“I don’t care if you’re coming to see my old man; you’re not getting through!”
She looked at him in surprise. Maybe there was a flu epidemic, and they weren’t letting anyone in to see the patients; maybe something else was going on . . . ?
“What are you staring at?! You don’t get into a hospital just like that! Yes, a hospital! You don’t even get into a bar like that. First you say, ‘Good day, I’m so-and-so, here’s my identity card, I’m here to do such-and-such,’ and then I decide whether to let you in or not. Damnation, there’s got to be some order,” he said, and as he spoke, he leaned first in one direction and then in the other, as if he were addressing an unseen audience or giving a public lecture about the rights and obligations of someone who’s come before a porter.
“Isn’t it visiting hours?” she asked.
“It most certainly isn’t,” he answered, giving her to understand that this very question was an insult to his office.
“When are visiting hours?”
“You can get an answer to that at the information desk,” he said, making every effort to sound very official.
“Where’s the information desk?”
The porter pointed behind his back. “But you can’t get there unless I let you in!”
“Well, are you going to let me in?”
“We will if you are polite and ask nicely . . .”
“Excuse me? What’s wrong with you?” she asked, looking at him scornfully. She had already stopped caring whether she would get in or not. If he didn’t let her in, it would be better in a way for everyone concerned. Both for Dijana, who would put off her encounter with crazy Manda until tomorrow, and for the doctors because by then the doctors would have already figured out what to do with the crazy old woman.
“C’mon then, get in there!” he said, waving with his hand like a policeman motioning a malfunctioning truck on by.
“How dare you talk to me like that?!” she said, furious.
“Beg pardon, whaddya mean?” he said, acting like he didn’t know what she was talking about.
“I didn’t herd sheep with you; you can’t talk to me like that, you vulgar jerk . . . !”
“Excuse me, what was that . . . ?”
“What you heard, you filthy peasant; not only you but whoever let you down from the hills . . . !”
“Listen, I might change my mind,” he retorted, trying to threaten her.
Instead of getting him to keep her out, she’d succeeded in intimidating the porter.
“But this is my job,” he said after she passed, as if apologizing.
She didn’t know where she might find crazy Manda. She went from ward to ward, down the hospital hallways that at times seemed like catacombs, so that she had to duck down to pass through the low entry into the radiology ward, where the walls were ironbound and resembled the inside of a submarine; at others they changed into labyrinths that went in circles, past glass walls behind which goggle-eyed old men were dying with tubes in their throats. She thought she’d stepped into another world or at least into another state, where the habits and rules were different than in the outside world, and that was just as hard for a living person to emerge from as it was for them to enter. A cold sweat covered her, her heart beat like crazy, and she was certain that the first cardiological patrol that came along would take her captive and stuff her into green pajamas with the hospital’s emblem on suspicion of her having had a major heart attack.
After a good twenty minutes of walking, she happened upon the emergency surgery ward and in it the same young doctor as yesterday. “How is she?” she asked about crazy Manda before the young lady managed to say anything.
“I don’t know what to tell you . . .”
“Did she bleed to death?”
“No, but . . .”
“Tell me what happened!” Dijana said. She was trying to appear as concerned as possible, interrupting the doctor and getting in close to her face, fearing the attack she expected from her.
“It looks like a stroke; she’s been transferred to neurology . . .”
“Is she unconscious . . . ?”
“She’s conscious, but she’s not herself, in a manner of speaking . . .”
“What do you mean . . . ?”
“I don’t know how to explain it to you. She’s not really here. They had to tie her down.”
Dijana began to cry again. She simply didn’t know what else to do. She cried from fear and excitement or from happiness because it seemed to her that her trick had worked.
“You can talk to Onofri, the chief physician; he’ll tell you more about it,” the young lady said. She was a little guarded, not like she had been in the morning, though she still felt sorry for Dijana, albeit with a faint feeling of disgust. But this was definitely much better than what Dijana had expected.
