The Ward (3 page)

I keep my head down to avoid catching a glimpse of myself in the glass that surrounds the nurses’ station, concentrating instead on the floor, the walls, the sounds of lunch being trundled
into wards and forced down. My gaze is drawn to the sluice room; the door is propped open and the shelves are piled with overflowing bedpans and sputum bowls. I pass an abandoned cleaning trolley
parked at an angle next to the shower room, the mop head thick with filth, a muscular cockroach skittering under its wheels. I’m glad I have the dressing over my nose so I don’t have to
confront what it smells like in here.

I need to find somewhere quiet, somewhere private, so that I can go over my options again. But where? I can’t leave the ward – it’s blocked by a rusty security gate. The sight
of it totally freaked me out when I arrived. I mean, I know that Joburg is a violent city, but this is a hospital, not a prison. When I was still able to convince Dad that the only way I was going
to get better was to have another op, he booked me into a series of private clinics which specialised in cosmetic procedures. They were more like hotels, with private rooms, satellite TV and nurses
who didn’t treat me like crap. A million miles from this dump.

Just past the men’s toilets there’s a grubby ‘Waiting Room’ sign tacked next to a door, and I creep towards it. I hesitate, then turn the handle and peer inside.
I’m hit with a waft of smoky air. Two wizened patients are sitting puffing away under a huge ‘No Smoking’ sign, their drips standing behind them like disapproving relatives. They
immediately stop speaking and stare at me in disgust, and I scuttle away as if it’s me, not them, who’s been caught doing something illegal.

Stiff with self-consciousness, I walk on. I’m nearing the end of the corridor, and the snoozing security guard jerks awake, glances at me distrustfully, and then rests his head on the gate
again and closes his eyes.

I’m about to turn around and head back when I spot a narrow alcove diagonally opposite the security gate. There’s an open door leading into what looks to be a small, darkened storage
room. Maybe I can hide in here. Gather my thoughts.

I head towards it, the sound of a cough stopping me dead.

No
ways
. There’s a man in here, lying on a narrow bed, a drip snaking out of his arm. What the hell is a patient doing in here? The cot he’s on barely even fits into the room.
He’s one of the few people under sixty I’ve seen in the ward and he’s lying there, eyes closed, his face covered in a fine sheen of sweat. I creep closer, careful not to wake him.
Even though he looks like he’s at death’s door I can’t tear my eyes away from his stubbly face and his shock of black hair. He reminds me of someone, someone familiar. I edge even
closer. That’s it. Robert Pattinson.
That’s
who he looks like. But not like Robert was in
Breaking Dawn
, more like when he was in—

‘Ms Cassavetes!’ Lumpy Legs calls.

I jump guiltily and turn to face her.

She’s striding towards me, puffing with exertion. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’

A bored-looking orderly is trailing behind her, pushing a wheelchair. I drop my head, hiding my face behind my hair.

‘Are you deliberately trying to make my life difficult?’ she says.

‘Sorry.’

‘They need you in X-ray,’ she snaps, gesturing to the wheelchair.

‘I can walk.’

‘Hospital policy.’

I glance back at the storeroom. ‘There’s a man in the—’

‘Yes, yes, that’s none of your concern. Now
please
,’ she says, voice heavy with sarcasm, ‘if it’s not too much trouble.’

I do as she says. The chair is surprisingly comfortable and I lean back and pray that the orderly won’t try to chat to me. Thankfully as soon as Lumpy Legs is out of sight he plugs
earphones into his ears and pops a strip of gum into his mouth. He mutters something to the snoozing security guard, who yawns, stretches and takes his time unlocking the gate. The orderly wheels
me through it and into a lift, its stainless steel walls smudged with fingerprints, a wad of filthy tissues balled in the corner. We rattle down, my empty stomach turning in on itself, the orderly
humming along to ‘Beautiful’ by James Blunt, popping his gum every so often. The lift shudders to a halt and he sweeps me out into another long corridor, this one painted a tired
yellow, a stretch of wall scored with deep circular marks that look horribly like bullet holes. The strip lighting crackles and hisses, and we crawl along for what feels like miles, squeaking down
corridors lined with foldaway beds containing passive patients, weaving around a woman in a wheelchair stranded outside the open door of a filthy toilet, and trundling past a group of skeletal,
yellow-skinned men and women queuing patiently outside a barred dispensing window.

