Its getting dark, p.9
It's Getting Dark, page 9
The woman seemed to be walking aimlessly along, from one department to the next. Sometimes she stopped, hesitated, went up or down a flight of stairs. She read various notices on corkboards, gazed at the landscape photographs that were displayed on the walls. When doctors came the other way, she slowed her steps as though about to address them, but she never did. One or another of them nodded at her, as though with a vague memory of having treated her at some point. Even though I only saw her from behind the whole time, I grew more and more convinced that it was Miriam, still going around after all those years.
* * *
—
I had the mother and son brought into one of the treatment cubicles and promised to be with them right away. When I stepped outside the building for a smoke, Miriam was still standing there, as though waiting for someone. She asked me for a cigarette. I gave her a light, and we smoked silently and companionably. Miriam blew the smoke out of the side of her mouth and made a mocking expression like someone who had never smoked in her life and has learned the gestures and expressions from somewhere. It was early March, but the last few days had been unseasonably warm. I already had a few night shifts behind me, and as always in those weeks, I was short of sleep, and felt at once incredibly tired and very alert, hypersensitive, and nervous. After a few drags, Miriam gave a whinnying laugh, dropped the cigarette on the ground, and clumsily trod on it. She wished me a nice evening and quickly walked off. I was certain she could sense me watching her, her movements were as self-aware as a model’s on a catwalk. She vanished in the darkness, I put out my cigarette and went back to work.
Not many days after this first visit, Miriam was back in the ER. She had come in the afternoon and asked for me, whispered the nurse on reception. When she heard I was still on night shift, she said she would try later.
Miriam asked me if I always worked nights. Tonight’s the last time, I said, then I have a week of daytime shifts. Her foot was swollen, she said, she had tripped going down some stairs. This time I let her lie down on the treatment table. She had no socks, only ballet pumps, and her feet were ice-cold. I performed the usual checks, moved her foot this way and that, asked if it hurt and how. Miriam seemed a bit vague, her answers didn’t add up and gave no clear sense of an injury. Finally, I had her foot X-rayed. Other patients came in, it was a busy night, and Miriam had to wait a long time till I finally had a moment to look at the X-rays with her and talk her through them. Even though her foot was bothering her, she was pacing up and down in the cubicle when I came back, it seemed impossible for her to sit still. She barely listened to me. It’s nothing serious, just a sprain. I bandaged her foot and advised her to wear shoes that would give her more support.
When I came on ward on one of the following mornings, I found Miriam already in the waiting room. She was all alone there, the mornings were usually quiet. She was sunk in thought, then, when I greeted her, she jumped up. I’ll be with you right away, I said. The colleague I was taking over from gave me a quick résumé of the night just passed and told me about one or two cases that hadn’t been resolved. A young man who had had liposuction a week ago had gotten involved in a fight; he complained of bad stomach pains and refused to be sent home, even though the ultrasound hadn’t indicated anything out of the ordinary.
Miriam was already in one of the cubicles, waiting for me. I had only just said hello when I was called away. A worker had been brought in to emergency with a profusely bleeding cut to his arm, and I had to see to him right away. An hour later, I was with Miriam again. She was sitting in her cubicle, smiling, and saying she had stomach pains. Where exactly, I asked her. Here, she said, making circular movements with her hand over her stomach like someone letting a foreign waiter know they were enjoying their dinner. Then you need to see one of my colleagues from internal medicine, I said, I don’t know why you’ve been brought here. I asked for you, she said, you’re my doctor. But if you have stomach pains, the other side should be looking after you. Here, we’re surgery. Don’t you have a GP? Miriam said she didn’t think it was that bad. And couldn’t I make an exception for her? I asked if she often suffered stomach pains, what she had eaten in the past few days, whether her digestion was normal. On a scale of one to ten, how would you rate these pains? No, said Miriam. She said she had woken up in the night and felt afraid. I gave her a sample package of Panadol and told her to eat regularly and take plenty of liquids. Disappointed, she asked why I didn’t want to examine her. She had heard somewhere about ultrasound. I said there was no reason for that. If the pains continue, then you really should see my colleagues in internal medicine. I said she could come to the ER any time, but not for every little trifle. She gave me an offended look, got up and left.
I had expected she would complain to management, but the next day I found a huge bunch of flowers in the day room. They’re from your patient of yesterday, said the reception nurse, grinning at me.
* * *
—
The woman in the green mac was still wandering through the corridors, we had been in and out of cardiology and were entering vascular surgery. I was relieved we hadn’t run into anyone I knew who would ask me what I was doing. At first I had kept a discreet distance, but the woman hadn’t turned around once, and with time I found myself closer and closer to her, without her seeming to notice. She looked briefly into the meditation room as though looking for someone but emerged right away. Once she went into one of the bathrooms, but she didn’t stay there long either.
I remembered the time I paid a house call on her and wondered how I’d let that happen. Presumably I’d told myself it was my duty as a doctor to try and help her, but secretly I just liked her, I found her loyalty and trust flattering and that led me to break all the rules of my profession.
