Sacrifices (17 page)

“Yes, Louise. Did he call? Doogie?”

“He did. But I missed him. Can you give me his number?”

“Can’t do that, no.”

“Please, Fazila.”

“I call him again. Tell him you by your phone.” Fazila
is gone before Louise can reply.

She sits for another twenty minutes, waiting for the phone to ring. It doesn’t and she feels trapped in this cramped apartment, littered with unwashed dishes and junk food wrappers, so she pulls on a raincoat and a baseball cap, tucks the phone into her jeans and heads for the door.

The rain has slowed to a steady drizzle when Louise reaches the sidewalk. If she turns left she’ll get to Main Road: bars and take-outs and Nigerian drug dealers. Right and she’ll hit Rocklands Beach: homeless people and young guys selling their asses. She turns right.

She waits for the traffic on
Beach Road, the lighthouse on Robben Island throbbing, the deep bass moan of the foghorn rolling in from Mouille Point. On the opposite sidewalk she passes a dented old Mercedes, half eaten by rust. The lights of passing cars track across a white guy with gray hair sitting at the wheel, his window wound down despite the rain. He makes a kissing sound and she sees he’s jerking off, taking her for one of the rent boys.

She hurries on, reaching the railing at
Rocklands Beach. A blind black man in an old suit sits on a bench under a streetlight, water dripping from his dark glasses, a white stick propped up beside him. A handwritten sign rests against his shoes. The letters have run in the rain. She puts a few coins in his tin which holds only water.

“Thank you,” he says.

Louise stands at the railing, looking out over the dark ocean, the stink of kelp ripe in her nostrils, seagulls wheeling like bats under the streetlights. A wind hammers in from the sea, blowing foamy spume into her face, chilling her bones. When a man comes and stands too close to her she spins and bolts, dodging through the traffic.

As she reaches the bottom of her street her phone rings and she digs it
from her raincoat, fingers half frozen.

“This is Louise.”

“I’m not looking for no daughter.” Achmat’s voice is soft, and she battles to hear him over the churn of the traffic on the wet road.

“And I’m not looking for a father.”

“Why then you troubling me?” He sniffs, as if he has a head cold.

She ducks into the doorway of an apartment building. A uniformed brown guy, his bald head gleaming, sits behind a desk in the deco lobby
decorated in a nautical theme. He looks up at her through a porthole, lifting the phone on the desk.

“I just want to talk to you,” Louise says, “about my brother.”

There’s a pause and she thinks Achmat’s gone until she catches the wash of his breath. “I got nothing to tell you.”

“Please,” she says.

A trio of sniffs. “You got money?”

“Yes. I have money.”

“Five hunnerd?”

“Yes.”

“Come then tomorrow, to
Paradise Park. Two o’clock.”

“How do I find you?”

“I fetch you by the graveyard. You wait there, understand?”

“Yes.”

“Girl?”

“Yes?”

“You gonna bring me the money?”

“Yes,” she says, “I’ll bring you the money.”

He’s gone. Stowing the phone she hears boots on concrete and looks up to see two colored security guards in Kevlar vests approaching her through the mist, their little car idling at the curb.

“What you want here?” one of them says, in Afrikaans.

The other pushes her against the wall of the building, his hands going to her pockets.

“Take your bloody paws off me,” she says in her best Newlands accent.

“It’s a girl,” the first guy says.

The man stops frisking her. “What you doing here?”

“What the fuck is it to you?”

“Watch your mouth,” he says, grabbing her arm.

Louise shakes herself loose and walks, leaving them staring after her, their car radio talking in tongues.

Lane stands alone in the elevator, watching the display creep upward. He hasn’t been in Barnard Memorial Hospital since his father died here ten years ago, Bernard Lane succumbing slowly and agonizingly to bowel cancer, the once fleshy man—an all-round cricketer in his day—reduced to a papery husk, his last words, “Bugger this”, reaching Lane’s ears on the tail of his final breath.

Rising to his destination, that sick-making hospital smell in his nostrils, Lane silently curses himself for answering his phone.

He was driving past the pillared entrance to the Mount Nelson Hotel, his blood still charged with adrenaline from his encounter with Jade, when his Nokia chirped. Beverley. He almost let it go, but paranoia prompted him to take the call.

“Michael,” his wife said, “where are you?”

“In the car, on my way home.”

“Can you come to the hospital?”

“What’s wrong?”

“Just come here, Mike. Please. I really need you. ”

At this uncharacteristic expression of frailty Lane turned his car back toward the city.

The elevator chimes and the doors open onto the polished glare of the orthopedic ward, a copper-skinned woman in a uniform so white it dazzles
watches Lane from behind a counter.

“Yes?”

Before Lane can answer he hears footsteps and turns to see Beverley walking toward him. She looks haggard, the skin around her eyes mauve in the hard fluorescent light.

“What’s up?” he asks.

“Barry Hurwitz has news and I just know it’s not going to be good. I don’t want to deal with this alone.” She stares at the shred of Kleenex still glued to Lane’s throat. “What happened to you?”

“I squeezed a pimple.”

Her eyes narrow in suspicion—an all too familiar look—but Lane is saved from further interrogation when a beefy man in a sweater and chinos steps out of an elevator.

“Bev,” Barry Hurwitz says, “so sorry to keep you waiting.”

Beverley makes the introductions and the surgeon pumps Lane’s hand before he steers them toward a small lounge—a couple of chairs hunkered around a table piled with magazines, artless abstract prints on the walls. They sit. Beverley perches on the edge of her chair, hands clasped in her lap. Hurwitz moves his gaze between the Lanes.

