Closure (2 page)

Dr Woolicotts' colleagues rush in and they administer rudimentary first aid and inject the remains of his ear with a painkiller and antibiotic. One of them gingerly retrieves the bloody piece of ear. They escort Dr Woolicotts to an ambulance that's always on standby, and with a flurry of sirens it ferries Woolicotts to the general hospital just across the road.

James meets me at the door the moment I unlock it and step into the locked ward. My hands are shaking. I should have joined Rollins and Smyth outside for a smoke.

James looks at me a little puzzled.

“Don't ask,” I say.

“Okey-dokey. What did the doc say about my game of tennis?”

“James, you'll have to forgive me but something came up. I'll get to it now. Where can I find you?”

“Ah, here?”

“Silly question. Catch you later.”

Back in the office I sit with unsteady hands around a coffee cup. Zoe, the charge nurse, pulls a chair up so close to me our knees are almost touching. She stares into my face with her big clear blue saucers. I know that professional look. We're all trained to do it to optimise empathy and leave the subject in no doubt about the caring nature of our enquiry. But turned on me like this, by Zoe, in such textbook fashion, it fills me with an urge to flick my hands with the coffee cup at her face. Yet I feel compelled, even pleased to tell her the story.

I turn away both James and Cheryl from the office as I write my report of the incident as if it were part of a choreographed scene: strictly motor activity, and the exact words I heard. No impressions, no conjecture.

In keeping with procedure, I meet Rollins and Smyth for a thirty minute session mediated by a psychotherapy nurse. Smyth says he panicked when he injected Samuels through his trousers. He wonders why he did not wait just one more minute while he accessed Samuels' bare arms by rolling up a sleeve. Says he feels weak for panicking.

Rollins chimes in about his anger while restraining Samuels from doing more damage to the doctor. That he viewed any means at his disposal as necessary to stop what he saw as a grave danger to the doctor. Was he a bad nurse for using maximum force against a fellow human being who was not in control of his normal human faculties? The psychotherapist looks at me. I smile and say everything happened so fast, I felt shock and fear from head to toe and I felt close to everyone in the room except the person who most needed my empathy, but for whom I felt not the slightest affinity at that moment.

They all look at me. I quickly add that I know I share cultural, gender and racial affinities with Samuels, but at that moment I hated him to my core. I even felt shame at his behaviour, I say, that he somehow let the race down by his aggression towards his helpers in the midst of his despair. The nurse looks at me with eyes that suggest there's nothing they cannot and will not contain.

She nods and says my anger is appropriate and clearly I understand it and own it and Mr Samuels was lucky to have me in his corner.

Rollins and Smyth concur. We sign off and thank the psychotherapy nurse then return to our respective wards. Rollins walks with me a part of the way. He says I should not blame myself; it's the system that should be blamed for always putting me at the front of the queue whenever a black man was brought in.

“But my presence is supposed to help calm him down.”

“Not in this instance, Zack. The guy was some place where we couldn't reach him.”

“Yeah, I suppose so.”

“Hey, I hear from Katie that you scored with the Redhead last night.”

“Christ, news travels fast round here.”

“How was the Redhead?”

“None of your business. She has a name, you know.”

“Which is?”

“I can't remember. See you later for a quick pint?”

“Sure. Will the unnamed Redhead be there?”

“Course not. I mean, I've no idea.”

“Later then.”

“Oh, any word on Woolicotts?”

“They've stitched it back on. He'll be fine. Might even start to listen to a lowly nurse as a result.”

Cheryl meets me at the entrance to the ward. She asks about my contacts. I say I woke up late and had no time to put them in. She says I look as if I had no sleep.

“I look that bad?”

She always starts our talks with some personal observation before launching into her feelings of despair modulated by our magic combination of antidepressants, one-on-one talks and therapy.

“Can I talk a little later?”

“But I've waited all morning to chat with you.”

“We will talk, I promise, but I need to catch James first.”

“He left the ward a while ago to play tennis.”

“What? Excuse me a minute.”

I run to the main office and find Zoe. I ask her if she knows anything about James leaving the ward.

