by John Harris
I sat in the wheelchair.
Rick wheeled me through the main entrance to the reception to register and said that he’d wait outside while I went through the form-filling.
‘Koh Pha-Ngan?’ the nurse behind the counter read from my form. ‘Why you no go ho’pi’al there?’
‘I didn’t know there was one,’ I groaned.
‘Bes’ in sou’ Thailan’!’
‘Dave and his fucking guidebook,’ I muttered, ‘I’ll kill him.’
‘You no kill anyone, mis’er Ha’is, ha-ha, too si’.’
I spent the next hour inside a small disinfected room being probed with stainless steel. I had to provide a stool sample, which involved having a shit and scooping a piece up into a bottle using a little plastic spoon. Blood was taken too, and, unable to find a vein, the nurse decided to prick my finger with a scalpel. She squeezed the end and sliced, blood exploded onto her white smock, sweat poured down my face, voices became loud and I fainted very embarrassingly.
The doctor said that they wouldn’t be able to read the results of the tests until the next morning and, given my condition, suggested that I stay in one of the wards overnight for observation.
‘What do you want me to do?’ Rick asked when I told him the news.
‘Go. There’s no point in you hanging around here.’ He was suddenly distracted as a particularly beautiful nurse passed by. ‘Give it a rest,’ I said wearily. ‘There’s plenty of time for that.’
‘You’re only saying that because you’re staying.’
‘I’d swap positions with you right now if I could.’ We both stared as she bent over to retrieve a thermometer from a small boy’s mouth, revealing the tops of her smooth thighs. ‘No, you go,’ I said, tearing my eyes from the vision, ‘I’ll stay and suffer the consequences.’
Rick left, having chatted up most of the nurses, and I was checked into a spotlessly clean ward with ten beds in it, only two of which were occupied. One had an elegant looking Thai man in maroon silk pyjamas lying on top of it, reading a copy of National Geographic and smoking a cigar, coughing occasionally. ‘Like one?’ he asked, taking a packet off the side table and offering them to me as I was wheeled in.
‘No, I’m OK thank you.’
‘You can’t be OK, you wouldn’t be in here if you were.’ I didn’t quite know what to say. Not because of his abruptness but because of his perfect English. The nurse guided me to the opposite side of the room from Thai man, next to the only other occupied bed. No one was in the bed, but judging from the paraphernalia that spilled out of the drawers in the side cabinet: books, airmail letters etc., and from the pair of tie-dye trousers that were laid out on the bed, he was either a foreigner or a Westernised Thai.
I glanced at the clipboard hooked on to the bottom rail of the bed as I was wheeled past. Name: Phinopan, Tommy R. it read. I passed out again.
THREE
Since seeing the clipboard at the end of his bed earlier that afternoon, I had spent the whole day walking, or rather wheeling, around the hospital. Not because I was interested in three-storey white buildings, but because I wanted to think about what I was going to say to Toomy’s brother, if indeed it was him. I didn’t think that I had any real reason to be nervous or scared; after all, Tommy, as I’ve already said, is a popular name in Thailand, and it was even conceivable that there was another Tommy on the island with the same surname. But if it was the same Tommy, and he wasn’t in the north of the country, then why were the girls lying to us?
At first, to be doubly sure of not being seen, I’d asked the nurse if it would be possible to be relocated to another ward, saying that the sun coming through the windows hurt my eyes; a pretty feeble excuse but all I could think of on the spur of the moment. Predictably she dismissed it, and to change my mind showed me that the only alternative was a ward full of screaming Thai kids and their distraught mothers.
I wheeled around aimlessly trying to think what it all meant, occasionally passing by our room to see if the mysterious ‘Phinopan. Tommy R.’ was back in bed yet. I even thought about discharging myself immediately and heading back to Koh Pha-Ngan to warn Rick, but that seemed a bit over the top considering that I hadn’t ever clapped eyes on him yet.
I explored all three floors of the building before, on my ninth circuit, just as I came out of the door from Surgery/Radiography, I saw a man going into our room. He was on crutches and had splints on both legs, one arm was in a sling and, despite his badly scarred face and missing ear (just a hole), I recognised him instantly as the same man who had told me to get lost at the Back Yard Pub a whole year before.
