A Drop of Rain (18 page)

Mom got back with Steve today while I was at school. Also, she found my diary and read it out loud to Steve. She said that Steve did not appreciate how I had described him. She told me these interesting facts while she was making dinner, and I was helping her.

Luckily, she said this before Steve got back from fetching his stuff to move in with us again. Otherwise, I might have killed someone.

Instead, I told my mother: (1) She has no right to invade my privacy. (2) She is crazy to get back with Steve. (3) I'm leaving.

She started screaming at me that she absolutely had to read my diary to find out what was going on with me. She absolutely had to find this out, because I never tell her anything. Just like Dad never told her anything. She also screamed that I have absolutely no right to tell her what to do, or what not to do.

Before she screamed any more hysterical drivel, I left the house. I walked around for a couple of hours, and then I went to see Joe Dekkers. Joe had told me to drop in some time and see his photos and dark room.

Joe shook hands with me, invited me in and made us a couple of his and Eva's “famous Sloppy Joe sandwiches”. We talked for a couple of hours.

In the end, we made a deal that I can live at Joe's house for a while. I can sleep on an old couch in his basement. I can also eat at his house. In return for my room and board, I will help Joe cook and clean up around his place, shovel all the snow at his and Eva's houses, babysit his boys on the weekends sometimes,
and generally make myself useful.

I phoned my mother about ten o'clock that evening. I told her where I was, and what I was doing. I told her I needed my own space. She started screaming more drivel, so I hung up.

I went home the next day while Mom and Steve were out. I packed a duffle bag and garbage bag with my stuff, took them over to Joe's and officially moved in.

Joe started as a bouncer, then became a cop. He picked up a couple of university degrees, worked with young offenders, then started teaching. Now he wants to be “downwardly mobile”. He wants to drive trucks and do photography.

I'm going to check out Joe's T'ai Chi class tomorrow.

Elizabeth is a nurse. She is already married. She has a baby girl. Johnny is already an engineer, working on huge construction projects. Finally, I have my first job. I am a country doctor. I am far from the big-city hospital where I interned. I am also far from my brother, sister and mother. I am on my own.

I am a pretty good doctor, but sometimes I make mistakes. The first mistake is with a three-year-old girl. She is very sick. She has a high temperature. Her neck is as rigid as though she has swallowed a stick, and she is unconscious. I diagnose meningitis, but, at the city hospital where I send her, the more experienced doctor diagnoses severe bronchitis.

The second mistake is with a woman who has pain in
her lower back and whose urine is abnormal. I diagnose kidney trouble. But not long after I send her to the city hospital, her legs become paralyzed. She has polio.

The third mistake is with a man whose symptoms indicate typhus. Or so I think. When the doctors in the city hospital operate, they find that he has an ulcerated bowel.

Yes, I do make mistakes, but usually I diagnose correctly. The city doctors ask me how I can be right so often. Out in the country, I don't have sophisticated equipment and tests.

“I use my eyes and my fingers, and I listen carefully to my patient,” I say. “I ask many questions. And I always tell the patient to return to me, if he is not feeling better in one or two days.”

One patient comes back in two days.

He says: “Doctor, I am taking the medicine you gave me, but I don't feel any better.”

I ask: “How often do you take the medicine?”

“One in the morning, one at noon, and one at night,” he replies.

“But that is not enough!” I exclaim. “I prescribed four pills right away, then two every four hours, and all through the night too. You should have taken twenty pills by now, and you've only taken six.”

I show the patient the directions I wrote on his bottle of pills. He goes home and does as he was told.

A farmer comes and asks me to cure his sheep. His sheep has a broken leg.

“I am not an animal doctor!” I protest. “I'm a people doctor!”

“Please help!” he pleads. “There is no one else.”

“Oh, all right,” I sigh. “But I make no promises.”

I treat the sheep as though it is a human being: I put its leg in a cast. I have no idea whether the sheep's leg will get better, but it does. The leg heals perfectly.

Then another farmer comes and asks me to cure his cow.

“I am not an animal doctor!” I protest again. “I am a people doctor!”

But the farmer will not listen to my protests, and finally I go and help his cow. And for the rest of the years that I remain in the country, that farmer supplies me with fresh milk every morning—for free. The bottle of milk is on my doorstep when I open the door.

One day as I am doing my rounds, someone asks me to visit a very old woman who is very ill. The woman must be ninety years old. She has pneumonia. I give her medicine, and she gets better. Because she is very poor, I say, “Don't worry about my fee.” But she shows up at my house a few weeks later with sorrel leaves she has picked by the roadside for making soup.

Because I know how far she has walked with those leaves, I begin to cry.

One day I am visiting the reform school. The reception room is filled with young offenders waiting for inoculations. Suddenly, someone runs into the room and tells me that a child at the school is so sick he may die at any moment. I grab my medical bag and start running too. I forget to lock the medicine cabinet that sits in one corner of the reception room.

One hour later, when I return to the reception room after treating the sick child, I remember about the medicine cabinet. I almost panic. I know these
young offenders, who have been waiting all this time in the reception room, have committed all sorts of crimes. Surely, they discovered that the cabinet is unlocked! Surely, they stole some drugs!

But when I check the drugs in the cabinet that evening, I find nothing missing. The next day I tell the young offenders how well they behaved. That Christmas, I invite them to a party at my house.

