by M J Dees
“Come on,” Mariana pleaded, breaking Teresa’s trance. “The water will cool you down.”
Teresa waved to Mariana, agreeing, and then looked back to the striped cuckoo, but it had already gone.
The water at first seemed very cold but once she was inside letting the cool waves lap over her back Teresa felt very good. She began to notice how beautiful the mountains were with their blanket of green trees. It seemed like there were no clouds in the sky but when Teresa looked about, she noticed some small fluffy ones here and there. Teresa thought that Annabel would love the beach. She had taken her to the Isle of Wight one summer, but the water was cold, and the sun didn’t seem to warm her. Not like in Brazil.
The tide was a long way out, and there was a large band of flat wet sand that met the dry sand about twenty metres from the kiosks that were stationed every hundred metres or so as far as the eye could see and served cold drinks, hot food and ice cream.
As Teresa soaked in the salty ocean, she watched a range of plastic detritus float by. Bottles, cups, bags, straws. More stranded rubbish indicated the high tide mark. Cigarettes, bottles and discarded polystyrene food trays littered the area Teresa and Mariana had placed their seats and towels, though it was cleaner than the high tide mark.
Teresa stared at the distant mountains, spared from the deforestation that dispensed with nearly all the Atlantic forest, She imagined what the country must have looked like to the colonists when all the land was covered in these beautiful shades of dark green, right up to the beach. What must life have been like for the Tupi who lived in these forests before the Europeans arrived with their influenza and smallpox?
“What a mess we have made.” Teresa thought aloud.
“That’s not one of ours,” Mariana replied, watching an empty can of coke float away.
“Yes, I know.”
The sea and beach were always filthy after New Year and Carnival. Thinking about the pre-lent celebration reminded Teresa of the date. It would have been her wedding anniversary had she still been married.
Chapter Sixteen - Unlucky for some - 7th February 2015
The shower felt good, and Teresa’s skin tingled the way it did when she had failed to apply enough sunscreen. Still, it felt nice under her clean, albeit tight, clothes and she went to the kitchen with the hunger that always followed a day on the beach.
“You caught the sun,” said Mariana’s mum as soon as she laid eyes on Teresa’s skin which was growing pinker by the minute.
It was already getting dark by the time Teresa and Mariana waved goodbye to her mother and headed off back towards São Paulo. The streets were still full of people coming back from the beach in their swimming costumes.
Teresa always found it amusing that the international media always chose to film shots of beautiful women on Copacabana for their news segments. She thought it would be much more interesting if they came down to the coast south of São Paulo and filmed all the saggy bellies on the sunburnt middle-aged uglies.
The motorway wasn’t too busy, and both Mariana and Teresa felt they’d made the right decision to go back early.
There was a sudden bang followed by the shattering of glass. Teresa held her face and, without intending to, screamed.
“Christ!” Mariana accelerated.
Teresa felt a dull throb in her head; she seemed to be clutching a handful of sand against her face, wind rushed through the window. Liquid began to trickle down Teresa’s nose.
Teresa tried to piece reality back together. Something must have entered the window and struck her on the forehead.
“Let me see,” Mariana ordered as she drove at breakneck speed.
Teresa turned toward Mariana and lifted her hand from her face to get her opinion.
“OK,” Mariana said decisively.
“There’s a police checkpoint up here. We’ll stop there and ask the cops where the nearest A&E is.”
Teresa placed her glass-filled palm back onto her bleeding forehead.
“What happened?” she shouted to Mariana over the roar of the wind rushing through the open window. Shattered glass sat in Teresa’s lap.
“Criminals,” Mariana shouted back. “They wanted to rob us.”
Teresa had heard stories of people dropping bricks onto cars from overpasses, only to rob the driver stopped to examine the damage.
Mariana screeched to a halt at the police checkpoint. Teresa knew Mariana was explaining something to the police officer, but her head was too much of a fuzz to comprehend.
The police leapt into his car, turned on the lights and siren before pulling into the centre of the road, stopping all the traffic. Another police officer removed the barrier across the central reservation, and Mariana followed the speeding police car onto the opposite carriageway in the direction from which they had just come.
They hadn’t followed the policeman for long when he pulled off the motorway and onto a side road and pulled up in front of a public medical centre.
Mariana thanked the police officer and parked then rushed round to the passenger side to help Teresa out of the car.
“You OK?” Mariana asked, cringing at the stupidity of the question.
Teresa did her best to nod without rubbing her handful of glass further into her face.
Bored-looking individuals, clutching various parts of their anatomy with bits of cloth, filled the waiting room, into which Mariana led her. People, who had stood on broken bottles on the beach, were a very popular feature of accident and emergency rooms at this time of year, and, as a result, there were people hopping in one direction or another.
Teresa’s sudden appearance seemed to provide a significant source of entertainment for the injured multitude who turned their gaze from the television hanging on the wall, which they had been watching for hours, and redirected it towards Teresa as Mariana led her over to the nurses’ station.
Nurses directed Teresa to sit then used water to wash as much blood and glass as possible away from her eyes.
