Does it Hurt to Die (3 page)

Jannie reached for the phone next to the bed. The transplant was going ahead, and the argument with Renata would have to wait until later for an attempted resolution.

‘
Mike, is that you?’ Jannie whispered down the phone.

‘
Yes,’ replied Mike, ‘but why on earth are you whispering?’

‘
It’s Renata,’ said Jannie. ‘She’s in one of those moods and thinks my main love is the transplant programme. Can you prepare Sibokwe and tell him that we might need to go to the hospital tonight.’

‘
That’s fine, we’ve already had a talk to him and Sian has his bag packed.’

Mike McMahon was the coordinator of the non-operative side of transplants at Groote Schuur Hospital. He looked after the anaesthetic and intensive care needs of the transplanted patients. He was almost the same age as Jannie, and they had known each other for what seemed a lifetime. Sometimes he infuriated Jannie. Mike was an English-speaking liberal who believed firmly in integration and loved to challenge ideas; in many ways, he was the complete opposite of Jannie. Despite their differences, however, they had become good friends. Jannie also thought he was an excellent anaesthetist and gratefully acknowledged that he had been a critical force in setting up the liver transplant programme.

Mike had always been very encouraging, understanding how difficult it was trying to succeed in the shadow of Christian Barnard’s famous heart transplant unit. The success of the first heart transplant in 1967 still cast itself into the corners of the smallest room at Groote Schuur Hospital, the persona of its premier surgeon seeming to come alive whenever the hospital’s name was mentioned. Jannie knew he would always be competing with that memory and that it was a record that would never be matched. Despite that—or in spite of that, he was not quite sure which—his desire was still to create the best liver transplant unit in the Southern Hemisphere.

Mike interrupted his thoughts
. ‘Jannie, to speed things up why don’t you let Susannah take the donor liver out?’

‘
Good God, Mike, you seem to have a very short memory. I thought you wanted this transplant programme to succeed!’

‘
You can’t do everything. People, other than you, sometimes make mistakes. It wasn’t her fault that the last liver wasn’t maintained at the right temperature.’

‘
Look, Mike, if she had been really switched on she would have picked it up. Why does she want to do transplant surgery anyway? Why doesn’t she do plastic surgery, or if she likes a bit of drama, paediatric surgery? I’ll gladly give her a reference.’

The conversation was going the way of many past conversations, towards an issue that Jannie knew Mike was passionate about: equality of the sexes, a subject that equally irritated Jannie coming from a background of Afrikaner male dominance. With his background, he had always seen the woman’s primary role as being a mother and carer to children. Being a specialist surgeon, he could not see how a woman could meet the demands of surgery and motherhood. It had been difficult enough for him adjusting to someone like Renata, but at least they had found common ground to accommodate his beliefs, and she worked part-time when Christian was born. What annoyed him most now was that Mike did not seem to have any understanding of when things could be discussed and when they could not. He did not believe Susannah had the ability to harvest the donor liver—not primarily because she was a woman but because she was not as capable. Part of him wanted to pull rank as head of the transplant unit and tell Mike to shut up, when Mike cut into his thoughts again.

‘Jannie, either you give her another chance, or you can find yourself another anaesthetist. I’m not going to be drawn into a discussion about the merits of women in surgery. Susannah is very talented, if you would only give her half a chance.’

‘
What’s got into you? You sound like you’re having an affair with her.’ Jannie heard the phone click at the other end. Damn, he thought as he redialled.

‘
Mike, it’s Jannie. Don’t hang up. I’m sorry. It’s a bit of a stressful time for all of us. I know you’re not having an affair with Susannah, but your remark about not making mistakes got to me a little, and I retaliated by saying something that was way out of line.’

‘
You’re going to have to start giving a bit more responsibility to others. You’re going to have to accept that others are not perfect or as talented as you, and that people learn from their mistakes.’

‘
I understand that, but there is an awful lot riding on this transplant. Sibokwe has become something of a
cause célèbre
among the liberal left. They see him as a chance to redress years of injustices. The chancellor is saying that this is our opportunity to justify a First-World practice just when there is a groundswell of opinion for Third-World community medicine. You know that, and we haven’t done any kids. We’ve only done eleven adults, for Pete’s sake, and if we stuff this up, we’re finished.’

‘
You’re over-dramatising, Jannie.’

‘
Maybe, but I’d prefer the other junior consultant, Peddington, to harvest the liver. Susannah can do the back table.’

‘
I think that’s a mistake. Peddington is already an egotistical sod, and he’s Susannah’s junior. If you put him above Susannah in the transplant team, he’ll be unbearable, not to mention what it will do to Susannah’s feelings,’ said Mike.

