The exam room is stifling. The rows of little desks are mean. They seem ill-matched in the tall vast space traversed with many worn and weary looking roof struts made of dull steal. Each body is slumped over their exam paper. Like a race about to start; all he sees are rows of humped spines, tense. All he hears are the slow rhythmic steps of the attendant as he paces between the rows; echoes like a dripping tap, sounds, a prison guard doing his rounds, reverberations in the thick over-abundant air. Then it stops. Two hundred and seventy two lungs breathing in. The attendant is standing in front of me. I look up and see his open fly. I look up further; a buckle, blue shirt, white buttons, an ugly orange tie, a misshapen knot, a ... He walks away confident he has said what he meant to say; I want to laugh. I hold my breath. I grab my bag. My chair grates like a lawnmower on a Sunday morning. I don’t care. I leave.

    The South Road is wide and crowded; such a small name for such a vast and ugly thing. A young slender long haired man swerves and sways his way to the median strip. It is nothing but dead grass. He balances on the concrete edge, foot over foot heading north, bag over his left shoulder, right thumb out and waving, beckoning in the fuming breeze. A black man runs through the traffic chasing a white man, cars squeal and people shout. Can you see them?

    And then I am hit. The impact on my hand propels it in front of me and I stumble, almost off my feet. The tray-top makes to speed up but then pulls to a stop. I examine my hand. There is a deep wound between my thumb and first finger. The blood hasn’t started to flow yet, neither has the pain. I hear a car door slam. A large unattractive man comes up to me, g’day mate, are ya ok. I make light of the wound but show it to him, I think I caught the corner of your traytop. He takes my hand in his. His concern and apparent interest is affecting, we’d better get that seen to, it’s ok but the blood will start coming soon and it’s starting to throb. There’s a clinic down the road, hop in.

    I get in the small truck that is old but neat. He hands me a surprisingly clean handkerchief and I wrap it around my hand. He doesn’t speak as he drives.The radio plays gamelan music. He turns off the main road and stops outside a doctor’s surgery. He asks me about my MediLine card, yes, I have one.

    The waiting room is crowded. A young man enters with his hand wrapped in a bloody cloth. He sits in the only chair available. Opposite him is a very large brown woman with two babies cradled, left and right, in her buttery arms. She is paging through a dog-eared magazine, a fat thumb flicking pages while the other hand dives regularly into a large bag of barbecue flavoured potato crisps. It becomes clear that each infant is sucking on a nipple. The young man looks around at the other waiting people, all women. All women with babies. A big white woman with an infant on her lap leans forward sandwiching the child between her torso and knees. She is wielding a toothpick and she gauges muck from under each toe nail. The young man watches, holding his breath as he imagines what the young baby is doing. The mother with focused concentration picks and jabs at all of her fat ten toes, nails painted purple. The front door opens and a large truck driver enters, gestures to the young man. He follows him out.

    It’s a place for babies. You’d better come with me. The radio is still on in the cabin. A high voice is reporting on strange things happening around the city. The truck driver asks me my name. I tell him, what’s your name. He tells me and I think he says Kulio but I’m not sure. I’ve never heard of a name like this.

    They drive for about twenty minutes. The news. A semi-trailer is on fire in the north of the city and careers down an embankment into a house. The house explodes. Wild horses stampede through a kindergarten in a small coastal town but details are sketchy. A hardware store in the mountains to the east of the city is having a sale on rain-water tanks: buy one get one free. The weather is going to be fine and dry.

    A small tray-top pulls into a driveway. A long haired youth and a big sloppy dressed man get out and walk into a plain fibro house. A crying woman runs down the street.

    Take a seat. I sit at the kitchen table. Everything is clean and shiny and things have been put away. It looks like the kitchen of an old fashioned mother. The roof support struts are decorated with little paintings of flowers and squirrels. Usually struts are made of polished metal in an attempt to render them invisible. These are made of wood. They look beautiful.

    Kulio opens a cupboard after lifting its latch and takes out a box clearly marked Medial Kit in large red letters. I can see canisters of kitchen ingredients in descending shades of green. He closes the cupboard door and replaces the latch. Here’s some disinfectant, some pain killers, and bandages. Kulio goes to the sink, takes an upturned glass, the first of many identical ones, from a low fenced shelf and puts it under the tap. He turns the tap. Nothing comes out. Shit! He goes to the fridge and takes out a small bottle of water. He puts it on the table and opens it. There is a price tag, ¥12.78; it has been crossed out and ¥21.99 written over it. I won’t be long.

    The man leaves the room. I take two pain-killers marked “For Wound Pain”. I use as little water as possible to wash the gash, douse it with disinfectant, and wrap it in a bandage. It throbs and stings but I know it is only temporary.

    In a bedroom in a bland suburb near a disused railway station a large man takes off his clothes and wets a sea sponge with a little water from a small bottle and pours a little liquid soap into it. He sponges himself paying particular care to particular parts of his body.

    I find a fresh kitchen cloth in a drawer next to the sink. Most things in the drawer are still in their shop wrappers. I tidy the kitchen and try to make it look like it did when we entered. Kulio enters the kitchen. He is wearing an elegant long dark blue silk dressing gown. A great rumbling sound is heard. Kulio sits. Sit closer, hold on to the table. We prepare ourselves.

    After fifteen seconds of quiet the house begins to shake. A fay young man with his hand in a bandage sits at a table with a burly older man in a dark blue silk kimono.

    They hang on to the table as the shaking increases. Cups and plates can be heard banging against their latched cupboard doors. Clean upturned glasses rattle against their little fences around their shelves. One of the roof struts cracks like a shooting gun. Get down! The two males slide off their chairs and huddle together under the kitchen table. The larger man’s kimono falls open. The shuddering continues for another fifteen seconds. Explosions can he heard outside. Screams. Shouts. Other loud noises. The two men cling and wait. Finally the shuddering eases and then stops. The men breath normally again.

    Kulio looks at me, I think you’d better stay here for awhile. He smiles. His face changes dramatically, softens. It takes on an attractiveness akin to safety. I can do nothing except agree, I can’t drive. Kulio smiles and his face tells me that he doesn’t care about that.