Most country people are poor. Often, I do not allow my patients to give me money, for if they do, they will not be able to afford medicine. I tell them: “You must not pay for my services, but pray for my health.” Many people must have prayed for my health, because for a long time I was very healthy.

As well as milk, sorrel and prayers, the country people give me a free house and free vegetables and fruit. I ask them to donate some food to the reform school, instead of to me. And they do.

When she first came to Canada, Hanna attended mass more often than she had in Poland. Later, she became alienated from the Catholic Church. She decided the church was “detached from social reality.” Now, when she is dying, she refuses to see a priest.

She has asked only for communion wafers. When I went to the church to get the wafers, the priest said he had never received such a request, but he sent a full bag of wafers. She ate only one. I left the rest in the backyard for the squirrels.

Then one day Hanna asked to hear a recording she
gave me long ago: Penderecki's
Passion and Death of Our Lord Jesus Christ According to St. Luke
.

She spent hours listening to the long piece.

She made no comment.

Hanna knows as much about dying as she does about living, perhaps more. So many people died while she was growing up in Poland, during the war and after.

As she lies dying, she wants to be near her “close ones”. She wants to be near them as they live their everyday lives. To her last breath, she wants to teach them.

Now, she is teaching me about dying. For so many years, she taught me about living. “Much sunshine,” she would say during all those years, instead of saying “Goodbye.”

“This capitalist society has a negative selection process,” she would say. “Those who are successful in this society often lack the best human qualities.”

“I have a certain attitude toward life,” she would say.

“Don't exaggerate,” she'd say.

“Don't be aggressive,” she'd say.

“Look at life,” she'd say.

She likes to be silent and still in her room. She likes to listen to the sounds of the family and friends of her adopted daughter.

All the ordinary, everyday sounds of people who love each other.

I've got a boarder: Naomi's friend, Curtis. He needs another, older fellow to talk to.

And I need another, younger fellow to talk to. I was getting tired of reading every evening. And writing my “lonely hearts” diary.

Curtis has had a difficult time for the past few years. It's a measure of his strength of character that he hasn't gotten into big trouble. He has, however, become wary of our so-called civilization. He says he feels like a wild animal in a cage.

Both Curtis's parents phoned me. Curtis's father seems like a decent fellow. He's trying to come back from a business failure, and to get his personal life together at the same time. Curtis's mother is okay too. Just narrow-minded, and overly worried about her son.

Curtis says his mother's boyfriend assaulted him. I told Curtis I thought his mother should have let him press charges. I also told him he should not have had to tolerate the man's verbal abuse.

My boys wanted to shop for ski equipment the other day. They were outraged when I dragged them to a second-hand store. Tough.

Got some good shots of cumulus clouds in Eva's backyard yesterday, while “babysitting” Hanna.

Naomi's doctor friend has had a heart attack and been hospitalized. It seems serious.

What next?

Sometimes I feel like Atlas holding up the pillars of the universe. Or is it Sisyphus rolling a boulder up a mountain?

Or am I turning into a boulder myself? An ancient mountain?

Sunday, November 28, 1999

Last Sunday morning at eight, when Mary and I were supposed to start work, I phoned the receptionist at the Rec Plex and told her what had happened to Mary the afternoon before. I also told her that I was quitting. I said that I would write a letter of resignation to the director and deliver it on Monday. I spent the rest of the morning talking to Mom and writing my letter.

In the afternoon I went to the hospital. Curtis came with me. Curtis thinks I was right to quit the Rec Plex job.

“You don't owe them anything,” he said. “And besides, there are lots of other rotten, minimum-wage jobs out there.”

Curtis is going to ask about a job for me as a cashier at the grocery store where he works.

They wouldn't let Curtis into Intensive Care, only me. I am listed as next-of-kin.

The nurse asked if I was Mary's granddaughter.
“You look so much alike,” she said.

Visitors are not allowed to stay for long in Intensive Care. This is a medium-sized room with low lighting and quiet machines beside the beds. Mary was hooked up to several machines. She smiled and squeezed my hand. Now that she is in a Canadian hospital, she seems more trusting of our society.

I told Mary that I was relieved she was finally getting proper care for her chest pains. She told me that she was too. “Canadian nurses and doctors are very good,” she said.

I told her that I would come back again in the evening with Mom.

Mom went with me to the hospital in the evening. Mary was out of Intensive Care. She was in a regular hospital room with three other women in the same room. Mom brought flowers for Mary and kissed her on the cheek. Then Mary, Mom and I had a discussion.

Mary has worse problems than we thought. The doctors found this out when they saw X-rays of her chest. Mary has breast cancer, as well as a heart condition! She has to have an operation to remove the cancer. But her heart is not healthy enough to endure an operation right away, so she has to rest at home for about two weeks.

Mary is worried that, even after two weeks' rest, her heart will not be healthy enough. She is afraid that she might die during the operation. But she still wants to have it. She agrees with the Canadian
doctors that it's the right thing to do.

Mary
was
worried about money too, but she isn't any more.

Mom told Mary that she can receive unemployment insurance, a disability pension, or welfare. Then, after she has been a landed immigrant for ten years, she can receive the old age pension and a guaranteed income supplement. Mary was relieved to hear this. So was I.

Mom also told Mary: “There is no use your hiring a lawyer to protest your unfair treatment at the Recreation Complex. Law cases take not only much money, but also much time. Of course, the local newspaper could make a front-page story out of what happened to you. The director of the Rec Plex might get fired.”