by H. J Golakai
‘Waiting still?’ Soft brown eyes in a tiny face looked a question up at her.
Vee nuzzled Ikenna. ‘Aay sugar, I know. But we got to wait like everybody else, okay? Just small more.’ A new fit of coughing erupted at her shoulder; the man was bringing up hacked-up pieces of lung. She hopped to her feet.
‘Or maybe,’ she muttered, hoisting the toddler onto her hip, ‘we ask some questions.’
The receptionist was serving the cocktail proffered by all gatekeepers: apathy and bullshit, garnished with feigned sympathy. She barely lifted her gaze to acknowledge Vee’s questions. ‘I’m really sorry ma’am, but the doctor can’t see you yet. As you can see, it’s gonna be a long wait for everyone. You just have to be patient.’
‘Patience covers an extra twenty minutes. It’s been over an hour,’ Vee said. ‘Come on, the patients here are this big.’ She gave Ikenna a playful swing towards the desk and he giggled, waving his arms. ‘How much time can it take to look one over and prescribe a cough syrup?’
The girl pursed her lips. ‘Obviously, you’re not his mother.’
Vee bristled. ‘Not his m– excuse me? Whatchu tryin’ to say, that I–’ The receptionist crossed her arms and popped a hip, prepared for showdown. Vee took one look around the crowded room and sucked in the storm. One stupid move and she’d be back on the butt of the line. TB Hero would be the least of her worries; the kid on the end was covered in a rash and throwing up orange chunks.
‘Pardon me,’ she sugared, starting again. ‘Please, okay, I really have to get to work. Can you check how much longer it’ll be? I’d really appreciate it.’
The receptionist sighed. ‘What name is it under?’ she asked, flipping through the appointment book.
Vee supplied Ikenna’s name and appointment time. ‘I’m his godmother. It’s under his mother’s name, Connie Ade–’
‘I see it, but there’s nothing I can do.’ The girl met her eyes and softened. ‘Look, it usually isn’t this crazy, but one of our paediatricians doesn’t seem to be coming in today. Ten, fifteen more minutes, max. I’ll make sure you’re in the next batch called.’
Vee thanked her and turned away, then remembered her prescription. ‘Where can I find a pharmacy in the building?’
The receptionist grimaced. ‘Sorry man, there’s no pharmacy on this floor. Used to be, but everything’s been shuffled because of the renovations. Ground floor, west wing, oncology. Bit of a walk.’
Cursing under her breath, Vee left her cell number and set off.
There was trying too hard, and there was just right. The Wellness Institute was clearly aiming for a healthy mixture of both. It was clinically chic, if there was such a thing, but not so self-important as to have ditched the conventional hospital feel, which, gory or not, lent a weird kind of comfort. It was however, New Age-y enough to have opted for old parlance like ‘institution’, which did no harm when paired with taglines like ‘a beacon of hope in health care’ and all its other cutting-edge frills. Even under renovation, the place looked and felt good. The tastefully carpeted corridors and pastel waiting lounges were comfortable distractions from the construction work underway. Unsightly scaffolding and noise from an active building site were unwelcome additions to the muted plushness of the interior, but the WI had collared brisk business and was handling it well.
Vee didn’t ask for much from hospitals. They were like jails and children’s birthday parties – if you got out alive, count yourself lucky. Having spent most of her life in places where access to a proper doctor was a raffle win for most, hanging on to high expectations didn’t feel right. Clean bed, capable staff, clear diagnosis; that would do her. But here … here you got that and a gushing fountain of more. She felt ashamed for surreptitiously eyeing the fresh paint and smiling staff, comparing them to the poky clinic in Kenilworth that would certainly never see her face or debit card ever again. Her last GP had been pleasant enough. Well, until her problems overwhelmed them both and threatened to reveal his ignorance in more specialised matters, which had resulted in a hurried referral. She was glad of it. The WI was hot property – if they didn’t have someone who could fix her, nowhere would. Their bill was bound to be piping hot, too. The key was remembering that her health was important and worth paying for to preserve. She would keep singing that refrain and watch in mute dismay as the invoices filled up her postbox.
Her cell phone tinkled.
