by T. M. Clark
‘I guess I looked like an easy target,’ Lily said.
‘You? No! Look around,’ Mr Magaso said, shaking his head. ‘There are many other women here with bags on their shoulders only, easier targets than yours. That was a bag snatch like I have not ever seen before. That man wanted your bag and something in it, and he attacked you.’
CHAPTER
20
Lily had been home a few hours and had at last stretched out on the couch to watch TV after she had completed all the paperwork that Piet and Natalie had made her fill in about what had happened.
The youngster had outrun Piet, and there had been a car waiting. Piet had run the plates, but they were stolen, so they were no closer to knowing who had attacked her, or what they were really after.
A call came in on the house phone. Lily answered it.
‘Dr Lily?’
‘Yes?’
‘It’s Elise. It’s an emergency. Coti won’t wake up. I tried and I tried, but she is sweating and sleeping.’
‘Do you know if she took something to make her sleep?’ Lily asked, rubbing her temple.
‘No. She has been sick for a day, maybe two. Piet asked me to keep checking on her for him, but something is wrong, and I can’t get Piet on the phone.’
‘We’re coming. Try to keep her cool until I get there,’ Lily said. ‘Are the kids okay? Did they settle in back at home?’
‘Yebo. Sorry about the bad ending to the day, they seemed to have loved the market. David seems taken with Spiderman now.’
‘We will have to try it again another day, see if we can erase the bad memory of me being attacked there, make it all glitter and sugar again,’ Lily said.
‘I think they would like that.’
‘Right, you see to Coti, I’m on my way.’ Lily hung up and immediately rang Piet, who picked up on the first ring.
‘Lily?’
‘Elise has been trying to reach you.’
‘I just plugged my phone into my bakkie charger. I am about to leave the station.’
‘I need to get Coti into hospital. Sounds like she has gone into a coma. Can you meet us at the turn-off into Platfontein? Quintin can drive.’
‘I will be there. Lily, you sure you are feeling up to this? Perhaps if I bring her in—’
‘She will be in such pain if it is meningitis. She’ll need something to help her at least with that before you move her, and you don’t have anything you can give intravenously.’
‘Nee.’
‘It will be okay; Quintin will be with me. We need to save Coti. I’ll be fine,’ Lily said.
She put down the phone and stared at it for a long time. Of all the days, why today? Could Africa throw any more at her?
* * *
Lily administered the antibiotics into the drip in Coti’s arm. She watched as the steady blip of the heart monitor continued and rubbed her eyes. The massive headache that she’d got from the bump on the back of her head that morning wasn’t helping at all. Nor the bouncy ride into Platfontein that Quintin had undertaken with her. Despite arguing with her, he already had the Land Cruiser keys in his pocket and was walking out the door, still telling her why it was a bad idea. She loved that man and the way he cared so fiercely for her. Always wanting to protect her from the cruel world out there.
She wrote up the chart that hung on the end of the bed. As she went to place it back, she dropped it on the floor, where it clattered loudly as it struck the tiles. Slowly, she bent down and picked up the clipboard which had landed facedown. She turned it over to look at her notes.
When she’d written it, it had been as clear as day in her mind, and she knew what she’d commented on, but on the paper was just chicken-scratch. Nobody would be able to read it.
During her training so many years before, one of the doctors had said that nurses needed to be able to read a doctor’s writing, and despite the old joke about how poorly they wrote, they were encouraged to always write as neatly as they could.
She couldn’t stop the shakes.
‘Doctor, are you okay?’ Staff Nurse Jones asked as she came into the room.
‘Fine. I think. Tell me, do you ever have trouble reading my writing on the charts of my patients?’
The nurse looked down. ‘I do, but Sister Newman, she says it’s legible, and she tells me what you have written.’
‘So, you find it difficult usually?’
‘Yes, but it’s still not as bad as some other doctors. Most days it’s okay. Why do you ask?’
‘I just tried to read my own writing.’
‘Let me look.’ She took the clipboard from Lily and studied it for a moment. ‘Doctor, this isn’t your writing. This is just straight lines. I don’t think that even Sister Newman could read this.’
