A Simple Intervention, page 9
I placed everything in her hands, the card game too. I guided her fingers so she could feel the surface of her belongings. Surely her skin remembered. Skin always remembers.
At the end of each shift, I dropped in to see the doctor in his office. I gave him an account of the hours I’d spent at Marianne’s bedside. I repeated what I’d said to the night nurse at the handover.
He listened to me. He took notes. But he wasn’t present. ‘You can go now.’ That’s how he said goodbye each evening, usually without looking up from his notes. Only once did he set his pen aside after I’d stood up to go.
He folded his hands. ‘Are you going back to your room-mate?’
That heat under my skin again. ‘My room-mate?’
‘Yes. You share a room, don’t you?’
I nodded. He’d never asked me about the nurses’ halls.
‘Tell her to keep an eye on you.’ He looked back at his notes. ‘That’ll be all.’
I turned round and left his office. I closed the door behind me. On the steps to the changing room, I had to grab hold of the banister. My feet were almost faster than I was.
Marianne should have been his key, said one of the older nurses.
‘His key to what?’
‘Money. To other rich families looking to fix their problem cases. So he can continue his research and boost his reputation.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘It’s not about that.’
She nodded and put a hand on my shoulder. I hated that about the older nurses. Their experience, which they passed off as knowledge, their arrogance towards nurses like me, who still believed in something. Yes, that was me: someone who believed in something.
3
I knew she was there. She was trying to be quiet, but if one body knows another, it feels its presence even in sleep. I opened my eyes. Outside it was still dusk. The light on those June days was inexhaustible.
‘Sarah.’
She looked at me. She put down whatever she’d just picked up. ‘Hello,’ she said quietly. ‘I didn’t want to disturb you. You were a long way away.’
‘You mustn’t let me sleep.’ Anger rose within me. ‘When you’re here, you mustn’t let me sleep.’ You mustn’t let me miss all these hours with you.
‘What’s wrong?’
I only felt the tears as they seeped into my pillow. I wiped them away quickly.
Sarah came and sat by me on the bed. She ignored my attempts to fend her off with my hand. After all, she knew my body as well as she knew her own, and she saw that I needed her. She buried her fingers in my hair. ‘Are you going to tell me what’s happened?’
I needed a moment. I pressed my face into the pillow. And then it came out. The intervention. The incoherent word. The abyss. The room I wasn’t allowed to leave. The flowers. Sarah listened, nodded. There were pauses, during which I thought I’d said everything.
‘You’ve been in that room the entire time?’
‘Yes.’
‘And she was well before that?’
‘No, of course not…’ Then came another torrent. I tried to describe Marianne’s rage. The silent blast in her body. The tide flooding in as reliably as it ebbed away. I told her about the other patients, about the hope and tranquillity when they opened their eyes after the intervention.
Sarah waited until I’d got every last word out. ‘Do you remember what I told you?’ she asked. ‘About my friend?’
‘Yes.’
She nodded again. Although she was still touching me, something within her seemed to move away in that instant. I sensed a muted irritation. ‘Surely you can see,’ she said, pulling her hand out of my hair and rubbing her forehead, ‘that what’s happened to your patient isn’t just unfortunate. That there’s maybe a more fundamental problem here. With the type of treatment.’
There it was again. She couldn’t stop herself. I closed my eyes. The anger returned, swelling inside me. ‘I’m tired,’ I said.
‘Okay.’ She shifted away from me a little but didn’t stand up. I could hear her trying to find the right words. She opened her mouth several times to speak, shaking her head each time and trying again. ‘I don’t understand these interventions as well as you do,’ she said finally, ‘so I need you to tell me whether… and be honest with yourself, whether these people really are better afterwards.’
I opened my eyes again. ‘Yes,’ I said. Her gaze was unyielding. The lines across her forehead. Her mouth poised, ready to question me further. How quickly the tenderness could vanish from her face.
‘Always?’
I sat up in bed. She wouldn’t let me sleep. ‘Since when has there been an always in our profession?’
‘Can you swear that your patients lead a better life afterwards?’
‘What are you asking me?’
Something inside her stiffened. Her body suddenly felt so heavy sitting there on my bed. A weight that was pushing me deeper into the mattress too. ‘I can’t help feeling these interventions are harmful. And I’m not the only one who thinks so. I’ve read that they quieten people down. Especially women. That they take something of themselves away from them.’
‘No,’ I say. ‘That’s not true. That might have been how it used to be, well… years ago, in psychiatric institutions. But that’s got nothing to do with what we’re doing now. We don’t quieten anyone down. And what is that supposed to mean, anyway? Take something of themselves away? Where have you been reading such nonsense?’
Sarah stood up and went to the window. She supported herself with both hands on the frame, dropped her head between her arms and took a few deep breaths. Her shoulder blades, which I knew so well, were now protruding sharply from her back. ‘At least I don’t believe everything someone tells me just because they’re higher up than me.’
