What Lot's Wife Saw (29 page)

At the Infirmary, I found that the sandstorm had caused its usual havoc. I told them to hose the grounds down so that the dust would settle and not keep swirling back into the atmosphere. The Respiratory Clinic would have its work cut out this evening. I entered the building, conscious of the crunching of my shoes on the ubiquitous sand. The cleaners were looking desperate as they mopped the hallways. There wasn’t a nook or cranny that didn’t boast its own little pyramid of sand that defied brooms, cloths, brushes, mops and even hairpins.

Sometimes I despair of running a clean Infirmary and console myself by thinking of my conservatory. The Colony’s sand is unique, the grains are so fine that they can’t be seen by the naked eye. They are the devil’s own molecules that penetrate everywhere, into cupboards, drawers, pipes, noses and ears. You will find them in the stuffing of mattresses, between the pages of books, in sealed water bottles and in unopened tins. They ruin paints, erode wood and corrode metals. Our lungs are already affected by the salt fumes, so when a sandstorm hits, the worst cases struggle to breathe and some even die from lack of oxygen.

There’s no material that’s impervious to the sand. You try to blow it off your watch but you get nowhere since the sand’s embedded on and under the glass and is even getting a free ride on the minute hand. We wrap a wound with reams of gauze for protection but when we remove the dressing we find the wound under an inch of sand. The problem makes surgery a nightmare. As soon as we hear that a storm’s closing in, we hang layers of thick nylon sheeting, but it’s futile since any incision receives its first grains as it opens. If we don’t lose the patient from whatever afflicts him we’ll definitely lose him to infection. When the winds subside, the colonists come in droves to the Infirmary with all kinds of respiratory problems but also from dermatological infections, since the sand invades the very pores of the skin. Decongestives are the prescriptions of choice, irrespective of diagnosis, and the oxygen wagon stops at every bed. An unencumbered, clean and satisfying breath is a luxury that’s never crossed the borders into the Colony.

Passing outside the Intensive Care Unit, I saw that the sandstorm had left fourteen victims behind, counting the bodies that the orderlies were removing. It could have been worse. I walked into the surgical ward to see how the casualties of the cave-in were faring. The previous week, a section of the crater had collapsed, dragging down or crushing eleven galleries along with their hapless workforce. We’d never before amputated so many arms and legs. The operating tables were hopelessly outnumbered; we operated in beds, on cots and all over the floor. Even the incinerator was overworked with severed limbs, so we’d had to light fires on the roof terrace before they started to decompose and then we’d really have been in trouble.

I entered the amputees’ ward and leafed through the register. In the amputees’ ward one is always met by deathly silence – they comprise the most critical group of patients. What’s worse for them is not the leg that’s gone but the imposed inactivity which, in the Colony of lost homelands, cannot be endured. The patient might remain bedridden for months retaining, unfortunately, full awareness. That gives him all the time in the world to brood, and this inevitably leads to depression. Then nostalgia sets in. It’s like the unswattable fly that continuously buzzes around your head and drives you mad. Sleeping pills and tranquillisers are distributed by the bucketful.

One glance around was enough to diagnose their crazed looks behind the bloody gauzes and bandages that swaddled their heads. I bent over the nurse’s ear and asked him to double the dosage of tranquilliser in their drips. He whispered back that he’d already done so this morning on Dr Sanchez’s orders and two hours ago he’d tripled it following Dr Miskin’s recommendation.

“Then quadruple it,” I said. He looked at me with alarm. I lifted his name card and read: Gerard Grousset.

“How long have you been in the Colony, Grousset?”

“Three months.”

Inexperienced nurses shouldn’t be put on the amputees’ ward – how many times must I repeat myself!

“Do you have the night shift on this ward?”

“Yes, Director.”

“I suggest that you quickly forget everything that you’ve learnt in Nursing School if you want us to find you alive in the morning. Can you see all those looks around you?”

Grousset cast a bemused gaze at the residents of the ward but couldn’t see what he was meant to. His mind, shaped by the pharmacology textbook, stopped short of being receptive to the latent signals broadcast by the crazed eyes and the deathly silence.

“If we quadruple the dose, they’ll die, sir,” he said uneasily.

