Not so much.
A nurse pads by, sees I’m awake, smiles brightly and perhaps assumes that I’ve been awake a while, and someone else has already said hello. I smile back. She’s forgotten me by the time she’s gone, but that’s okay, there are a lot of patients on this ward, it’s easy to forget. A miracle really that I wasn’t left in the ambulance, an extraordinary thing to be here at all.
Wait a while.
Easy to be forgotten to death in the medical system, but it’s okay, there’s paperwork, NHS targets (do they have those in Italy?), no patient to be left in A&E for more than four hours, just keep on rolling rolling rolling
the woman across the aisle from me turns onto her other side. She’d forgotten I was there, and is unimpressed at the sight of me. In her free time, she shouts at children, I decide. They make too much noise. They’re always smiling and happy and running and free and it’s for their own good that their dreams are crushed asap.
A senior doctor arrives, three juniors in his wake.
How are you feeling? he asks, hands in pockets, casual, relaxed, a flicker in the corner of his eye as he tries to work out if he’s ever seen me before. He’s seen tens of thousands of patients in his career, and forgotten most of them, but they all know he remembers them by name and cares deeply for their condition. That’s how good he is. His badge says his name is Dino, but I find that hard to believe.
I’ve been better, I admit. I think I was stabbed.
Ah! The horror at the hotel, yes of course! The senior doctor smiles, the juniors recoil, suddenly a little alarmed at being near me for, sure, I was stabbed but is there not a danger that I might have stabbed someone else too?
Well then yes, let’s have a look… could be worse, could be worse, nice clean dressing, looking good, missed the lung I see that’s good, antibiotics of course we’ll have a nurse come take some readings
(the nurse does not come)
no name, whispers a junior
Dr Dino is relieved — he hasn’t forgotten my name, he never knew it, perhaps he doesn’t have to go on a mind-boosting fish-oil diet after all.
What’s your name?
Faye, I decide. Faye Cavarero. Where is this?
You’re in the Ospedale dell’Angelo, in Mestre. The Paolo was overwhelmed by the scale of the medical emergency, and the paramedics were able to stop the bleeding on the scene, so you were evacuated here. You were a guest? A note of caution in his voice.
No: a photographer.
Instant relief. Oh, a photographer! I imagine the police will want to see your pictures.
I imagine they will.
Do you need counselling? he suggests carefully. There’s a chaplain, someone to talk to, I can have someone sent up.
Sure, why not.
Of course! Minions! (The juniors stand to attention.) Alert psychiatric services!
They depart.
No one comes.
No name on my chart.
No name on the board above my bed.
Doctors do not bother to write these things down, they have people for that. I call a nurse over, more water, please, she takes my stats while she’s there, writes it down, says, there’s no name.
My name is Faye Cavarero.
Ah, like the philosopher, yes!
Yes, just like the philosopher.
It’s a good name, a strong name. You’ll be strong!
When dinner came, I asked for toast, but they forgot my order, so sorry, I go to get it now, forgot again, and I went without.
That settles it: I cannot stay here for ever. I will starve to death if I do.
Nurse! screams the woman in the bed opposite mine. My head hurts! Bitch — give me more painkillers! Bitch, why won’t you do it my head hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts!
Her words deteriorate to a low groaning, an animal sound from deep within, a low mewl that the nurses cannot silence.
Please give her painkillers, sighs the woman in the bed next to hers. Please: just anything to make her stop.
When the lights are turned out, the woman is still moaning, and I am out of water, and no one comes.
Chapter 94
On the second day, in the dead of night, I put my left foot on the ground.
In the depths of space, nebulas coalesced to stars, hydrogen fusion commencing at the core, light and heat bursting across the universe.
Put my right foot on the ground.
In the darkest places of the oceans, thermal vents cracked, spilling fire into the dark, and species of bacteria, amoeba, protozoa and tiny, wriggling organisms that could barely be called living, save that they respired and moved and reproduced and decayed, flocked to this eruption of heat, and fed on its energy, and evolved into something new.
I stood up.
Almost immediately, I fell, catching myself on the side of the bed, the pain in my side numbed by stitches and drugs, head spinning, knees strong but head weak, stars in my eyes, oceans in my brain.
Sat back down.
Counted to sixty.
Put my left foot on the ground.
Counted to thirty.
Put my right foot on the ground.
Counted for thirty more.
Held onto the metal stand on which had been suspended various sacks of antibiotics and saline drips, blood and all the goodies chemistry could supply. Used it as a crutch.
Took a step.
Counted to twenty.
Took another.
Lessons from being a runner, lessons from life. Divide the problem into parts. Not: today I shall run a marathon. Today I shall run to the end of the park and back. Tomorrow I shall run to the shops. Now I shall say something kind to a person I hate. Tomorrow I will study compassion and learn French.
Today I shall walk to the bathroom, replete with hooks, handles, straps, fold-away chairs and lift-up seats for every conceivable scenario.
Today I shall lock the door.
Take a piss.
Drink water from the tap; blessed water, drink water until I hurt, I AM THE QUEEN OF THE UNIVERSE!
Shuffle through the gloom of the night-shift hospital.
The nurse, catching up on paperwork at the desk, is confused by me, but I’m not her problem, and I seem to be walking slow but well, goes back to her paperwork.
Sleeping wards, half-sleeping patients.
Beep beep beep, a monitor has detected something wrong, waking the entire room, who squeeze their eyes tight shut and lie very still, in the hope that by ignoring the sound of the machine beep beep beep it will go away, just go away!
A spill of light from a bed where a woman has given up on sleep, put her headphones on, pulled the TV screen on its artificial arm close and now watches last year’s movies, a surgical drain filling slowly with fluid down one side of the bed, a five-litre bag gently swelling with urine on the other, the tube strapped to the inside of her thigh.
I am my feet
stepping
stepping
stepping.
A moment to recover breath. I sit in the big brown chair next to a woman on an oxygen feed, her eyes shut, her curly hair pushed up high across the pillow behind her head, her hands folded one over the other and back straight, like a pious funerary statue in an ancient church. She slept, and when I could breathe a little better I opened up the small cupboard by her bed, pulled out the green bag of patient belongings, and stole her jeans and a shirt and a fifty euro note. Left her the credit cards and the rest of the cash, apologised silently and bundled these goods into my robe.
Hobbling back to my bed.
Gender-segregated wards, no point going into the men’s unit, a nurse by the door saw me and smiled, might make a fuss, will forget. A junior doctor, badge round her neck, asked me if I was all right. I said yes; had just needed to pee. Did I need a hand getting back to bed? No. I’d be fine, really.
The woman with the headache was asleep at last in the bed opposite mine when I returned. I stole her smartphone — just for a little while — and was surprised to see how many calls she had received, from people with familiar nicknames, text messages laden with love and care, to which she hadn’t bothered to reply. With the volume turned all the way down, I sat in the chair beside my bed and ate plums and licked my lips and looked up Hotel Madellena.