I quickly wheeled backwards around the corner so that he wouldn’t see me, and watched him enter, my gaze immediately falling on his crutch-holding hand. If it was Tommy who Dave and I saw taking the beating, he would have a missing finger. ‘One, two, three, four... five,’ I counted, they were all there. So much for the left hand. Now the right.
Wheeling noiselessly down the corridor to our ward, I stopped by the door and watched as the nurse helped Tommy onto the bed. She said something in Thai and pointed at my bed, and I guessed that she was telling him that another guest from Koh Pha-Ngan was staying here.
‘Mis’er Ha’is,’ Tommy’s nurse said looking up, and pulled back the covers on my bed, ‘wha’ you doin’?’ With my head bowed, I let her come over and push me to the bed. ‘Get in bed an’ I bring you dinner. Wha’ you wan’?’
I patted my stomach and pulled a face, indicating that I still had the shits. If Tommy hadn’t recognised my face I didn’t want to tempt fate by letting him hear my voice. Empress Ning had once told me that all Westerners look the same to Thais, it’s only their voice and actions that tell them apart.
The nurse got the message and helped me into bed, informing us that the lights would be switched off soon, and that if I wanted to read or eat then I was to use the cord switch that operated the reading lamp above my head. ‘Mis’er Ha’is, why you no tal’ frien’ Koh Pha-Ngan?’ she asked, tucking in my sheets.
‘Tired,’ I croaked, rolling onto my side to face away from Tommy and praying that she would go away.
The nurse went out, and a moment later the lights went out. As silently as possible, I turned and watched in the darkness as Tommy, still holding the magazine in his left hand, leaned across and pulled on the lamp cord with the other. The lamp came on, bathing his stitch-scarred face and what was left of his right hand in light. He pulled the cord between thumb and palm, and my heart skipped a beat. All of his fingers were missing!
FOUR
The next morning I ambled, bleary-eyed from a sleepless night, into the doctor’s room and sat down next to his plastic skeleton.
‘Well Mister Harris,’ the doctor said, dropping his implements noisily into a kidney tray, ‘you were wrong and I was right.’ He turned and said something to the nurse, who rummaged through a box-f le on his desk. The previous day I had argued with the doctor, saying that my symptoms were the exact same ones as malaria, and that he should look for those signs when examining me. He had disagreed, his counter-argument being that no malaria existed in Thailand, a suggestion I found a bit hard to swallow considering the number of travellers taking malaria tablets on the recommendation of their own doctors.
‘Ah-ha, here we are.’ He took the file from the nurse and laid it out on his desk, pinching his nose in thought. Behind him, in the frosted glass that separated his surgery from the corridor, a kid was standing on a chair with his face pressed against the glass. The nurse saw him and went outside, pulling the chair from under his feet so that the image dropped like a stone. There was the sound of a motherly slap followed by crying, before the nurse returned and stood obediently beside the doctor.
‘Yes, it looks like dengue fever, Mr Harris,’ the doctor continued. ‘It’s certainly not malaria; all of the tests show no signs of that and they show no signs of anything else.’ He went on to explain how dengue fever, being some kind of virus, didn’t show up on the kind of
blood and stool tests that he’d carried out, and that because it was a virus there was nothing I could do but sweat it out. He also informed me that the disease’s common name was break-bone fever, because of the amount of pain suffered by each victim in the joints.
‘As I explained yesterday,’ he went on, ‘there has been an outbreak of the disease in southern Thailand, especially among the islands of Koh Samui, Koh Tao and, of course, Koh Pha-Ngan.’ He sat back. ‘There’s very little we can do about it, I’m afraid. Even the usual precautions of covering up at night and sleeping under a net are useless because this little fellow bites during the daytime.’
I rubbed my aching temples. ‘Is there nothing you can give me?’
‘Painkillers?’ He closed the file, indicating the end of the consultation. ‘You can expect the symptoms to last about a week before your body fights the virus off. A week, ten days, not more.’
Defeated, I took a prescription and followed the nurse out into the corridor, and was directed towards a hole in the wall where drugs were administered. I should have been over the moon at the news but instead felt curiously let down, as though my suffering had been for nothing. All this pain and just for a virus, not even a real disease.
