by JT Lawrence
“This isn’t happening,” Keke says, both hands on the door, eyes on the slack body she knows so well. Her own heart aches; her stomach is a mess of liquid nerves. “This isn’t happening!”
“Clear,” says the surgeon, and the other two lift their bloodied latex hands. There is a dull thump of a current and Marko’s body jumps. Keke’s ring vibrates. She pulls herself away from the small screen of reinforced glass and sits on the floor. Her whole body is focused on the ring on her finger.
“Come on, Marko,” she says to the ring.
But the ring doesn’t pulse again.
Chapter 39
Scentless
It could have been minutes or hours later when the steel gurney slams the double doors open and they wheel Marko’s body out of the operating room. Keke looks up with swollen eyes, as if waking from a dream. She doesn’t hurry to stand up. She’s in no rush to see Marko’s corpse. The three surgeons walk out, weary and blood-spattered, their white butcher gumboots squeaking on the hospital floor. The nurse pushing the bed looks at Keke in surprise.
“Oh,” she says. Even her shoes are covered in blue paper.
Keke thinks the young woman will chase her away but all she says is: “I’m not used to seeing people out here. Visitors, I mean.” Her subtle Zulu accent gives Keke a small measure of comfort. She steps closer to the body lying still on the bed. Takes his cold hand. Doesn’t understand why he still has an oxygen tube jammed down his throat.
The nurse’s shoulders relax. Her ID badge introduces her as ‘Nursing Intern: Themba’.
“Are you coming?”
“To the – ” starts Keke. She can’t say the word out loud. To the dead place? Mortuary.
“To ICU.”
“ICU?” says Keke.
“Oh!” says the nurse again. “You thought he had – ”
“His heart stopped beating,” says Keke.
“Yes.”
“It didn’t start again.”
“No. They tried to get it to work again. Put a stent in. But it didn’t work.”
“I know.”
“Look,” she says. “I’m just an intern. You should be downstairs. Talking to the Patient Resources person. They know the right things to say.”
“You’re saying the right things,” says Keke. “You’re taking him to Intensive Care. That means – ”
“He’s alive,” says the intern.
“What?”
The woman looks both ways down the corridor, as if waiting for someone to come along and yell at her.
“He’s alive,” the nurse says again. “Only just. I mean, we’re not sure if he’ll make it through the night.”
“He’s alive?” A loud sob gets stuck in Keke’s throat. Suddenly there are tears everywhere.
“Marko?” she says, looking at him properly for the first time since he was wheeled out.
“He’s…comatose,” says the intern.
Keke touches his face: as pale as milk. She lowers the sheet that was pulled up to his chin to reveal his battered chest: bruises leaking from under the waterproof whitecell dressing. She sobs again. There is a backpack on the bed, one that she doesn’t recognise, and a ziplock of personal items. The backpack is connected to Marko by a red tube.
“Come on,” says the nurse, pulling the sheet back up and pushing the gurney slowly, taking Keke with. “Let’s get to the ICU and get him plugged in. It looks like you could do with a cup of tea.”
Once the nurse has installed Marko in a private ICU ward, Keke is allowed to stay, as long as she ‘hambas’ if any doctors come around. Themba makes sure Marko has everything he needs: oxygen, painkillers, saline, catheter. She plugs the backpack into the wall, so it looks as though Marko is inadvertently plugged in, too. Keke wishes it could be that easy – to recharge someone back to life.
Then the nurse comes back, scrubs discarded, with a cup of tea for both of them. “Don’t tell anyone.” She winks.
The tea is in a heavy old mug with the Gordhan logo stamped on the side. It’s one of the heat-sensitive ones that show the temperature of the drink by changing colour. Hers is a gradient of orange. Themba’s is already fading to yellow. The tea is Earl Grey, which makes her think of Kirsten, before she changed her name back to Kate. A previous life: when things still made sense. Or at least, when things had appeared to make sense.
“What is it?” asks Keke, motioning at the backpack.
“It’s his new heart.”
