The Hollowed

by Jay Caselberg

  “Well, hello. This is our patient is it? Anastasia Baron am I right?” He looked around, spied a chair and pulled it over to the side of the bed before sitting on its edge.

  Stase nodded.

  “Okay, good,” he said, his face all smiles. “Well, I’m going to be doing your operation, Anastasia. I’m Dr. Walters. You can call me Nigel. And is it Anastasia? Or is there something else you’d like me to call you?”

  Stase swallowed. “You can call me Stase.”

  “Stase it is then.” He flashed her another smile. “Now, Stase, I don’t want you to be nervous. I’ve done thousands of these procedures. It’s really not a big deal. In over 90% of the operations, the whole procedure is a success.”

  Stase nodded slowly.

  He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and clasping his hands in front of him. He looked briefly over at Chris, gave him a brief smile and then turned back to Stase. “So, is there anything you want to know?”

  She lifted her hand to her throat, touching it gently with the tips of her fingers. “What about my throat?” she said. “Is it going to be bad? Is it going to be a big scar?”

  He smiled again. “Now, Stase, surgical technique has improved over the years. Of course there’ll be a scar, but…” Stase moved her hand out of the way, and he reached over and traced a line on her neck with one finger. “We will try and keep the incision in a place that follows one of the natural lines on your neck. That way it will be hidden. As the scar fades, it will just fall naturally into that line. You’ll hardly know it’s there eventually.” He sat back down.

  Stase didn’t look convinced. She touched her throat tentatively. “You’re sure?”

  He laughed. “Yes, of course I’m sure. We don’t live in the Dark Ages any longer.” He turned to Chris.

  “And you…”

  “Chris.”

  “So, Chris, do you have any questions?”

  Chris shook his head.

  “Okay, then,” said Dr. Walters. “I’ll see you in a couple of hours, Stase,” he said standing. He reached over and squeezed her hand.

  And then he was gone.

  Chris waited around for about another hour, while Stase flicked through magazines and occasionally reached up to touch her throat. When it was finally time for Chris to leave, he felt awkward, uncomfortable. He reached over and took her hand.

  “You’ll be fine, Stase,” he said.

  She just looked straight back at him, expressionless.

  He came back the next morning, a bunch of flowers carried before him, almost like a sacred totem to wards of the medical smells and the reality of what was happening, what this place was all about. He walked up the shiny, clinical corridors, listening to the hospital noises echoing around him. The floor was dark grey, buffed to an unnatural shine. The tall walls were white, but it was off-white, tinged with a grey that matched the floor. The whole place was washed with an aura of depression. It was a place full of the sick, the dying, the dead, and it did nothing to hide that reality from those who walked within its walls.

  A man came up the corridor pushing a drip stand beside him, bundled in a big, dark-red woolen gown. Chris walked past him, avoiding making eye contact.

  He made it up to Stase’s room and nervously poked his head around the door. She was lying in bed, a pink nightgown open at the front, her hair in disarray. Thick, cream bandages concealed her throat, a darkened red stain at one side. He frowned and swallowed. Twin clear tubes ran from beneath the bandage to a stand with a pair of bottles on the floor next to the bed. Only the tubes weren’t quite clear, a thin trail of dark blood ran down the inside of one of the tubes, down to one of the bottles, which was about a third full of dark liquid. He swallowed again. On the other side of the bed, another tube ran from the back of her hand up to a drip.

  “Hey, baby,” he said quietly as he stepped hesitantly into the room.

  Her eyes slowly opened, and she looked over at him and gave a weak smile. “Hey,” she said and frowned, giving a short half cough and a frown.

  “I brought you these,” he said unnecessarily. In that stark clinical environment, with the tubes and the bottles and everything else, he didn’t know what else to say.

  She looked over at him, gave him a weak half smile, but there was something else in her eyes, something cold and distant, almost accusing.

  Chapter Twenty

  Going the Distance

  They had no real idea whether the operation had been a success or not. Dr. Walters, Nigel, had said he was pretty confident that they’d gotten the whole thing. When he broke it down, what that really meant was they’d removed Stase’s thyroid completely. She’d have to take thyroxine tablets for the rest of her life, but that was a small price to pay considering the alternative. They, the oncologist and the surgeon, still weren’t sure that the alternative was not going to happen. Stase and Chris didn’t really want to think about that.

  For the next week or so, Chris treated Stase with kid gloves, all thoughts of anything else gone from his present focus. The entire world had narrowed into one tiny reality. Despite the claim that they’d gotten it all, the treatment was not over. Stase had to go in a week later for a comprehensive nuking. They were going to put her in a lead-lined room and dose her body with radiation to make sure they had the last of the cancer excised from her body. Chris had always been slightly bemused by the fact that they used radiation to cure cancer, radiation which gave people cancer in the first place, but he had no illusions about the fact that he didn’t really know enough. He was no medical expert.

