Page 3 - Sample Flip Builder Project

Phone pressed against my ear I walk through to the study, where it’s quieter.

Invercargill? Where’s Invercargill?
‘I’m calling from the operating room,’ he says. ‘I’m about to take your son into

surgery. Are you aware he’s not well?’ He doesn’t give me time to answer. ‘An infection
has taken over his body. It’s not responding to antibiotics, and is busy shutting down his

vital organs.’

Mr Speight tells me that unless he cuts Tristan open to flush out the infection —
‘these things have a habit of lurking in damaged tissue’ — his chances are not good. He

may have to remove dying flesh. He doesn’t actually say my son might die, but that’s
the implication. ‘I’ll call you after the surgery to let you know how it’s gone. I’ll be a

couple of hours,’ he says, and passes me on to the theatre sister, Barbara.

‘I’ve got your son here and I’ll care for him as if he were my own,’ she says,
which just about undoes me. Then, ‘Hello, Mum.’ Tristan is on the line! His voice is

groggy. I say ‘Sweetheart,’ before my voice breaks and have to swallow hard, then he’s
gone. My husband appears at the doorway, and I go into his arms, haltingly explain

things. I’m searching for a flight to New Zealand when Julian Speight calls again.
Tristan has come through. He has six incisions: three up his right arm, one

across his ribcage, and two on his left leg. The longest and deepest of these runs

across the top of his foot, where the infection is eating away his flesh. But Mr Speight
hasn’t had to remove any tissue. I babble and tell him I’m on the first plane in the

morning, that I’ll be there tomorrow evening, and look forward to meeting him, as if this
were a social engagement with a long lost cousin.

I have to catch three planes: Brisbane/Auckland/Christchurch/Invercargill — a
route that takes the entire day. Invercargill is at the tail-end of New Zealand. It has a big

base hospital and I know — from a telephone conversation with one of Tristan’s mates

— that the day after his fall he checked himself into Queenstown’s mountain clinic and
from there was transported by ambulance.

In Auckland while I wait for my connection a man with a teenage son halts in

front of me.
‘Are we at the right gate?’

‘Yes. Gate 29, it says so up there.’

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