Her brain scrambles to understand.
“What?”
“It’s not a permanent solution, obviously, but his heart was so badly damaged. The waiting list for donor hearts is miles long. It’s a synthetic heart – a Cardiocirc – basically, a machine that circulates his blood. And of course, we’re resping him. That’s when we inject robotic red blood cells to – ”
“I know what resping is. It’ll keep him alive till he can get a new heart?”
“Hopefully.”
“Hopefully?”
Themba sighs, scratches her leg. “You know I always hate it when the doctors say this, because it seems contradictory, but…his condition is critical, but stable.”
Keke swallows hard, watches Marko’s corpse-still face.
“Don’t think of the coma as a bad thing. It’s helping him. It’ll be very good if he makes it through the night. It’s the new heart we need to think about. You don’t know anyone in high-up places, do you?”
Keke blinks at the nurse. Themba is joking. Kind of.
The intern’s shift ends, and she leaves Keke by Marko’s side. To pass the time, Keke sorts through his personal effects. He didn’t have much on him when he was medevac-ed. His clothes had been cut off in the OR, his shoes were lost, but Keke holds his SnapTile – the device he used to call for help. She checks his ‘sent’ items and sees his 911-bump. Then she sees a message in his draft folder, written at around the same time as the emergency message but not yet sent. A bump addressed to her, but it never made it. That was when he had his heart attack, thinks Keke. 20:16. That is when his heart flew out the window. Keke opens the message. He had typed the beginning of a note to her, knowing he was dying, and all he had managed was one letter before he lost consciousness. “L”.
She doesn’t know what to think of it, and is too tired to try to figure it out. Instead, she gets up onto the hospital bed and squashes in, next to him. She’s scared to put an arm over the train tracks on his chest; scared she’ll hurt him, even though he’s deeply unconscious, so instead she nestles her face right into his neck and breathes him in. She can just get his scent from under the medical smells on his skin and body. This body that was so close to death a few hours earlier, and then that smell would have been gone forever. Scentless. She inhales as much of him as she can.
The sun rises slowly in the east, painting the hospital window gold.
“I’ve got you,” she says. “I’ve got you.”
Chapter 40
Orphan on a Train
Seth carries Silver’s and Sebongile’s suitcases, while Kate walks hand in hand with the twins, who are still in their pyjamas and dressing gowns. Two armed guards follow on a beat behind them. It’s just after five and the sun is just beginning to rise. Neither Seth nor Kate have had any sleep: Seth’s plane landed at 11pm, and once he got home, he and Kate stayed up all night discussing what was to be done. They’re too early for the isiPhapha, so they get a booth in the 24-hour tea shop with the vintage newspapers on the walls. Two extra-large double-caff flats, they order from the servbot, and red cappuccinos for Bongi and the kids. The guards shake off Seth’s offer of coffee like a bad idea.
Seth taps the tabletop as they wait in silence for the drinks to arrive. Kate’s eyes are rimmed with red. Blinking Pink. She wants to hold Seth’s hand, stop it from tapping little circles into her head, but she doesn’t. Sebongile seems miles away, perhaps worried about Mally, perhaps upset that she is being sent away. The twins notice the cake display box and rush over to it, breathing all o
ver the glass and fogging it up. Then, using their fingers, they draw pictures in the condensation. A star, a house. Usually Kate would make a fuss, tell them to stand away from the glass and wipe their handprints away with an apologetic glance at the manager. Today she just sits quietly and watches them play.
“Can we have cake?” asks Silver. Usually the answer would be ‘no’, but this time Kate looks at Seth, who shrugs.
“Only if you say the magic word.” Kate wants to smile at the kids, be warm and cheerful, but her face is tight with emotion and raw nerves.
The twins cheer with their good fortune: an early morning adventure and cake. The servbot is back, wanting to know how many blackchoc cupcakes to bring. Kate can’t stomach the idea. Her mouth is so dry she doesn’t think she’ll be able to swallow even a bite. Sebongile takes the kids to the bathroom to wash their hands. One of the guards goes with them. The other stays behind, scanning the empty platform.