‘Thank you, Nurse,’ she said, taking back the chart.
As a doctor she was no idiot; she knew something was wrong. So much for her small concussion that she managed to talk Quintin out of calling an ambulance for. She rubbed her cheek and could feel where the scab had formed across the cut she’d received.
‘You look a little pale. Perhaps your fall affected you more than you realised today.’
‘I’ll have a rest now that Coti is stabilised. I couldn’t leave her alone, even after what happened today. I’m just tired, that’s all.’
‘If you say so. Get some rest. Now that your patient is here, the other doctors can look after her. Go home; a doctor is no use to her patients if she’s sick.’ The nurse put her hand gently on Lily’s arm and then walked away. The door closed behind her.
Lily held the board close to her chest as she sank to the floor. She hung her head, trying to stop the nausea and the clamminess as it rippled over her skin, the feeling of knowing that something was wrong.
She had taken quite a knock on her head. She really should have it checked.
She flicked over scenarios of what could have caused her writing to become illegible. Loss of a fine motor skill could be caused by a few factors. Simply knocking her head in the fall, a small swelling in the brain, cervical spinal stenosis, but there was a pain associated with that, and she wasn’t displaying any other symptoms. Ulnar nerve entrapment. Again, a huge pain accompanied that. She wrote that off and dug deeper. A brain tumour. She’d had no pain; she was tired. Cancer.
‘No. Think of lesser illnesses that cause a degenerative loss of motion, Lily,’ she said quietly to herself. ‘Don’t jump to the worst-case scenarios. Stop the self-diagnosis.’
There was a gentle knock on the door, and a second nurse entered the room. ‘Dr Winters, are you okay? Nurse Jones asked me to check in on you.’
‘I’m not sure, Sister Turner,’ Lily said as she read the nurse’s badge. ‘Perhaps. Would you mind writing up these notes for me as I seem to be having a problem getting things down on paper tonight.’
‘We couldn’t believe you came in; the talk of the hospital is that someone attacked you at the market just this morning.’
‘I thought I was okay. Seems I hit my head harder than I realised. I need to record what meds she’s been given, her temperature and vitals.’
‘I’ll organise that. But let’s get you into a chair and make sure that you’re okay before we see about your patient and her chart,’ Sister Turner said as she took Lily’s arm and helped her off the floor and into a visitor’s chair.
‘You know, we can take you into MRI and do a quick scan, see what’s happening in there, make sure it’s just a concussion.’
‘I’m pretty sure it is only that. There’s no reason for it to be anything else. I’m tired, my head hurts, and you’re right, I need to get home. I’m probably more shaken up than I wanted to admit to myself. Stunned that someone would do that to me. To anyone.’
‘Come on, Dr Winters,’ Sister Turner said, ‘let’s go down and have that MRI to iron out any doubt that it is just a concussion. You can never be too sure. I’m clocking you out for the night.’
‘Please get Quintin; he’s waiting for
me in the doctors’ lounge. Tell him where you took me,’ Lily said.
* * *
A day later, Lily was back at the hospital and by Coti’s bedside again. Coti had not improved.
‘Come on, you need to fight this,’ Lily said quietly. She looked at the drip; Coti would need new antibiotics soon. She rang the call bell.
Nurse Jones walked in. ‘Hey, Dr Winters, good to see you on your feet and looking so much better.’
‘It’s good to feel better, too. Believe me, doctors make the worst patients.’
‘Tell me about it,’ Nurse Jones said. ‘So, it was just a concussion?’
‘Yes, all clear now. But I’m glad we did the MRI; I never got a chance to say thank you to you for getting Sister Turner involved.’
‘It was the least I could do,’ the nurse said.
‘Thank you anyway,’ Lily said.
Nurse Jones smiled. ‘Was there something you needed; you used the call button?’
‘I’m increasing Coti’s dose of antibiotic. Add another ten millilitres of Cefotaxime.’