At last we draw to a stop outside the X-ray department. The wooden benches outside it are full of patients in hospital gowns waiting for their turn, but no one looks up as the orderly parks me
behind a gurney containing an elderly man with a dried-up face and clawed hands. His mouth is open, revealing stumpy blackened teeth. A middle-aged nurse with bloodshot eyes pushes through the
black doors, and for a second or two our eyes lock. Then she flinches and turns away, just like I knew she would.

‘You took your time,’ Gertie says, as I’m wheeled back into the ward. ‘You’ve been gone for hours. You missed all the excitement.’

She points to the bed opposite. It’s empty. The blankets are puddled on the floor, the mattress covered with a yellowing plastic sheet. It had once held a woman with swollen, blue-veined
feet, dyed red hair and a hectic cough. ‘Another one bites the dust,’ Gertie says. ‘Off to the great morgue in the sky.’ She cackles.

I’m relieved to see that the religious man is gone, although his mother is still hidden behind the curtains. The woman on the other side of Gertie farts loudly and then moans in her
sleep.

‘Charming,’ Gertie says.

Lumpy Legs bustles in. ‘Doctor’s on his way,’ she snaps in my direction.

‘Twice in one day, hey, doll?’ Gertie says to me. ‘I’m lucky if they remember to change my drip.’

‘Oh, Mrs February,’ Lumpy Legs tuts, whipping the curtains around my bed.

Another doctor appears behind her, this one an Indian man with tired eyes and a worried expression. He glances down at my chart.

‘Ms Cassavite,’ he says, mispronouncing my name. ‘We have your scan results here.’ His voice is high and girlish, heavily accented. ‘I am sorry to have to inform
you that the news is not so good.’

Lumpy Legs looks at him with a mixture of reverence and fake concern. She fiddles with my sheet.

The doctor rattles off a flurry of medical jargon. ‘Are we clear?’

I shake my head, doing my best to smother the growing excitement. I understand exactly what he’s just said, of course, but I want him to repeat it. I want to be
sure
.

‘In the terms of that of a layperson, Ms Cassavite, if we do not operate again, you could have serious complications.’ He checks his notes again. ‘I see here that this is not
the first time that you have been having this procedure. And that you were not informing this hospital of these facts. It is pertinent that you must sign another consent. And we must also be sure
that you will be liable for the extra expenditure.’

‘When will you operate?’

‘In a few days. As soon as a theatre is available.’

‘And afterwards? Will I… will I look… different?’

‘Different? I am not understanding you fully, Ms Cassavite.’

‘Will I still look like the same person?’

‘We will not know for sure until the operation is over, Ms Cassavite,’ he says. ‘But you must prepare yourself for the worst. The shape, it could alter quite radically. The
damage is extensive. Much reconstruction might be necessary.’

Okay, a couple more days in this horrible place, but it will all be worth it. The doctor’s eyes widen in disbelief as he takes in my expression. I’m not surprised. He wouldn’t
know why I’m smiling.

I know it’s night because the ward sounds different, more subdued. No ringing phones, no clattering carts or running children.

I listen to the quiet conversations of the nurses, the old women moaning in pain like mourners at a funeral, the building breathing, the stale air circulating, the tick of the drip machine. And
underneath it all, a distant thrum, like the hospital is built over a massive beehive, or a full stadium buried hundreds of metres deep.

I’ve been drifting in and out of sleep all day, my rest more like a series of naps than the dead semi-coma I was in before. I’m more alert now, feeling more, and I scan my body: the
ache in my right arm, the jag of the drip in my left, the pinch of the catheter, a sharp pain in the palm of my right hand. My lower back feels bruised and my throat is still acid-burned. My hands
and toes are freezing and I can rub them together for a few minutes before I grow tired again. I don’t feel hungry or thirsty – the drip has kept me hydrated – but my lips are dry
and cracked. My hair is filthy, unwashed for days. I must look and smell like shit.

I test my eyes compulsively, but I can’t get past the count of eight before they sting shut again. And while they’re open, I can’t really see anything, just blurred shapes as
if something’s grown over the lenses. Christ, I can’t go blind. I can’t just lie here and lose my sight.

The light floods on and I hear what sounds like a drawer opening. I turn my head and force my eyes open.

