The Small Fortune of Dorothea Q (36 page)

I
woke
up late on Sunday morning. No sign of Mum. She must have left early to return to the hospital. Still in my PJs, I made myself breakfast. A bowl of cereal in my hand, I walked over to the phone. The answering machine light was blinking. I pressed the button: ten new messages. I went through them; a couple were from Neville and Norbert, but most were from Marion. Marion! Neither Mum nor I had spoken to her since the accident; we’d been too caught up in events. But it was too early to call her now. I’d do it later. Instead, I now speed-dialled Sal.

Apart from the hasty handing over of the house key so he could feed Samba, I hadn’t seen Sal for a couple of weeks. In fact, not since the day we watched
Charade
. He was as tied up with his studies and his job, as I was with Gran’s life and her care.

With a start I realised something: I missed Sal dreadfully. I went over to the couch with my cereal bowl and the telephone, cuddled into a heap of cushions, and settled down for a nice leisurely Sunday morning chat. I told him all about Gran, and what I had gone through in the last two days. No, not even two days, though it felt like six. A day and a half. Sal, the doctor-to-be, was both empathetic and knowledgeable. He told me a bit about more about shear injury, and how unpredictable the outcome was at this stage.

‘If she’s got brain damage it would have been better for her to have been killed,’ I said.

‘Don’t say that. It’s not true. Not necessarily.’ Sal replied.

There was a gap in the conversation. I took a few more spoons of cereal.

‘So,’ said Sal after a while, ‘did you hear from George Clooney? Or did you contact him.’

I realised with a start that I hadn’t even had time to call George Clooney; in fact, I had completely forgotten about George Clooney, just as he, apparently, had forgotten about me.

‘It’s been three weeks,’ I said to Sal. ‘I think I’ll write him a note. Nothing like taking fate into my own hands. No sitting around for this girl. And I need a distraction from all this Gran drama. What do you think?’

‘Go for it!’ said Sal. That’s what I loved about Sal: he was always totally supportive.

‘I mean, I don’t think much of the
Daily Mail
, but it’s just a beginning. He could easily move up to the
Guardian
or the
Independent.
What with the scoop on Gran – in fact, that’s probably why he didn’t call. I bet he got a promotion with that story! He’s a good writer.’

Sal chuckled, but it seemed cold.

‘What’s the matter?’

‘Oh, nothing.’

‘And how are you? What’ve you been up to?’

‘Oh, nothing much. The usual. Uni and work, work and Uni.’

‘Can you make it over this afternoon? We can go and see Gran together.’

‘Inky, I can’t come this afternoon, I’m working. In fact, I’ve got to go now to start getting ready. I’ll see you around. Say hi to your Mum and I hope Nan’ll be all right.’

And suddenly he was gone, and the house was hollow and empty. So I went to the hospital.

M
um was sitting
next to Gran, and I saw it at once: the letter, in her hand, still unopened.

‘Hi, Mum!’ I said. She started, and looked up; she had been lost in thought, or in some other place, and had not heard my approach. I smiled, and pointed to the letter.

‘Aren’t you going to read it?’

She shook her head, and said nothing.

‘Mum!’ I said. ‘Go on!’

She looked around, and shook her head again.

‘It’s so – so busy here,’ she said. ‘So chaotic! Nurses rushing in and out, taking blood pressure, adjusting Mummy’s infusion – it’s just the wrong – atmosphere. I need peace and quiet.’

‘Oh,
Mum!’
I said, exasperated. ‘Just read the damn thing and be done with it!’

And to my surprise, she did. As if she’d been waiting for a final push. She let out a huge sigh, slid her finger under the closed flap of the envelope and tore it open. She began to read, silently, but couldn’t have read more than a sentence or two before dashing the letter aside.

‘I can’t,’ she blubbered. ‘I just can’t!’ Mum, crying! That was a new one.

‘Shall I read it to you?’

‘Yes. Do that.’

So I took the letter gently from her hand and began to read. The handwriting was somewhat spidery, but somehow, reading slowly, I managed to decipher the words:

I paused, and looked up, to see how Mum was taking it. The words were so untypical of Gran, so serious, so sentimental, even, that I was astonished. And a little bit scared. Mum was too, I could tell; she had buried her face in her hands, but briefly removed them to nod at me.

‘Go on.’

M
um cried out
. ‘What? What did you say?’

