Saree

by Su Dharmapala

  ‘And you came here immediately for treatment?’

  ‘Yes. We didn’t want to go to the UK because Shanthi didn’t want Lucky to see her sick. But if I know my son there will be hell to pay now. He simply adores her and it’ll kill him that he’s missed spending the last few weeks with her.’

  ‘Is that why you haven’t called him yet? Because you are scared?’

  Raju Nair had nodded sheepishly.

  I gave him a long stare. ‘Call him. Do it. I would want to know if something like this was happening to my parents.’

  ‘So you are close to your parents then?’

  ‘No, not at all,’ I replied softly. ‘My mother hates me.’

  ‘Would you like to go to the movies on Saturday night?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I want to watch a movie and I thought you might like to, too?’

  ‘Can’t you go with one of your friends? What about that mate you go to the footy with? What’s his name?’

  ‘Jimmo? We’ve been seeing each other for two years and you still can’t remember my best friend’s name?’ Simon asked.

  Simon and I were sprawled out on my bed in my apartment on Malvern Road. Outside, I could hear the rattle of the iconic old Number 5 tram as it made its way into the city. They always brought out the old bone rattlers when the temperature went over thirty-six degrees in summer. The modern air-conditioned trams didn’t have the stamina of the old models, wilting and dying in the heat.

  ‘We aren’t exactly seeing each other,’ I replied moving aside from under him.

  ‘What would you call it then? Maybe it’s time we got serious. We are getting to that age, you know,’ Simon added.

  ‘And what age is that?’

  ‘I’m thirty-six . . .’

  ‘But I’m only twenty-nine . . .’

  ‘Perfect for an old fella like me,’ Simon smiled.

  ‘Simon . . .’

  ‘Come on, Marion. Don’t you think it’s time we started perhaps seeing each other outside this room? I can hardly remember what you look like with clothes on!’

  ‘We just had dinner and I was completely dressed while we ate,’ I protested.

  ‘That’s not what I mean and you know it. Come on, Marion. At least meet some of my friends.’

  I looked at Simon Stuart for a moment. He was perfect. Quite literally perfect. Six-foot three to my six-foot frame. One of the very few men I actually had to look up to. A doctor. Funny. Sweet. We’d met during my first week at St Jude’s, though it’d taken some time for things to get started.

  ‘I kept meeting this beautiful woman, but whenever I turned to look for you, you’d melted away somewhere,’ Simon had said to me on our first date.

  ‘So, you’ll come to the movies?’ he asked again.

  ‘Hmmm . . .’ I mumbled hesitantly. ‘When?’

  ‘How about next Saturday? Jimmo will be there with his girlfriend, Carla, and Bingo too, I think . . .’

  ‘Who’s Bingo again?’

  ‘Bingo – Brett Dingman – he’s the engineer who did St Jude’s building audit last year.’

  ‘Why do all your friends have such stupid names?’ I asked.

  ‘Don’t you get “Mare” all the time?’

  ‘Only from the nurses.’

  ‘Jumped-up bunch of nannies!’ Simon snapped. ‘Did I tell you what that cow Angela on ward twelve did today?’ he asked before launching into a long diatribe against the entire nursing sorority.

  ‘If something goes wrong, it’s my neck!’ he grumbled as he climbed out of bed and pulled on his jocks. ‘Who does she think she is? Did she do five years of study? No. I did. A three-year degree and they bloody think they own the world.’

  I made conciliatory noises as I handed him his clothes. A doctor he might be, but he had the attention span of a Cavalier King Charles spaniel. Before he knew it, I’d got him dressed and through the door without him even realising I’d engineered him leaving.

  I mulled over what to do with Simon as I padded through to the kitchen to grab a glass of water.

  Whatever might be said about how invisible I am, the same could not be said about my apartment. Within the safety of these four walls, I didn’t try to hide my true self. I’d painted the walls in bright colours – reds, blues and rich oranges – and put lush wool carpets on the warm wooden floors. I’d found the most colourful paintings I could find and hung them on the walls. I crossed to the French doors that led to my rooftop garden and tried to open them, but they were stuck. Again. So I picked up the hammer and gently tapped them open to let some fresh air in. Part of the doorframe crumbled away. I would soon have to have the frame replaced for the third time in as many years – it was just that the rising damp from the butcher’s shop below was unstoppable.

