Luke Johnson has been crowned the winner of the Bellarine Writers Competition.
Luke’s story on the topic ‘A fortunate accident’ was judged the best overall story in the final.
Born and raised in the Geelong region, Luke has worked as a physiotherapist for over 20 years. He says he is lucky to live in Ocean Grove with his wife and two daughters.
The competition took place over several months.
Six local authors who won each month’s competition fought it out for the grand prize of $1000. They had a choice of three topics: ‘A fortunate accident’, ‘The visit’ and ‘The choice’.
Luke was named the winner at a function for all finalists on Wednesday night.
A Fortunate Accident by Luke Johnson
At last, I had my own little Jack.
I’d waited so long. Watched and waited.
Before, I had no one. But then he came to me. I remember his soft blue eyes, so bright and clear; not just seeing them but feeling them look at me. As if he knew like I did that we were meant to be together.
As I walked through the nursery I’d look at the others, but he was always the one. I felt like someone could blindfold me, spin me around a hundred times and push me to the ground and I could still get up and find him.
Then, for six years, there was just us. We’d moved to a little country town; a place where we could just be Jenny and Jack and no one else. Not nurses or newspaper reports; not missing or found.
Where the little wire fence out the front was all we ever needed to protect us. Where the grass was greener than it had been in the city and the air was not just cleaner but lighter. And the stars that we’d look up at were shining as if they’d waited all this time for us to notice them.
I didn’t think for a minute that a family could ever need any more than what we had.
But then the accident happened. I remember I was sorting letters at the post office and the morning news had come on. It was grand final week and I’d left Jacky at home, putting up streamers and posters from the paper. I remember hearing the screech of tyres and then the hiss of the air brakes somewhere outside, but I still had a few letters to sort and I was waiting for the weather forecast. It was only when the sirens started to wail and whine over the radio that my heart skipped a beat and somewhere I felt that the world might be evening up the score with me.
But not him – the world owed him nothing like that.
It was Ken from the general store who held me back as I tried to run and hold my boy, all twisted and broken and still on the gravel shoulder of our street. It was only the second day he’d ridden to school on his own; I could still see his little face trying to hold in the pride and happiness that being a big boy gave him. But through the tears that ran hot and sticky and the dust that blew up as the helicopter landed, I couldn’t see his smile anymore. I couldn’t see his chest moving. I couldn’t tell if my Jack would use those big blue eyes to tell me he loved me again.
Then I waited again, but this time I only watched the sterile hospital floor. Those long, fitful hours that passed in the starchy white corridors hollowed me out and punished me. Those same blanched walls where years before I‘d first held him and taken him secretly out of those front doors that dutifully opened to the light and space we would scurry away in and make a new life. Now the hospital, and the world, stole us back and I found myself recoiling in the mental confines and dark corners that I had worked so hard to run away from.
How was I to know that from such a sordid thing could come something perhaps even more beautiful?
The doctor told me about it; how Jacky could donate his organs. Little parts of my boy could go on and live in others; bring life and his own form of perfection to them. After it had been done it took a long time to find them all, what with the privacy laws and things, but in the end when I got hold of them they could hear what it meant to me. All five of them broke down like I did and as we sobbed and clutched at each other’s pain, I knew they would agree to what I wanted them to do.
From my one little angel came a choir of five.
As I look at them now, I love them. I feel close to them, like any mother would.
But I envy them. They hold within themselves little parts of Jack that I cannot. They share cells with him now that I do not. Their connection is stronger than mine.
When I see little Mary, I know the breath that she huffs out as she laughs at one of my jokes comes from the lungs Jack once used.
When I hold Anna close, I feel the very warmth of her, the four chambers that held my Jacky’s life pumping away steadily in her chest.
Stephen sits in the corner and keeps to himself, his kidneys purifying everything he takes in. He knows Jacky’s two little red sieves are careful and dependable.
And Harry isn’t so yellow anymore – he’s the one who took a bit more convincing, but now I see he knows he is lucky and wants to thank me.
Then there is Noah. The one who studied medicine but had problems with his eyes. Within days he might have run out of time, but there was my little Jack lying on that cold silver table in the morgue and so I signed that form. I held it up to the doctor and he looked at me like I was heaven on a stick.
On the phone Noah had been the one who had understood the most. And right here I can do nothing but stare at those beautiful blue orbs and Noah can’t help but smile back.
As I click the lock on the door and hear their chains rattle against the bluestones in my basement, I ask myself how I ever came by all of this. From despair and agony, this situation – this fortunate accident – has given me a family and a purpose I probably don’t deserve.