She led her into a tiny office, where behind a relatively oversized desk an enormous gray-haired man was sitting. He had a large nose and a protruding lower jaw, like a giant albino bulldog. She showed her to a chair and went out quickly. Dijana sat down before the chief physician said anything. He neither greeted her nor moved at all in his black chair, which was covered with cracked vinyl. He couldn’t even manage to get up. Who knows how he even gets in and out and sits down, she wondered at first, because she really couldn’t figure out how even the thinnest man could pass between the wall and the desk to get to the chair, and this man was very fat.
“So,” she said, more to get his attention than to break the silence.
“You must be Mrs. Delavale,” he said with one of those deep, loud voices that can be heard from hilltop to hilltop, even when they whisper.
“I’m not; actually I am, I’m Mrs. Delavale’s daughter,” Dijana said, bumbling.
“If it’s what we think it is, okay, but if it isn’t, we won’t be able to keep your mother in the hospital. If it’s a case of brain insult, this situation won’t last long, and she’ll leave us. If it’s something else, and you’re here to tell me whether it is or isn’t, then you shouldn’t have brought her to us because of a slit wrist. So, I’m asking you: how has your mother been acting in recent days?”
He watched her as would someone who could see through any lie. She didn’t know how to respond to him or how to gain some time.
“What is going on with her?” she asked in a fragile tone.
He looked at her, certain that this was all a lie, and said nothing for a few seconds, full as he was of experience with fraudulent patients and their families, perhaps to get her to break down, and then said, “Nothing special; I only had to evacuate half the ward, including all the nurses. You know, it’s a tradition for the Sisters of Mercy to work for us, pious nuns. Not even the communists have made an issue of this. The sacrifices these sisters make for the patients and all who suffer are boundless. I’ve had to have them removed from the ward as long as your mother is here. What she says and does isn’t for human eyes and ears. I guess you don’t know anything about that, do you? If that’s right, then we’re dealing with a brain stroke, but a very unusual one, the kind that there hasn’t been in this hospital for the thirty-five years that I’ve been here. I can remember that much! Otherwise such cases are known only from books. But people write all kinds of things in books, and I’m not inclined to believe every bizarre thing I read. So, to tell the truth—between you and me—I believe that your mother is in a state of chronic maniacal psychosis, or whatever psychiatrists call it, and I think it’s a disgrace for you to have brought her here! Of course, I can’t prove it, but even if I could, I couldn’t have you prosecuted according to any law. But I’m telling you, ma’am, that it’s dishonest, immoral, inhuman, both to us who work here and to the patients who are being treated in this ward and who because of your mother did not receive adequate care today. And I wonder how it was that you got her to sleep—what did you give her before you called the ambulance? Namely, this is where one could start talking about grave consequences for you. When you shot her full
of sedatives, you risked killing your mother. There’s a very small difference between a dose that will put a ninety-seven-year-old lady into a deep sleep and a dose that’s lethal for her. Especially when dilettantes use such substances. And you, Mrs. Delavale, or whatever your name is, you’re a dilettante, aren’t you? But don’t think you’re going to get off just like that. I’m ready to testify that you attempted to murder your mother. Of course, in the event that my assumptions are correct, and something really tells me that they are, and in the event that your mother hasn’t suffered an extremely bizarre brain insult, which I’m firmly convinced that she hasn’t, you’re not going to take us in like that. A brain insult of this kind would be a greater miracle than a monk seal appearing in the Gruž harbor. Therefore, this moment is your last chance to confess and tell me what really happened!”
When he finished, he tapped the ballpoint on the desk, as if he were holding a judge’s gavel in his hand, and Dijana felt ashamed for the umpteenth time that day. All anyone cared about, so it seemed, was to humiliate her and kick her out of the way.
