The Ward (8 page)

Farrell sighs, runs a hand through his hair. ‘Lisa, you think we’re doing the right thing?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean, don’t you think we’re blowing this out of proportion?’

I pause and turn to look at him. It’s not warm in here, but sweat beads his forehead. ‘No. There’s something weird going on here, Farrell. What about that freaky guy who was
spying on me?’

‘I know all that.’ He sounds irritable again, pissed off with me and I’m tempted to just agree with him. But I can’t. I can’t go back. ‘Say we get out of
here,’ he continues. ‘What then?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You got any money?’

‘No.’

‘So what are we going to do when we do get out?’

‘I don’t know. We’ll go across to the mall, call someone.’

‘Who? You’re not even from here.’

‘Haven’t you got any friends? Someone who’ll give us a lift?’ He doesn’t answer. ‘Let’s just play it by ear. After what we saw… back there, you
really want to stay here any longer?’

He shrugs.

We’ve reached the lift. I press the button, and the doors slide open with a clank. The interior is clad in stainless steel and I can’t avoid catching a glimpse of my reflection. A
tall skinny woman with a dressing over her nose and lank blonde hair drooping over her shoulders stares back at me. I don’t recognise myself. I look older, haggard, tired. I look like a
stranger.

‘What floor did he say?’

‘Three,’ Farrell snaps, folding his arms and moving away from me. I can feel tears pricking my eyes again and I will them not to fall. I know he’s worried and probably as
freaked out as I am, but…
Please don’t hate me
.

I press the button and the lift shudders upwards. My stomach drops and I’m hit with another wave of wooziness.

The lift grumbles to a stop.

I swallow the tears back and do my best to sound normal. ‘When we get out we just have to—’

The doors slide open onto pure chaos.

‘Where the
fuck
are we?’ Farrell asks.

But it’s obvious where we are. We’re at ground zero. Casualty. After the near silence of the morgue, the noise is overwhelming. Screams, howls, shouting, and above it all
someone’s yelling, ‘I shouldn’t be here! I’ve got medical aid! Listen to me!’

The corridor in front of us is stacked with hospital beds and gurneys and, although I’m trying not to look too closely at the patients lying on them, I can’t help it: a half-naked
woman, her thighs covered in seeping blisters; a sobbing boy, his knees drawn up to his chest; a nurse frantically trying to jab a drip into the arm of an emaci ated teenage girl whose face is a
mask of blood. Nurses run up and down the corridor, shouting instructions at each other and a doctor in a bloodstained white coat hurries past us, screaming into a cellphone, ‘Don’t you
understand? There are no more fucking beds!’

I grab Farrell’s arm to hold him back as a pair of grim-faced paramedics dressed in soot-smeared overalls speed past us clutching a defibrillator. They disappear into a curtained-off
area.

‘Which way?’ Farrell asks.

I rip my eyes away from the sight of a nurse pulling a shard of glass out of the arm of a screaming boy, a woman with gore-soaked blonde hair bawling next to them, and search for the signs.

The right-hand corridor leads to Maternity, the left to casualty and admissions. There has to be an exit through there.

‘Left,’ I say. ‘Stay close.’

No one tries to stop us as we weave our way through the chaos. We edge past a man lying on a filthy sheet. His right arm ends in a bandaged stump and he stares up at us blankly. A small child
sits huddled next to a woman wrapped in a blanket; neither looks up as we pass.

The noise intensifies as we head further into the casualty ward, and I realise that the patients we’ve already passed are the ones who are going to make it; the ones who aren’t going
to end up in the black bags, stored in the refrigerated truck.

‘Triage,’ I mumble. ‘That’s what they’re probably doing.’

‘What?’ Even though I know he can’t see clearly, Farrell’s eyes are glassy with horror.

‘They’re prioritising the injured. Sorting them into the ones that are the most critical.’

‘Jesus, Lisa.’

A harried nurse pushes out of a curtained-off area, and for a split second I get a glimpse of a woman whose face is nothing but a mass of raw flesh. We stumble through what was once the
waiting-room area. The plastic chairs have been shoved aside to make room for more makeshift beds and drip stands, and another pair of paramedics, their faces scored with exhaustion, race past us,
pushing a twitching body on a gurney. Next to the nurses’ station a doctor is trying to revive a hugely fat man, his shirt cut away to reveal a fish-belly white stomach. The doctor yells for
back-up.