Comments from the nurses like “Oh that’s a big one” and “That’ll scar” did nothing to reassure Teresa.
.
Mariana fished through Teresa’s handbag for her medical card.
Her face washed, Teresa was now able to open her eyes. She held one hand on the wound, although now she was pushing a surgical dressing against her forehead rather than a handful of glass.
Before long, the nurses led Teresa through to a treatment room where the doctor reminded Teresa of a famous black American actor. The doctor looked as if either he had been taking his medication or he hadn’t slept for a week or both.
“What have we got here?” he asked removing the dressing. “My, it does look like you’ve been in the wars, doesn’t it? You’ll need a few stitches I’m afraid.”
He took care to make sure the wound was free of glass and dirt.
“Will I have a scar?” Teresa asked.
The doctor looked at the wound and thought for a moment.
“It’s quite a big one. I’ll do my best, but there is quite a significant chance you will end up with a scar I’m afraid.”
Teresa sighed.
“Have you got any bio oil?” the Doctor asked.
“Bio-oil?”
“Yes, when the stitches come out you should rub bio oil on twice a day. It’ll help reduce the scarring.”
“Thank you,” said Teresa, but she was still very much disappointed she would have a scar at all. The size of it seemed secondary.
“Now this might hurt just a little bit.” said the doctor as he started injecting a local anaesthetic into the skin along the wound.
Teresa watched him prepare his needle and thread on a small silver tray. She took a deep breath as he ready to sew her skin back together.
“Here you are,” said Mariana, bursting into the room. “Well, that’s all the paperwork sorted.” She gave a big smile as she saw the doctor and sat on the other side of Teresa.
“Hello, I’m Mariana,” she said to t
he doctor
The doctor looked at Mariana between stitches and smiled.
“Pleased to meet you, Mariana,” he said pushing the needle through Teresa’s flesh and pulling the thread.
“It must be absorbing being a doctor.” Mariana continued.
Teresa would have rolled her eyes at Mariana’s shameless attempt to flirt were it not for the fact that she considered any movement of eyebrow or forehead at this time to be inadvisable, so she kept her reproach to herself.
“It has its moments.” smiled the doctor, inserting a new stitch.
“Do you live in Praia Grande?” asked Mariana.
“I do, yes.”
“Married?”
“No.”
“Attached?”
He smiled again.
“Nope.”
Mariana’s grin was as wide as the Cheshire Cat’s.
Teresa could not believe her friend was trying to get off with the person sewing up her forehead. There must be some etiquette in situations like these.
“And what do you do Mariana?” asked the doctor.
“I’m a teaching assistant” Mariana replied.
“Teaching. A caring profession.”
Teresa couldn’t believe it. Now the doctor was flirting with Mariana.
“There you go,” he said, snipping the last thread. “The nurse here will apply a dressing. When you’ve finished here, come to my office.”
He took off his gloves as he walked to the door with what Teresa perceived was a definite limp.
“We won’t be long,” said Mariana
Teresa wished she could throw up, but she felt trapped in Mariana’s blind date.
Mariana applied makeup while the nurse applied Teresa’s dressing and, as soon as the latter had finished, Mariana whisked her off to see the doctor.
“Careful,” Teresa complained. Being dragged along the corridor.
“Sorry,” said Mariana who didn’t slacken her pace.
Mariana made them hover in the grim corridor outside the doctor’s room until he had finished with a patient, a dirty looking old man in a vest hopping on one leg and with a fresh white bandage around the other.
“Come in,” said the doctor as Mariana sat down and Teresa took the seat next to her. “Well there doesn’t seem to be anything broken,” he said, slipping an x-ray of Teresa’s head onto a lightbox on the wall.
Teresa marvelled at the image of the inside of her head. Technology never ceased to amaze Teresa.
“We’ll just give you a shot of antibiotics now and a course to take at home just to make sure there’s no infection. If you do have any problems, here’s my card.”
In an instant, Mariana took the card leaving Teresa wondering to whom the doctor had been talking.
“Now if you’d like just to step behind this screen.”
The doctor limped to the back of the room, pulled back a screen and waited for Teresa who still sat motionless in her chair.
“Who? Me?” Teresa said, at last, awakening from her daze.
“Of course you silly,” scolded Mariana. “You didn’t think he was inviting me behind the screen did you?” she leant over and whispered in Teresa’s ear. “Of course I wouldn’t mind if he did”.
Teresa ignored her and did what the doctor had told her to do.
“Now I’m going to need to give you an injection in your buttock,” he informed her. “So I’m going to need you to lift up your skirt at the back for me. Unless of course, you’d like me to call a female nurse to give you the injection.”
Teresa shook her head to indicate that would not be necessary and lifted her skirt thanking the heavens that she’d put on a decent pair of knickers today and not the industrial strength enormous brown pants she wore during her periods.
The doctor took the largest needle Teresa had ever seen and filled it with an antibiotic. The sight of the needle left Teresa feeling a little faint, and she steadied herself by holding onto the back of a chair.