“You think now I’m going to get down on my knees and beg you? Is that what you think?” she said, watching him like a she-wolf about to jump on its plump and powerless prey, trapped between the wall and the black desk. Chief physician Onofri, however, didn’t back down. At that moment he was seething with the hatred that had accumulated in him since he’d come to this hospital as a young doctor in the belief that he would remain there two or three years, just to get some experience, complete his internship, and get recommendations for a good specialization. But he’d ended up staying there for almost his whole life, unable to specialize in what he wanted to, walking streets that became ever more cramped as his body became ever thicker and trying to reconcile himself to the truth that he hadn’t needed to study medicine to become what he was: someone who had wished in vain to get out of his hometown, to go off somewhere where he and his family were unknown and live with a view of one of the Swiss lakes. Since his wish had gone unfulfilled, he felt himself to be no different from the lowest city street sweeper. He hated his patients and their eternally concerned families, who cheated, lied, and stole and so believed they could cheat death. He hated interns, especially the young female interns who rushed through his ward (who knew how, sharing whose beds and working whose cocks) and got places where he wanted to be. He hated those who died and those who regained their health, and for a long time there hadn’t been an outcome that he could be happy about. He wrote both NAD and exitus letalis with the same bile and without any fury. And now he had a woman before him whom he’d caught in a lie, and still he could do nothing to her.
“You’re playing with me—you think you can get away with that?” he asked. “Answer me when I ask you a question!” he shouted, and Dijana tried to look him in the eye without wavering. As if a lion couldn’t do anything to an antelope as long as it didn’t lower its gaze. “You’re a . . . ,” he said, at a loss as to how to continue because no insult seemed adequate, and then said quietly, “a whore!”
“I think we’re finished here,” she responded calmly, then got up and went out.
“Get the hell out of here!” the chief physician shouted when she was already closing the door. His voice echoed down the hallway, which was painted in two oily shades of green, with a linoleum floor in a third shade of green.
“What did he say to you?” the young doctor asked.
“Do you really want to know? If you do, ask him. I think he’ll be happy to tell you,” said Dijana, and no matter how insulted she was, she felt a lot better. She was sure that they wouldn’t send crazy Manda back to her. They had no way of doing it, if they didn’t send her through the mail.
“His nerves are gone. Otherwise, he’s a good physician, probably the best in the city. You know, that’s old age for you,” the young woman said, embarrassed.
“Fine, and tell me now, where’s my mother?” Dijana asked coldly.
“They just brought her back to the ward . . .”
“Can I see her . . . ?”
“If you wish . . .”
“Yes, I do; why wouldn’t I? Do you think anything could surprise me?”
“We had to tie her up,” the young doctor said to prepare her, but the words sounded more terrible than what they were supposed to communicate.
“That’s completely fine,” Dijana responded.
“It’s not a brain hemorrhage; her encephalogram was perfect, as with a completely healthy person.”
Dijana laughed and said, “I don’t doubt that a bit!”
They stood over a bed on which crazy Manda was lying on her back, without a pillow under her head, covered with a gray army blanket. Leather belts were fastened across her. She couldn’t look anywhere except up at the ceiling or at a battered dresser next to the bed. She was silent, which surprised Dijana, because in the last months she would swear and shout as soon as she woke up after an afternoon nap of an hour or two.
“Hey, grandma,” the young doctor called out, “look who’s come to see you.” But the old woman didn’t move or give any sign that she could hear her. From the rhythmic and regular blinking of her eyes one could see that she was awake and completely calm. Dijana didn’t know what to do. She would have liked most to turn around and leave, but that would be rude, maybe even dishonest toward the young woman who’d believed her and maybe still did. There was even a very small possibility that crazy Manda had miraculously disappeared just as she had miraculously appeared and that the bound old lady was that Regina Delavale that had disappeared one November morning, when some other woman in her body began cursing and breaking things. Dijana didn’t seriously believe this, but she didn’t dare do anything that she might later regret.
“Can she hear us?” she asked after ten minutes or so.
“I don’t know,” the doctor said and passed her palm in front of the old woman’s eyes. Crazy Manda blinked.
“Maybe we should untie her,” the young woman suggested. Dijana didn’t want to say “yes” or “no.”
“I don’t know. I don’t know much about this . . .”
