says Governor Wayan Koster, adding that from now on, foreigners should only use modes of transport prepared by tourism services that meet certain standards “to ensure quality and dignified tourism”.
But he goes on to say it remains unclear how the ban would be upheld.
