The Breath of Night (36 page)

Considering the hospital’s laxity in other areas, its strict visiting hours baffled Philip. The nurse who gave him news of Dennis was adamant that he would not be allowed on the ward until four, leaving him nothing to do in the meantime but rerun the events of the previous night. Caustic fumes mingled with harrowing screams as he watched Dennis fall to the ground clutching his groin, while Amel, with studied cruelty, raised his champagne glass to each of his three companions in turn. To add to the horror, no one around them stirred, both audience and dancers locked in their private performances.

Shocked and incredulous, Philip pushed past Max, knocking glasses and dishes off the table, and knelt beside Dennis. ‘It’s all right,’ he said, cradling his head. ‘You’ll be fine; I promise you’ll be fine. An ambulance! Somebody call an ambulance!’

The manager, finally roused, rushed over and, betraying no emotion, ordered the three nearest dancers to carry Dennis to the dressing room, before turning to his customers. ‘It is nothing,’ he said with a forced grin. ‘The silly boy has too much heat. He has fainted. Enjoy! Please, enjoy!’ The audience took him at his word, accepting the incident as if it had been part of the floorshow. Following the convoy across the stage, Philip looked back at the table, where Max sat stupefied and shaking, Ray covered his face with his fan, and Amel calmly lit a cigar.

Thrusting aside the manager who tried to bar his way, Philip entered the musty dressing room. With every surface piled high with clothes and costumes, kitbags, drink cans, food wrappers, celebrity magazines and what looked like an open maths text book, the three dancers hovered in the doorway, uncertain where to deposit Dennis, until Philip stepped forward and swept all the clutter off a narrow bench.

‘Has someone rung for the ambulance?’ he asked.

‘No, no ambulance!’ the manager said.

‘What do you mean? We must get him straight to a doctor!’ Philip said, only to be struck by a hazy memory of his Boy Scout training. ‘Water! We need some water to wash off the acid.’

While Dennis mixed moans with entreaties, of which only the names “Hesus”, “Maria” and “Diyos”, were intelligible, two of the dancers filled a mop bucket with water and the third soaked a T-shirt to make a sponge. Wrapping a cloth round his fingers, Philip carefully peeled off Dennis’s pouch. Dennis shrieked, only to fall silent, along with everyone else, on seeing the butcher’s slab of scarred and blistered flesh.

‘He is castrated,’ one of the dancers said, at which Dennis shrieked louder than ever.

‘Nonsense!’ Philip said. ‘It’s just a burn.’

‘Scream softly!’ the manager said to Dennis, as Max appeared at the door. ‘They must not hear you.’

‘Oh, your beautiful cock,’ Max said, aghast. ‘Dennis, your beautiful cock!’

Telling two of the dancers to hold Dennis’s arms and praying that his First Aid badge had been merited, Philip dabbed Dennis’s skin with the wet T-shirt. With a yell, Dennis tried to kick him away and leap down, but the dancers restrained him. ‘I’m sorry; I’m being as gentle as I can,’ Philip said, before turning to the manager. ‘He needs treatment. We must take him to hospital at once.’

‘Go get Papaya,’ the manager said to the third dancer. ‘Fast!’ Dennis’s howls grew more plaintive, as Philip doused his wound.

‘We should put ointment on it,’ Philip said, turning back to the manager. ‘Do you have a medicine chest?’

The manager shook his head.

‘We have oil for the massages,’ one of the dancers said.

Struck by the brutal irony, Philip wanted to echo Dennis’s howls. ‘Yes, it’s better than nothing,’ he said, as he grabbed the sticky bottle and gently rubbed the oil on to his penis, scrotum and thighs.

Papaya proved to be more resourceful than any of the men whose ranks she was eager to join, first ringing for a cab to take Dennis to hospital, then answering Philip’s request for some loose-fitting clothes by fetching the lead singer’s kimono.

‘She will kill you,’ one of the dancers said.

‘She can try,’ Papaya replied.

With Papaya’s help, Philip raised Dennis to his feet and draped the kimono round his shoulders. ‘Do you think you can walk?’ he asked Dennis, who nodded, grimaced and tottered a few steps. The barman appeared at the door to inform them that the cab had arrived. ‘Round the back! Round the back!’ the manager shouted, only to shrink from Philip’s withering gaze. With the manager and dancers watching from a distance, and Max
trailing
helplessly behind, Philip and Papaya dragged Dennis to the cab and laid him across the back seat.

‘Perhaps it would be best if you went by yourself?’ Max said, after Papaya had returned inside. ‘Two Englishmen bringing in a half-naked Filipino boy with a charred crotch might cause comment.’

‘Whereas one would be par for the course?’ Philip asked scathingly. ‘Whatever you suggest.’

‘Promise you’ll call me as soon as you have news.’

‘Of course,’ Philip said, sitting beside the unruffled driver as they set off for the nearest hospital. On arrival, they went straight to the emergency room, where the duty doctor refused to give Dennis so much as a painkiller until he was guaranteed payment. Leaving nothing to chance, he directed Philip to the accounts department, where a hare-lipped clerk took an imprint of his credit card in exchange for the requisite deposit slip, which Philip brought back to the doctor, who studied it as though it were an ECG graph before agreeing to proceed. Philip sat in the waiting room, feigning indifference to the resentful glares from people whom Dennis had displaced, until the doctor
summoned
him and, with Dennis sedated on the bed, proffered his diagnosis.

‘The patient has deep partial thickness burns to the penis, scrotum and thighs, which will result in severe scarring.
Otherwise
, there should be no permanent damage.’