“Now you might feel a little prick,” he said, but Teresa wasn’t in the mood for making a joke out of it and anyway before she could prepare a decent response, he had already pushed the needle into her buttock.
“I’ll give you a letter,” the doctor said returning to his desk. “So you won’t have to work for a couple of days and a prescription for some antibiotics. Any problems, give me a call.”
“I will,” said Mariana.
Teresa and Mariana sat in the car, contemplating the rest of the journey to São Paulo.
“He was nice wasn’t he,” Mariana commented.
Teresa was about to raise her eyebrows then thought better of it.
“He was meant to be looking after me,” Teresa complained.
“And?”
“And you’re trying to get off with him all the time. It’s so embarrassing.”
Mariana laughed.
“Sorry about that. But you’ve got to seise the moment haven’t you?”
Teresa didn’t think she’d ever seised the moment. Moments seized her.
Mariana started the car, pulled out of the car park and rejoined the motorway toward São Paulo.
“You’re still going to stay at mine tonight right?” said Mariana. “There’s a 24-hour pharmacy nearby where we can get your drugs. No drinking for a while eh?”
What was Mariana suggesting? Did she think she had a drinking problem? Teresa sat in silence.
“Don’t worry,” Mariana said after a while. “Everything’s going to be fine.”
Teresa snapped.
“It’s OK for you to say that. You’re going to marry the doctor and live in a big house and have lots of children and live happily ever after. I’m middle-aged with a scar on my forehead. Who’s going to marry me now?”
She began to cry.
“Look. Teresa. I’m…Jesus!”
Just then, a car wheel, lying in the middle of the motorway appeared in the headlights. There were cars in both lanes either side. There was not the time to swerve aside without rolling the car, so Mariana had no choice but grip the steering wheel as tight as she could and hope for the best.
Teresa thought that this was the end.
The car struck the wheel and leapt over it. Mariana struggled with the steering wheel, somehow managed to keep the vehicle on the road, and then steered it over to the hard shoulder where they sat breathing for a moment until, after a second or two Teresa began laughing aloud.
Mariana looked at her as if she had gone mad and then her mouth cracked into a smile, and she too started laughing.
“Phew,” said Mariana, at last, trying to catch her breath. “I tell you what. You’ve cheated death twice this evening. Do you still think you’re unlucky?”
Teresa thought about it.
“Oh my God,” she said. “Have you heard that phrase bad things always come in threes? We have to think of something else bad that has already happened otherwise a third bad thing will happen.”
“It’s not threes; it’s pairs. Bad things always come in pairs. So we’ve had our bad things now so we can relax.”
Once she had her breath back, Mariana set off again, and the rest of the journey was without incident.
They stopped at a 24-hour pharmacy where Teresa bought her antibiotics and then arrived at Mariana’s house that, to Teresa, seemed huge. Three bedrooms, two bathrooms and, what Teresa considered to be a beautiful kitchen, as expensive looking as Mariana’s mother’s but more trendy.
“How can you afford to live in a house like this?” Teresa asked.
“It belongs to my parents,” Mariana laughed. “When they moved to the coast I had it all to myself
It’s gone midnight,” said Mariana. “Let me show you to the spare bedroom.”
Teresa followed Mariana up a spiral staircase.
“Here’s the bathroom,” she said indicating a door on the left. “And this is your room.”
Mariana led Teresa into a spacious well-decorated bedroom with a large double bed covered with whit
e sheets, large pillows, and at least a dozen cushions. At one end of the room, a thin white curtain was riding a breeze that was entering through the half-open French windows.
“Oh no, I didn’t close the windows. I hope there are no mosquitoes.” Mariana rushed over to close them, and the curtains relaxed onto her.
“So there you are,” she said waving her arm towards the bed. “You’ll find fresh towels in the cupboard. Would you like some water?”
“Yes please.”
“I’ll go and get some. If you need anything in the night, I’ll be in the room at the end of the hall.”
While Mariana fetched some water, Teresa found a towel and went to the bathroom opposite for a shower. It was the first time she had seen her face in a mirror since the accident. She looked terrible. A large dressing covered almost half her forehead, and black rings circled her eyes. Teresa sighed. She turned on the shower and undressed. Blood on her dress.
Small pieces of glass dropped out of it and onto the floor. Teresa turned on the shower and stepped into the cold stream of water. More glass that had stuck to the sweat on her body now washed off and edged its way to the drain.
She soaked up the water for a while, taking care not to get her dressing wet then patted herself dry in case any glass somehow still clung to her.
When she returned to the bedroom, there was a jug of water and a glass on the bedside table, but Mariana was nowhere in sight.
Teresa climbed into bed; Mariana had already relocated the cushions to a white wicker sofa, which sat on the opposite side of the room.
The sheets were soft, and Teresa soon drifted into slumber.
A buzz which brushed her ear woke her.
Mosquito?
Knowing she could never sleep while the predator was tormenting her, she turned on the bedside lamp and began searching for her nemesis.
She caught a glimpse as it made a pass across the bed, but it wasn’t close enough or slow enough for capture or assassination.