I Have Life, page 6
I picked up the phone, still three-quarters asleep, my heart pounding.
‘This is the provincial hospital,’ a man’s voice announced politely.
I braced myself. The worst was going to hit me now and I immediately called on the Lord. I just said his name, ‘Jesus’, and I felt a peace and calm come over me like still water.
‘We’ve got your daughter here,’ he continued.
‘What’s wrong with her?’ I asked.
‘She’s had her neck cut and she’s been stabbed in the stomach.’
I was stunned. I could not conjure up a real picture in my mind. Neck cut? Stabbed in the stomach?
‘But how did this happen?’ I demanded.
‘We don’t know. She was picked up in Summerstrand.’
Summerstrand? What on earth was Ali doing there? She had called me earlier to say she and Kim and a few other friends were going to the beach. I thought maybe they had gone to a club or a pub and some brawl had broken out and Ali had got in the way of someone else’s knife.
‘Can you fix her?’ I wanted to know.
‘We’ll try. We’re going into theatre now,’ he said.
‘What shall I do?’ I asked him.
‘Well, you can come over here or you can wait at the phone. I will call you and tell you when she’s out of surgery,’ he offered.
‘I’ll stay here. Thank you,’ I said and replaced the receiver.
The first person I called was my friend Mercia. I told her what had happened and asked her to come to my house so that we could begin to pray for Ali.
While I waited I called Kim. I needed to know what they had been doing in Summerstrand and what had happened to Ali. She answered the phone in a sleepy voice. I told her that Ali was in hospital and that she had been stabbed. She had no idea what was going on. The last she had seen of Ali, she said, was when she had dropped her off at home around 1 a.m. Then she went to pieces. I tried to calm her down and promised to talk to her later.
My friend arrived and we made a few more phone calls. I called my son Neale and his wife Ronwyn and asked them to pray as well. Then I called my sister and other friends. I asked them all to start a prayer chain.
So while Ali lay in theatre more than a thousand people, some as far away as England, were praying for her.
Mercia and I stood in the lounge praying. Suddenly she said the Lord had given her a scripture. It was an obscure piece and we took out the Bible to look it up.
‘Do not fear the King of Babylon for he is a mere man whereas I am the all-wise, all-powerful, ever-present God and I am with you to save you and deliver you from his hand.’
I knew then that Ali would pull through. Out of all the verses in the Bible, God had given us that one. He had made a promise. We started to thank him.
About three hours later the phone rang. It was a nurse at the hospital. She had called to tell me that the first part of the operation to Ali’s throat had been completed and that the doctor was now starting on her stomach.
‘Sister,’ I asked, ‘is she going to be all right?’
‘She’s going to be fine,’ she reassured me.
We went back to praying. At about 9.15 a.m. the hospital called again. Ali was out of surgery. We could come now and see her.
I raced to the hospital and the High Care Unit.
A doctor, a short man with greying hair and dark eyes, stepped through the doors of the unit. He looked exhausted.
‘I’m Alison’s mother,’ I introduced myself.
‘I’m Dr Angelov,’ he said shaking my hand.
Then he looked at me for a long while before he spoke.
‘Such brutality, I have never seen such brutality,’ he shook his head before walking off.
Brutality? What did he mean? That was not how I had understood it when I spoke to the other doctor earlier. I thought she had only superficial stab wounds.
I pushed open the door to High Care and moved quickly towards the ward in which Ali was lying. I was shocked and nervous, extremely anxious about her.
She looked frightening. She was filthy, her face was swollen, her eyes were filled with blood and bulged out of her head which was propped between two sandbags. She had tubes and pipes everywhere. There was a cage over her lower body, keeping the blankets off her, and there was this massive bandage across her throat.
As I stared at my beautiful child my insides were caught in an icy grip of terror and agony that only a mother knows when her child is suffering. But I knew she needed me to be strong now. I lifted my spirit and concentrated on the promise God had given me.
She was awake and conscious and I took her hand.
‘Hello, my baba,’ I leaned over and whispered to her.
‘Hello, my mommy,’ she replied.
I could not believe that she was actually capable of speaking. I instantly realised that this was much more serious than I had originally thought but I still had no idea of how it had happened. I did not want to burden Ali now by asking her. All I focused on at that moment was the fact that she was alive.
Inwardly, I said ‘Thank you Lord. Thank you for keeping your promise.’
She started to speak. Her voice, I noticed, was a little hoarse.
‘The police must get the people who did this to me,’ she said.
People? What people?
‘They will, my darling, they will,’ I said with utter confidence.
Before I left I slipped a piece of paper on which I had written out the verse we had been given earlier under Ali’s pillow. I wanted His promise to be with her every minute of every day.
Ali clearly needed to be left alone to recover. Outside a group of her friends had gathered. Everyone was shocked and numbed by the news.
There was also a young man there, a very good-looking chap who held a little cactus in his hand. He introduced himself as Tiaan Eilerd and I learned that he had been the one who had rescued Ali and brought her to the hospital.
‘Thank you,’ I said, hugging him.