‘Where the hell are you?’ Chari hissed in her ear. Vee held the Nokia away to check the number. Of course: Charisma Mapondera, office busybody, using an office landline snoop. The woman would rather risk being overheard by half the staff than spend a cent of her own airtime calling in a more private spot. ‘It’s almost eleven. She’s been stalking you all morning.’
‘Uh. I’m running a little late,’ Vee said. Portia Kruger, editor-in-chief and omnipotent ‘She’ could grind her bones to dust later – a task she always took on with rabid glee. ‘You’re supposed to be covering for me. I didn’t know there’d be all this rigmarole. This place is more like a new nightclub than a hospital. Aaaay Lawd.’ Ikenna’s body clock was chiming his next nap session and from the lolling of his head, he wouldn’t hold out for much longer. She relaxed her grip on him, forcing him to stay awake by clinging on to her.
‘… know exactly how she can be. You don’t even sound like you’re at a doctor’s appointment. Oh my God. You’re not at a doctor’s appointment, are you, you traitor! You’re at a job interview. You’re packing your bags to work for the Mail & Guardian and leaving the rest of us in this dust bowl. Don’t even deny it.’
‘You got me. In one morning, I’m taking a three-year-old to his check-up, hustling to mine …’ Vee mentally amended the second to ‘postponing mine indefinitely’, since something had to give or she’d be here until lunchtime. At the thought of another appointment missed, through no fault of hers, relief coursed through her. Guilt hunted relief down and ate it. Was she really trying or simply going through the motions? She did want to know what was wrong with her, dammit – she was pursuing every avenue and life kept getting in the way. ‘Then I’m rushing home to throw on my power suit and speeding to town to knock out a brilliant interview at the M&G, all before twelve.’
Chari giggled. ‘Okay, okay, you’re at a doctor’s office full of whinging kids, your life is sad and you don’t need atto from me.’ Vee had no doubt that Charisma was idling behind her desk, untroubled as she used her phone and pilfered snacks from her drawer. Chari hated anyone who was immersed in their own lives, leaving her smack alone in the middle of hers. Vee could hear her cogs turning, churning out ways to snoop. ‘How come you have to take him, anyway? Why can’t his mother do it? You do know you’ve got next to zero sick leave days left. And why are you at the doctor’s so often these days? I know you’re not preggers … you’ve actually lost weight. Your ass is turning white.’
Vee lowered Ikenna to the floor. He latched onto her leg and began a half-hearted whimper. ‘Chari, I already told you: she’s tied up.’ Vee could only imagine what her best friend was up to her eyeballs in. New stock arrivals turned her into a monster, knee-deep in merchandise for her boutique and hollering at her staff. Connie Adebayo put nothing before her child, except on days she could happily prioritise being a businesswoman after bribing his loving godmother with discount clothing. ‘Don’t worry about me, I’m just … running some tests. Routine.’
‘Isn’t that just like these modern mothers? Inconsiderate. Always finding ways to foist their kids and their needs on single friends. Exactly what my cousin did! She wants to be here for the 2010 World Cup next year, right, so she packed up with her kids, left Harare and pitched up one clear blue–’
‘Chari, I’ll call you back,’ Vee lied, and hung up.
Where the hell, she wondered, striding up to the nearest enquiries desk. The woman on a call behind the counter stalled Vee’s question with a brusque ‘one-minute’ finger before she wrapped up and supplied directions to the makeshift pharmacy.
Vee rounded the next corridor and ran into an impossibly long line. Please Lord, don’t let that be the pharmacy.
It was the pharmacy.
Vee swore under her breath. The line was moving fast, but not fast enough. Close to three years in South Africa and their policy on lines, queues they called them, was still an amusingly annoying mystery. Everyone patiently waiting their turn, smiling completely inane and unnecessary smiles at one another as if in agreement about the absurdity of the wait, admiring the ceiling, taking ever-so mincing, obedient steps closer to their big moment. With the exception of a passport office, nonsense like this would cause a bust-up in West Africa. The hustle and flow of her kinfolk was as chaotic and yet as organised as a thumping bloodstream. Everybody got what they were after, some jostling and hackles raised, no mental gymnastics. This was asking too much, even for a Monday.