“I keep changing my mind,” says Kate. “Is it really the best thing to do?”
“Yes,” says Seth. “It’ll be easier to keep Mally safe.”
She knows. They’ve said the same thing over and over, but the decision still nags at her. It’s not too late to change her mind. As if Seth can read her thoughts, he touches her arm and says: “She’ll be fine. We need to focus on Mally. He’s the one in trouble.”
“I’m worried that she’ll think we’re sending her away. An orphan on a train. Like those horrible stories in our history lessons at school.”
“It’s hardly the same thing. It’s sunny Durban, not World War Three. Besides, Silver absolutely loves Mom and Dad. She’ll have a great time. Think of all the ice cream they’ll feed her.”
“It’ll probably be good for her,” says Kate, more to convince herself than anything else, “to have all the attention, for once.”
Kate’s bio parents had jumped at the chance to have Silver and Bongi come to stay. They don’t understand why Mally isn’t coming, too, or why they were sending Silver escorted by a nanny and a bodyguard, but Kate said she’d explain later, in a couple of days, when they would come to collect her.
It’s the right decision. It’s the right thing to do, but still there is that magenta spiral turning in her brain, roiling in her gut. She drains her coffee and orders another one.
Half an hour later Kate is hugging Silver so hard the little girl complains. After such a big dose of caffeine, Kate’s synaesthesia fades; her senses are numbed. It’s like eating a rice cake, seeing the world in dry grayscale.
“Be good for your gran,” she says, passing Silver her cuddle-bunny and tapping her pink backpack. Seth tells Sebongile to make sure Silver eats some healthy food and brushes her teeth. Bongi nods. The unlikely trio of guard, nanny and girl-child step up onto the speed train and go into the first cabin where they find a window from which to wave. There is the sound on the tracks: an unclamping, and a pressure building. The bells chime their warning that the doors will be closing. Kate feels like jumping on and grabbing Silver, taking her home, but instead she stands frozen by grey heartache on the empty platform. Silver seems happy, excited, even, until the doors close and the train starts moving. Then her eyes grow into saucers and she starts crying, setting Mally off too, and then they’re both wailing their heads off. Seth pulls Mally towards him, holds the little boy’s shoulder while he reaches out for his sister and cries. Sebongile tries to comfort Silver, who is now hysterical, and trying to climb through the closed window. Kate covers her face with her hands, swallows her tears. She doesn’t want either of the kids to see how upset she is. The train rolls away slowly, slowly, then gathers momentum and shoots away with a hiss. Kate watches it turn into the size of a toy then disappear into the black cave of a tunnel. Seth gathers a sobbing Mally up into his arms and makes comforting sounds, wipes away his tears and spit. How did Seth learn to be such a good father, when he had no role model, growing up? She feels a rush of gratitude for him, and she joins the embrace. She can no longer hear the train.
Chapter 41
Flinty Stone
All morning, strange nurses drift in and out of the room to monitor Marko. Keke waits for one of them to ask her to leave, but they pretend she’s not there, even though she’s lying right next to him, eyes closed but unable to sleep. Their kindness renders her invisible. She has this idea that if she’s touching him, if she can keep him warm with her body heat, then he’ll stand a better chance of surviving. When his breakfast arrives, in the form of a creamy white IV bag, the muscles she didn’t even realise were tense finally relax. He has made it through the night.
Keke gets up, goes to the small white basin, and washes her hands with pink liquid soap. She rinses her face too, and gulps filtered water straight from the tap. She drinks and drinks until the flinty stone she has stuck in her throat softens a little. There’s no time wasted looking at her reflection in the mirror; she knows she looks like a wreck, and she doesn’t give a shit.
