The Patient (15 page)

‘Trace, we're going to have to sell the house, the cars, cut down all our expenses. If we get onto it straightaway – real-estate agents, car dealers, the works – we might get it all done in three months and be OK after the redundancy money runs out. I hate to say it, but I think we'll have to take the girls out of private school.'

‘Oh, Jon, we are not the only people who've had to make difficult decisions in their lives. The girls changing schools is hard for me to think about too, but if it has to be done, then we can do it. The other things – the house, the car – it's all just stuff. What really matters is us, us as a family.'

The corporate world is not a charitable one. The drive for profits and earnings is paramount. If you cannot make the grade, you cannot draw a salary. Jonathan's boss felt terrible, but he had pressure from above. Jonathan himself had terminated several employees over the years. He had never given them much thought in the past, but now their faces haunted him. James, for example, a 55-year-old man with school fees, mortgages and leased cars. There was certainly no charity shown to him when his performance went down. After half a lifetime spent at the company, he had little hope of getting another job. The same day, Jonathan's boss had brought in a bottle of champagne to toast Jonathan's half-year results. His division had been the most profitable. The last anyone had heard of James, he had started drinking and his wife couldn't take it any more and had left with the kids. Now Jonathan was the latest victim of the ‘screw you' corporate world.

Over the next few days, his and Tracy's attitudes began
changing. They were no longer ‘at home' they felt as though they were renting someone else's house. They began to hate this house that had once meant so much to them. Their clothes, their cars, their house were now nothing but nooses tightly squeezed around their throats. They felt suffocated.

Tracy worked efficiently and solidly to gather their material goods together to sell. As subtly as possible, to avoid upsetting Jonathan, she would fill up the car boot with her clothes, ornaments, silver frames, vases, crockery, good cutlery and sundry souvenirs of their travels and take them to various second-hand dealers around the city. Soon, she discovered that most of their things were worthless to sell. She started making frequent calls to the
Trading Post
to place adverts for the cheaper items and to the auction houses to sell the few that did have some value. Each time, she gave her parents' telephone number as the contact.

After four weeks of BCG treatment, Jonathan was once again urinating blood, and frequently. In fact, he could hardly stay out of the toilet. He was urinating every half an hour now, night and day. Vera checked him for infection and assured him that he didn't have one; it was only a reaction to the BCG, which was to be expected.

At three one morning, he could no longer take it. He woke Tracy. ‘Please, I really need to go to the hospital. I'm urinating straight blood.'

Tracy called her parents to come quickly to stay with the girls, and half an hour later she and Jonathan were at the Victoria Hospital Emergency department.

Tracy and Jonathan were struck by the large red neon light outside Emergency. Whether through a planned act of electrical vandalism or by some fluke, several letters were out, so instead of reading ‘EMERGENCY' it read ‘-MER---CY'. Jonathan and Tracy looked at each other and smiled.

‘Anything but mercy, I would have thought,' Tracy commented. Jonathan didn't care whether or not he received mercy. He just needed to be seen.

They walked into the brightly lit waiting room and up to the clerk behind the glass. It was the same woman who had been there on their first night – the night that started the whole ordeal.

‘Yes, can I help you?'

‘My name's Jonathan Brewster. I'm a day patient here. I need to see a doctor.'

‘Just fill in this admission form, please.'

‘But I'm already a patient here. I have chemotherapy for my bladder in the day-stay suite.'

‘You will still need to fill in the form.' There was no
changing this woman's mind. The policy was clear. Everyone had to fill out the form.

Jonathan thought,
This woman could be replaced with a three-line computer program:

 

Say ‘Fill out form'.

If form filled in, then contact triage sister.

Else say ‘Fill out form'.

 

Jonathan gave up arguing and took the form. Tracy shook her head in annoyance, took the form from Jonathan and commenced filling it out while he went to the toilet again. As he walked back, she looked up at her husband and realised he was not a young man any more. He had deep lines across his face that she had never before noticed. He was a bit stooped and his hair was greying. Was it the pain? Was it the cancer? The constant going to the toilet was hardly helpful either. It had certainly all taken its toll, and for one so young he was looking so old.

He sat down next to her roughly, sullenly. He had been so quiet since he had lost his job, withdrawn. Tracy had got on with the tasks of daily living: arranging, cleaning, organising. Meanwhile, he had been sitting for hours on end in his study with his music playing or walking around the house like a zombie.

It was only a couple of weeks before the auction would be held. Everything that could not be sold had been packed into boxes and placed in his father's garage. It was going to be a tight squeeze, but they were moving in with Mr Brewster. They would move just before the auction, so the girls could be spared the trauma of losing their home while they were still living in it. Mr Brewster lived not far from the girls'
school and had offered to take over their school fees. At least they were to be looked after. Jonathan dreaded the possible strings that came with his father's offer of shelter and schooling: daily family prayers; grace before each meal; church on Sundays; Bible reading. Yet what choice did he have?