Jannie struggled to control his sense of frustration. A frustration brought on by his friend’s inability to dissect out the important factors. He surprised himself.

‘OK, Mike. We’ll have Susannah harvest the liver, but I’ll get Peddington to go with her. Yes, yes, I know they don’t get on, but we need two brains there; they’ll just have to get on for a few hours. Will you explain the situation to Susannah, and I’ll phone Peddington?’

There was silence at the other end. Jannie wondered whether Mike had hung up again, but heard no telltale click.

‘But I think it would be better coming from you, or Hannah, the transplant coordinator,’ said Mike.

‘
Thanks, Mike. I’ll do that and tell them that the donor is in Port Elizabeth and that the Red Cross will fly them up as soon as they’re ready. I’ll chat to Hannah and make sure that everything is ready to go as soon as they’re back.’

‘
That’ll be at least seven hours. What are you going to do?’ said Mike.

‘
I thought I’d go to church and pray.’

Mike knew better than to comment. Despite his friend’s intolerance of others and other character misdemeanours, he was someone who went to church most Sundays. In many ways, he had traits consistent with Christian belief, without the firm convictions that helped you live out those beliefs. Mike knew that part of that was Jannie’s strict Dutch Reformed church upbringing, but he also wondered whether it was just because he had not found a better explanation for life. He had often quizzed Jannie on what he had believed in and why he felt the need to go to church. It was the only time he could recall that he had received a single sentence reply from Jannie.

After a short silence, Jannie added, ‘I still need help each day in understanding why I’m here.’

Mike thought that if anyone knew why he was here, it was Jannie, but, then again, even good friends fail to understand the depths and complexities of each other’s personalities sometimes.

Jannie put down the phone to Mike, and then in succession talked to Hannah, the chancellor, the theatre coordinator and the minister of health. By the time he finished it was a quarter to eight, and he could hear no sounds coming from the rest of the house. Christian must be asleep. Renata obviously had put him straight to bed. No ‘goodnight, Daddy’ was a frequent form of punishment when he was in her bad books.

‘
Christian too tired to say goodnight, was he?’ said Jannie as he walked towards the front door.

‘
Save your sarcasm, Jannie. While it befits you and the surgical profession, it contributes little to humanity.’

‘
Well, if that’s your attitude, I’m going out.’ He deliberately did not tell her it was to church, lest it provoked more comment on the inconsistencies in his life.

Jannie shut the front door more loudly than he usually did, mostly as an exclamation mark to his last statement to Renata. He stood on the step for a minute and wondered to himself if they should really go for counselling, or whether the relationship was beyond reprieve. He had thought about it many times before and knew that if they were to survive, something had to be done, but then something such as the transplant would intervene. As he walked down the front steps towards the car, the rain started. He had brought an umbrella and quickly put it up. As he hurried towards the car, a gust of wind blew it inside out thoroughly soaking him. In disgust, he threw the umbrella into the back of the car and sat thinking that this obviously was an omen. Either Susannah would stuff up the donor liver or it would reject within thirty-six hours.

He started the car and drove slowly towards the church, convinced that no amount of praying was going to prevent a disaster with the transplant. As he got closer to the church, the rain became heavier and he had to drive even more slowly, struggling to see through the windscreen. The road that led up to St Andrew’s Church was poorly lit, and because of the rain, he was not expecting the scrum of cars. They lined both sides of the street. ‘Damn,’ Jannie muttered to himself.

Not a place to park within eight hundred metres and an umbrella that did not work properly meant he would be wringing wet by the time he reached the church. There were two alternatives, he thought
, go home or brave the rain. That thought was quickly replaced by another; that going to church, even wringing wet, was infinitely preferable to having to deal with Renata’s mood.

Getting out of the car, he half ran, half walked to the old stone church, wondering why it had suddenly become so popular. There would be nearly a thousand people there that night if it was consistent with the other nights that he had recently been. It would be overflowing from the original presbytery into the new wing, and some of the congregation would be blacks and coloureds, which made it quite unusual for a church even in liberal Cape Town. Coming from the background that he did, which demanded segregation even in church, St Andrew
’s fascinated him. Its services were almost like being transported to some foreign country. Not that he ever told Renata, as it was at her insistence that he had first come to St Andrew’s and he did not want her to think that desegregation worked, even in a church.