‘I can do that, but you will need to write me a new script. The generic of that is out in pharmacy, and I got their last one this morning for her dose then. I know they have the non-generic, even though it’s more expensive, but they want it by name or they won’t dispense it to us.’
‘That’s fine, she falls under the research project, so here you go,’ she said as she dug her pad from her pocket and wrote out the script. Careful that she could see her printed writing correctly and anyone else could read it, too. It seemed to take a long time.
‘Is that all?’ Nurse Jones said.
‘For now. If you can administer that directly into her drip and flush with saline, I’ll be back to check on her in four hours.’
Nurse Jones nodded and left the room.
‘Come on, Coti,’ Lily said, ‘you have to pull through. I can’t lose both of you.’
CHAPTER
21
Heritage Day on the twenty-fourth of September was marked as the day that the rainbow nation celebrated its cultural diversity, but to Lily, it would always be King Shaka’s day. The images of masses of men, dressed in traditional Impi cloths, gathering at his graveside to celebrate the last of the great Zulu conquering kings, had always been a memory that had lived with her from her university days in Durban. Taking advantage of the public holiday, Lily had spent most of the day at the long bench in Quintin’s studio, listening to his music as his work soothed her. Tiger sat in an old box on the benchtop, half spilling out of it but purring all the time. He seemed as content as a cat could be.
She could feel her shoulders relaxing.
Coti’s rapid response to the new brand of antibiotics had been nothing short of remarkable, and she had pulled through. Sure, she would be on tablets for a while yet, but she was already home and being cared for by the other people in Platfontein.
Now that Lily was there more regularly, the women of Platfontein were starting to trust her, coming to her with their problems, and she was finding out more and more about the interesting San and their customs.
She still needed to get to the bottom of the HIV epidemic and verify the research handed in by Ian, but her contact with the women and her access to their stories was going a long way to seeing the impact on their social structure. Even without HIV, their move to Platfontein was destroying it.
Lily was looking at all the past patient notes on each person who had died of pneumonia or meningitis. Clutching at straws, she’d entered everything. And finally, she was seeing a pattern.
She took in a quick breath. ‘Oh, my hat. I think I’ve found it.’
‘What?’ Quintin asked.
‘I think I’ve found something,’ Lily said. ‘Something big and concrete and you need to come and have a look.’
‘About time you had a break. What is it?’ Quintin asked as he came over and sat next to her on one of the other stools.
‘See here. There was a lot of pink in the analysis of the medication that the meningitis patients had taken before they got sick. Those are HIV blockers.’ She turned a page. ‘This now, see the majority of green medications? Those are meningitis drugs.’
‘And?’ Quintin said.
‘Drilling further down. Same patients. Looking at those with meningitis, only two-thirds had spinal taps, and different hospitals, so different equipment with those, so I can rule equipment out.’ She turned back to the second page. ‘This is where it gets interesting. This is the page for everybody who had pneumonia. Not so many pink flags, HIV, but enter the two new drugs, yellow and orange tabs are: Donepezil and Memantine. These patients were all on Alzheimer’s medication,’ Lily said.
‘So, what are you saying?’ Quintin asked.
She wanted to be wrong. She dreaded that she was right.
‘Hang on, I have to show you one more quickly. Paediatric patients. Those who died as well as those who had just been ill. Same smattering of pink tags but, look, a new dark-green tag is dominant. Liquid paracetamol. I think it’s the drugs that are causing the clusters.’
‘Show me again,’ Quintin said.
As she turned back to him, she took a deep breath and said, ‘I’ve been analysing the files with people who were ill and people who died. One of the questions on the medical reports is which medications they were on before they got sick. You know—common medications that everyone takes, along with vitamin supplements. I was coming up blank with everything else trying to find a common link, so I also analysed the medications they were given in the hospital once they’d presented with the sicknesses. I still have gaps, but I’m pretty sure that I have the answer.
‘For pneumonia and meningitis patients, most have been on HIV inhibitors, or they’ve been on Alzheimer’s medication. The paediatrics patients were all given liquid paracetamol. These are the only three drug groups that I’m certain of; there are others, too.’