I’d neither the time nor the inclination to explain to the foolish Grousset that nostalgia is a carnivore that devours people from the inside. The patients are in a fever pitch of overexcitement, the external sign of which is the deathly silence. Not only would the increase fail to kill them, it was doubtful whether it would be effective. The most insidious ailment in the Colony, and for which we’ve no cure, only chemical suppression, is called “death wish”. It can spread through a ward like wildfire and when we draw back the curtains in the morning we’re greeted by a roomful of corpses. Grousset wasn’t in physical danger from an attack, but his life hung on a thread within his brain that could be snapped by the contagious suicidal fury around him. He lacked the detachment to see that and he felt sorry for them, which was the first step on the slippery slope to despair. I ordered him to quadruple the dose immediately and if their eyes didn’t return to normal, to quintuple it. He could sextuple it without seeking permission. If he so much as grimaced in protest he’d find himself divested of his white gown and holding a sand shovel instead of a thermometer.

Trembling from my nerves, I went through the hallway and into the toilets. I locked the door behind me and convulsed into uncontrollable sobs. I needed to kill Grousset, to mercilessly torture him as his life ebbed, to crush his stupid face with my fists and to make him swallow, one by one, the pages of the pharmacology textbook. Those cow eyes of fledgling nurses, whose blood salt content hasn’t yet risen from the fumes, drive me completely insane. I put two tranquillisers on my tongue and swirled them in my mouth for faster effect. It still took a quarter of an hour before the last sob escaped my lips and I could draw a normal breath. I couldn’t recognise myself.

Still unsettled, I washed my face in the washbasin. I’d had it today with the amputees’ wards, the Intensive Care and the surgical wards. From now on I’d restrict myself to the First Aid Station, to the minor incidents, a cut finger, an upset stomach, a moderate fever. I’ve had it with death in this violet hell; no doctor can endure losing nine out of ten patients. We’re made to feel that something’s awry when one slips through our fingers alive.

I entered the First Aid Station and immediately felt all the fuss and groans that signify good health wash over me like a balm. Patients come here more to grouse and be heard rather than be treated. The majority of those that spend time here are administrative personnel and shop assistants. Salt miners tend towards orthopaedic wards, salt workers crowd into the dermatological ward and dock workers crop up everywhere. You won’t find cyclists in the Infirmary, either because their health is iron-clad or because, from what I hear, they cure themselves with home-spun remedies, they apply salves and poultices of their own design, the effectiveness of which escapes me but keeps them out of my wards.

I noticed a nurse next to me incompetently bandaging an elbow so I turned to help. I explained that the elbow has a lot of motion and we must take this into account when applying bandages. “Give me that gauze. Let me show you.” As I was adjusting the gauze, I felt the patient’s hostile stare but I didn’t pay it any attention.

The nurse followed my demonstration with drooping eyelids and explained himself by saying that his shift had ended long ago but his replacement was already very late so he’d had to remain on the ward. I get furious when a nurse is late for his shift and I promised this sleepdeprived substitute that his errant colleague was in for some severe discipline.

“Should he have requisitioned a berlinga, perhaps, to get here on time, Director?” the patient said, dripping venom.

I focused on his face and recognised the Treasurer of the Bank whom I’d roughly hauled off the berlinga and thrown onto the street in mad pursuit of the Black Ship’s ghost. The shock made the gauze slip through my fingers and, bending down to retrieve it, I accidentally brushed his injured elbow.

“Careful!” shouted the banker, wincing. “You caused this injury, Doctor, and I expect you at least to have the decency to treat it properly.”

His words caused an immediate reaction in the ward; the doctors who were in the adjoining examination stalls turned with evident interest in our direction. I turned red with shame. When the Treasurer saw my cringing discomfort, he turned up the volume so that he could be certain that he could be heard in the next wards as well.

“I think I’m entitled to an apology for your unacceptable behaviour this afternoon, Director! I never expected a man of your position to throw people out of berlingas!”

I leant over him so that my response wouldn’t reach the straining ears in neighbouring beds. “For your information, I was on a mission. I mean I was following orders, there was a very good reason why …”

“Is that so? You haven’t yet shown me the requisition document so I refuse to believe you!” he shouted.