A bottle of painkillers was duly issued. I turned to go back to the ward and was stopped in my tracks by an eerily familiar smell. I shivered and the hairs on the back of my neck stood up.
Smells, like music, remind one of places and people in a way that photos or video footage never can. I don’t know the psychology or physiology, or whatever, behind the phenomenon, but a smell can provide instant recognition of a place and a point in time, as well as a person. Especially when she’s sprayed half a bottle of Chanel No. 5 (Khao San Road variety) all over her body.
Toomy! it said to me, as the sweet perfume hit my nostrils and stopped me from going any further, like I’d walked into a wall. For a moment I wasn’t sure what to do, it was as though the smell of perfume was choking me. Only Toomy used so much of it, sometimes getting through a bottle a week, spraying on so much that even on the jungle path, wind and all, it was possible to tell if she had walked to or from the house in the previous ten minutes.
Cautiously I walked down the corridor to our ward and, with my back and both palms flat against the cold painted wall, shuffled sideways towards the door, allowing one eye to peep around the door frame. Toomy was sitting on the edge of the bed, while Tommy cowered against the wall under a stream of what appeared, from Ta’s expressions anyway, to be Thai expletives. She wagged her finger again and again. Poor Tommy didn’t have a chance. Every time Ta bollocked him and waited for a reply, he just sank further into the pillow trying to get away from her.
‘Da, Da!’ she screamed, pointing at my bed, picking up my clipboard and stabbing it with her finger before throwing it back down and continuing the abuse. Even Toomy seemed a little alarmed at Ta’s noise level and looked about the room nervously, holding up an apologetic hand to the old man in the bed opposite.
Sliding my cheek back across the door frame, I closed my eyes and sighed. The painkiller I’d taken outside the pharmacy was beginning to work but it did nothing to make me feel better now. I was distracted for a second or two as a cockroach came scurrying along, then stopped outside the room. Its body-length antennae waved in the air before it shot off into a ventilation shaft, probably to escape the nauseating perfume. Just where I want to go, I thought and peeped into the room again.
Toomy was now standing, and Ta had picked up her handbag and was wagging what looked like a final warning to Tommy. In her hand she held a British passport! I blinked and looked into the corridor, unable at first to believe what I’d seen, before looking back into the room.
Ta put the passport into her bag and they turned to leave the room. I panicked, first turning one way then the other, before turning back again and walking quickly away. Stupidly I went in the direction of the exit, which meant that I had to do a full circuit of the floor to avoid being spotted before coming back to the room. When I got back to the ward, Tommy was sitting alone, looking pensively at my bed as though staring into the tomb of an ancient king and trying to visualise a lost civilisation.
At first he didn’t see me walk in, and it wasn’t until the old man said, ‘Ah, Harris, you appear to have countless enemies and few friends!’ that he looked up. He would have started the verbal abuse immediately but delayed it when he saw what I was looking for.
‘No you pa’por’,’ he screamed.
I looked at him. ‘What?’ It was the first time that I’d looked Tommy square in the eye and the experience wasn’t a pleasant one. He’d lost one eye, which had been replaced with glass, and it stared out of his skull like a window that had been vandalised and boarded over. I looked away.
‘You, you fuck! You frien’, Li’, he no ha’ money, he lie eve’yone. Say got lo’ o’ money from daddy bu’ no tell tru’. He lie Ta, tell got lo’ o’ money. He fuckin’ dead. An’ you, man, you bo’ fuckin’ dead! Same people do this to me, do you, man.’ He pointed to various parts of his body and I obediently followed his finger.
He could hardly get out of bed to give me a beating so I said, ‘Don’t know what you’re talking about,’ and started to put the few things I’d unpacked the night before back into my bag.
‘Where you go, man?’ he demanded, leaning over. ‘You go, we fin’ you, man. We go’ Li’ pa’por’, you ain’t going nowhere!’ He suddenly lunged sideways and grabbed the back of my T-shirt with his good hand, and I pulled away so hard that he fell out of the bed. ‘You fuckin’ no chan’, man!’ he screamed, pushing himself off the floor. ‘No chan’!’