My anger towards her intensified. Anger because she refused to see what we were achieving in this hospital. Anger because of the many times I’d tried to bring it up with her and she’d brushed me off. ‘You’re right. You don’t understand our intervention. How could you, anyway? It’s impossible to talk to you about it. Do you have any idea how these people were beforehand? They were… in institutions. In prisons. They’d got themselves into hopeless situations, like the women on your ward. They were addicts, like your friend. We could have helped her too.’
She struck the window frame with her hand. She struck it hard. I fell silent. ‘Help?’ She turned towards me. Her jaw was trembling. ‘It was their help that killed her!’
I put my feet on the cold floor. Was she about to throw a shoe? Or even give me a slap? But instead she turned back to face the window. She was withdrawing from me. That’s what she did best.
‘Haven’t you noticed?’ I said. ‘All you see is her. I tell you about my work, about my patient, and you see her. You couldn’t care less about the good that comes out of medicine. All you see is her.’
‘And all you see is some sort of… hope.’ Her voice became calm again. My hope, the hope she recognized in me, seemed to pacify her. She put her hand on the windowpane. ‘You can’t see the part we play in all of this. As if what we share with one another, we two, you and I… had nothing to do with it.’
‘But it doesn’t. It’s your pain that makes you think that.’ It had infected everything. It was in her eyes, in her words, in this room. An intense weariness came over me. ‘It’s not my pain.’
‘Of course it is.’ She tapped her fingertips on the windowpane. ‘It belongs to all of us.’
Get up. Get up and go. Only come back when she’s ready to talk about something else. There was no other way to cope. I stepped into my slippers.
‘So they can cure psychological disorders now.’ She nodded. ‘I understand that. So it’s only logical that one day they’ll do that with me as well.’
‘Sarah, please.’ A cold weariness seized me by the throat. I needed fresh air.
‘Wouldn’t they say that about us two? That it’s a psychological disorder?’
‘They’re not saying anything at all about us.’ I saw the doctor before me. His folded hands. His question about my room-mate. The heat under my skin. He didn’t know anything about us.
‘Does he serve you coffee in his office?’ She looked at me. ‘Does he tell you you’re something special, your doctor? You’d like to be, wouldn’t you? Something special?’ She shook her head. ‘But you’re no different from us. Do you know that? You’re playing his game. But they’re his rules.’ She turned to me and put her hand on her chest. ‘You’re just like me.’ I thought she was going to cry. ‘Think about it. Strike out your hope, then see what you’ve got left.’
Get up and go. I had to leave, otherwise there’d be no end to this. I stood up and was about to head for the door, but Sarah was quicker. She bolted towards me and grabbed my arm. My skin cried out. It remembered the silent assent between our bodies. It didn’t want to go.
‘My friend may have been an addict, but that’s the only difference between her and us. The only one.’
I stood firm against her gaze. ‘You can keep your pain,’ I said. ‘I don’t want it.’
‘You can be so stupid, Meret.’
I wrenched my arm free from her grip. ‘I have to go,’ I said. I didn’t say: I know I can be stupid. So stupid, I’d give myself a good beating if I could.
‘Be my guest. Don’t let me stop you.’ She stepped to the side to let me by. All the tension seemed to fall from her as I passed. Her body softened. It softened like a body after a fight, giving in to its exhaustion. And I went, even though I wanted to stay there and take her in my arms. I went, even though my skin was still crying out, crying out as I closed the door, crying out as I went down the stairs and stepped outside.
4
‘Hello?’ I said into the receiver. There was a crackle at the other end of the line. ‘Hello?’ I said again, louder this time.
‘It’s me,’ came through the crackling. ‘Bibi.’ No one else announced themselves like this on the phone. She did this with everyone she called. How often we’d tried to drum it out of her, rattling off phrases like ‘This is Bibiana’, or even ‘Bibiana here’. ‘Can’t you at least say: Bibi here?’ No chance.
I clutched the receiver.
‘Meret, did you get my last postcard?’
‘From America?’
‘Yes, pretty cool, wasn’t it?’
‘And are you in America?’
‘Are you crazy? How on earth am I supposed to get there? I’d have to book a seat on the deck. And on the plane…’
And on the plane you’d have a panic attack. I always forgot that. In my head, Bibi was indestructible, not someone with a fear of flying. Not someone whose stomach could be turned upside down by lurching waves.
‘How are you?’ Bibi asked.
‘Okay.’
‘I’d be able to tell all the way from America that you’re not okay.’
‘Nonsense.’
‘Well, if you say so.’
‘I’d rather hear how you are.’
‘Really well, actually. I’m opening a café. With some friends.’
‘Friends?’
She groaned. There was another brief crackle on the line.
‘Bibi!’ I shouted down the phone. I was afraid the call would be cut off. But she didn’t seem to hear me.
‘It’s… a dump. Or rather, it was a dump. We’ve done the basics. We’ve even got an alcohol licence. But we don’t have a beer tap yet. Or a water supply.’
‘Where do you live?’
‘What do you mean, where do I live? On the streets, of course. What a stupid question.’
‘I’m serious.’
‘I live in a house, like most people. What’s up with you?’
‘I haven’t heard your voice for months. I was beginning to think I’d never hear from you again.’
Not a word at the other end of the line. ‘I know,’ she said finally, her tone subdued. ‘Sorry about that.’
