Lindy Cameron - Meaner Than Fiction

MEANER THAN FICTION

by

LINDY CAMERON

First published in eBook form by Clan Destine Press in 2013

CDP Imprint: Crime Shots 2013

PO Box 121, Bittern

Victoria 3918 Australia

[First published in print by The Five Mile Press 2009]

Copyright Author

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (The Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of any book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or the body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-In-Publication data:

Cameron, Lindy

Meaner Than Fiction

ISBN 978-0-9875077-0-9

Cover Design Rae Cooper

A country GP found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time when an angry patient went looking for someone with whom he could share his pain.

Dr Andrew Taylor was working an ordinary Saturday morning shift when he was shot repeatedly by an armed and deluded man who simply needed to show any doctor he could find, just how upset he was with the world at large.

Random shootings like this are unusual in Australia and the bizarre unfairness of what happened to Dr Taylor did not end on the day he was shot.

It was a nice morning. I was wearing runners. I'd just finished seeing a patient and was escorting her back to the front desk. She went through the waiting room; I went, as usual, through the front office.

He was standing on the other side of the counter. He wasn't one of my patients but I recognised him, so I said good morning and asked what I could do for him.

He said, 'I'm very depressed'.

He raised his hand - which was holding a gun; a pistol.

I thought, he's not going to kill himself because he's not pointing the gun at his head.

There was no time to react to what was really happening. The next thing I was on the floor. I didn't feel anything but knew I'd been shot, because of the noise and the fact that I was on the floor. I sat up. There was blood. I'd been shot in the hip. The bullet had gone straight through.

Then he shot me again in the same leg. I tried to drag myself behind a filing cabinet but he kept firing - at the wall, at the cabinet, everywhere; he just kept firing...

If this were crime fiction, in the first person, the narrative would most likely continue with a clichd balancing act between life and death. As narrator, I'd be trying to hook you with an action-packed or tension-filled flight or fight scenario.

I may well be going down in a hail of bullets, but I'd be telling you all about it as I went.

Actually, if this were crime fiction, I think I'd start again and give the piece more colour by adding all the noise: the screams, the shouting, the Bang! Bang! Bang! of the gunshots and the variety of sounds as each bullet hit something different - a metal filing cabinet, a solid wall, a human body. My human body.

And of course, there'd be the pain - lots of colour there. I mean, I've just been hit by... How many did we get to? Was it two bullets? And let's make them .45 calibre, full metal jackets - for extra oomph and drama.

Okay... so I've just been hit by two bad-arse bullets; the pain alone would have to be enough to kill me. Wouldn't it?

Yeah right; the reader's not silly. Obviously I survive. I have to, in order to tell my tale. I am, after all, the first person. I know, I know; there are fictional exceptions. A mystery buff would say: 'Never rule out the dead narrator. All we need here, for a riveting story, is a well-told flashback - to the who, what and why - then the hero can bite the dust, if that's what the author wants. It's been done before. After all, the story is all in the telling; that's what makes it new'.

Flashbacks like those, however, only work if the narrator knows, or can figure out during the re-telling, how they came to be in that predicament. The narrator needs to be able to explain the circumstances that led up to this incident, or there is no story. If the narrator does die in the end, everything else has to turn out right first. And if I die, well... the chances are, in fiction, that I probably deserved it.

On the other hand, if the narrator doesn't have a clue why some nutcase with a gun is on the rampage, then obviously, in fiction, the 'I' of the story has to survive in order to carry out an investigation; to go back to the real beginning, wherever that was, and find out why.

That is the pact that crime fiction writers make with their readers. It's not so much the 'who' but the 'why' that's important. It's not the mystery, but the solution that matters.

And a crime fiction buff cannot be taken for a ride. The motives, of the good and the bad, must be examined, or at least revealed; the outcome must be believable, if only in context; and justice, of some kind, must be seen to be done.

If this were crime fiction it would therefore be my job as the author to provide you with those answers. I would do this because I know that fans of crime fiction don't actually read mysteries or crime novels because they like being confused, baffled or scared; or because they derive a vicarious thrill from the violence. They read it because everything turns out right in the end. Order is brought to the chaos and there is always closure. Compared to that, real life is a bitch.

So if this were crime fiction I, as the author, would now go back to the end of my introduction and after, 'he just kept firing...' I would freeze the action there - again - and then delve into a flashback of how I, the narrator, came to find myself in this bizarre and bloody situation.

And if this were crime fiction my editor would, no doubt, suggest I lose the odd reference to the runners.

But this is not fiction so I will, instead, go back to the start and tell you the truth: that this is a true story, and in real life things rarely end the way they should. This is not my true story; but it does speak for itself; and I don't need to add colour.

On Saturday April 12, 1997 Andrew Taylor, for no other reason than he was a doctor, was - as the press would later say - 'gunned down' by a man who wanted to show someone how he felt. Specifically, he wanted to show a doctor how he felt. Andrew Taylor was the doctor he found. The first and second shots hit Andrew in the right hip.

The Man, armed with a .45 calibre semi-automatic Norinco pistol and two magazines of bullets (a mixture of full metal jackets and jacketed hollow points) fired about nine shots around the small Hastings medical clinic. All were aimed at his one single target; five were direct hits.

The Man ignored the screaming receptionist, over whose head he was firing. He even shouted: 'Shut up, I am not going to kill you'.

He fired and fired and fired. The third shot to hit his target struck Andrew in the left leg, below the knee. The Man emptied one magazine and reloaded. He walked through the crowded waiting room, ignoring all the terrified patients, to follow the doctor into the hall where he had dragged himself. He then shot Andrew Taylor in the back.