The bright, messy collage of bulletins on the board nearest to the pharmacy caught her eye. Vee quit the line and wandered over, keeping Ikenna, alert and at heel, in sight. In the years to come she would think back to that moment, scouring her memory for a reason, a jolt or inkling that had drawn her over, and would never be able to pinpoint one. What had made her move out of line and what would have happened if she’d stayed put. No reasons besides boredom and impatience ever presented themselves.
Vee scanned the wall-mounted board, one eye on the line (five more people to go, almost there). There was a farewell announcement – a much-loved specialist moving to greener pastures, good luck in California! – two postings for research nurses and a notice from admin apologising for any inconvenience caused by parking restrictions during the construction phase. The left section of the board dedicated itself to interesting times, chronicling through a splatter of photographs the happy moments between patients and the staff.
One snapshot stopped her mid-turn, pulled her in with such authority it felt as though it reached out with one hand and tilted her chin in its direction, then pressed pause on her entire day with the other. Vee froze. She blinked until her eyes started to water. The photo was still there. Her hand went up of its own free will and her fingertips traced its borders, confirming it was real. Not all of what she saw these days was.
Before her was an image of a birthday celebration in a hospital room.
A bunch of kids and two nurses, one middle-aged and the other dew-fresh, a huddle of grins around a huge cake propped on the lap of a bald, prepubescent boy. A few of the other children were bald too, but unlike the boy in the middle, they wore bandanas or caps. A girl stood near the boy’s elbow, at the edge of the photo but somehow in the middle of it, as central as the boy himself. Her smile and stance were uncertain compared to the other kids, like she knew herself an outsider here – her hair too full and glossy, her complexion too rosy. As the girl crouched to fit into the frame, her hand rested on the boy’s arm, fingers curled around his bony shoulder as if he were a reservoir of strength she hungrily drew on. Even without the knitted red hat and the knife of time to carve away the baby cheeks, the girl’s face was unmistakable. An animal groan made Vee start and look around in surprise, until she realised the sound came from her own throat. A couple nearby looked up from their conversation and squinted in her direction.
‘Teelinglingling. Teeleeeelingling,’ sang Ikenna, tugging on her jeans. Dazed, Vee looked down as if she’d never seen him before in her life. It took a moment to sink in that he was mimicking a ringing cell phone. Hands shaking, she fished the Nokia out of her handbag.
‘Miss Va … um, Viona … Vaija … uh, Miss Johnson,’ spoke a hesitant voice. ‘Tamsin here, the receptionist from upstairs. Dr Kingsley’s almost done with the last patient, so he’ll see you in ten minutes. That okay?’
‘Yes, thank you,’ Vee croaked. ‘On my way.’
Her face was hot, melting, sliding off, the combo of plastic and glass of her phone icy against her skin. This Air Girl, this Smiling Everywhere Girl, she lived here, inside this picture, in this hospital. She’d been inside this building at one point. There was no mistaking it, no question about that smile. The girl in the photograph was the younger mould of the tormentor, but nonetheless it was her. The one Vee kept seeing when there was nothing to see. This face was the ambassador of last week’s jogging meltdown and all the other unwelcome sightings. The force in the ominous undertow she sometimes felt when sitting alone, of being watched, hovered over, the one that pricked up tiny anthills on her skin.
Vee wiped a clammy slick of moisture off her forehead. Anxiety rolled, fogging her vision.
Not here. Not now.
God no no no no no no no …
2
Dr Ian Fourie lingered outside the front entrance of the Wellness Institute and sucked in the fresh morning air, enjoying a rare opportunity for introspection before his day began. He stood at his car, looking over the signs of progress. The place was almost finished. Almost … but not quite. Active building sites were a blight, no matter how contained and low-key the forces involved tried to keep them. And builders never finished on schedule, ever. They were meant to have wrapped up in May, when winter kicked in, yet here they were still, staring down the barrel of October in a few weeks. Mercifully, most of it was confined to the back of the grounds, but the thought of people equating a chaotic exterior to shoddy service within made him sour.
He couldn’t think of the WI as up and running until all the finishing touches were complete. Ian liked things done. Finality and full stops were reason to relax. Right now, he couldn’t give in to any excitement bubbling under. It was unlucky to celebrate prematurely, or worse, to overstate one’s abilities to complete a task and then fall sadly and pathetically short of it. A lasting stain of my pessimistic mother, he chided himself.
