Morris Beitsal had just turned twenty-one, when he was run over by a sportscar, less than a block from where he lived with his parents, an hour outside Melbourne.

Returning home late from work, Morris was nevertheless in high spirits that evening.   Although he found the long train ride to and from work tedious each day, he enjoyed living in exurbia: The region midway between the city and the country: He enjoyed the privacy of living on a full hectare lot, their nearest neighbour half a kilometre away.   Instead of having their neighbours right on top of them as they had been in his childhood when his family had lived in the slums of Fitzroy.   But most of all he enjoyed his special times at the camper.   Something which he could never have experienced if they still lived in the inner suburbs of Melbourne.

In fact it had been daydreaming about the camper, and what it contained for him, that almost cost Morris his life.   Normally he scrupulously looked both ways before crossing the road.   But that evening he had been thinking of the camper as he stepped out onto the road, and never saw the small, red sportscar bearing down on him.   All Morris saw was blackness as he was struck; all he heard was a loud explosion, the sound of breaking glass, and someone screaming hysterically.   That had been what he had hated the most: That god awful screaming.   How he wished the stupid person would shut up.   But then he realised it was him: He was the stupid person screaming as he rebounded off the bonnet of the sportscar and was thrown broken and bleeding into an empty paddock a few hundred yards from the front door of his parents’ house.

*      *      *

It was about a month later Morris awakened from his coma.   At first he revived for just a few seconds, too short a time for anyone to even notice.   Later he woke for a few minutes at a time, so the hospital staff notified his parents.   When finally he awakened properly, three hours later, April and Geoffrey Beitsal were there to greet him: His mother seated on a small lime-coloured, plastic stool beside the bed, his father standing protectively behind her.