“Bev, Mike, there’s no easy way to say this. Christopher’s leg has turned gangrenous. His life will be endangered if we don’t amputate.”

Lane hears a sound so foreign to his ear that it takes him a few seconds to comprehend that his wife is crying. This woman, who stood stoic and dry-eyed at the graves of both her parents—taken a year apart by cancer—and her daredevil brother who shattered almost every bone in his body while base jumping, is weeping.

“When?” Beverley asks.

“Tomorrow morning.”

“And there really is no alternative?” she says, fighting for breath.

“None. I’m sorry.”

“How much of the leg will be lost?”

“We’ll take it above the knee. Of course, we’ll save as much of the limb as we can to facilitate the fitting of a prosthesis at a later stage.”

“What went wrong?” Lane asks.

“The leg became infected post-surgery. We tried to contain the infection but the tissue has become gangrenous and it’s spreading fast. If we don’t amputate septicemia will set in and he will most certainly die.”

Beverley blows her nose on a tissue that she conjures from her sleeve, her fighting spirit returning. “This is unacceptable, Barry. Surely this is gross incompetence, even malpractice?”

Hurwitz holds up a freckled hand. “Okay, let’s slow down, shall we?”

“No, I won’t bloody slow down
! We’re talking about my son here.”

“Did you know Christopher was using anabolic steroids?” Hurwitz asks.

Beverley blinks and can’t stop her eyes skidding across to Lane before she swivels them back to the surgeon. “Of course not. What do you mean?”

“Once we discovered the infection I ordered intensive tests and the blood work indicates pretty heavy steroid abuse. We’re talking years here. Anabolic steroids impact on bone growth and strength, and in my opinion the severity of Christopher’s injury was as a result of his drug use. They also radically undermine the immune system, hence the present situation. I’m sorry, but that’s it.” He shakes his head.
“Chris has had a tough time and I think we should focus on getting him through this before we start throwing accusations around, and I’m certain his steroid abuse isn’t something you want the media to get hold of.”

Hurwitz flashes a
tight smile, but his pale eyes are hard and Lane knows he and his wife have been warned. When he sees Beverley is about to protest he cuts her off.

“Okay, Doctor, you’re right. We need to focus on Christopher. What’s next?”

“First I would suggest that you break the news. I’ll pop in on him later and give him any reassurance he needs.”

“Of course.”

“And we need Chris to sign a consent form.”

“Can’t we do it for him?”

The surgeon shakes his gingery head. “No, he’s eighteen, he has to do it.” He stands. “The duty nurse will give you the form. I’m contactable on my cell.”

He walks off, his loafers bleating on the tiles.

Beverley blows her nose and dabs at her red eyes. “I can’t do this, Michael. You’re going to have to tell Chris.”

“Bev, he’ll want to hear it from you.”

She shakes her head. “What he doesn’t need now is my weakness. Tell him I’m with Barry, being briefed. That’ll reassure him.”

Lane understands that her tears, as authentic as they may be, are also strategic. If she is the bearer of this news she will be implicated in Christopher’s confusion and anger. Better to use the unloved and unwanted father as her proxy. He can’t help but admire his wife.

Lane stands. “Okay. Where is he?”

She points down a corridor. “Ward seven. On your left.”

Lane approaches the woman at the desk who gives him a consent form and explains to him where Christopher must sign.

He finds the private ward, the half-open door allowing him a view of his son’s leg sheathed in plaster, suspended from a pulley system. Lane knocks and enters. Christopher is watching rugby on the widescreen TV mounted opposite the bed, a pair of headphones hooked into his ears. He looks pale and somehow reduced.

He stares at Lane and removes the headphones. “What are you doing here?” His voice slurring from painkillers.

“I’ve come to see you.”

“Bullshit. Where’s Mom?”

“Talking to the doctor.”

The room is festooned with flowers, cards and garish foil balloons urging Chris to “get well.” Lane removes a striped Western Province rugby flag and a pile of men’s magazines from a chair and sits.

“Chris, Doctor Hurwitz tells us he needs to operate in the morning.”

“Ja, I know. To reset my leg.”

“No. I have some bad news.”

“Fuck, man, spit it out. What’s going on?”

“
There’s gangrene in your leg. They have to amputate.”

The boy stares at him. “You serious?”

“Yes. I’m sorry.”

“No, you’re not.”

“Chris . . .”

“Get the fuck out. I want to see mom.”

Lane stands and flaps the sheet of paper. “You need to sign this. It’s a consent form.”

“I’m not signing a fucken thing. Call my mother. Now.”

Lane shrugs, sets the paper down on the cabinet beside the bed and heads for the door.

“Dad?”

When had the boy last called him that?

Lane turns and sees the fear on his son’s face and he feels an echo of a very old emotion that he thought was long dead.

“Do they have to do this?” Chris asks, his voice thin.

“Yes. If they don’t you’ll die.”

“Jesus.” He closes his eyes, then opens them and looks up at Lane. “Don’t go. Please.”

Lane sits. “The doctor will be in later to explain everything to you.”

“What will I do? Afterwards?”

“Hurwitz is already talking of a prosthesis. They’re very sophisticated these days. You’ll be able to lead a normal life.”

“Normal for a cripple?”

Lane shrugs. “There will have to be a period of adjustment.”

The boy makes a sound that resembles a laugh. “I suppose you think I deserve this?”

Lane shakes his head, but can find no words of denial.

Chris says, “You’re not going to believe me, but since I’ve been here I can’t stop thinking of that night. What I did.”

“I believe you.”

“I was popping ’roids. And you know what happens when you mix them with booze? Fucken does your head in.”