As if to taunt him, the wind picked up. Dust rose and the protective sheeting draped over the concrete lip of the roof billowed above his head. Ian stepped back and coughed, flicking dust off his coat. He looked up at the ledge above the double doors of the main entrance, where the institute’s sign was being erected at last. The temporary wooden slats supporting the lettering groaned and shifted in the wind, sending more debris crumbling to the ground.
‘What the–’ He peered closer and blinked, lost for words. They were courting a lawsuit if a plank got loose and brained a prospective client on his or her way in.
Ian scanned the perimeter tape demarcating the edge of the site, spotted a cluster of builders under a jacaranda at the edge of the car park and headed towards them. ‘Who’s in charge here? You? Okay, come with me, please … yes, you, come with me.’ He drew the puzzled headman back to the entrance and jabbed a finger. ‘Do you see that? Are you and your men responsible for erecting this sign?’
‘Ja, sure.’ The man frowned. ‘But right now’s our tea break.’
‘Naturally. And in the meantime, this establishment poses a danger to all when in fact it’s our duty to heal and protect. Do you not see the irony in that?’
The headman’s expression replied an unequivocal no, he did not. ‘Look man, no worries. Ons sal dit later regmaak. Hoekom, is jy die hoof van die hospitaal?’ He looked Ian up and down, waiting for a reply, then repeated, slowly, as if speaking to a child, ‘I said, we’ll fix it later. Why, are you the head of the hospital?’ His lip curled as he flicked his eyes over Ian’s cashmere coat and BMW keys. ‘Don’t you speak Afrikaans, man?’
Ian’s keys dug into his fist, heat flooding his face. He wanted to scream at this lout that he practically ran the cardiology unit and was one of the finest specialists on the payroll. ‘Yes, I do, of course,’ he snarled. ‘But right now, that’s not the primary concern.’
The headman took a pointed sip from a steaming mug and flicked his eyes over the sign again. ‘Ja, sorry, sir. We’re working as fast as we can. We’ll drop everything and get that fixed for you right away.’ He walked back to his circle of brethren without a backward glance, and Ian watched them make a big show of amusement as the headman overplayed their encounter.
Ian grabbed his belongings from the BMW’s front seat, glowering. He hadn’t meant to grandstand like an ass, but appearances mattered. The WI couldn’t afford to be a reminder of the establishment it used to be. The clientele they wooed wanted excellent care as much as a touch of grandeur. Under no circumstances could anything mar the facility’s debut, not if he had anything to do with it. All the hours of ass-kissing and elbow-greasing had to even out to a substantial payoff, if his efforts hadn’t been a waste.
Ian shut the door of the BMW X5, savouring its meaty sound. That was the sound of a good car as far as he was concerned, that thick, coming-together clunk of expensive doors. The car noises he remembered from his childhood were overly loud and metallic, a death rattle of abused doors and engines on the brink of collapse. Both of his daughters, conscientious as they were, thought the car a waste of money and murder on the environment, but their distinct lack of complaints at the BMW’s comfort and legroom on long trips didn’t escape his notice. His son was a simpler soul, bless him; grabbed the wheel at every available chance.
Ian strode up the path and through the automatic double doors, hoping to avoid any more encounters of the crass kind. Lingering and mingling was not on his agenda today.
‘Good morning, Dr Fourie.’
He turned towards the deep voice. Behind the security desk a tall, dark-skinned man in uniform rose to his feet, his eyes warm. Patriotic as Ian was, he secretly believed that the best service in town was almost invariably provided by foreigners, his wife excluded. Etienne Matongo, a Congolese getting by in a job he wouldn’t be doing in better times in his own country, always had a cheerful greeting every morning he was on duty. Matongo and the WI went way back. He’d stayed dedicated to the establishment from its infancy to the bloom it now enjoyed, and had earned the deputy of security and surveillance title. Ian spared the few minutes it took to exchange pleasantries about the weather and their families, and then hustled for the lift to the second floor before anyone else cornered him. He ducked past his personal assistant and the assault of morning messages, emails and appointments he knew she had waiting for him and snuck into his office. He hoped, in vain really, that none of the other PAs had seen him. The first moments of peace in the mornings were worth killing for.