“He left about fifteen minutes ago to play tennis. He told me you spoke to his doctor, Dr Arbutnot and Arbutnot said it was okay. He showed me a note.”

“No, Zoe, what note? I didn't speak to Arbutnot. Why would James say that? We've got to find him.”

Zoe calls the front desk of the hospital and they say James passed there with a permission slip from his doctor. Her eyes saucer and pool. She grabs her hair and her tone of alarm heightens.

She hangs up, throws the mobile on the desk instead of back into its charging station, snatches it up again and dials the 3-digit hospital emergency number which throws the entire site into emergency mode and alerts the police to be on the look out for a missing patient.

“Zack, find James. Hurry.”

I dash out of the hospital without my leather jacket and regret it the moment I step into the cool autumn air. I shiver and realise it's not from the cold, but adrenaline. I jog up the street, cut into the park. As I run I look left and right for James. Pigeons scatter from my approach. I take the north exit and bound up the stairs of the footbridge that arches over the railway line. As I cross the old splintered planks of the bridge, I glance at the station platforms, trip and recover awkwardly. On the semi-crowded platforms I pick out a figure in white tennis clothes, standing a hundred yards away. He looks squarely in my direction, lifts his arms and waves. I grab the diamond-patterned wire fence that encases the bridge.

“James! James!”

The train rumbles under the bridge and blocks my view. As it enters the station, its brakes fill the air with a high-pitched whine. A handful of pigeons swoop from the station.

“Zack! Zack!”

I peer towards the other side of the bridge and there is James in white tennis gear, tennis rackets under his arm and a tube of tennis balls held high in the air with the other hand. He looks at me and at the train. He shakes his head and raises his eyebrows to show his surprise.

I run up to him and squash an impulse to hug him and punch him all at once.

“What are you doing off the ward?”

“I secured Dr Arbutnot's permission myself but I told a little white lie to cover your ass. I told Zoe that you called him for me. You've been busy.”

He digs into his pocket and pulls out a green slip. I grab it from him. The date is today's and the signature resembles Arbutnot's indecipherable scrawl.

The train pulls away with a hum that rises in pitch as it picks up speed.

“Why would you think it was helpful to me for you to tell others that I said it was okay for you to leave the ward?”

“I like you, Zack, but you are new to the nursing game; you just qualified for God's sake. By the way, I told Cheryl to cut you some slack. She's been chasing you all morning. I'm feeling like my old self, even if you can't see it.”

“I'm glad you're okay, but I'm mad at you for lying. Let's walk back.”

“Okey-dokey. The tennis courts are being cleaned so I can't play anyway.”

“Who were you going to play with?”

“My friend, Mr Charles.”

“Not Mr Charles again, James. I thought you got over him.”

“I tried but he came back for a game of tennis.”

“You and I know full well that there is no Mr Charles.”

“Just a minute ago, on the platform, you saw him wave at me.”

“That was Mr Charles?”

“The one and only. My confidant and tennis partner.”

“We can talk this one through when we get back to the ward.”

“Okey-dokey.”

I dial the ward. Zoe picks up. I tell her to stand down the emergency code, James is fine and we're on our way.

Zoe meets us at the entrance to the ward. A broad smile makes two slivers of her eyes. She pats me on the back and leads James by the arm to a room for a consultation. He winks at me as he follows her in. I pour myself a coffee and drop into a chair in the office to make a few notes about the incident with James. I call the locked ward to ask about Rodney Samuels. The nurse reports that he's sleeping; the sedatives have taken a hold on him and he'll be out of it for days, revived for meals and the toilet, but kept under a strict and heavy drugs regimen. That protocol for aggressive sick people ensures no more violence or break-outs, and amazingly, when patients surface from it, they behave with zest and a keen regard for life.

A rap of knuckles on the translucent plastic pane of the office door makes me look up from my scribbling. A purse-lipped Cheryl with an exaggerated hangdog look stares in at me. I jump up and pull the door open. She waits for me to say something. It's only a moment's hesitation but enough for her to turn on her heels and storm off.