* * *
—
That evening, some two or three weeks now after our initial meeting, my phone rang just before midnight. I recognized Miriam’s voice right away, she had a slow and pressed way of speaking, as though she had to concentrate very hard not to say something wrong. She said she was in a phone box. She had cut her arm, and could I come. I said she should stick a bandage over the cut. It’s quite deep, she said, I’ve lost a lot of blood. Then ring the emergency number, I said irritably, I’m not on call. Please will you come, said Miriam, and gave me the address. I’m waiting for you.
I picked up my emergency bag and ran down the stairs. I had to wait a long time for the streetcar, and then I had to transfer. Even though it wasn’t far, it still took me half an hour to get there. Miriam lived in one of two identical high-rise tenements that were probably built in the fifties and seemed fairly run-down. They stood on the edge of a large park with trees and a playground. Across the street was the football stadium, which, empty, seemed to produce a kind of vacuum, an atmosphere of desolation.
Miriam was wearing a patterned nightdress, and I had to ask myself if she’d really gone out to a phone box dressed like that. Her left forearm was wrapped in a dishcloth that was stained with her blood. Her face was extremely pale. I asked her to sit down and rest her arm on the kitchen table. How did it happen? I asked, carefully unwrapping the dishcloth. There was a cut stretching all the way to the wrist from the center of her forearm, it might easily have severed her pulse artery. Miriam merely watched me with a look of fascination and apprehension. When I examined her arm, I started seeing the many scars on it. Close to the elbow was the clumsy, amateurish tattoo of a small cross in a halo, presumably her own work. I felt a strange attraction, and I couldn’t help touching the place on Miriam’s arm, very gently. I have no idea how long we sat together like that, joined by my touching her arm. Suddenly I realized what I was doing and pulled my hand away and cleared my throat. It’s not as bad as it looks, I said, you were lucky. I’ll have to put in a couple of stitches. But at least it’s not trivial, said Miriam. I shook my head. No, it’s not. I asked whether she owned a car, then I could drive her to the hospital. She shook her head. Couldn’t you do it here?
She refused a local anesthetic. She said she had a high pain threshold, and it was true, she didn’t so much as flinch as I sewed up the wound. It was as though her arm wasn’t part of her. She watched me work, which irked me, I’ve never known a patient who didn’t look away. When I was done, I asked her again what had happened. With a knife, said Miriam. What with a knife? I cut myself with a knife, she said. I bandaged her up and told her to call me tomorrow at the hospital so we could make an appointment to have the stitches removed. She made to get up, but I told her to stay sitting for now. She was still very pale and seemed tired.
I looked around the kitchen, which seemed to be original fifties. On the windowsill were a couple of pots with herbs. The table and chairs were old and looked like junk, but everything seemed clean and tidy. I thought about my own, contemporary kitchen and my apartment, in which I didn’t feel at home. About all I made there was coffee, maybe a snack the odd night when I got in late and didn’t feel like going out again. It may sound strange, but I felt much more at home in Miriam’s kitchen than in my own. I had the feeling I was exactly where I wanted to be.
Then I guess I’d better go, I said, and stood up. I held out my hand, which she took in hers, then brought it to her mouth and kissed it. Wouldn’t you stay here? she said.
* * *
—
The woman in the mac had gone down the stairs and into the café. She was now in line for a cup of tea. I stood directly behind her and got an espresso from the machine.
She seated herself at a small table in the middle of the room, while I found a place by the wall from where I could watch her. I hadn’t often been in this particular cafeteria. We had a machine on the ward that made better coffee than the equipment here, and I had no great fondness for mingling with the patients. For the first time, I realized how different the patients and the employees were in their bearing, there was no need for hospital gowns and lanyards to tell them apart. You could feel the power the latter had over the former, see it in their confident movements, the certainty with which they sat there talking to one another. So now I was one of the lesser species, the ones who sat there with wide-open, inquiring eyes that looked away when they met mine, as though ashamed of their vulnerability.
* * *
—
Miriam didn’t call me to arrange an appointment. Since she had no telephone, I sent her a reminder a couple of days later, was she getting on okay, was the wound healing properly, she should have the stitches taken out, and would we see each other again? I got no reply.
I didn’t have many friends, but I was far from being unsociable. I liked debating with colleagues over lunch, talking to the patients and hearing their stories, chatting with the nurses about their holiday plans or trouble with their children or boyfriends. I tended to listen more than speak, there wasn’t much to say about me. I was usually one of the last to get up from the table at lunch. Sometimes I would walk an ophthalmologist I liked across to his ward, even though the ER was at the opposite end of the hospital. My colleague asked if I’d already swum in the lake this year. He said he had heard about this neat bathing place, a strip of grass that you sometimes had to yourself. He had heard about it from a patient. She brought me flowers—can you imagine, a huge bouquet. Have you ever got flowers from a patient? What was her name? I asked. You know I’m terrible with names, he said. But from his description there was no other possibility, it had to be Miriam. What was her trouble? I asked. Hard to pin down, he said. A flickering in one eye. I didn’t find anything.
