Stranger than Fiction

Well, I had all thse plans on what to write today and everything has come to naught, becuase Matthew Davey is dead.

Matthew Davey, for those inconsiderate live-in-their-own-world shits like me who don't read the paper, was a better man than me. Top researcher, top flight doctor, exceedingly decent man. My dubious memory says he was the first one of us to resuscitate someone, some drunken biker dead on the road, as he drove home in second year.

He died on a helicopter crash, two days ago, nine Australian military officers on some peacekeepy thing in Indonesia. It was in the newspaper today.

I shouldn't write these things while drunk.

But he was a smarter man, a more decent man, than I am. I would say we went through medical school together, but he went higher. One time we dissected a cadaver together, and he explained neurology to me, which was no mean feat, square pegs in round holes, that kind of thing.

I borrowed a Doug Anthony All Stars cassette from him. A book and a guide to some stupid video game and I never gave them back, and now they're in the shed somewhere.

And we sat outside a lab once, everyone inside doing endocrine physiology, and we had this weirdly spontaneous deep talk - where two people with no answers tried to talk about what made marriages work, this weirdly serious discussion between two people, neither of whom knew what worked but who wanted things to work out, wanted to find out what made people love and stay in love.

As if a heart is just a gland.

But we were doing the best we can, you know? We could understand glands and proteins, just not hearts and minds.

Anyway, Matt is dead.

He didn't drink that much, so tonight I drank his wine, damaged my brain. Bottle of Merlot.

As if the heart is just some gland.

I ask you. Dying in a foreign country, on a military helicopter. A moment of terror - although he does not strike me as the terrifiable type - and the helicopter plunges into the sea. Leaves a widow and a gap in the tracks.

There was no need for this to happen at all.

I might write more of this when I'm less intoxicated.

Thanks for listening,

John.

PS - Never really understood endocrine physiology.