‘You’re sure of this?’
‘I triple-checked. I couldn’t believe it myself. We are dealing with either substandard or tainted pharmaceutical drugs.’
‘Are you ready to tell Piet and Natalie?’
‘There is more. The drugs that we’ve been giving the patients in hospitals to combat the infections also appear to be tampered with. I can’t prove this one conclusively like the others, I will need more time to research and go through pharmaceutical records at the hospital, but I’m pretty certain I’m onto something there. I want you to check me first; make sure that I’m not drawing the wrong conclusion.’
Quintin put his hands on either side of her face. ‘If you are right, this could mean that you could be in more danger than before. That little escapade at the market was not just a random attack. They thought you had the flash drive on you. Someone knows you have all the files to figure this out.’
Lily nodded her head. ‘I need Piet and Natalie to look into it further with me. But I’m one hundred per cent sure that there are contaminated drugs in South Africa. I have to narrow it down to exactly who’s manufacturing them, or distributing them; it might be any company, South African or international. But that is what is causing the meningitis clusters I came here for.’
Quintin held her hands. ‘Your safety is my main concern. Having found this, what else can we expect to happen?’
‘I don’t know. This is unprecedented. I can speak with Marion, find out her opinion.’
‘I think perhaps Piet and Natalie should be called in before you tell Marion. Let them know what you’re all really up against.’
She nodded.
He hugged her. ‘Well done for finding it. I’m so proud of you. You okay?’
‘Yeah, I’m super excited to find what was causing the clusters, and at the same time, inside I’m strangely calm. Wanting now to find who did this and make sure they pay for every life they have impacted. Every person they made ill or murdered.’ Her voice rose a little at the end.
Tiger peered out from his box, stretched and walked over t
o her, as if knowing that she needed some attention.
Lily reached out and took the cat in her arms. ‘You stay safe here, but no medications for you either, just in case.’ She buried her face in his soft fur until he wriggled, wanting to get down.
‘I know it’s late, but you should call Piet and Natalie and share the news.’
‘You realise it’s Saturday night and it’s already after ten,’ Lily said.
‘I don’t think they’ll care,’ Piet said, ‘If it’s important we need to tell them, remember. No matter what time.’
CHAPTER
22
Piet and Natalie sat at Lily’s dining-room table, files spread around them. The sun was rising outside, taking the sky from its inky blues into the gentle mauves of dawn.
Quintin cleared the empty coffee mugs in front of each of them.
Piet rocked back in the chair. ‘Thanks, Quintin.’
Lily smiled as he walked past and touched her shoulder.
‘So, mainly HIV-positive people are dying. That is some sick joke. I mean, yes, they have compromised immune systems, but they are on their meds, they do not just die randomly anymore,’ Piet said.
‘I’m amazed by the complexity of your analysis and what you’ve found,’ Natalie said. ‘I can’t believe that someone would use a drug made to prolong life to deliver a death sentence. It seems so unfair. My guess is it’s personal. It’s someone with something against people with HIV, or against old people, but I can’t put a finger on why children? What type of sick person wants to kill children?’
‘I agree. It makes no sense. Why kill somebody who is already going to die?’ said Piet.
‘Perhaps it wasn’t to kill them, but it was just to make them more ill,’ Lily said. ‘In the private sector, sick means hospital and more drugs. The more drugs you sell, the more money you make.’
Natalie shook her head. ‘Even in our old-age-homes cases, this scenario works. Sick means high care or the ER if you’re bad enough.’
Piet scratched his head. ‘Does not work for the prison system though. Too sophisticated to have come from inside there, it has to be an external factor. It is easier to simply bribe a guard if a prisoner wants to get out and go home. Anyway, some of these men were only on short sentences, a couple of months, and for most of the prisoners, it is much better than being on the street, so it makes no sense that they would want out in the first place. They do not have to be sick and go through the infirmary to get out. I can understand the maximum-security prisoners attempting to take that route, but that was only two out of all those deaths.’