One. The distorted outline of a man’s huge frame at a cabinet. White jacket.

Two. The shape turns to me. A smudge of dark grey over the hazy white of his coat.

Three. He looks down. Finds what he’s looking for in the drawer. Four.

Five. My eyes are burning, screaming. The man comes closer. I open them wide as a headlit deer’s.

Six. He looms over me. Takes my arm. Other arm under the pillow. I can’t find the fucking call button.

Seven. Two round blurs on his grey face. Massive glasses. Drops of sweat from his face fall onto my cheek.

Eight. He opens his mouth and his breath smells like rotting flesh. I have to close my eyes. He’s gripping my arm. Where’s the fucking button?

My eyes refuse to open again.

I feel him roughly pull the needle out of the J-loop, and he mutters something in a thick voice that I can’t make out. Then silence. As soon as my eyes can stand it, a minute, maybe two,
later, I open them again and look. He’s gone; left the light on, but there’s nothing to see except the fuzzy glare of this storeroom.

It takes me three eight-second bursts of vision to find the remote. Once I have hold of it, I slump back and press the button, not letting go until my thumb stiffens. Minutes later a night-shift
nurse stands in the doorway.

‘Yes?’ Shit. It sounds like Sister Elizabeth, the Ugly Sister.

‘Someone… changed my drip.’

‘Yes?’

‘What’s in it? Is it the right thing?’

‘Yes,’ she says from the doorway. She doesn’t come closer, she doesn’t check. She has no fucking idea.

I’m crushed by a wave of exhaustion. As I drift off, the panic becomes muffled. Someone – someone who shouldn’t be here – is putting something in my blood.

But I’m so tired. I can’t do any more.

‘Sister? Sister, have a look at this.’

I recognise Nomsa’s voice in my sleep haze. I feel her wiping my arm where she’s inserted another fresh drip needle.

The sister says something to her that I can’t make out.

‘But he can’t keep getting new needles. His veins are bruised.’

Sister Elizabeth lowers her voice and mutters again.

‘And I don’t know who put…’ I can sense Nomsa looking at me, probably trying to determine if I’m actually awake, although I’m doing my best to pretend
I’m still asleep.

‘Besides,’ says the Ugly Sister, this time loud enough for me to hear, ‘the hepatitis is clearing up. The bilirubin counts are coming down. He’ll only need a drip for
hydration.’ She leaves the storeroom.

It’s getting worse. I open my eyes and there’s no pain. Its absence is unnerving. All I can see are blotches over the doorway’s blurred radiance. I can feel
the mould eating into my eyes, and, unless eyes spontaneously regenerate, I’m fucked.

‘Mr Farrell,’ Nomsa says. I hadn’t heard her come in. ‘How are you feeling?’

‘Okay, actually. I feel stronger. More awake… But my eyes…’ Suddenly I have an embarrassing urge to cry. I don’t want to go blind. And Nomsa is the only person in
the world who seems to care. I hold myself together.

I feel her fingers opening my eyelids and she shines a light into them. ‘There’s much better reaction. And the conjunctivitis is clearing up. The antibiotics have worked well on
that. Doctor will say whether we should extend the course. You say you still can’t see?’

‘Everything’s blurred. I can see light and shapes.’

‘I’ll ask Doctor about the ophthalmologist. But he’s only doing rounds this afternoon.’

‘But what if it gets worse? If it becomes permanent? If there’s something I can do now to avoid…’

‘I’m going to ask Doctor, and I’ll try to find out.’

‘Nomsa?’ I ask, not sure if she’s still in the room.

‘Mr Farrell?’

‘Did you manage to get hold of Katya and the studio?’

‘No answer. I left messages, so I hope they’ll get them. I’ll try again later.’

If I could get hold of Katya, she could call an ophthalmologist for me and he could come see me. I don’t want to go blind. Jesus… From fucking measles. There must be something
simple I can do. If I can just get to the nurses’ station, they’ll let me use the phone. I’m sure I’m strong enough.

I push myself to a sitting position, and need to take several deep breaths before I have the energy to move again. I have to hoist my legs over the short railing at the side of the bed. Either
that or work out how to lower it, which I guess would take more energy. I get my left leg over the side, but with it dangling there I can’t find the purchase to hoist my right leg over with
it.