by S. L. Grey
The light floods on and I hear what sounds like a drawer opening. I turn my head and force my eyes open.
One. The distorted outline of a man’s huge frame at a cabinet. White jacket.
Two. The shape turns to me. A smudge of dark grey over the hazy white of his coat.
Three. He looks down. Finds what he’s looking for in the drawer. Four.
Five. My eyes are burning, screaming. The man comes closer. I open them wide as a headlit deer’s.
Six. He looms over me. Takes my arm. Other arm under the pillow. I can’t find the fucking call button.
Seven. Two round blurs on his grey face. Massive glasses. Drops of sweat from his face fall onto my cheek.
Eight. He opens his mouth and his breath smells like rotting flesh. I have to close my eyes. He’s gripping my arm. Where’s the fucking button?
My eyes refuse to open again.
I feel him roughly pull the needle out of the J-loop, and he mutters something in a thick voice that I can’t make out. Then silence. As soon as my eyes can stand it, a minute, maybe two, later, I open them again and look. He’s gone; left the light on, but there’s nothing to see except the fuzzy glare of this storeroom.
It takes me three eight-second bursts of vision to find the remote. Once I have hold of it, I slump back and press the button, not letting go until my thumb stiffens. Minutes later a night-shift nurse stands in the doorway.
‘Yes?’ Shit. It sounds like Sister Elizabeth, the Ugly Sister.
‘Someone… changed my drip.’
‘Yes?’
‘What’s in it? Is it the right thing?’
‘Yes,’ she says from the doorway. She doesn’t come closer, she doesn’t check. She has no fucking idea.
I’m crushed by a wave of exhaustion. As I drift off, the panic becomes muffled. Someone – someone who shouldn’t be here – is putting something in my blood.
But I’m so tired. I can’t do any more.
‘Sister? Sister, have a look at this.’
I recognise Nomsa’s voice in my sleep haze. I feel her wiping my arm where she’s inserted another fresh drip needle.
The sister says something to her that I can’t make out.
‘But he can’t keep getting new needles. His veins are bruised.’
Sister Elizabeth lowers her voice and mutters again.
‘And I don’t know who put…’ I can sense Nomsa looking at me, probably trying to determine if I’m actually awake, although I’m doing my best to pretend I’m still asleep.
‘Besides,’ says the Ugly Sister, this time loud enough for me to hear, ‘the hepatitis is clearing up. The bilirubin counts are coming down. He’ll only need a drip for hydration.’ She leaves the storeroom.
It’s getting worse. I open my eyes and there’s no pain. Its absence is unnerving. All I can see are blotches over the doorway’s blurred radiance. I can feel the mould eating into my eyes, and, unless eyes spontaneously regenerate, I’m fucked.
‘Mr Farrell,’ Nomsa says. I hadn’t heard her come in. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘Okay, actually. I feel stronger. More awake… But my eyes…’ Suddenly I have an embarrassing urge to cry. I don’t want to go blind. And Nomsa is the only person in the world who seems to care. I hold myself together.
I feel her fingers opening my eyelids and she shines a light into them. ‘There’s much better reaction. And the conjunctivitis is clearing up. The antibiotics have worked well on that. Doctor will say whether we should extend the course. You say you still can’t see?’
‘Everything’s blurred. I can see light and shapes.’
‘I’ll ask Doctor about the ophthalmologist. But he’s only doing rounds this afternoon.’
‘But what if it gets worse? If it becomes permanent? If there’s something I can do now to avoid…’
‘I’m going to ask Doctor, and I’ll try to find out.’
‘Nomsa?’ I ask, not sure if she’s still in the room.
‘Mr Farrell?’
‘Did you manage to get hold of Katya and the studio?’
‘No answer. I left messages, so I hope they’ll get them. I’ll try again later.’
If I could get hold of Katya, she could call an ophthalmologist for me and he could come see me. I don’t want to go blind. Jesus… From fucking measles. There must be something simple I can do. If I can just get to the nurses’ station, they’ll let me use the phone. I’m sure I’m strong enough.