‘Rajan is alive,’ I repeated. She grabbed the letter from me, and read on in silence, her hands shaking, blubbering as she read.

Once again, I was left out in the cold. Would I ever learn the whole story? When Mum had finished the letter she flung it away and threw herself on to Gran’s bed, almost tangling herself up in the infusion tubes, and cried – cried and cried as if she would never stop. I picked up the letter and finished reading it, in silence.

D
orothea stood rooted
in the doorway, but only for a second. Rika, screaming at the window, then swung around to face her mother, shrieking wildly:

‘You bitch! You killed him! He’d dead! Rajan’s dead and it’s all your fault!’

She dropped the torch and ran to the bed, where she buried her head in her pillow and pummelled the mattress with her fists.

‘Oh Christ!’ cried Dorothea, and ran to the window, picking up the torch on her way. She shone it down to see what Rika had seen. The circle of light searched the bushes below and finally found Rajan, his head stuck on the fence, his half-turned face blood-streaked, the stave poking out from the top of his skull.

‘Oh shit!’ Dorothea ran, taking the torch with her, out the door, along the passage joining the Annex to the house. She flew up the stairs to the bedrooms and pummelled on Matt’s door.

‘Matt! Matt! Wake up! Wake up!’

But she couldn’t wait; she opened the door and barged in, lunged towards the bed and shook Matt until he was wide awake and sitting up.

‘What’s the matter?’

‘Quick, get up, it’s an emergency! Rajan fell on the fence. It went through his head.’

‘Good God.’

Matt shot out of bed in a trice, grabbed his medical bag and ran out the door in his pyjamas.

Dorothea ran to Humphrey’s door and Ma Quint’s. She shook them both out of slumber, gave a breathless account of what had happened. They ran downstairs; Dorothea stayed behind and rang the hospital for an ambulance. She replaced the receiver and took a moment to catch her breath; for it seemed she had not been breathing.

Her heart was pounding like a jackhammer. Her brain red hot, burning; mind black but for the one thought:
No. No. No. Not again. Don’t let this happen again. Oh no, God, not again. Please not again
. Over and over and over, the jackhammer:
No. No. No. Not again.

She joined the others downstairs. She could not look. She had seen, already. There was Matt, doing something, shouting something. She could not hear what he was shouting, because of the scream in her own head.
No. No. No.

Basmati was already there, and she was screaming, the shrill panicked scream of a mother for her lost child. Dorothea laid her hands over her head and shook it as if to banish reality, shake the nightmare out of her brain. But the nightmare was real, and the horror, and she could not shake it away.

But then the real Dorothea, the practical head-on-her-shoulders Dorothea, slipped through the cracks of shock and heard Matt calling:

‘Have you called the ambulance? And we need the fire brigade too! They need to cut through the damn pole!’

Dorothea ran back upstairs, dialled 999 again, this time demanding a fire engine. She deliberately refrained from adding that there wasn’t actually a fire. Cutting a man down from a fence spiked through his head might not be considered an emergency—who could possibly survive?

Back down to the yard.

Humphrey had his arms around Rajan’s body and was holding him up, preventing his head from slipping further down the stave. Dorothea looked away. She could not bear the sight. Rajan’s head! His beautiful face, bathed in blood, his body limp and lifeless. Not again. She had seen. She knew. The stave had pierced right through the top of his head. He was gone. Gone. Gone already.

Still: there was Matt, doing his best as a doctor should. Perhaps he had a few breaths left in him. A few. He must have, otherwise Matt would not be working on him, would he? Dorothea had no hope; what could a doctor do, with a brain speared through? Yet still that scream:
No No No.

From the open window of Rika’s window, just above the scene, came an agonised keening, loud, primeval, almost a howl. Rika’s bedroom light was off; Rika was crying to herself, in the dark, all alone. Dorothea longed to go there, place her arms around her daughter, but she couldn’t. Rika’s last words resonated in her heart.
I hate you! You bitch! You killed him!
She would have to deal with that, but later. First this nightmare had to end.
Rajan had to be saved! He had to be saved! Oh Lord! Please! I’m sorry! I’m so sorry! Forgive me!

Visions came to her of a similar nightmare: seventeen years ago, in a Kitty front yard. Freddy lying on the ground with a garden fork stuck out of his abdomen. Her cries for help, and no help coming; the blood, the blood! Freddy’s life force ebbing from him as the blood oozed from the four wounds in his belly. Dorothea pulling off her blouse, and then her skirt, pressing it against the wounds, and seeing them turn slowly red. The crowd, standing around and gawping and nobody doing a thing. The ambulance, arriving over an hour later, when it was too late and Freddy had bled to death. Her hope and her faith sinking into the darkness as Freddy’s blood sank into the earth. The blackness of despair left behind.