As he ran he held the umbrella half in front of him, his fingers holding the spokes to ensure that it did not blow out again. Peering over the top to ensure that he did not run into anyone, he barely noticed several men sitting in a green bakkie in the church car park. A quick glance in their direction unnerved him a little; they seemed to be dressing in the bakkie. Moreover, they were black; a thought he then quickly dismissed as insignificant, as perhaps they were part of the service that night. St Andrew
’s he knew was attempting to reach out to the black community and often had services featuring blacks. Perhaps that was the reason for its popularity; it was experimental and different, although it was also the message of love that they preached that seemed to attract so many, he thought—a concept he had struggled with. How did you love those you did not feel were your equal? He had tried, unsuccessfully, to imagine some of the workers on his father’s farm. Nevertheless, it still fascinated him that people wanted to try. He was sceptical, but at the same time curious, that black and white people could intermingle and treat each other with equal respect. As his umbrella blew out again he focused on the final fifty-metre dash to the church.

Once inside, one of the ushers tried to show him to a seat in the front row. Most nights he sat at the front, the pastor insisting that someone of his stature be a focal point of the congregation. However, the way he was feeling tonight, he wanted to just melt into the congregation, so he smiled politely at the youth group usher, and made his way halfway up towards the back of the church. The church was able to accommodate about two thousand worshippers and was two-thirds full. The innovative design meant that the seating was graduated up towards the back of the church, meaning those at the back were seated approximately ten feet higher than those in the front row.

As he sat down and tried to put Renata out of his mind, he wondered whether he could ask God to help ensure the success of the transplant. He then thought that that was self-interest and hubris, which even with his rudimentary biblical knowledge he knew God did not like. As he was contemplating the relative merits of the thought, the choir began with a song that he had always liked: ‘God, how great thou Art.’ His affection for the song was partly because he had struggled to understand the concept of a loving, giving God when there was so much poverty and unhappiness in the world and partly because many of the people who led that praise were those who had the least to praise God about.

This evening, though, it was not the words so much that commanded his attention as a voice so pure singing it. The young woman standing in front of the choir could only have been sixteen years of age, but she had a voice so pure, the notes so crisp that he felt the hairs on his neck rising as she sang.

‘
When we reach that heavenly home, we will fully understand the greatness of God, and will bow in humble adoration, saying to Him, O Lord my God, how great thou art.’

He was so taken by the pureness of the notes that he only partially registered the vestry door opening. It was just off to the left of the stage. That in itself was not unusual. Quite often St Andrew’s would have performers make a quiet entrance and take the stage to give a surprise rendition as a way of introducing the sermon. Jannie looked again, as this did not feel the same as other nights—the person coming in through the door wore a mask. He could see in the spaces around his eyes that he was black. It was not his colour that disturbed him. This was, after all, a growing multiracial church attempting to meet the needs of all races—a fact that Jannie had struggled with for quite some time but had adjusted to with Renata’s persuasion. More recently, he had had to admit to himself that if integration was ever going to happen, then this church provided something of a model. However, he reminded himself that despite the fact that religion was interwoven with politics, politics was bereft of the love that seemed to make a church such as this work.

The first man in a black hooded mask was quickly followed by a second in a balaclava and overalls. They were both carrying what appeared to be semi-automatic weapons, with pouches tied around their waists bulging forward at the front. Behind the first two, Jannie could now catch a glimpse of three others pulling on hoods.

The thought that this was a novel way to introduce a sermon was shattered as the first black man shot the youth group usher and then turned the AK-47 towards the beautiful young singer. As if in slow motion she stumbled backwards as three shots were fired from direct range, finally collapsing, with blood pouring from her neck and abdomen, her white dress slowly turning scarlet. Someone in the congregation then began clapping—applauding what they thought was a dramatic staged introduction to the sermon.

Jannie was transfixed. Uncertain still of what was happening, he watched as the other gunmen quickly entered. Two years of army service suddenly flashed before him. From his gun classification classes he recalled that their guns were AK-47s. They were highly inaccurate over twenty metres but deadly at close range. This was not a staged introduction to a sermon; these were real AK-47s and they were firing live ammunition.

The first gunman was by this time twenty metres into the church, his weapon on semi-automatic, firing indiscriminately at the congregation. People were crying out at the realisation that something horrible and terrible was evolving. There was no applause now, just an eerie silence surrounding gunshots, and the dawning of disbelief that this was a terrorist attack.

Jannie could feel the fear building, a sense of helplessness through being unable to defend himself, a feeling that he had not experienced before. Some people were scrambling to get out of the line of fire while others climbed back over pews to get away from the advancing gunmen. As he tried to process his options
, the voice in the back of his mind was screaming at him to get down. He flung himself to the floor behind the pew immediately in front of where he was sitting.