‘Thank you so much, doctor. That’s a huge relief.’

‘He told me that he had spilt the acid on himself.’

‘On himself?’

‘On himself,’ the doctor repeated, as if to set out the
boundaries
of his concern. ‘It is rare to see such lacerations on the tip of the penis. In the normal course of events we would expect them on the base.’

‘I see.’

‘We will keep him here under observation for a couple of days until the wounds start to heal. We need to catheterise him to ensure that the urethra stays open and, at least initially, put him on a drip to maintain the fluid levels. There is nothing more for you to do here now. Your friend will be taken to the ward and made as comfortable as possible. I suggest that you go home and call us in the morning.’

Philip followed the doctor’s advice, returning to the hotel, from where he rang Max. He reported the doctor’s prognosis, but for all his insistence that Dennis’s injuries were temporary Max focused on the scarring.

‘How will he live? He can’t dance – not just at the Mr
Universe
, but anywhere – if he’s deformed.’

‘Isn’t that a bit over the top?’

‘People will think he’s diseased!’

‘Then he’ll do something else. It may turn out to be a blessing in disguise.’

‘Not for Dennis: he is his cock! And what about me? How will I…? You’ll sneer, but he’s the only one left who can excite me. Every time he strips off, I’ll think of… I’ll smell that… I’ll never get it up again.’ Exhausted and emotional, Philip wondered if he were dreaming. ‘That stupid, selfish boy! So greedy, always so greedy! I warned him never to cross the Lims, but would he listen?’ Swallowing hard, Philip told Max that he needed to sleep
but that he would ring him after breakfast to arrange a trip to the hospital, at which Max equivocated. ‘Would you think me
terribly
wicked if I pass? I’ll meet him the moment he comes out. I have such a phobia about hospitals. I was born in one, you see; it’s traumatised me for life.’

Feeling Dennis’s absence more acutely than he would ever have supposed, Philip booked a cab to take him to the hospital at three. He was anxious to avoid Maribel whom, after
considerable
agonising, he had rung with the news of her brother. Much to his relief, he had been diverted to voicemail, where he had left a brief message with the name of the hospital and a request that for both their sakes they should space out their visits, his at four and hers at five. By daylight the lobby looked even more chaotic than it had done the night before. A bleeding woman lay slumped in a chair, four young children playing at her feet, while a cleaner swept impassively around them. A family of Indians sat eating a pungent curry beside a giant rubber plant. A
well-dressed
woman brandished a fistful of forms at a bored
receptionist
, her clanging bracelets echoing her rage. Having called the lift, which opened with a horror-film creak, Philip made his way up to the third floor, where bed-bound patients lined the corridors as if in the aftermath of a tornado.

After a lengthy search he found Dennis’s ward. Eighteen beds were packed as tightly as in a furniture showroom.
Identifying
Dennis’s by the sheet cradle, he squeezed in next to it,
narrowly
missing a catheter bag full of blood-streaked urine. He laid out his offerings of a T-shirt and shorts, a toothbrush and toothpaste, two bottles of water, two Hershey bars and in a nod to convention, a bunch of grapes, on one side of the bed, and perched gingerly on the other. Flustered by a stray glance at a double amputee opposite, he fixed his gaze on Dennis.

‘How are you feeling? Or is that a stupid question?’

‘You are kind man,’ Dennis replied, after a pause so protracted it looked set to become permanent.

‘You don’t have to say that,’ Philip said, his eyelids pricking.

‘Yes, I do not say it before. I am having to say it now.’

‘Are you in a lot of pain?’

‘Like fire here!’ He pointed beneath the sheet cradle. ‘All burnt, but still on fire.’

‘It’ll pass. Every day will be a little better.’

‘And then what will it be?’

‘Business as usual, I expect,’ Philip said to his instant regret. ‘The doctor told me that you’d make a complete recovery. You could even go back to the club, if you like.’

‘No,’ Dennis said fiercely. ‘This is bad place. Never!’

‘I agree. Maybe now’s the time to take the plunge and set up the bakery. If you haven’t raised all the cash, you could see if the bank would lend you the balance. How much have you put aside so far?’

‘Nothing.’

‘But I thought you’d been saving for a couple of years.’

‘Is all gone.’

‘I see; I’m sorry.’

‘I leave this country. I make very much money abroad.’

‘In Kuwait?’ Philip asked, recalling the swindle that had brought him to Manila.

‘No, I go round this world on boat. I am being steward in cabin with many women. They will be happy with Dennis.’ The prospect appeared to revive him. ‘Then I will come to England and then you will drive me.’

‘It’s a deal.’

‘But first, you will buy me fan, yes? There is no aircon here, but this nurse, she says we can put on our own fan. So you will bring one for me?’

‘Of course, but I don’t think that they’ll keep you here –’ Philip broke off at the sight of Maribel, who walked in and threw herself on to Dennis, wetting his cheeks with her tears. He pushed her off in a gesture at once abrupt and tender, before whispering something in Tagalog.

Maribel turned to Philip, her eyes lowered. ‘Hello, Mr Philip,
sir,’ she said, as if reverting to their first encounter. Her arrival caught Philip off guard. He strove to control his emotions, but they were changing too fast.

‘I didn’t think you’d be coming before five.’

‘I am wishing to speak to you, if you are allowing it, sir.’

‘Please don’t call me sir; we’re not in a shop! I can’t see what purpose it’ll serve, but since you’re here you may as well go ahead.’

‘If you please, can we be speaking outside? Then we will not be disturbing Dennis.’ There could be no surer sign of Dennis’s debility than his failure to respond to his name.