With grim determination I rapidly packed all of my things, ignoring the torrent of abuse and occasional attempt to grab me. All the money I had was in my pockets already so, checking that my own passport was intact, I zipped the bag shut and hoisted it onto my shoulder with surprising vigour. The painkiller was charging around my body now and, though not as good as new, I felt capable of making the journey back to Koh Pha-Ngan to find Rick. Without a word of return abuse, I took a deep breath and walked out of the ward, Tommy still shouting behind me, ‘We fin’ you, man, no p’o’lem!’
As I walked through the swing doors and out into the car park, the sun warmed my face and made me feel better than I had felt for almost a week. On the way towards the taxi stand I bought a Coke and popped another pill just to keep me going. Realising that I needed to keep well out of sight, I skirted the edge of the car park, keeping beneath the palm trees. It was possible that the girls, or someone working with them, were on the lookout for me, so I wasn’t taking any chances. Not only that but since leaving the hospital I had the distinct feeling that I was being watched.
Putting it down to healthy paranoia, I gulped down the remaining Coke and continued towards the main road where the taxis stood, crunching my way through the jungle foliage.
There was a noise among the bushes ten yards to my left. I froze; my heart started to beat faster. ‘Shit, get moving,’ I whispered to myself, and taking a look in the direction of the rustling leaves, I quickly walked on.
It came again, only this time closer, so I picked up the pace, ignoring the twigs that scratched against my legs. I cursed myself for having been so stupid as to walk in the jungle where anyone could clobber me over the head without being seen.
The noise came again and I started to jog. The taxis were only fifty yards away and I could see their bright paintwork through the tree trunks. Two drivers stood against one of the cars chatting idly, eating melon seeds.
A crash of branches. Fuck! I ran faster and now heard the sound of someone else’s feet running, pounding on the dead foliage, each crunching footstep as clear as a bell over the silent jungle floor. Clearing a group of trees, I allowed myself a quick glance back to make sure that I wasn’t hearing things. No one there, the noise of footsteps wasn’t behind me! ‘Keep going, John,’ I mumbled, ‘keep going.’
‘John!’
; ‘Keep running, don’t stop now, you’re almost there.’
‘John!’
I fixed my eyes on the taxi driver ahead when a figure jumped out from behind a tree and I did a sort of sliding tackle to stop myself running into him. The soil and leaves churned up against the soles of my feet into a soft black pile and I came to a rest on my back, looking up at the tree tops, patches of blue sky filtering through, and Rick’s worried face looking down at me.
FIVE
‘You scared the shit out of me!’ I gasped. ‘What the fuck are you doing creeping around out here?’ Rick held his hand out and I grabbed it, pulling myself up. The decomposed leaves had gone up my shorts and become lodged in my waistband so that even the smallest movement pricked me. I stood rummaging around inside my fly to retrieve the pieces of twig and earth, waiting for Rick to reply.
He sighed heavily. ‘Ta’s a confidence trickster, John, we’re in deep shit.’ The rigidity in Rick’s muscles suddenly left him and he relaxed, leaning against a tree for support. It was as though having told me this had lifted a huge weight from his shoulders.
I stopped rummaging and looked up. ‘You’re telling me? I’ve just spent the morning watching her scream and shout in there.’ I thumbed over my shoulder. ‘All of them are in on it.’
He seemed surprised at the news. ‘Ta, in there? What did she say to you?’
‘Nothing, I hid.’
He thought for a moment, his mouth gaping. ‘Why did she come to see you?’
‘Me? She came to see Tommy, for Christ’s sake, not me!’
His chin nearly hit the floor. ‘Tommy! What’s he doing in there? I thought he was in Bangkok.’
Rick’s ignorance of the whole chain of events was slowly dawning on me. Of course he didn’t know any different, how could he know about Tommy? I shook my head slowly from side to side and put my hands onto my knees to catch my breath. ‘Tommy’s not in Bangkok, Rick, he’s in there, crippled for life. He’s got busted legs, only one eye and no fucking fingers.’ I stood straight. ‘So when you say we’re in deep shit, you’re not fucking kidding!’