Lying on the floor, he began searching through the feet in front of him. The second terrorist was advancing in his direction. His firearm was an Uzi not an AK-47, short and snub-nosed, which he held in one hand. With his other hand, he reached into a bag around his waist and pulled out a hand grenade. It was not the normal type of hand grenade that Jannie had seen often on the practice range during National service. This hand grenade was crowded with nails that had been crudely stuck to the outer casing, the intention to maim as well as kill. Whoever they were, he thought, they were aiming for maximum damage and quite possibly a massacre.

Tucked tightly now beneath the pew, he closed his eyes momentarily and opened them as he heard it splinter. A bullet screamed through the pew and into the concrete millimetres behind his head. Frantically he looked underneath the pew for another option, other than just lying there and waiting to be killed. There were two, he thought, stay, or run for the exit twenty metres away to his right. As he looked down the pew towards the door he saw one of the youth group up and running, half crouched-over, heading for the exit that he had himself considered. As he reached the exit, he did not grab the release bar, preferring to hit the door with his shoulder in a rugby-style challenge. The door shook but did not release; it was locked from the outside. Stunned, the young man turned to look down at the terrorist. For a moment, they faced each other, and Jannie watched as the young man frantically grabbed at the release bar, shaking it violently, pleading with it to open, and then dying as the Uzi spat death in his direction.

The gunmen by this time were laughing as they were killing. They were killing and wounding young and old alike. He could see them looking around deciding who to kill next. As the two terrorists who had originally come into the church stood back to back and fired indiscriminately, the fourth terrorist reached into his pouch, took a nail-filled grenade and threw it in the direction of a group of visiting fishermen. From the left of the church, Jannie heard a dull, muffled, chilling sound he had heard often before in basic training—the grenade exploded amongst the fishermen, dismembering arms and legs. It was followed by a spine-chilling scream from one of the visitors. Jannie looked in the direction of the scream and could see one of the severed legs of a fisherman lying in the aisle, its last drop of blood staining the carpet.

Jannie winced at the memory of the Angolan mercenaries they had killed, their bodies pockmarked with shrapnel, body parts missing and the despair that he had felt then even though they were enemy combatants. The horror of the memories of disfigured bodies brought with it the erupting nausea. He closed his eyes and tried to shut out the carnage that had been part of his life in another time and which now threatened to engulf him again. This was not a place or time to be sick. He fought against the urge to vomit, thinking it may attract the gunmen’s attention. As he fought another wave of nausea there was a lull in the semi-automatic fire. He opened his eyes and peered along the line of the pew. Was it over, or were they reloading? He could see nothing at the end of his pew and then scanned a small area underneath the one in front of him. Something caught his eye which made him freeze.

Rolling down the aisle ten metres away was a grenade in its pre-morbid state. Wobbling as it rolled, not in a straight line because of the nails that had been stuck to it, it veered to the left towards a group of pensioners. It stopped in the aisle next to them. Jannie was about to cover his face when, without warning, Noah Smit, one of the youth group leaders, reared up from behind a pew and threw himself on
to the grenade.

‘
You crazy son of a bitch,’ Jannie said to himself as he saw Noah’s body rise slowly, the explosion muted by his body, at the same time heroically shielding the pensioners from death or dismemberment. As he ducked again under the pew he knew that Noah would be dead instantly. Where did that kind of bravery come from? he wondered, as he struggled to control the nausea again, which was threatening to turn into uncontrolled vomiting. ‘Why was God allowing all this killing in His house?’ he angrily shouted to himself as he closed his eyes again and prayed that it would stop.

For whatever reason, it appeared to Jannie that God was not listening; the muffled explosions and shooting continued. It seemed like half an hour since it had begun; and he wondered whether there would be any end before they were all dead. He thought that that was certainly the plan—the terrorists would continue until they had killed everyone in the church. He scanned under the pew again and as he did so, he felt a thud.

Slumped in front of him was the head of the person who had been sitting behind him. He looked at the face and could see he had been shot between the eyes and fallen forwards over him. Jannie was partly protected, but now it was also difficult for him to move. As he looked at the lifeless face, he could see the back of the skull was missing, with part of the brain hanging grotesquely from the shattered skull and blood dripping down on to his forearm. He could control the urge no longer and violently vomited on to the face of the dead man in front of him.

It took a few moments before he could stop retching, and he then attempted to wriggle away from the head, the blood and the vomit. While he was trying to do that, a small cry came from the woman on his left. He saw that she had been shot and had fallen at his feet. Effectively both bodies now wedged him
in. He had no option now but to wait and pray that the killing stopped.