The two words were all I could manage to convey my huge gratitude and my immense thankfulness that God had placed this special young man in the right place at the right time.
At noon Dr Comyn, the anaesthetist, called Ali’s dad Brian, who had flown down from Johannesburg, and me into his office.
We were now going to be told the truth and the full extent of her injuries and the doctors’ opinion of it all. Dr Comyn spelt out, in graphic detail, what had happened
He did not mince his words and gave it to us straight. He told us her head had almost been severed from her body. He also told us she had been raped. It was the first time that I had heard that and my heart broke.
At least she is alive, I comforted myself.
At that point I wanted rather to focus my attention on the fact that she was going to recover because God had promised it. I did not want to dwell on the details of the attack or my own anguish.
‘I fought in the Rhodesian bush war,’ Dr Comyn continued, ‘and I have never seen anyone with injuries like this survive. These wounds were gross beyond belief.’
The prognosis, he went on, was not good. Ali stood the risk of getting septicaemia because of the debris that clung to her intestines. Although they had washed almost all of it out there was a good chance that she would become infected.
The outcome for the throat injury was equally poor, he told us. It was such a severe injury that there was a strong possibility that the wound would thicken and constrict the trachea. If this happened, Ali could choke and nurses were watching her every breath in the event that this might happen.
The more I heard how bad everything was, the more I thought, ‘This is incredible. She survived all this, my brave, brave child.’ I thanked the Lord again.
I suppose Dr Comyn was puzzled by my composure. He stopped talking and turned to me.
‘Do you understand what I am telling you?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ I replied calmly. ‘I understand perfectly. But none of those things you say might happen will happen.’
‘And why not?’ he sounded a little indignant now.
‘Because God has told me so,’ I answered with confidence. ‘Because God has said He will deliver her and I believe Him.’
Dr Comyn looked at me with a pitying expression, as if I was a total idiot. But it didn’t worry me much at all. I would have looked at someone the same way if they had said that to me before I had been saved. I, too, would have thought they were stupid.
Meanwhile, doctors from all over the hospital came to look at Ali. They stood there over her bed, flipping through her chart. Some of them just shook their heads. A woman doctor came and spoke to me.
‘If I had not seen this with my own eyes,’ she said, ‘I would not have believed it.’
The thing that amazed them all, apparently, was the fact that her thyroid had been cut in half and that she had survived more than four hours. Staff who had been in Casualty when Ali was admitted also stopped by, amazed that she had pulled through. Everyone who had seen her seemed completely flabbergasted by it all.
Dr Comyn, I suspected, also felt a bond with Ali. Something about her had touched him deeply. He did say that as he was about to anaesthetise her he had looked down and said, ‘It’s OK, we’ll breathe for you now’ and she had flashed him the most incredible smile that just tore at his heart.
More and more people poured into the hospital wanting to see Ali. Dr Comyn thought visitors would be good for her and Ali agreed. She saw almost everyone and talked to all of them. The nurses were beside themselves. They could not cope with the constant throng and asked me to vet some of the visitors. Many people who did not even know who she was came to see her. It seemed that she had already touched some kind of universal chord.
Then the flowers started to arrive. On the hour, every hour, another basket or bunch would arrive. Soon there was nowhere left in High Care to put them all. Every single available surface was filled with bursts of beautiful colour. Eventually they filled the entire corridor outside her room as well as another around the corner.
About three days later, while I was at home, Dr Comyn called me from High Care.
‘We’re approaching our most critical time now,’ he said sounding quite grave.
‘That’s fine, doctor,’ I said. ‘Don’t worry, God is in control.’
I heard him sigh.
The next day I saw him at the hospital again. He walked towards me with a smile on his face. Although I must have exasperated him at times, he was an extraordinarily compassionate and gentle man.
‘Everything’s fine now. She’s out of danger,’ he declared.
‘But I knew that from the beginning and I told you so,’ I replied, returning his kind smile.
He looked at me tenderly and a tear rolled down his cheek.
8
BRIAN
A father’s rage
MY WIFE SALLY and I were virtually ready to leave for a church service in Johannesburg when the phone rang around 6.30 a.m. that Sunday morning. It was my son Neale who, while doing his best to sound contained, could scarcely disguise the fact that he was upset. He told me that Claire had called.
Alison, he said, had been involved in some kind of attack and had been admitted to the provincial hospital for surgery. I tried to extract more information from Neale, but he had nothing more to go on than that.
It was a long weekend and I had spoken to Alison some time during the week. She had told me that she had been invited to spend it out of town with some guy. She didn’t say who he was, but she did say she wasn’t quite sure of his intentions. My immediate thoughts were that this man had done something terrible to her.
I knew Claire would be at the hospital so there was no point trying to phone her. I was left with a feeling of helplessness which only a parent can experience in these circumstances. After speaking to Neale, I put down the phone and immediately flew into a blind rage. I was totally overwhelmed with feelings of anger, horror, fear, panic and revenge. I felt like a man possessed. I lost it completely and wanted to smash everything around me.