Whenever she went silent on us, I imagined she was ashamed. She was ashamed, and that’s why she never called. I pictured her holding the receiver in her hand but not being able to bring herself to dial one of our numbers. Because she didn’t know where to start. Where to start to make things good between us.
‘Do you need money?’
‘I’m earning money.’
‘How?’
She snorted. Now I fell silent. In truth, I knew it wasn’t shame that stopped her calling.
‘Tell me about your café.’
‘It’s in a corner building. It used to be a… well, it looks like it used to sell sanitaryware, because when we saw the shop for the first time, there were five toilet bowls and two bathtubs lying there – just imagine! And the dust, layers of dust, I’m not kidding you, and rubble and… you don’t always know what kind of stories these places have, do you? Don’t you get a shiver down your spine when you think of all the stuff that went on in that hospital?’
‘Yes, of course… Well, go on.’ Stay on the line. If you don’t want to talk, just breathe. Just breathe into the receiver. I swallowed my silent plea.
‘Tomorrow we’re going to start building the counter. I designed it.’
‘That’s great, Bibi. I’m sure it’ll be the best counter in town.’ I know what a good eye you have. How precise you are. I’m your sister. I know you.
‘I have to go now.’
‘No, don’t go yet.’
‘I’ll call you again soon. But you have to promise you’ll tell me then how you really are.’
‘But the phone’s in the corridor.’
She burst out laughing. ‘So what? And you’re a human being, or isn’t anyone in the building supposed to know that? Where do you live, anyway?’
‘Bibi.’
‘Yes?’
‘I miss you.’
‘I’ll give you a number. Next time I call. I’ll give you a number you can reach me on.’
‘That’d be—’
‘But you mustn’t give it to anyone else. Not like last time. You have to swear to keep it to yourself.’
‘I swear.’
Was she clutching the receiver, like me? Or was my voice worth less because I wasn’t going anywhere, because my number always stayed the same?
‘Take care.’
‘You too.’
I stayed there, the phone beeping in my ear. It took a while for me to hang up. I studied my hands. I didn’t know what they were for.
I’d waited twelve days, but Marianne’s eyes were still empty. She’d been transferred the previous day.
I was given only a few minutes to say goodbye to her. I packed her case and handed it to the two carers who’d come to pick her up.
After that, I made up the bed for the next patient. I scrubbed the floor. I took the flowers and shared them out between the rooms that didn’t have any. There wasn’t any rush, the older nurses said. But still I finished within the time frame dictated by my inner clock. It was still working.
Our room was empty too. Sarah had written me a note to say she was going to be visiting her mother more frequently and didn’t know when we’d see each other next. That was the only thing she left for me. No books, no freshly picked flowers, no mess. Over the last few days I hadn’t even found any of her hair.
I opened my eyes in the mornings and for less than a second she was still with me. I breathed her scent and felt her warmth still flooding the room. Then came the certainty: she hated me. When she’d said, ‘You can be so stupid,’ all the warmth had drained from her eyes.
The certainty sank like a stone. I stood up and went to the toilet, I relieved myself, I washed my face, I drank my coffee, I ate my porridge, I got on my bike, I set off, I was on autopilot, my body acted, I didn’t have to think.
5
Not long after they’d transferred Marianne, I saw the Ellerbachs on the front page of a newspaper one of the older nurses was reading at the breakfast table. I asked her to save the article for me.
Two new patients had arrived. Two more interventions had been performed, without any complications. I kept thinking about Marianne. The doctor said they’d chosen a lovely place for her, and I believed him. I believed this care home had the best beds and the best pillows, the promise of time, more time than had been granted to other desperate souls. But I could see it all in my head: the suitcase, the cards, the chair for visitors. All of it left untouched. These images ambushed me whenever I started to feel sure of myself again.
The doctor and I talked a lot. He’d call me into his office, where we’d go over Marianne’s intervention. He didn’t do this for his own benefit. It was important to him that I regain my confidence in the procedure.
On one of these occasions, the doctor asked me about Bibi.
‘Do you know where your sister is right now?’
Something inside me contracted. The few words Bibi and I had exchanged on the phone, the postcard that had arrived for me a few days later with the telephone number on it: this information was intended only for me – that was part of the deal. So I said, ‘I haven’t heard from her in a long time.’
‘And now you’re worried something might have happened to her.’ He said it with such conviction, it made me laugh. He gave me a look of irritation.
‘Forgive me,’ I stammered, ‘it’s just…’ It’s just that everyone, including me, had always thought the worst would happen to Bibi. Life would eventually punish Bibi, because how could it go any other way? What else was such behaviour asking for?
Happiness, something said in my head, and I couldn’t help laughing again, because it was absurd, even more absurd than the doctor, who was assuming the worst. I could hear Bibi’s voice, her happy voice, telling me about the café she was opening with her friends. I could feel the receiver in my hand, how I’d clutched it as if my life depended on it.
‘What if it isn’t true?’ I asked the doctor.
‘If what isn’t true?’
‘That we’re punished for certain things.’
‘What makes you think that?’