I push myself to a sitting position, and need to take several deep breaths before I have the energy to move again. I have to hoist my legs over the short railing at the side of the bed. Either that or work out how to lower it, which I guess would take more energy. I get my left leg over the side, but with it dangling there I can’t find the purchase to hoist my right leg over with it.
Then I make a stupid decision. I assume that, if my torso goes over the edge of the bed, my right leg will follow the rest of me. I’m correct. My body crashes onto the floor, my head hitting the edge of the cabinet. The drip line stretches, still attached to my vein. A jag of pain rips through my arm. At last the drip stand teeters and crashes down on top of me. The hook at the top thumps onto my skull and furious sparks fly through my brain, but at least the pull on my vein is slackened.
The Ugly Sister runs in bellowing something at me. The blurry shape of an orderly follows. As they manhandle me back onto my bed, I shout, ‘I need to use the phone. Nomsa? Can I speak to Nomsa?’
‘Nomsa is with another patient. Don’t do that again.’
When she leaves me, I’m too weak to move but my mind doesn’t stop racing. I can’t remember what happened that morning before I came here. All I have is this picture of Katya crying, leaving. I have the feeling she was going back to her parents’ – she always does. What happened that morning? My hands throb, as if in answer to a question I don’t want answered.
D &KatyaModel Please D me now. Please. R u ok?
I’m stuck here, with no way of knowing if Katya’s okay. I have to find out. But I can’t even get myself out of my fucking bed.
Later, Nomsa says I can try to walk. She reaches down and loosens my catheter. I feel like I’ve been released from a ball and chain.
She lowers the railing on the bed and this time it’s easier for me to flip my legs over and stand. I push myself up against the bed and Nomsa steadies me against the drip stand. I test my weight for a moment. Good to go. I start to shuffle off.
‘Keep left and don’t go too fast. Don’t overdo it.’
‘Ja, right.’
‘And don’t get lost.’
‘Thanks, Nomsa.’
‘It’s a pleasure, Mr Farrell.’
Once out of the storeroom I do as Nomsa suggests. I keep left, trailing the foot of the drip stand along the plastic skirting, stopping every minute or so to close my eyes and catch my breath. My sore hand throbs worse from gripping clumsily onto the drip stand. The top layer of the dressing is starting to come loose. I stick it back down as well as I can and shuffle through the blurscape at ten steps a minute, listening to the keening geriatrics, the rhythmic slap of a physiotherapist beating phlegm out of some old man’s lungs. There’s a limbo chatter in the wards, the trundle of gurneys, the pained circulation of the airconditioned air, and always, always, that subterranean thrum, like thousands of excited voices interred in the city’s rock. I get the eerie sense that we’re locked in, that nobody leaves this place except out the smokestack.
It’s just the isolation speaking. I wish I had my phone. Jesus, who knows how many followmobs I’m missing while I’m stuck in here. I’m going to lose serious Kred points.
The effort of my next minute of shuffling pushes the thought out of my mind. I reach the nurses’ station, their hustling dark-blue shapes whirling around in a complex dance like bees at a hive. The bustle makes me nauseous and I need to calm my stomach before I even think of asking someone for my phone. I move to a quieter stretch of hallway, press myself to the wall, close my eye
s and catch my breath.
In the room next to me, a machine starts making a panicked alarm, but softly, as if it doesn’t expect anyone to listen.
‘I’m afraid she’s passed on, Mr du Plessis,’ comes a voice from inside the ward – it’s the Ugly Sister, sounding a touch less bitchy than usual. ‘I’ll call Doctor to prepare the certificate. My condolences for your loss.’
A wail. A man howling. It’s deep and overloud, and it annoys me. I can tell he’s a fucking rebo phoney. ‘Lord, Thy will be done,’ he shouts. ‘Oh Jesus, please take her into your blessed arms and—’
‘Your Lord doesn’t have much practice at hip replacements, does he?’ says another voice, the harsh croak of an old woman.
‘Mrs February!’ the Ugly Sister barks.
‘Well, it’s not right, making a scene like that. Disturbing everyone.’
‘Muh-muh-mother!’ the man wails again.