Tracy handed in the form, and they began the usual wait on the uncomfortable chairs. Midnight-to-dawn television again. Jonathan looked around the waiting room. There were several people waiting for care, staring straight ahead or trying to catch up on sleep.

After sitting for some time, the TV and the fluorescent lights burning holes in his tired eyes, Jonathan noticed from the corner of his eyes, just outside the doors, a man lighting up a cigarette. He looked familiar. It took him a moment to place him – it was their gardener.

Jonathan got up and went outside. ‘Hey. What are you doing here?'

‘I work here part-time, Mr Brewster. I'm a night-runner for the hospital, carrying blood here and there for tests and transfusions. Children cost a lot, you know,' he said, chuckling. ‘My pager has gone quiet at last, so I've popped outside for a smoke. I'm sorry to see you here. Is Mrs Tracy with you?'

Jonathan nodded and confirmed the man's name. ‘It's Ahmed, isn't it?' It was Tracy who had employed him, and Jonathan had only seen him a couple of times since then. He was so glad, though, to see a familiar face, even if it was just the gardener's.

‘Please tell Mrs Tracy that I'll have the garden looking very nice for the auction. I understand you'll be living with your father from now on. That is so good. I would love my
children to live with me in my old age. I suppose I'm a bit old-fashioned.'

Ahmed stopped speaking to watch a car pulling up to the Emergency doors. The front passenger-seat window wound down, revealing two transvestites.

‘Hey, is this the Emergency department?' Hearing a baritone voice coming out of someone whose face was made up like a woman's was very odd to Jonathan.

‘Yes, you can park over there and the reception is just …' The driver had already taken off for the parking area before Ahmed could finish.

‘You must see some sights here, Ahmed. I'm amazed you're not working somewhere else.'

‘My brothers and cousins, we set up a milk bar together, but they accused me of stealing some money out of it, and we have had a dispute ever since. I have tried so many times to prove my innocence, to reconcile with them. After they went to lawyers, it became impossible just to talk, so now we ignore each other.' He shook his head sadly. ‘They walk around the mosque pretending to be very good Muslims. The women wear the head-covering, and they go to great lengths to demonstrate that they eat only halal meat. They have gatherings every Saturday night to which I'm no longer invited. I know from others that they spend their time talking behind my back. Who in the eyes of God is perfect? Meanwhile, the bills need to be paid, so I garden, I work here, sometimes I drive a taxi … work is work.'

The transvestite driver returned, supporting his friend, who was limping. He was barefoot, his wig slightly dishevelled, his make-up running. It was obviously a long night of
partying that had gone very wrong. The driver's make-up was also running, his mascara now halfway down his face, carried by what must have been rivers of tears.

‘What the fuck are you staring at?' It was the driver addressing Jonathan.

‘I'm sorry. I didn't mean to …' Jonathan wasn't used to seeing things like this.

They passed by and entered the waiting room to report to the front desk.

‘Do you want one, Mr Brewster?' Ahmed was holding up his packet of cigarettes. ‘We should really go and stand over there, though, away from the night nurse. She is so stickler for rules.'

Jonathan looked back at Tracy through the glass: she had her eyes closed and was leaning back on the wall. He went with Ahmed around the corner, and soon they were both enjoying the deep pleasures of a shared smoke.

‘This will kill you, Ahmed. It's probably because of this stuff that I'm in the position I'm in.'

‘We all die. Smoking kills. Of course it does. So does life. So do vegetables. So does my wife's korma. So does oxygen. So does drinking two litres of water a day. It all kills. Newsbreak: we all die. You, me, all of us. Maybe they will cure your bladder and you will die of a heart attack trying to throw your grandchildren up in the air. Maybe you die of vitamin poisoning. It is not news that we die. But here is the question: how many of us live?'

‘Jonathan!' It was Tracy shouting from the front doors.

‘They are calling for you,' Ahmed said. Jonathan threw his cigarette on the ground and stomped it out, leaving Ahmed to enjoy the rest of his break.

A nurse led Jonathan through Emergency, where nurses and doctors were running around like ants on an ant heap. Almost every cubicle was filled. The resuscitation bay where the trauma victims went had blood on the walls. There was someone lying there with a sheet over his head. It had obviously been a high-speed car accident. Jonathan felt woozy and looked away.

Finally, the nurse brought him to a vacant cubicle. The transvestite was being attended by a doctor in the cubicle on his left, separated from Jonathan by only a curtain. ‘I have tried, doctor, but I can't. They will not come out.'

‘I really need to know why. Why would you insert two oranges up your backside?' Jonathan was shocked.

‘Doctor, you cannot know any sexual pleasure until you experience it. Trust me, it is heavenly. Now, do you think you can get them out?' The driver was sniggering in the background.