I shoved the gauze into the nurse’s hand to finish the bandaging and rushed out of the ward.

“You must honour your medal, not take advantage of it, Dr Fabrizio. You should be an example to the rest of us!” the Treasurer’s triumphant bellows hounded my retreat.

I decided to lie low for a while in the doctor’s dining area, where there are no patients or visitors, and I didn’t intend to emerge before making sure that the banker had left the Infirmary. As I walked in, a group of doctors gathered around one of the tables fell suddenly silent. I could feel their eyes probing me. I filled a cup with coffee and sat quite close to them, trying to decipher their cryptic looks. I asked how the patients in recovery room 54 were doing. No one answered and I wondered whether my question was so transparently forced that they couldn’t be bothered to reply. Finally Gynaecologist Ventura muttered that he wasn’t as worried about room 54 as he was about the Palace staff who’d suddenly found themselves without a job and had collectively decided to pretend to be ill so that they’d collect sick leave allowance. “They’ve filled two wards without medical reason.”

“But the Palace staff haven’t been fired, what kind of nonsense is this?” I laughed.

“Are you being serious, Dr Fabrizio?”

By this time I’d monopolised the attention of the whole dining area. I was being skewered by very penetrating stares. I regretted my flippant answer that implied that I knew more than they. The gynaecologist had thrown me a baited hook and I’d snapped it up like a fool.

“I mean, I don’t believe that they’ve been fired. They’ve just been temporarily removed from their posts. At least, that’s what I’ve heard.”

“Are you being serious, Dr Fabrizio?”

My collar had suddenly become a few sizes too small. I felt as though I was under a searing interrogation lamp. I explained that the Governor had demanded total silence in the building because he’d something extremely important to finish and the noisy staff were distracting him.

“His work must be tremendously important,” commented Dr Miskin, “since on Friday he’d kept the servants locked in the basement until the afternoon, when his wife sent them packing.”

“Really, I’d no idea …”

“Oh, didn’t you, Doctor? I heard that you and the other medal wearers were shut in the Palace all of Friday and that you left at night wearing only your underwear.”

“Not underwear, it was rags,” Cardiologist Sanchez corrected him.

My perspiration was freezing my forehead. That night as we’d fled the Palace, we weren’t thinking that the Colony has eyes and ears everywhere and the goings-on in the Palace was the most popular topic of colonists’ conversations and that anything particularly juicy travelled from end to end at the speed of light, magnified by hyperbole, reinforced by the addition of imaginary, but delectable details. What other form of entertainment does this society have to offer but gossip? I bolted the rest of my coffee, looked at my watch and made the excuse that I hadn’t finished my rounds.

Gastroenterologist Lupo arched an eyebrow. “I’m treating the Saltworks General Manager who has a problem with his gall bladder. His villa, as you know, is opposite the Palace. He told me that for the second day running the Governor’s shutters have remained shut. He was most intrigued.”

“I wouldn’t know anything about that.”

I explored my avenues of escape but four of the doctors were strategically placed and the imposing bulk of Gynaecologist Ventura had invaded my space.

“Dr Fabrizio, you must realise that our concern is justified and above board. If anything has happened to Governor Bera, I think that we’ve a right to know.”

“Why would you think a thing like that?”

“Yesterday morning, we were expecting his butler to collect the Governor’s pills. He didn’t show up today either. Has Bera stopped taking his pills?”

“Indeed not, I’m going to take them there.”

If possible, the five physicians encroached even further, shutting out the light and depleting the air of oxygen.

“You’re a surgeon, by training, if I’m not mistaken,” said Pulmonologist Mochtachiev. I was always curious why the Governor should’ve chosen a surgeon as his personal physician. Be that as it may, if the pill is causing your exalted patient any suspicious side effects, I do hope that you’re conscientious enough to refer him to colleagues of more appropriate specialities.”

“There’s no question of side effects, you’re jumping to the wrong conclusions.”

“One mustn’t take risks where health’s involved, Doctor,” said Gynaecologist Ventura, and Cardiologist Sanchez added, “And especially where the health of the first citizen of the Colony is concerned, one shouldn’t allow vanity to interfere with professionalism.”