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something out . . . ’ I ran back outside, jumped into the car, belted myself back into my seat and rang Befftown police station. After the usual interrogation about why I was unable to bring the knife-wielding psychotic person in to hospital with my bare hands and had to take the police officers away from real police business to help, the duty officer agreed to ‘send a car’. I rang the ambos too – there being a knife and all – and they said they’d come as soon as they could.
    Nick and I pulled up a couple of doors down from the Luu’s place to wait grimly for our colleagues in uniform.
    ‘Did you go to circus practice last night?’ I asked. Nick was training to be a carnie at his local community hall in Marrickville. He did tumbling, juggling, silks, trapeze, trampoline . . . and the summer before he’d done a clowning course.
    ‘Yeah,’ he sighed, ‘I sucked though. Need to build up more strength everywhere or I’ll just fall to my death.’
    ‘Bummer.’
    We sat with the engine off and I was thankful that summer was over.
    ‘Ooh, I love this song . . . Remember it?’ I turned up the radio.
    ‘Vaguely.’
    ‘ Vaguely ? I loved these guys.’
    ‘One-hit wonders.’
    ‘Of All the Gin Joints were not one-hit wonders. They had, like, albums. ’
    ‘But only one hit. ’
    ‘They had albums, I’ve seen them in the iTunes store—’
    ‘—which no one buys; they only buy the hit!’
    I glared at him and he glared back.
    ‘Did you buy any of the albums?’ he interrogated.
    ‘No . . . ’ I admitted. ‘I just bought the hit.’
    ‘Hah!’
    My phone beeped in my handbag and I fished it out. A text from Lara.
    Day is never over. Master got me workin’
    I messaged her back.
    Maybe someday master’s gonna set me free…
    I locked the keypad and put the phone back.
    ‘How do you think this is gonna go?’ I pointed to the Luus’ house.
    Nick’s blue eyes met mine.
    ‘Unhappily.’
    Very unhappily as it turned out. We waited for forty-five minutes in the car until the police and ambos arrived within minutes of each other. Poor Mrs Luu refused to come out of her room, and when the officer broke the door in, she went us with the meat cleaver swinging and we all sprinted back outside.
    Amy sobbed while Nick and I tried to tell her she had done all she could and now we had to let the police do their job and get mum to hospital. However they could.
    The police called their commander, and soon theTactical ResponseTeam arrived and the whole street was cordoned off. Officers in riot gear with police dogs swarmed about in the front yard, and any of the neighbours who hadn’t known that Mrs Luu was mad did now. A police negotiator and a Vietnamese interpreter were added to the mix.
    ‘Shit,’ I said to Nick weakly.
    Two more hours we were there for. Unsurprisingly, the negotiator was unable to negotiate with Mrs Luu, and in the end the tactical guys stormed her room and shot her with a taser gun.
    From outside we could hear her screaming, and Amy screaming too.
    The miserable drama at Lachlan Grove was followed by a frustrating stint of arguing with the nurse-in-charge and the senior doctor in the Emergency Department at Elizabethtown Hospital. They didn’t like mentally ill people in their Emergency Department. Even seventy-year-old ladies who have just been shot with a taser.
    ‘Do not bring her in here,’ barked Dr Smug Fucker, barring the doorway of the ambulance bay.The paramedics had already got the gurney out of the ambulance but they stopped in dismay, looking to Nick and me for guidance.
    ‘Er, Dr . . . er . . . Hong,’ I began.
    ‘She’s yours ,’ he insisted. ‘She’s Mental Health.’
    It cracks me up how they say that. They say it all the time. Mrs Luu is Mental Health, like James Bond is 007. Honestly, someone will be wheeled in on a gurney with their head cracked open and their femur protruding a good few inches through the skin, but their file will reveal they are also being