‘Please lie down and pull your underpants down. I need to examine you.' Jonathan could hear the bed rattle next door and then the curtain move as the doctor leant down beside the bed. ‘Good God!' the doctor exclaimed. Quickly, he apologised for his outburst. ‘I'm sorry, it's just that I haven't seen anything like this before. I'll need to consult with the surgical registrar. You can get dressed now, and I'll be back in a few moments. Meanwhile, we'll need to get an X-ray of your abdomen to see if there has been any other damage – and perhaps some blood tests. Please don't eat or drink anything from now on. When was the last time you had anything to eat or drink?' The doctor was obviously planning surgery, Jonathan thought.

The curtains in Jonathan's cubicle parted, and a young Indian nurse came in to take Jonathan's blood pressure and pulse. She also took some blood for analysis.

‘You are a patient in the day-stay clinic, is that so?' she asked, looking at his paperwork.

‘Yes, I have a bladder cancer that is being –'

‘We have called the Urology registrar, and he is coming down to see you,' she interrupted. She gathered up her stethoscope and was gone.

Jonathan was left alone again. He could hear a woman talking in the cubicle to his right.

‘We'll have to take samples from her, take some of the semen for analysis. I'm sorry, but it's vital. I know she's been through a lot, but it's so important to be able to prove what happened.' He guessed it was a female doctor; she was speaking in soft hushed tones.

‘It's OK, Julie. They have to do this. I'll stay with you.' It was another woman's voice in the cubicle. At first, Jonathan could not work out what was happening. Take semen samples from a woman?

‘The police will also want to interview you and Melissa as soon as the doctors are finished. You need to tell them exactly what happened. I know this is a lot to go through, but he has to be put away. Julie, you need to do what is right for your daughter. She should never have to go through something like this again.' The mother began sobbing. Jonathan had a great urge to part the curtain slightly to see how old the daughter was.

‘It's OK, Mum. Let them take the sample.' Jonathan could not believe his ears. It sounded like a young girl. Perhaps nine or ten. Around the same age as his daughter Kate.

‘Fuck,' whispered Jonathan. What type of man would do that? He thought of his own daughters and what he would do if someone hurt even one hair on their head. He missed them terribly. Even since he'd lost his job, he hadn't seen enough of them, because he had been holed up in his study, preoccupied by his worries. He hadn't been much of a father to them. He really needed to spend more time with them, to nurture them.

His curtains parted again. It was a doctor who was vaguely familiar to Jonathan, one of the registrars.

‘Hello, Mr Brewster. What has been happening?'

When Jonathan related his symptoms and told him about the amount of blood in his urine, the registrar said he would have to admit him. He would speak with Jonathan's doctor in the morning, and they would probably have a look in his bladder to make sure the cancer was responding to treatment. There were no free beds in the ward, so he would have to stay in Emergency for the remaining hours of darkness. The nurse came in with more forms to fill out. Then Jonathan asked if he could go out and tell his wife.

‘They're going to keep me in. You go home, Trace. I don't want the girls to wake up and find both of us not there.'

She hugged him tight then left, and Jonathan went back into Emergency.

He stood at the opening to his cubicle and looked across the U-shaped Emergency department with the staff area in the middle of it. Here was a sea of human suffering. From the dim, distant days of high school, a fragment of
Hamlet
came back to him: ‘the dread of something after death, the undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveller returns'.

It amazed him that he could still remember bits and pieces he had memorised before exams so long ago.
The undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveller returns.
He wondered where his mother was now. Was she just dead in the ground, rotting away? Or was her spirit here with him in the cubicle? Whenever he thought of his mother now, it was always as she was before the illness, before she had become shrivelled. She was his shelter, away from the religious zealot that was his father.

‘Are you there, Mum?' he whispered. No answer, yet he felt an eerie sense of companionship. He shuddered. ‘What is happening to me, Mum?' he whispered again. There was a strange calmness in his mind. For the first time in such a long time, his mind was still. Out of the stillness, he heard the faint sound of his mother's voice. It was as if she was comforting him as she had when, as a boy, he had hurt himself. Soft tones, where words mean nothing. It was obviously his imagination playing tricks on him, he thought.

He needed to go to the toilet again. He resented the fact that his body had stolen from him a moment during which all time had seemed to stand still and he felt safe, at peace. His damned bladder.

He got up and asked a nurse rushing by with a syringe where the toilet was. She just pointed to the corridor. He walked down to search for the toilets, passing on his way a room labelled ‘Quiet Room'. In it was a family grieving. Two women, one older and one quite young, were hugging and sobbing. Some men with tattoos and wearing bike leathers stood around them. One stared out at Jonathan and closed the door. Two police officers walked towards Jonathan. They looked intently at him.

‘Mr Sawyer?' one of them asked.

‘Er … no … Brewster,' he mumbled.

‘Sorry to trouble you, sir.'