  The treatment was scheduled to take place at another hospital several miles away, and Stase was going to be in there for a week. During that time, she would be off her medication and not allowed to have direct contact with anyone. His visits would be limited. He accompanied her down to yet another hospital, yet another set of corridors with drab walls, shiny floors and antiseptic smells, people wandering the corridors with thick robes, shuffling along wheeling drip stands beside them. Stase’s room was in a side corridor, set away from the rest of the hospital. He saw her in, looking out through the window onto a featureless parking lot and the flat grey roof of another floor. All sorts of machinery were set into the room’s ceiling; the nurse explained that it was monitoring equipment, meant to test the radiation levels. The room’s walls were a pale blue-grey and the door was thick, split in two with a top section and a lower thicker part. The bottom was apparently lead-lined, designed so that people could sit and talk to Stase with no risk while she was still invisibly glowing.

  “Hrmmm. Good idea that,” said Chris. “There are certain things you like to protect.”

  Stase gave him a nervous half-smile, not really appreciating the humor right at that moment.

  He left her in the care of the nurses assigned to that wing and headed back for home, feeling useless. All there was to think about was what was happening with Stase. The doctors had said they couldn’t be sure she was out of the woods yet, wouldn’t be for weeks and all they could do was wait and hope. He was allowed to visit her only after two days had passed, after the radiation levels had dropped to a point where she could be around people at a distance.

  He found the corridor, walked up to the doorway. The bottom half of the door was closed and there was a simple metal chair sitting just outside it. He dropped a pile of magazines on the flat ledge on top of the bottom door and sat in the chair.

  “Hi, Stase,” he said. “I’ve brought you these. How are you doing?”

  She sat up on the edge of the bed and looked at him with a brief frown, as if she didn’t quite know who he was. “Yeah,” she said. “Yeah, thanks.”

  “So, how are you doing?”

  She shook her head, stood, padded over to the window and looked out. “I’m bored. God, I’m bored.”

  “Well maybe the magazines will help.”

  She turned from the window. “Magazines? What magazines?”

  “These,” he said, pointing at t
he stack. “I brought them for you.”

  “Oh yeah,” she said. “Thanks.” She turned to look back outside into the nothing of the parking lot.

  He wanted desperately to go in there, to walk up to her and hold her shoulders and look into her eyes, but he was stuck out there on the other side of a lead barrier. He wasn’t allowed to get anywhere near her.

  She turned and looked at him vaguely. “How long have you been here?” she said.

  Chris frowned. “I’ve just gotten here Stase. I’ve been here about five minutes.”

  “There was something…” she said. “Something I wanted to…” She lifted one hand to her bandaged throat. “How are the plans? Has the architect come?”

  “Stase, we’re not thinking about that now, baby. There are more important things to worry about.”

  “Hmmm? Oh yeah?”

  “Have they got you on painkillers?” he asked her.

  She shook her head. “No, not allowed any medication. No pills. Just the stuff when I first came here.”

  A nurse came down the corridor. “You need to be going soon,” she told him, looking at her watch. “Her radiation count is still pretty high.”

  Chris nodded. “Is that right? Is she not on any medication?”

  “Only the radiation treatment,” the nurse said.

  “Okay,” he said. “Stase?”

  She turned to look over at him. Again, her expression seemed glazed.

  “I have to go now. I’ll see you the day after tomorrow, okay?”

  “Hmmm? Sure.” She turned back to the window.

  Chris pushed back the chair, stood and headed back down the corridor under the nurse’s watchful gaze. Seeing Stase like that had troubled him. The doctors had told them that they may need to regulate her dosage, but if what he’d seen was any indication of the consequences of getting it wrong…what if she simply forgot to take it?

  No, he had to assume that the medical people knew what they were doing. And in the meantime, he had to wait for the radiation levels to subside enough so that she could go out in public safely. There was a complete leaflet warning about public transport, about getting close to people and the risks involved. The nurse had handed it to him as he’d departed, and he’d been reading it on the way out of the hospital. He shoved it deep inside his inner pocket with a sigh.

  If anything, Chris’s next visit to the radiation ward was worse. Stase seemed even more distracted and vague than she had on his previous visit. He tucked the thought away, concerned, but not wanting to inflict any of his concern upon her. She had enough to deal with. The end of her irradiation came, and he filled her prescription at the hospital pharmacy before taking her home in the back of a cab in a long silent ride while Stase watched the world outside, saying nothing. Thoughts of her radiation levels kept scuttling through his head. When he got her home, he set her up on the couch in the lounge with blankets, magazines and the television, stuff to keep her occupied, though she didn’t seem to be very interested in anything.

  Over the next few days, her mood gradually improved and she seemed to regain some interest in what was going on around her. He could understand a little; it must be a strange thing to believe you might die, because there, in her head, that’s where she’d been. It wasn’t surprising that she was withdrawn. Chris himself had tasted the possibility, run it over and over in his head, wondering what the hell he was going to do if they didn’t fix her, if she went through a slow decline and he was forced to care for her through that transition until she finally went away for good. He didn’t know how he’d cope, or even if he would have coped.