My wife at the time, Sally, tried to calm me down and when the initial shock was over we made immediate plans for me to get to Port Elizabeth. I was due to fly to Durban on business that evening, but I just had to get on the next plane and be with Alison.
In the mean time, Sally’s daughter Anita called an airline and got me a seat, the last one, on a 10.30 a.m. flight to Port Elizabeth.
The world disappeared around me as we raced to the airport. Everything seemed to be happening so slowly. I wanted to be physically there right then. Sally and Anita went off to organise the ticket while I stood at the check-in queue. The wait seemed interminable.
Anita and Sally appeared. They seemed grave and drawn. Anita had phoned the hospital and had been told that Alison had been raped. I felt a blow to my chest and could not come to grips with what they had told me. Just then I had to check in my bags and rush through the security check.
I hugged Sally and Anita and left them. Now I was alone with this news. Somehow in moments like that, when you are helpless, your soul builds a callus to protect you. I calmed myself, knowing that it would be useless to try to do anything now.
I boarded flight SA 409 and realised that I had an hour and a half with only myself now. I had a copy of the Sunday Times and tried to distract myself reading it. It didn’t work. I could think only of Alison.
I got out my diary and started writing on a blank page. I wrote the word ‘Why?’ over and over. ‘Why Ali? She doesn’t deserve this.’ The anger and helplessness spilled out on to the diary pages as I battled to come to grips with the horror of what had happened.
I wrote: ‘I just pray to God and his Son Jesus Christ that my darling daughter will be able to recover from this ghastly ordeal. I pray – although I know I shouldn’t – for vengeance and retribution on the perpetrators of this dastardly act of cowardice.’
There were many other scribbles in the diary before we touched down in Port Elizabeth, but I suppose it did help to pass the time and see me through the most traumatic journey of my life.
On arrival, I hired a car and raced to the hospital. It was after midday when I met Claire in the corridor outside the High Care Unit.
She gave me an update. Alison had pulled through surgery and was conscious. I went in to see her, fearful of what I might find and not knowing what to expect.
At first I could not handle it. She looked terrible. Her eyes were bloodshot and her nails were full of soil. Her face was swollen and she had this bandage across her neck. There were tubes and pipes everywhere.
Ali must have sensed my feeling of helplessness. The first thing she said to me was, ‘Daddy, please don’t worry about me.’
I was overcome. Here she was in this state and she was thinking about me and not herself. Ali had always tried to protect me. I had always been the more emotional parent.
Her calmness and strength soothed me. She talked some more, holding my hand. She was a little incoherent. She pointed to a little cactus on the cabinet next to her and said that someone called Tiaan had given it to her. I gathered that he must have done something to help her.
I left her needing to know more about what had happened. As I walked out of the ward the reality of the situation really hit me. I was shell-shocked.
Claire and I went to the duty room where we met with Dr Comyn. He had been the doctor on duty the night before. He told us about the surgery, how intricate and difficult the procedure had been. He clearly had deep admiration for Ali and for Dr Angelov. He said he had never seen anyone perform such delicate surgery so professionally.
Dr Comyn said Ali was not out of danger yet. The wounds might still become infected and there could be complications. I received this information with dread. I wished I could somehow make it better for Ali, make it all go away, but the reality was we just had to wait.
I went back to the waiting-room where a few people had gathered. Two police officers arrived. One of them was a woman who introduced herself as Nadia Swanepoel. She told us she had a good idea of who could have been responsible for Ali’s attack and that she needed an ID.
She had apparently seen one of the suspects in a shopping mall the day before. If Ali was able to pick him out of an album of photographs, she was quite confident that she would know who the other attacker was as both of them were apparently out on bail on another charge of rape.
She went in to see Ali and a short while later was back with a smile on her face.
After that I realised there was nothing more I could do at the hospital. It was after 3 p.m. and I needed to sort out accommodation. Dear friends, Willy and Jill, rallied around and gave me a bed for the night. They were wonderful, caring and loving. They knew exactly when to leave me to be on my own.
I needed to get out and think. I have always tended to bottle up my feelings. In the past I had always found comfort near the sea, and I made my way to Schoen-maker’s Kop at the start of the Sacramento Trail.
I started walking. It was so beautiful but I couldn’t appreciate it. My feelings overwhelmed me again, so I shouted out at the top of my voice. I screamed at the sea and at the sky. ‘Why? Why my daughter?’ I could find no answer.
I carried on walking up as far as the shells, which is about a two-kilometre stretch.
As dusk gently descended I turned around and headed back. I felt more composed and in that moment I believe God gave an answer.
I just knew that Ali would not die. That she had been saved for a purpose. I did not know how bad she’d be or how the injuries would affect her. But there and then I decided to pull myself together. I promised that I would be there for her no matter what, even if it meant I had to change my life.
I was in awe of my beautiful daughter.
The next day news of the attack was all over the papers. The headlines were huge; the event had clearly shocked and outraged everyone in the city. There was a tremendous feeling of joy and relief that the suspects had been apprehended.