Something sweet-smelling rushes out of the ward door and almost smacks straight into me. I can make out a blur of long blonde hair, and catch a subtle scent that reminds me of gardens, reminds me of the girls at work. ‘I’m… sorry,’ she mutters as she slips past me.
‘Doll!’ the old woman’s voice calls. ‘Where you going? You’re missing the drama!’
‘I can’t… I can’t, Gertie!’
She scurries away, her shape flitting down the main corridor like a mouse making a break across a cat-guarded floor.
There’s something about this woman’s smell, her voice, some subtlety in her accent that’s not exactly normal, but it’s familiar. Everyone else here – nurses, doctors, orderlies, caterers and all the old, dying patients – is part of the hospital, they are part of this building; but there’s something about the sweet-smelling blonde blur that makes me know she’s like me, that she doesn’t belong in here. Maybe she’s got a phone she can lend me.
I gather myself and follow. It takes minutes for me to shuffle up, dragging the clinking drip stand with me, to where she’s standing in a crook of the wall.
‘Hi,’ I say. Her shape jolts, turns its back to me. Her shoulders are shuddering as if she’s crying. Christ, maybe this was a bad idea. But it’s worth a shot.
‘I wondered if you had a cellphone on you? I—’
‘No,’ she says, swallowing a sob.
Jesus.
‘Sorry,’ she says. ‘That was rude. I… I did have a phone. The battery’s dead.’
Shit. ‘Uh. Okay. Thanks anyway.’ I close my eyes and prepare to make my way back. I take a few deep breaths then turn, catching my foot in the drip stand and landing up slumped on the floor.
‘What’s wrong with you?’ she says. ‘Can’t you see?’
‘Not much,’ I say.
‘Oh,’ she says. Her hand awkwardly flutters onto mine, trying to help in some way, and eventually I pull myself up on the drip stand.
‘Thanks.’
‘I th—’
‘Muh, muh, mother!’ the man’s voice echoes through the corridor.
‘Ms Cassavetes,’ the Ugly Sister calls her in that offensive voice of hers. ‘What are you doing out of bed?’ Her bulk shoves past me like I’m just another irritating obstacle in her day.
‘S-sorry,’ the girl says, and scuttles back the way she came.
‘It’s just one call, come on. You can’t be fu— you can’t be serious!’
‘I told you,’ the blurry-faced drone behind the nurses’ station says. I hear her yawning. ‘It’s against hospital policy. No patients are allowed to use the phones.’
‘Please. You want me to beg?’
‘It’s the rules.’ She sniffs and her large blue shape drifts away.
Fuck. Now what?
Not knowing what else to do, I walk away, testing myself again to see how far I can go. This time I make it past the blonde girl’s ward, past the nook where we spoke, and all the way down to the ward kitchen, where I can smell the coffee and chips the visitors have smuggled in and the stink of meat pies nuked in the communal microwave oven. I feel my way along the green-striped wall towards the next door. It’s closed but I can smell cigarette smoke coming from inside it. I find the door handle and let myself in.
I close the door behind me and peer into the blur, squeezing at my bandaged hand to soothe it. It feels like it’s been cut. I make out the shapes of a few chairs, a yellowish table and a maroon or brown couch. The blonde girl’s sitting on it.
‘Hello again,’ I say. ‘Are you smoking?’
She takes a few seconds to respond. ‘No.’ She shifts herself so that she’s sitting at an angle away from me. Almost turning her back. As far as she can without physically getting up to stand in the corner. ‘I don’t smoke.’
There’s something nasal about her voice. I can’t really make out her face, but there’s a whiter smudge in the centre of it, probably some kind of dressing or bandage. Nose job? I sit on one of the chairs. The thick plastic which covers the upholstery sticks to my bare thighs and I wonder when last they were wiped down. I make sure my smock is covering my dick.
‘What are you in for?’ I say, trying to sound chatty, conversational. Her muttering is really annoying me and in ordinary circumstances I’d just leave. But here, blind as a fucking bat, I might need her help to get hold of Katya.
Another long pause, then a sigh. ‘My face.’
Jesus. This is like a bad day at work. Interviewing a fifteen-year-old model pre-shoot, trying to get her to ease up. I challenge myself to get more than two words out of her. ‘What’s wrong with it?’