Despite giving her underarms a quick scrub too, Keke can smell yesterday’s panic. There’s no deodorant in sight, although she’s sure they’ll have downstairs at the pharmacy. She tries to keep her arms close to her body to limit the stink but knows she’s going to have to go home to pick up clean clothes. Her SnapTile had been buzzing all night with messages, probably from Kate. She should go and see her, find out if she’s okay, if Mally’s okay.
She should be in court today. She should be with Kate. She should be at home, in the shower. But how can she leave Marko? She sweeps his fringe out of his eyes: a maternal gesture. Probably her first, most likely her last. Her Tile buzzes again.
ZikZak > You have 2 come / court today.
Kex >> Um. RU fucking mad? Did U not get my message?
ZikZak > I know U want 2 be there with M but it’s the last day of Jduty.
Kex > I don’t care.
ZikZak >> Yes U do.
Kex > I need 2 be here.
ZikZak >> Marko’s in / coma. He doesn’t need you.
Kex > And U do?
ZikZak >> Lundy does.
Kex > I have nothing 4 Lundy.
ZikZak >> U know he’s innocent.
Kex > It’s just a theory.
ZikZak >> The prosecutor also just has a theory. One that will send him away 4 life.
Kex > I can’t help Lundy. Or Nash. I don’t know anything.
ZikZak >> You do. You just haven’t realised it yet.
Kex > I don’t know what U want from me.
ZikZak >> Yes U do. See U in court.
Chapter 42
Mom
“You can’t just come in here,” says the psychiatrist, still wearing slate. Grey face, grey clothes, and eyebrows as stern as any Kate has ever seen. “I’m busy with another patient. You need to make an appointment.”
Kate, panting, looks from the doctor to the patient, whom she hasn’t even realised is there. The man looks sheepish, as if Kate has caught him out in the middle of an embarrassing confession.
“It’s an emergency.” Kate gulps. “It’s my last chance.”
“Your last chance? At what?”
Kate takes the VXR gogs from the patient’s hands. “You can come back, right?” says Kate.
He nods at her.
“This is entirely inappropriate,” says Voges, arms crossed.
“Let me have this session and I’ll never bother you again.”
The doctor wavers, scratches her cheek. The man doesn’t talk, he just takes off the rest of his gear and hands it to Kate with downcast eyes.
“This is a professional practice,” says the woman. “That patient waited for over four months for this appointment. I’ll not stand for this.”
“It’ll never happen again.”
The woman looks doubtful.
“I promise you that it’ll never happen again. Can we get started? I don’t have much time and my family is in trouble.”
The doctor blinks at her, straightens her back, clears her throat. Her frown softens. Perhaps s
he’s trying to get back into caring mode. Kate pulls on the kit.
“Okay. Tell me why you’re here.”
“Something has happened,” says Kate.
“Would you like to talk about it?”
“No. But I need to get better. I need your help.”
The woman looks at her, irritated, clicks her stylus on her Tile.
“I need to speak to Marmalade,” she says.
Voges shakes her head.
“You know that immersion therapy doesn’t work like that. We don’t talk to…dead people.”
“My family,” says Kate. “I need to protect them. And I can’t protect them if I can’t think straight. I have to get rid of this…this fog that comes with my PTSD. These…slippery thoughts. I need to get over it. I can’t risk pulling a gun in my sleep or letting go of my son’s hand in a crowd.”
The therapist sucks at her bottom lip.
“You know that it’s not really James you’ll be talking to. It’ll be your brain’s version of him. What you know of him, what you expect of his responses.”
“Of course. Yes.”
She checks Kate’s gear then sits and smoothes down her hair, as if to unruffle her grey feathers.
“Alright,” she says, tapping a button on her holopad. “Let’s see what we can do.”
“Let’s start with a happy memory,” the psychiatrist says.
“I don’t have time for happy memories.”
“It will work better if we do it this way. We need to fool your brain into believing we’re back there and that things are good.”
“Honestly, I don’t have time. Can we just – ”
“Miss Lovell. Would you like this to work, or not?”
Kate takes a deep breath, counts to purple, and then lets it out.
“Back where?”
“What is your most poignant memory? A happy one.”