  ‘Why do you live in this dump?’ my mother demanded the one time she visited. ‘And how do you deal with the noise from the trams all night?’

  Yes, living in the apartment over a butcher shop on the corner of Glenferrie and Malvern Road was not what people expected me to do, not with my extravagant doctor’s salary, but I wouldn’t move for love nor money. ‘How do you stand the smell?’ more than one of my colleagues had demanded when I’d told them where I lived. ‘The Meat Works? That has to be one of the oldest and dingiest butchers in all of Melbourne. I think my great-great-grandfather bought his chops there!’

  ‘They’re very clean and I’m almost never there when they take deliveries.’

  People looked doubtfully at me – but they did not know my secret. Not many people knew, actually. Except for my landlord and the real estate agent. For across the rooftop courtyard was a sizeable room made almost entirely of glass. A greenhouse. ‘A bunch of hippies grew weed here during the sixties,’ the real estate agent had explained. ‘You don’t have to use it, but it’s on the lease.’

  I had taken it on gleefully. It was perfect. A perfect sanctuary for me. A place for me to indulge my unfulfilled dream of being a fabric artist.

  The news of impending death had strange effects on people. Some people sobbed. Others took the news calmly, only breaking down later in the privacy of their homes. Then there were those for whom death was a relief, or even a blessing, especially if they or their loved one had been ill for a long time. It could be hard to predict – but Raju Nair had been right when he said that his son would be furious when he finally learned that his mother was dying.

  ‘How long has it been going on for?’ I demanded that afternoon as I came in for my shift.

  ‘He came in last night. They hadn’t told him it was a hospital when they told him which address to go to,’ Kristen replied in a hushed undertone. ‘I heard them start arguing just before they closed the door at about ten pm.’

  ‘When you said St Jude’s I thought it was a resort city, like St Barts!’ the young man’s voice had echoed down the hall.

  ‘And he’s had all the oncologists in there?’

  ‘Yup. We put them in the family meeting room. He’s even called in several specialists from the US and UK.’

  ‘Damn it, this is why people are supposed to have these conversations before they get to the palliative care ward rather than after,’ I said looking down the corridor to see dying patients either sitting up in their beds listening eagerly to the muted argument.

  ‘Oh, don’t be such a spoilsport Mare. For most of our patients this is the best fun they’ve had in weeks! Months even!’

  Over the next hour or two, I heard snippets of conversation through the swinging doors of the meeting room as specialist after specialist trooped in to explain Mrs Nair’s diagnosis and the prognosis. I did not actually see the Nairs’ son, rather I heard his raised voice as doors opened and closed.

  ‘Is there no cure?’

  ‘Are you really the best oncologist in Australia?’

  ‘What about alternative treatments? Have you considered those?’

  ‘Did they have a break for lunch?’ I demanded after a while. ‘His mother will be ex
hausted.’

  ‘Oh, Mrs Nair is resting in her room,’ Kristen replied, pointing down the corridor in the opposite direction. ‘He’s in there with his father. And yes, he called for lunch from Quaff’s and they delivered it within half an hour.’

  ‘All the same, the prognosis is pretty clear. She’s not well and won’t get any better. Asking questions and shouting isn’t going to change that.’

  ‘Come on, Mare. You’d be the same if you found out your mother was dying. Wouldn’t you move heaven and earth to try to save her?’

  I paused for a moment before answering. I’d seen Kristen’s mother pick her up after a late shift. Mrs Donovan always came with snacks for her daughter and told anyone who’d listen how she never wanted her precious child to have a car crash after a stressful shift. Kristen probably hadn’t spent most of her rebellious teenage years vacillating between wanting her mother dead and feeling guilty for having those awful thoughts.

  ‘If I found out my mum was dying, I’d want to spend as much time as I could with her instead of arguing with doctors,’ I said, not wanting to reveal much of myself, then stalked off to do my rounds for the afternoon.