“Do you think I do? You’re her daughter; you decide,” she said, and it sounded malicious.
“I can’t take any more,” Dijana said and went out.
She stood leaning on a wall of the hallway, her hands behind her back, and didn’t know what to do. She remembered that she had forgotten the bag with things for crazy Manda somewhere, probably in the chief physician’s office. And then there was a scream in the room. She ran inside and found that crazy Manda had grabbed the young doctor by the throat. Dijana grabbed her hands and tried to break her old fingers. She shouted, and then two men in white overcoats ran in. One pushed Dijana away so hard that she fell and knocked over a lamp on the nightstand. She remained lying there even though she was fully conscious and composed because she thought that if she got up, she would be blamed for the fracas, the noise that sounded like two boards hitting each other; she saw the young doctor’s foot in a white wooden clog, dressed in what seemed like an orange child’s sock with images of soccer balls on it.
“Are you all right?” asked one of the men in the white overcoats, helping Dijana to get up while the other tried to shove a needle in crazy Manda’s behind. The young doctor was sitting on the floor, leaning against the bed. Her hands lay still, and she was gasping for air.
“I’m fine,” Dijana answered, “it’s not my fault.”
They gave her a glass of water and took her to Dr. Vlahović, a young anesthesiologist who’d returned from his studies in Zagreb like some kind of medical celebrity, though he’d received offers from all over since he was one of the best students in the history of the school of medicine and was just as excellent in his specialization. They took him on though the hospital had no need for an anesthesiologist. The other three didn’t even really have work because the surgery wards were hardly in operation, partly due to the shortage of surgeons and partly due to completely unusable equipme
nt, so the operable patients were sent to other hospitals and cities. But they took on Dr. Vlahović readily (just as a rural soccer club would accept a young Maradona), in the belief that with him they would have an easier time procuring money for the renovation of the hospital. In the ward he did work on general or internal medicine, did nothing at all, or when the south wind would blow and Onofri was particularly impatient, he would talk with the patients and their families.
He extended his hand to Dijana and said, “Ares,” but at first she didn’t understand what that was supposed to mean. Only later, when she read Dr. Ares Vlahović, Anesthesiologist on the door to his office, would she realize that he had told her his name, something that physicians never do and that would confirm for Dijana his impeccable finesse, which she would use to explain Ares’s tragic demise.
“The unfortunate woman is completely psychotic. The folksy phrase doesn’t sound nice, but it’s true: she’s a nut! You don’t need to say anything because I already know. It’s clear to me that this didn’t start today, and I can imagine what you’ve endured with her. I also know why you brought her to us. The psychiatric ward wouldn’t take her, right? The problem is that no matter how much we want to—and I do, and so does Dr. Fočić, whom you met—we can’t do anything for your mother in this ward. I know that this must be terrible for you, but it’s a fact that the whole system will collapse because of one such case. We’re no longer caring for those whom we could care for,” he said in a calm and quiet tone, in which there was both understanding and cold reason.
“But I can’t take her back home!” she cried out.
“Believe me, I understand that and would never try to force you to do that or try to persuade you to. We’ll try to keep her here on account of the injuries on her hands as long as we can. But that won’t be long. No more than two or three days. In the meantime we’ll have to come up with some other solution.”
That evening saw the occurrence of everything that would lead to the death of Regina Delavale, or crazy Manda. First off, a little after Dijana left for home, chief physician Onofri would burst into Dr. Vlahović’s office like a fury and accost him with the question of who had authorized him to keep the psychotic old woman in the ward. Was he aware of all the regulations he was violating and how he was endangering the lives of the patients and risking the human dignity of the staff? Ares told him that for him the Hippocratic Oath was above all that, whereupon Onofri laughed cynically and pointed out that for his young colleague it was pussy that was above all else and that was the only reason he’d come back from Zagreb. He could hide the way he treated the pretty Dr. Fočić from others, but not from him. That was when Ares blew up.
The Walnut Mansion Page 5