A pause. ‘I had an accident.’
Definitely a nose job. That’s what they all say, as if it’s some sort of disgrace when who the hell cares? But why the fuck would she get it done in No Hope? Christ, surely nobody’s here if they’ve got another option?
I lean forward in my chair, and she shrinks back into the couch.
‘Don’t worry,’ I say. ‘Remember, I can’t see much.’
‘Are you blind?’
‘No. Well… at the moment. I have a problem…’ She shifts into an easier position. I want to tell her – convince myself – that it’s just temporary, but I can’t force out the words. The ophthalmologist will be here this afternoon, and it will all be better. I rub my hand again; the ache’s not improving. ‘This place is stuffy. I’m thinking of going for a walk outside,’ I say to divert the conversation. ‘You want to come?’
‘You can’t leave the section without being discharged.’
‘What?’
‘They won’t let you out without the paperwork… I think they’re afraid of criminals.’
I give it some thought. ‘Nah, more likely they don’t want patients wandering around. Just as well, I suppose. You could have people who are sick with really bad stuff wandering into this section if there’s no control.’ I don’t want to think too hard about the diseases that must breed in this place. ‘Locked in for our own protection, huh?’
She doesn’t say anything.
‘I’m Josh, by the way. Josh Farrell. But everyone calls me Farrell.’ Only Katya calls me Josh.
‘I’m Lisa,’ she says.
By three thirty the eye doctor still hasn’t come. I lie on my bed, trying to stay awake; my long walk earlier has really sapped my energy. But I can’t trust any of the nurses to remember me when he comes. I feel I should be standing right at the nurses’ station, waiting for the doctor.
I dream that there are pigeons in glass jars arrayed on the shelves in this storeroom, flapping silently in their panic, suffocating slowly.
I see a round grey face looming over the entire hospital like a malicious moon, an insane scientist watching his rats dying in their trap. There are people in the jars now, old people scrabbling at the sides, moaning, too weak to scream or kick, suffocating, coughing up mouthfuls of blood-streaked phlegm. The grey-faced moon watches over it all, its soulless eyes staring, sweat pouring down, dripping off its badly shaved chin. Dripping onto my face.
‘Mr Farrell, Dr Marx
is here.’ Nomsa’s voice.
I try to rub the sleep out of my eyes, but my vision won’t clear. Then I remember.
‘Let’s have a look.’ The dark shape of Dr Marx’s face merges some of the dark spots into a shadowy patch. He shines a light into my eyes which glares and radiates. ‘Hmm. Yes, the conjunctivitis is clearing, but you do have quite serious ulceration because of the keratitis. We want to avoid this becoming an adherent leucoma. I’ll prescribe an antibiotic suspension, but it would have been better if we had seen to this earlier.’
‘But I’ve been waiting for—’
‘Nurse, please fill this as soon as possible. Two drops, each eye, twice daily.’
‘Thank you, Doctor,’ Nomsa says. The doctor bustles out without another word. ‘There you are, Mr Farrell. Your eyes will get better now.’
‘What does he mean “it would have been better if we had seen to this earlier”? The other doctor already knew what I needed yesterday morning. Why couldn’t he have given it to me then?’
‘Dr Koopman is not an ophthalmologist. He can’t prescribe—’
‘Okay!’ I snap. ‘Fine. Can I just get those drops now?’
Nomsa goes out without a word.
Dammit. I’ve managed to piss off the only decent nurse here.
Half an hour later, Sister Elizabeth comes in to check my drip.
‘Have you got my eye drops?’ I ask her.
Once again she barks, ‘No medical aid,’ as if that’s an answer.
‘What does that mean? I’m in a public hospital here. Free healthcare for the people and all that.’
‘You get generic if you don’t have medical aid.’
‘Okay, so? Where is it?’
‘There’s no stock at the dispensary. It’s on order.’
Oh God. ‘What?’ I’m biting my tongue, trying to keep myself calm, trying to keep the bureaucrat on my side. ‘How long will it—’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Is there stock of the medicine Dr Marx prescribed?’
‘Yes.’ She’s enjoying this.
‘So what do you want from me? What must I give you?’