  I took my time with it, too. I wasn’t in a hurry to meet the young Mr Nair, so I had a few lengthy chats with patients. Some of them found the muted sounds of the argument raging away disturbing – but not for the reasons I’d expected. ‘I have six children, doctor. I raised six children. But no one comes to see me. Mrs Nair raises one child and he comes halfway across the world to see her. Mine just live down the road,’ Mrs Shepard complained tearfully.

  ‘Some of us are lucky with our children,’ Mr Owens called from the other side of the ward.

  ‘And some of us are lucky with our parents,’ I put in firmly, just as a Code Blue buzzed through the ward. ‘Room 35!’ the nurse shouted as she rushed past me with the crash cart. I quickly caught up to her and we burst into the room together.

  ‘She was fine just a few seconds ago,’ the old woman’s granddaughter cried. ‘Then she started to shake!’

  I moved swiftly so that I could examine the elderly lady. It was Mrs Goldenblatt. She’d had a seizure – a massive stroke, judging by the blood pooling in the whites of her eyes. The fetid smell of faeces filled the air. I quickly felt for a pulse. It was there, but extremely weak.

  ‘What are her instructions?’ I asked, looking up at the nurse.

  ‘What do you mean, instructions?’ her granddaughter demanded.

  ‘To resuscitate or not to resuscitate.’

  ‘Ignore what she said. Do what you have to do to save her! Now!’

  ‘She’s left non-resuscitation instructions,’ the nurse confirmed, whipping Mrs Goldenblatt’s chart from the end of the bed and shoving it under my nose.

  ‘I don’t care about those instructions! Resuscitate her now!’

  I gently took the young woman’s hand and placed it in her grandmother’s. ‘You’re Jemima, aren’t you? Her youngest granddaughter? Your grandmother spoke often about you.’ I tried to speak as gently as I could. ‘Your grandmother left very clear instructions that she did not want to be resuscitated. Please. Come. Sit with her. She’s only got moments left.’

  The nurse and I sat with Jemima until Mrs Goldenblatt drew her last feeble breath and the calm of death took over her face. I don’t care what the medical books say about death being the cessation of brain function – it happens when the soul leaves the body. You can feel it happen as sure as you can feel a cold breeze on your face. Death is as real and tangible as birth.

  ‘Time of death, 4.45 pm, Tuesday, 12 January 2010,’ I called softly to the nurse. ‘We’ll go and inform the rest of your family,’ I told Jemima, who was sobbing into the crook of her grandmother’s neck.

  I was so focused on what I had to do next that I almost missed the tall man standing by the side of the door. It was only when he spoke that I noticed him.

  ‘I don’t care what my mother’s instructions are. You will resuscitate even if she is on her last breath,’ he said.

  ‘And you are?’ I asked in confusion.

  ‘Laksman Nair. Lucky.’

  The damn thing about international patients’ families was that they hung around all the time. They didn’t have local homes to go back to. It drove hospital staff nuts. Simon always complained that it was a pity that St Jude’s hadn’t installed a swimming pool, private gym and twenty-four-hour bar with à la carte room service when they’d opened their doors to international patients five years ago.

  ‘St Jude’s will be like those resort hospitals in Thailand. Five thousand for a boob job and ten thousand for your alcohol bill, thank you.’

  I didn’t argue with him, though I didn’t agree. It was different for Simon – he was a generalist, and most of his patients weren’t dying. In the palliative care ward it made perfect sense for families to want to hang around and I didn’t see a problem with making their time as pleasant as possible.

  But by the end of the first week of Lucky Nair’s stay in Melbourne, even I was praying for a bit of divine intervention in the shape of a pub that would get him out of the hospital even for an hour a day so that I could get some respite.

  ‘Her pain medication was five minutes late. She is dying, you know.’

  ‘She needs to be sat up more. Can we get fluffier pillows?’

  ‘I have had better food on airplanes! Who does the catering for this hospital?’

  The nurses who’d once swooned at his dark good looks and cultured accent took to hiding in the double-locked medical storeroom when they heard the soft tread of his expensive shoes on the vinyl in the corridor. ‘There’s no space left in here,’ Jodi said, shooing Kristen away one afternoon when three nurses had scooted in there. ‘Try the broom closet!’