Not again. Oh, dear God, not again!

The wail of an emergency vehicle. Thank God, the ambulance. But what could anyone do?

It wasn’t the ambulance. It was a fire-engine. In a city of wood like Georgetown, fire was taken seriously; there was always the fear of it spreading, growing out of control. Many times, Georgetown had been inundated by fire. Medical emergencies, on the other hand, were private. Not urgent. The ambulance was taking its good time.

Ma Quint had taken Basmati aside and was holding her, comforting her. Basmati was struggling to get to her son, screaming for him, but Ma Quint held her back.

Marion and the twins came down the front stairs, drunken with sleep, their hair dishevelled. Dorothea had to keep them away. She couldn’t let them see Rajan.

‘Come,’ she said sternly, turning Marion around. She grabbed the boys’ hands, one in each of hers, and led them up the stairs.

‘Where’s that bloody ambulance?’ she heard Matt cry. It seemed Rajan had already been cut down from the fence. Everyone was talking, chattering. Cars were stopping on the street, people getting out to come and watch. She felt like screaming at them all. Instead, she took the children upstairs and called the hospital once again. A sleepy voice answered.

‘Is the ambulance on its way? I called you twenty minutes ago!’

The voice on the other end was so disinterested Dorothea wanted to scream and tear its owner apart.

‘We still tryin’ to find the duty doctor, Ma’am,’ he said, and yawned into the phone as if to deliberately mock her.

‘What! You mean you haven’t sent anyone yet?’

‘No, Ma’am. We doin’ we best.’

Dorothea knew very well what their best would be. Only last week there had been an article in the papers about a woman with a breech baby who had died because the ambulance had never arrived. She knew, because she was the one to write a Letter to the Editor complaining about the lackadaisical emergency services of the Georgetown Hospital.

‘You stay sitting there!’ she commanded the three children, who, not yet quite awake, were sitting around the dining table waiting for further instructions, rubbing their eyes and yawning. The twins were as tame as lambs at this time of the night; thank goodness for that.

Dorothea called Dr Ray Wong, their own general practitioner and a personal friend of the family. This was an emergency.

‘I’ll come,’ said Ray, and Dorothea breathed out.
Forgive me! Heal me! Save me!

But
, said a stern voice within her,
what’s the point? The boy is dead. You saw him. Nobody could survive that. No ambulance and not a hundred doctors.

But a tiny spark of hope glimmered within her. Matt was there, and Ray was on his way.

R
ika had stopped her howling
. Dorothea debated whether to go to her, but knowing Rika, remembering her last words and the fact that she, Dorothea, was responsible for this present catastrophe, it was better to stay away. Stay far away. Rika was a loner; she dealt with every drama in solitude. It had always been that way. Rika rejected her; how much more would be that rejection now! No: better to leave Rika alone. They would deal with her the next day. Right now, the emergency was Rajan, not Rika. Perhaps Ma should go to Rika; but Ma was busy tending to Basmati, who was still in hysterics. Later she’d send Ma to Rika. But hopefully, Rika had cried herself to sleep. She would be calmer in the morning. Or not, as the case might be. But everyone else would be calmer, at least.

She had to do something about those children! This was no place for them; but now they were awake and too excited to go back to bed. Already the twins were at the window now, thrilled at the sight of the fire-engine, wanting to see the fire. Dealing with them would also keep her busy.

Dorothea picked up the phone again and dialled Leo’s number, her brother-in-law. After a while, Leo’s wife picked up the phone.

‘Belinda, we have an emergency here. Can you take the children for the rest of the night? I’ll drive them over. Marion and the twins. I’ll explain when I get there.’

‘Of course!’ said Belinda. ‘Bring them over.’

So Dorothea herded the children back down the stairs and into her car, under great protest: the boys because they would miss all the fun (Where’s the fire? Anybody dead?) and Marion because she thought she could somehow help. ‘I could serve drinks and snacks,’ she offered.