  About a week after she came home, she seemed ready to face the world again. She was taking her medication and seemed to have lost her previous vagueness. The stitches were out, but it was strange seeing her with that dark circular slash at the base of her throat, white at the edges and slightly frayed on one end. She had rooted around in drawers, pulling out a collection of scarves and trying them one by one, only half-satisfied with what she’d found. Despite the assurances from the surgeon, the marks of his work were plainly visible. A couple of days later, she returned to work, business suit and scarf in place. Chris saw her off, his concern trailing after her as she headed down the street. Later that night, she broached the subject of the house again for the first time.

  “Chris,” she said as they sat in front of the flickering television, eating from plates held in their laps. “Where are we with the appeal?”

  “Well, we have the forms. Things just sort of got in the way.”

  “Hmmm. Well we can’t afford to hang around any longer. We have to get the whole process moving again.”

  “Last thing we spoke about,” said Chris, a little off balance with the sudden change of pace, “was that we needed to get supportive evidence. I don’t think the process we went through before was right. Maybe we should have talked to the neighbors some more.”

  It seemed to Chris that Stase had decided that she had been through whatever she’d been through and it was time to get back to normal life, if it could be called normal. It might have just been displacement activity on her part. He suspected that was really the way things stood. If she could get her teeth into something properly, it would take her away from the memory of the disease that walked around with her like that tender, half-healed badge on her throat.

  “I don’t agree,” she said. “Why should we talk to them? No way I’m going to give that bitch the satisfaction.”

  “Don’t you think you should take it a little easy for a while, Stase?”

  “What’s the point of that?” Her response was short, clipped. “We’ve wasted too much time already.”

  “Okay, if that’s what you want…”

  She set her plate down on the coffee table and gave him a hard look. “Yes, it is what I want.”

  Chris realized he’d been put on notice. The game was afoot again, and they were going to play it to Stase’s rules.

  “Okay,” he said, lifting a placating hand. “We’ll look at it on Saturday and make some plans.”

  She picked up her plate again and started eating, watching the television. End of conversation. The TV noise was the only thing to fill the gap.

  Chris watched her for a while. Suddenly he felt as if he was to blame for everything that had happened, as if Stase resented the set of circumstances that life had dealt her and Chris himself was the root cause of all of them. She looked up and caught him watching, but simply turned back to watch the television with a little shake of her head.

  On Saturday morning, they pulled out the plans, the paperwork from the planning authority, and the copies of the letters and spread them out on the kitchen table. Chris inwardly suppressed the sigh that he felt rising within him. It was back to the same old thing, back to the folly and the grandiose schemes. He was starting to wish that the whole thing would simply go away. Stase, poring over the neatly arranged document, moving from one to the other, cross-referencing, sitting back and nodding, was focused, but quite often her scrutiny was punctuated with a frown.

  “I don’t remember that,” she’d say.

  “What?” Chris would say, leaning in, wanting to be helpful, but she waved him away, apparently determined to solve it herself.

  That was not the only evidence Chris saw pointing to something not quite right with her memory. Daily, he noted little things, things that she forgot, conversations she couldn’t remember having. It was starting to become a concern. The whole planning thing was something that was keeping her occupied, her dedicated obsession the same as it had ever been, but Chris was starting to suspect that there was something else going on. There were echoes of the way she’d reacted when she’d been down in the hospital’s radiation ward, but he thought that enough time had passed for all that to no longer be an issue. He decided he had no option but to confront her about it. He waited till late on Sunday to broach the subject.

  They’d just come in from the backyard, still overgrown, still a mess, not
yet bearing the holes and piles of weeds where Chris was to make a start on the garden, where Stase had cast a few suspicious glances in the direction of the neighbor’s house, but not with quite the same intensity that she’d shown before.

  They were standing in the back hallway, Stase closing the backdoor when he touched her shoulder.

  “Stase, are you feeling all right?” he asked.

  “What do you mean?” Her brow was creased.

  “Well…” How could he put it? “I’m a bit worried about you. You seem to be forgetting things. I’ve noticed lately, you sometimes don’t seem to remember things that happened only a short time before.”

  Her mouth took on a sour downturn. “What are you saying, Chris?”

  He took a breath and bit his lip. “I think maybe you should check your medication. I’m not convinced that they’ve got the dosage right.”

  She flew at him, pushing right up close, putting her face right up next to his. “And since when have you been a doctor? What the fuck would you know, Chris? Hey? What the fuck would you know?”

  He stepped back from her sudden pale-faced ire. “I’m just saying, Stase. I’m worried about you. Don’t you remember what it was like down at the hospital when you weren’t taking anything at all? Don’t you remember that? You barely knew who I was or what you were doing. If the stuff can affect you that much, don’t you think you should look at it?”

  “You think I don’t know what this is?” she said, turning away.

  He leaned back against the wall with a sigh. “What is it, Stase?”

  She whirled. “You’re trying to undermine me. That’s what it is. Trying to make me think I don’t know what I’m doing. There’s nothing wrong with me. I know precisely what I’m doing, and if you think you can control me by making me question what I’m doing, then you’ve got another thing coming. It’s not going to work.”

  Chris’s closed his jaw and lifted both hands in front of him. “Listen to what you’re saying. It doesn’t make any sense.”