  I couldn’t hide, of course. As the senior ward doctor, I was obliged to be available at the nurses’ station if I were not doing my rounds. But by the end of the week, I’d developed a migraine from gritting my teeth, dealing with young Mr Nair.

  ‘May I call you Lucky?’ I’d asked him politely early in our acquaintance.

  ‘Mr Nair will do,’ he’d cut back. ‘So what about her pain medication?’

  ‘Well, Mr Nair, you’ll find that your mother has a self-activated morphine dispenser that allows her to manage her own pain medication.’

  ‘What about the pillows?’

  ‘There are fifteen luxury Sheridan pillows in the top section of your mother’s wardrobe. Have you run out of those?’

  Lucky had shaken his head sheepishly.

  ‘Try those first, and if you still need more, I’ll get housekeeping to drop off a few extras.’

  ‘But what about catering? The food is atrocious!’ he’d fired back.

  ‘Mr Nair, the food at St Jude’s is supplied by some of the best caterers in Australia. Your mother receives nutritionally balanced meals that she can easily keep down. I know it is bland. I know it is boring. But plain food is best when you’ve just finished radiation therapy,’ I explained patiently.

  ‘Is that it?’ Lucky demanded.

  ‘If you have any special requests, I can have the chef come and speak to you.’

  ‘No, I wasn’t talking about the catering,’ Lucky said. ‘Is there nothing else other than radiation? Nothing more we could do for my mother?’

  ‘I saw you speaking with the oncologist and the radiation therapist. They are both world leaders in the treatment of myeloma. Did they speak to you about any experimental treatments?’

  ‘Yes, but they also said that my mother probably would not do well with them at her age!’

  ‘That is a fair point. Even young, fit people in the prime of their lives struggle with chemotherapy.’

  ‘Why is that?’ Lucky had asked, cocking his head to the side. In the dim light of the nurses station, I could understand why he had sent the nurses into a dither. He was a strikingly good-looking man with the most penetrating set of eyes I had ever seen.

  ‘Chemotherapy is really
a contradiction in terms,’ I explained. ‘We inject people with carcinogenic chemicals, hoping that those chemicals will kill the cancerous cells before the patient becomes too ill to continue with the treatment. Until better treatments are found, that’s our only hope.’

  ‘That’s it then. I am going to lose my mother,’ he’d sighed, looking down at his feet.

  ‘Mr Nair, losing a parent is one of the most difficult things anyone of any age ever has to confront. I am so sorry for what you are going through. We have a grief counselling service here at St Jude’s and I would be happy to arrange an appointment for you. There is also a chaplain service and I can organise a session with a psychologist if you wish.’

  Lucky looked up angrily. ‘Look, I don’t need your pre-prepared grief counselling spiel here. I need the truth!’

  ‘And you would have heard the truth from the oncologist yesterday. I cannot add anything more to that.’

  ‘So what kind of a doctor are you anyway?’ he demanded, looking down his nose at me.

  ‘I am a palliative care specialist,’ I replied. Somehow the derision in his voice had got under my skin. ‘I tend to people while they are dying. I make no promises other than to look after my patients until the very end.’

  ‘Have you lost a parent?’ Lucky demanded.

  I pressed my lips together. I wasn’t going to talk to him about my parents.

  I prepared for the twentieth of every month with a great deal of trepidation. In fact I even started taking a half-dose of Valium and cancelling any interfering appointments.

  ‘What do you mean you’re not having dinner with me? It’s Valentine’s Day, for God’s sake!’ Simon cried in an aggrieved tone down the line when I told him I was unavailable.

  ‘It’s too close to the twentieth of the month, remember?’

  ‘Oh . . . PMT. Well, you’ll have to make it up to me. Come with me to the Moonlight Cinema at the Botanic Gardens with Davo and his bird Susan. We’ll make a party of it.’

  I agreed reluctantly, promising myself I’d find an excuse not to go closer to the date. It was time to break off my relationship with Simon altogether. He was asking things of me I couldn’t give him. Not in a million years.