The Lazarus Effect. HJ Golakai
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personal assistant and the deluge of morning messages, faxes and appointments, he sneaked into his office, vainly hoping that none of the other PAs had seen him. The first moments of peace in the mornings were worth killing for.
It lasted about two minutes before the phone went. Let it ring, he thought as he leaned back in his chair, pressing thumbs into tired eyes. But knowing better, he reached over and answered. It was Tamsin from Paediatrics, who breathlessly informed him they had only two doctors available and the place was a meat market. She knew it wasn’t his responsibility, but she’d tried Doctor several times on her beeper, cell and home land line and still no answer. Could he perhaps . . . ?
Ian hung up with a sigh. Without needing to glance at the wall calendar or the smaller flip-over version on the desk, he knew the date. Obviously that was why Carina wasn’t at work yet, and why she was not intending to turn up at all. He knew which anniversary the date signified weeks before it arrived, announcing itself every year with the same dank, heavy presence that crept into his heart and home. Every member of his family became more subdued, and no one looked each other in the eye for days, not to mention the frequent inexplicable absences from home. Having slept at a nearby bed-and-breakfast the previous night, he was hardly setting the best example.
All the same, he’d expected this well-coordinated, sombre dance around the unspoken to have petered out, if not through the passage of time then at least from how exhausting it was for all involved. He was unable to suppress an image of himself at his mother’s kitchen table, wearing different clothes over the years, but with the same confused hangdog expression. The years had yawned between them, and neither had been able to submit to the grief of losing a husband and father. Food and denial became substitutes for communication. Anything could petrify into tradition if people gave it enough respect.
Ian picked up a framed photograph and felt a tightness in his chest. The smiling face of his son looked back at him, a face almost exactly like his own thirty years ago. In a green shirt splashed with a jaunty print that made him look even younger than his fourteen years, Sean grinned as if he hadn’t a care in the world. Wherever he was now, he likely had no cause for cares. Even with the barest fuzz of hair and lighting that hardly compensated for a sallow complexion, it was hard to tell he was a sick child with only months left to live.
Ian removed the frame and drew another snapshot from behind the first, peeling them apart. With the frame concealing it, no one would ever have guessed it was there, which was what he wanted. The photo showed a young girl in a T-shirt and blue jeans, framed in a doorway with hands in pockets and shoulders raised as she laughed into the camera. Same smile, sameish nose.
They could be brother and sister, he thought absurdly. Which they were, and would have acted like, had he allowed it in the short time they’d known each other. “2 September, 2002” was written on the back of the boy’s photo – seven years ago to the day – while “17/03/07” was scrawled on the girl’s.
Two children lost to him in less than a decade, frozen forever at ages fourteen and seventeen. Two grieving mothers hating his fucking guts for the rest of his life: one whose smouldering contempt he swallowed every day, the other whose leaden silence and ability to freeze him out of every line of communication were more effective than any physical blow.
Ian picked up the phone wearily. The next number he dialled was his wife’s.
* * *
The knife carved a slice off the carrot, and the tip of a finger almost followed as well. Carina swore and stuffed the digit in her mouth. The metallic taste of blood began on her tongue and then amplified, filling her mouth and nose. It made her think of the operating theatres of her internship, of someone lying prone with their life in her capable hands and relying on her skill to see them through. It reminded her of many smells she couldn’t face today: baby powder, full nappies or vomit. She couldn’t face the combined aroma or sight of babies living and being, no matter how much she was needed at the hospital. I can’t face much of anything today, she thought as she squeezed her eyelids together and took gulps of air. Today I see myself through.
It was pointless. The tears would come no matter which way she played it.
Carina dwelt for a glum minute on her personal classification of mothers. Some women, most women, were born to do it. Others were self-made, morphing into the role as their bodies plumped and they realised they’d intended to do it anyway and now was as good a time as any. Others were just resigned to the prospect. She had no idea where, or if, she fitted into either of the latter two groups, but she definitely didn’t fit into the first. She’d never fancied the idea of mothering, most likely because she hadn’t given it much thought, preferring to think of things only when they were immediately relevant. She had very much liked the idea of being part of a couple. The better half of another.
Once married, she’d had no clue why the first pregnancy had surprised her. She hadn’t gone out of her way to prevent it, and the thought of a termination had repulsed her almost as soon as it had come to mind. Not on any moral or religious grounds, but purely on the principle that she always completed anything she began. Her own mother would not have been shocked had she known that her daughter’s first reaction to the news had not been delight. From childhood, Carina felt she’d always been accused, wrongfully in her view, of being too sleepy in her decision-making in some places and too headstrong and impulsive in others. This from the woman who, after all these years, still doubted that her daughter’s decisions – to study medicine, leave Germany to practise in Africa and marry a man who wasn’t white – were all carefully considered. Which of course they had been.
Four pregnancies, though . . . Carina had to hand it to the old woman on that score: she herself had not seen that coming. After the trauma of Sean’s birth, when they’d finally laid his perfect, downy head on her chest, she’d told herself she was done. One was enough. But like most modern women who thought themselves above the subservience of love, she hadn’t made any allowance for how powerful would be her need to please her husband. Ian was absolutely besotted with Sean. In that sentiment she’d agreed with her husband wholeheartedly, as they joined in showering their eldest with the adulation he deserved.
She’d given him the first name of Heinrich, after her own beloved father, but as was usual had become resigned to having her authority undermined as he came to be called Sean, his second “less stuffy” name. Regardless of what he was called, no child was as deserving of being spoiled and overwhelmed with love and gifts as their firstborn. Sean was as good and sweet-tempered in the flesh as he’d been in utero, which was not at all what she’d expected. Carina had looked on in quiet terror at the monstrous blue-veined stomachs, pimpled faces and oedemic legs of would-be mothers and the frightful carryings-on and tantrums of other people’s offspring in public. How had she, a seasoned paediatrician, not noticed these things before? What blinkers had shielded her eyes from the truth that these little balls of human, her primary clients, were hell-raisers? Without a second thought, she simply delivered the routine lines on child care that needed to be doled out to parents who needed more sleep or time to themselves. Until it was her turn, but she’d gotten lucky.
At least with Sean she’d gotten lucky. As her belly had swollen distastefully another three times, her attachment to her firstborn had grown disproportionately more intense. None of her children, Sean included, looked much like her. One of her girls even had the audacity to look like a reincarnation of one of Ian’s overbearing, bearded great-aunts. But Sean had had enough of her in him to satisfy, she reflected with a smile, something in the general way his features arranged themselves while he battled his emotions and fears. He’d got his strength and resolve from her, and combined with uncommon cheerfulness and maturity his personality served him well throughout the course of his illness.
Carina blinked against a hot welling of tears. Ironically, that very thing had driven her crazy. Throughout her medical career she’d seen many myths regarding both science and human nature debunked. The one about the glowing angelic child that soldiered on bravely through chronic illness, managing to uplift others despite the pain and hopelessness of their own situation, was in reality as rare as unicorns. Sick children were like sick adults: cranky, headstrong and downright impossible. Like all children, they picked up on the adult vibes around them and acted out, and the