She drove them the five minutes to Leo’s house in Kingston, where Belinda and Leo were up and full of concern. Belinda gave her a cup of tea ‘to help her relax’, and Leo insisted on coming back home with her, because maybe he could help in some way. When she returned the crowd had grown yet more; several cars had followed the fire engine and were now parked all along Lamaha St, as well as those passing by who had stopped out of curiosity. Their occupants had gathered round to watch the goings on, rather disappointed that there wasn't an actual fire. Dorothea, enraged, shooed them away and stood guard to keep them from returning;

otherwise they'd have possibly pushed away the doctors in their eagerness to ogle.

There was still no ambulance; but she hadn’t expected one anyway. Rajan lay on the ground, the tip of the wooden spike still sticking out of his head. Matt and Ray were working on the wound; they had stopped the bleeding, it seemed. Dorothea swayed; she was going to faint. No, she wasn’t. She had to know.

‘Is he …?’

Humphrey looked up. ‘He’s still alive,’ he said.

‘Oh thank – thank God!’

Thank you! Oh, thank you! You saved him! Now save me! Give me peace!

‘By a miracle,’ added Matt. His face was glum.

‘But, Dorothea – we can’t do much,’ said Ray, also looking up. ‘He can’t survive this. Not possible.’

That’s when Dorothea finally burst into tears. She had not cried for seventeen years, not since the night when Freddy died, when the ambulance had finally come and the paramedics had declared him dead and covered him with a white sheet and packed him into the back of the vehicle like a slab of meat. She had howled in despair then, just as Rika had howled this night, but never again. Back then, it was Humphrey who had comforted her. And now, again, it was Humphrey. He rose to his feet and put his arms around her. She cried into his chest.

‘My fault! All my fault!’ she blubbered, and in her heart she wailed:
I’m sorry! So sorry! Forgive me, save me! Heal me! Make me whole!

Humphrey did not contradict her. He only held her, strong and silent. Dorothea let herself cry. Gave herself permission. She disintegrated. Dorothea Quint was not real. She was a mirage, an image. Hard as steel on the outside, only to protect this inner core, this softness, this vulnerable truth. Hardness was not strength. She had played a loser’s game. And now she was nothing, just a withered vine in Humphrey’s arms.

Finally she stopped crying. The fire engine had provided a stretcher and they had manoeuvred Rajan onto it and were transporting him to Ray’s car, which was a station-wagon whose back seats could be lowered to create an almost flat space at the back. They shoved the stretcher in. It was a little too long; the flap at the back had to remain open. Matt climbed into the back with Ray; he crawled into the space between the lifeless body and the side of the car, to hold on to Rajan and make sure he didn’t fall out. Humphrey climbed into the passenger seat, Ray into the driver’s seat. He leaned out of the window.

‘Call the Medical Arts Centre,’ he said to Dorothea. ‘There’ll be a duty nurse – tell her what happened, and to prepare the emergency room for us. Tell her to call Dr Ali – the surgeon. We’ll be there in ten minutes.’

‘I will,’ promised Dorothea, and she did. And after she had done so she got into her own car and drove to the MAC in Thomas road. Basmati came with her, and, because Basmati clung to her and would not let go, Ma Quint. The Medical Arts Centre was a private hospital where several doctors, Ray included, had their surgeries: the best hospital in the country, as up-to-date as possible. Damn the Georgetown Hospital! Damn the non-existent emergency services! Damn them all!

But,
a little voice argued,
they probably couldn’t have helped anyway.

Rajan is going to die. You saw him. He is half-dead already. Dorothea, this is a second man’s blood on your hands. First Freddy, and now Rajan. All because of your interfering, ferocious temper. All because, as Rika said, you’re a bitch. Oh Lord, have mercy!

I
n the morning
Rajan was still alive, by some miracle. Matt, Ray, and Dr Ali had worked on him for hours. Humphrey and Dorothea, Ma and Basmati, had waited in the waiting room, taking turns to nap, leaning against one another, or lying across the chairs and resting a head on the other’s lap. At one stage they had needed blood; all four had been tested. Dorothea was found to be a universal donor. She had given blood, and returned to the waiting room. To wait, and nap, and worry, and cry.

They had stabilised Rajan and put him into an artificial coma. There was nothing more to do. Everyone was exhausted.

Dorothea drove them all back home. Matt was saying that in spite of the best they had done, Rajan would probably die the next day. They had not been able to remove the piece of metal still stuck in his head. His own skills were not up to it; he was not a brain surgeon, after all. And though Dr Ali
was
a surgeon, he too was not trained for such a sensitive operation.