Someone grabs my wrist. At first I think it’s Farrell, but it can’t be.

Head down, he’s making his way towards the glass exit doors, the flash of emergency lights blasting into the waiting room, saturating the scene in flickering red light.

I look down and straight into the eyes of a skinny dark-haired woman. She’s young, maybe a year or two older than me, and she’s lying on the floor next to the admissions desk. Even
though her clothes are torn and covered in soot and filth, I can tell that they were once expensive. She tightens her grip on my wrist. I try to loosen it, but she’s strong.

‘Help me,’ she whispers. ‘My daughter – I need to find my daughter.’

‘I… I…’

‘
Please
.’ She begs me with her eyes. But what can I do? Farrell is almost at the exit doors now.

Follow him
.
Run
.

‘I’m sorry,’ I whisper, hating myself. Pulling my wrist free, I skitter away. I don’t look back.

I can still make out the whoops and wails of the ambulances as they negotiate their way through the chaos back there. I can even imagine screaming and crying, but that’s
probably just reverberations from the hellish soundscape we blundered through. Whether it was the injured people or their desperate relatives I couldn’t tell, but all their shouts and cries
meant the same thing: pain and fear. And the smell. Burned clothes, burned hair, burned flesh.

I inhale deeply to try to clear the person-ash out of my lungs and get my breath back. Take in air right to the bottom of my lungs, slowly out; deep inhalation, slowly out. As I do, I think of
Katya. If Nomsa left a message for her, why hasn’t she come to see me? Was what happened on Monday morning that bad? Or maybe it’s just that she’s on a shoot. Yes. A job.
That’s much more likely. I’ll get home, sort this out.

Next thing, I’m on my arse on the grass.

‘Are you okay?’ Lisa asks.

My mind comes back into focus. I must have just gone faint from all the heavy breathing. It’s the first time I’ve had some fresh air all week. For a moment I expect my vision to
resolve out of the grey like it does after you’ve passed out, but then I remember that I can’t see. Where the hell are my eye drops? Have I lost them?

I fumble around on the grass.

‘Here,’ Lisa says, pressing the vial into my hand.

‘Thanks.’ I tip a couple of drops into each eye. Even though Nomsa said twice a day, morning and night, I’m desperate for this shit to clear out of my eyes, and to have my full
senses back. Outside, in Johannesburg, you’ve got to be on your guard.

I concentrate on what I can make out. Greenery, spots of colour, a fresh smell: freshly cut grass and floral scent. I breathe again, careful not to overdo it, stay sitting on the spongy grass,
my arse getting wet from the dew. I imagine the clean air replacing every molecule of the death stench we’ve been through. There’s birdsong.

‘Where are we?’

Lisa’s still standing by my side. ‘A garden. Someone’s house.’

‘How did we get in here?’

‘I don’t know, we were just running. I went through this gate across the road.’

I can picture the sort of house, those boxy suburban properties around the concrete monolith of New Hope Hospital. But why would anyone leave their gate open to the street? ‘We’d
better hope there are no dogs.’

‘Let’s keep going.’ Lisa grabs my wrist and tries to help me up, but she crashes down over me when she starts to pull. Her body is warm, tense. She struggles off me, sits on
the grass next to me and groans.

‘You okay? We both seem to be falling today.’

‘Ugh, headrush. I’m starving. I was supposed to have the surgery today so I haven’t eaten for ages.’

‘Are you sure it’s okay for you to be out here? I mean, if you were supposed to have an operation, then shouldn’t you—’

‘But you said that I shouldn’t risk having surgery there again!’

Christ. Is she really that suggestible? What do I know? ‘Why were they going to operate again anyway?’

‘They said… I had complications after the last one.’

‘Shit, Lisa. That doesn’t sound good. What kind of complications?’ Christ, what if she collapses on me or something? Starts haemorrhaging or whatever.

‘I’m not going back there. You didn’t see what I saw. I’m not just being paranoid. There’s something seriously wrong in that place.’

‘Christ, Lisa. Of course it’s going to be a bit weird. There’s just been a huge accident—’

‘
Besides
that!’ she snaps. ‘I
know
about hospitals, and I’m telling you, there’s something wrong there. Normal hospitals don’t just let psychos
drift around stalking their patients. You saw him too!’