“Cheryl, let's talk, now.”

She spins around and her face lights up. “Really?”

“Yes, right now.”

I walk with Cheryl to a quiet part of the ward, near a set of windows that look out on a patient-maintained garden. Cheryl says she feels better already and asks me how my eyes are doing.

“Fine. How about yours?“

“Not so good. I cried all day and I lost a lens. Washed it clean away.”

“Why the tears?”

“I don't know; I just feel bad. An overwhelming sadness. Just want to crawl into a hole and curl up in there and never look at the world or anyone again.”

“You woke up feeling that way?”

“No. It just welled up in me when James said he was going to play tennis and I realised I did not want to do anything, and I mean nothing.”

“You are doing a lot, Cheryl. You're here working very hard, everyday, to get better.”

“But I don't feel better.”

“It comes slowly. I've seen a big improvement. Remember how you arrived curled up like a bean and wouldn't respond to all my entreaties to you to take your medicine?”

“Nope.”

“You were catatonic. Didn't blink. Your contacts dried on your eyes.”

“Oh, yes. You used a pipette to drop saline in my eyes with your shaky hands.”

“Yep, and when the lens fell out of my glasses you helped me to look for the tiny screw and you told me about where to get cheap contacts.”

“I remember we never found that screw. Didn't you use sellotape to hold the lens in place?”

“Aha. Shall we look for that lost contact of yours?”

“Don't bother. I change them daily.”

“Of course. Did you go to the art room?”

“No, but I will now if you'd just shut up.”

“Right, then. See you later.”

“Thanks, Zack.”

“No sweat.”

I zip back to the office. Katie clasps my coffee in one hand as she huddles over her notes, in a pool directed from the angle-poise lamp. She looks up and says she did not want my coffee to go to waste. I thank her for her consideration. She offers to make a fresh pot and refill my cup. But I tell her to forget it. I let her know that it's late in the day and I'll need more than coffee to get over the shift. She gives me a hug, hands my cup to me and exits. I tip my head back and drain the dregs and smack my lips like I've just knocked back a shot. I resume my notes on James, with those to be made for Cheryl politely waiting in line.

I turn left from the ward into the main corridor with its six lanes of foot traffic and twin fluorescent strips evenly spaced overhead and unerringly the same lustre, night and day. I tear along at a rapid pace, weaving left and right around more casual folk. Actually, no one who works here is casual; all of us have somewhere to get to by yesterday, but I'm the rabbit with the fob watch able to hop at twice their rate. A drop of water falls off my chin and lands on my shirtfront. I reach into my back pocket for my handkerchief and wipe my face.

I smell the canteen before I see it. The food and the central heating conspire to produce a witch's cauldron. Yet my mouth waters. I walk in, scan the place for a familiar face, see none and feel glad for the isolation. I join a short queue with my tray and post-9/11 plastic cutlery.

But one look at the congealed rectangular trays of rice and pasta baked under the heat lamp puts me off. I advance to the refrigerated section, choose a triple BLT in shrink-wrap, a banana, a single oatmeal cookie, a small bottle of apple juice and cup of coffee and still the woman at the till says “anything else?” I take my seat in a corner with a view of the exit. I stretch my legs under the table, lean back in the plastic chair and pull out my mobile from my front pocket of my jeans. I dial Katie back on the ward.

“Katie, do me a favour. Have you seen Cheryl?”

“Not at the moment, but I'm at the dispensary. What about her?”

“She's on the ward, right?”

“I couldn't tell you. What is it? Should I find her?”

“No, I'll head back. Thanks Katie.”

“Not sure what I did, but you're welcome, Zack.”

I gulp my food. I drink the entire 300 mls of apple juice in one tilt. I inhale the banana – I mean divide it into three parts and each third I crush and swallow. I break the cookie into two and wash the halves down with my coffee cup.

Cheryl cries for half the day and in just a few minutes she perks up as if she'd grazed her knee in a playground. That's too much of a 180° turn even for my nursing skills. Or am I just so plugged into this place I'm unable to take a thing at face value?