That afternoon I rang administration and asked for Miriam’s file. The secretary couldn’t find the name in the system. At lunch the following day I asked my colleagues about her. There were some who couldn’t remember the name, but they remembered the scars on her body, the low voice and the tattoo of the Celtic cross. Miriam had been a patient in at least six wards since the time she first appeared in the ER. Wherever she’d been, she had complained about a vague array of symptoms, pointing to some part and telling some story, visual impairment, headaches, feelings of paralysis, lack of appetite, what have you. Whatever happened to be featured in the advice columns of the women’s magazines. My colleague in gynecology had refused to examine her, the others had treated her out of the kindness of their hearts or because they took a shine to her and had then forgotten to ask for her insurance details or issue a bill. It seemed faintly embarrassing to all of them, and I sometimes wondered if they were telling me the whole story. Some had been given flowers by Miriam, they owned up to that, but sooner or later she had stopped turning up for appointments. There’s nothing really the matter with her, said the internist, but she’s always got something. She’s got the lot, said the ophthalmologist, laughing.
My colleagues weren’t put out by the way Miriam had unsettled the whole hospital. They talked about other cases, hysterical seizures, false pregnancies, insurance cheats who had successfully faked serious conditions for years, one even blindness. If we didn’t have any imaginary patients, we might as well shut up shop, said a dermatologist, whom Miriam had been to see regarding some itch.
* * *
—
The woman in the green mac had stepped out into the park through a rear exit, and I followed her. After a few paces, she stopped to watch an overweight young woman sitting on a bench with a drip stand next to her. She was eating a sandwich and kept tearing off little pieces to feed the sparrows, which were skittering around her feet. For a long time, the woman in the mac stood there watching her, then she spun on her heel and walked past me into the building, apparently without having seen, much less recognized me.
I remembered how Miriam once told me how she liked going to the hospital. She felt safe there. And she liked the park behind the main block, the old oaks and the birches, and the doctors in their white coats. It must be nice to help people, she said. It’s strenuous, I said. Often the people themselves don’t know what’s wrong with them, they can barely tell you what hurts. And what hurts you? she asked. Nothing, I said, but even as I spoke, I knew it wasn’t true. If only it were that simple, I said. In the meantime, I had learned what was wrong, but that didn’t make matters any easier.
Miriam had told me about a few of her scars, a burn, a cut, a place on her hip where the skin was red and brittle as parchment. I put my hand on the scars she was talking about, as though by doing that I could make them disappear.
* * *
—
Without my properly becoming aware of it, the woman in the green mac had led me all the way back to the entrance lobby. There stood the chief surgeon. When he saw me, he walked up to me with quick steps, his hand outstretched in greeting. We thought you’d maybe thought better of it, he said laughing and shook my hand. He talked at me, told me about the impending rebuilding of the hospital, the business manager who seemed only to want to cut costs, a lawsuit about a colleague’s mistake that had ended well. Only he said nothing about my condition and the upcoming operation, as though it were somehow embarrassing to him that I was now on the other side. He spoke to me as though I was paying a courtesy call, or we had bumped into each other on the street somewhere. Over his shoulder, I watched the woman in the green mac leave the building. For a moment, I thought of going after her, canceling the operation and just leaving and going back to my previous life for as long as it would take me. But then I gave the surgeon my hand, thanked him—for what, I don’t know—and walked up to the ward, where they were expecting me.
Cold Reading
Ship always signifies voyage. Don’t lose yourself in your desires and dreams. Perhaps it’s time to strike out in a new direction.
Although it had looked like rain in the morning, I had left my umbrella onboard ship, and had gone on land with the first group. Barcelona was our fourth stop, after Civitavecchia, Livorno, and Marseilles, and each time I had put myself down for a shore party. I wasn’t going to stew on the ship, I wanted to have fun, but the only people who went on the excursions were old couples, people who were interested in palaces and cathedrals and asked well-informed questions and owned expensive cameras that they aimed everywhere, as though they had set themselves to inventory the Pearls of the Mediterranean, as our cruise styled itself. The odd husband had shot me a look, while their wives were suspicious and quizzed me, and did their best to keep me away from their husbands. As if I had any interest in a flirtation with a retired insurance broker or high school teacher.
A dozen buses were standing ready on the dockside for the trippers. Ours was two-thirds full. The Spanish guide had such a heavy accent that I couldn’t understand more than half of what she said, but I wasn’t terribly interested in the history of the city to begin with. Our first stop was the Sagrada Familia, the allotted time was just enough to view (and photograph) the cathedral from the outside and to buy postcards and souvenirs, and then it was on into the Barrio Gótico. We inspected the outside of Santa Eulalia, while our guide fed us with useless tidbits of information and my fellow cruise passengers asked clever questions. I had a sudden vision of myself spending the rest of my life in tour groups of elderly persons touring old European city centers and memorizing dates and the names of artists and aristocratic patrons. The tour guide was just saying how thirteen white geese had guarded the cathedral nave, which caused some hilarity in our group. Like little goslings the tourists waddled after the guide who promised to show us arcane corners of the Barrio Gótico. I watched them go until they had dissolved in the crowd.