‘Okay,’ I say. ‘Okay.’ But now I’m out here, breathing normal air that doesn’t stink like puke and death and cheap disinfectant, I’m starting to think
maybe I overreacted. What if that grey freak was just some deranged old man with dementia or something? That could be it. The Green Section was full of freaky old people.

‘Plus, that woman in my room,’ Lisa continues. ‘She died after a hip replacement. That doesn’t happen. That fre— that man. He was trying to tell me to run…
Like he knows something.’

Honestly, I’m trying not to, but all I hear is a hysterical woman. I’m trying to give her the benefit of the doubt, but it sounds to me like she’s just got a notion in her head
and is making up a whole plot around it. What a Z-type fuck-up.

I say nothing. Birds chatter in the trees around us. I smell a waft of fresh air. I don’t want to run around. I’d much rather just sit for a moment. This is the most comfortable
I’ve been for a long time.

‘And then there’s what they were trying to do to you,’ she says.

‘What do you mean, do to me?’

‘Next to your bed… What they… Oh, hell. Never mind.’

‘Jesus, Lisa! What the fuck did you see?’

She’s silent for a while, deciding. A bee buzzes around my head, then leaves.

‘Pictures,’ she says.

I wait. She says nothing more.

‘What pictures?’ I’m losing my patience.

‘I shouldn’t have said anything. Never mind.’

‘Don’t
fucking tell me to…’ Jesus. Her blurred shape flinches away from me again. I have to relax. How can I speak like this to someone I don’t even know?
To anyone? ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to… I’m sorry, okay?’

She doesn’t say anything. I look to her, but her shape gives me no clues. Now she’s just sitting there.

‘Lisa? You okay? I’m sorry.’

‘They were pictures of you. Those instant ones – what do you call them?’

‘Polaroids?’

‘Yes!’ Who the fuck uses Polaroids anymore? ‘That’s it. Like someone had been taking pictures of you as you slept.’ Her voice is flat, like she’s talking to
herself. ‘But in them you were marked. You know like how a cosmetic surgeon will mark you with black felt pen before the surgery? Or like one of those diagrams in a butcher shop. You know, a
cow, divided up into choice cuts.’

‘What the fuck?’

She reaches forward and for a second I think she’s going to jump on me, try to kiss me or something. Before I can push her back, she pulls the neck of my hospital gown down, then instantly
recoils. ‘Oh my God,’ she breathes.

‘What?’

‘On your… on your… chest.’

I rip my gown up and crane down to see my torso. Through the blur I can make out bold black marks across my stomach and chest.
Holy fuck
. I feel like vomiting.

‘Jesus, Lisa. What the fuck’s going on in there? Some kind of sick joke? You think the nurses are trying to mess with me?’

‘I don’t know. How would I know?’

That has to be it. Some kind of sick joke they play on the rich people who wash up by accident on their wards.

I need to get some perspective. Calm the fuck down. Calm Lisa down. Take charge. I do my best to sound as rational and focussed as I can. ‘All we have to do is get far away from here,
report this shit to whoever the authorities are and then I guess you should go to another hospital. There are loads of private clinics in Joburg, there must be a vacancy somewhere.’

‘I can’t go to a private clinic.’

‘You don’t have medical aid?’

‘It’s not that. There are other… complications.’

‘Like what?’

She doesn’t answer.

‘Like
what
, Lisa?’

‘Nobody else will do the surgery. It’s not safe. I’ve had too many. I only came here because they didn’t ask… because they said they would do it.’

‘What do you mean you’ve had too many?’

‘It doesn’t matter.’ She’s quiet, then she’s crying.

The air’s ripped by a helicopter’s blades chopping above us. Its dark shape squats down behind the trees at the hospital.

Lisa gasps and swallows as she stifles her tears. ‘Sorry, sorry,’ she says. I wish she’d stop apologising.

The helicopter’s noise is a wake-up call. Soon as I’m home I’m going to make things right. I get up. First step, find a phone. The hospital is my best bet. ‘Can you help
me back to the hospital?’

‘No!’

‘Hang on, hang on. Just to Reception. They don’t need to know who I am. I’ll just ask to use the phone.’

‘No, Farrell, please. I told you, something bad is going to happen there.’

‘You don’t think your “something bad” has already happened? There are dead bodies piling up outside from a train crash and you think they’re planning to carve me
up. What else can happen?’