For Justice, Understanding and Humanity. Helmut Lauschke
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regret and dismay. The nurses had the good impression of this doctor because of his human face that the white skin and the must of wearing the uniform of the SADF did not matter much. The ‘angel’ of nurse in the children’s ward had tears in her eyes. She thanked the young colleague for his good work done and for the joy he had brought to the children and for his commitment he had shown to the staff. The nurse gave a very special pricing that the young colleague got tears in his eyes as well. He said to the nurse that he had admired her work and didn’t know, if he would meet a nurse of such humane format again. The farewell was a heart-moving one ‘chiselled’ into the memory of the people involved.
The doctors left the hospital and took the path between the rolled-out barbed wire in front of the tattered picket fence to the left and the five caravans to the right which all would become vacant by leaving of the army doctors. We stepped over the branches broken down from the old trees behind the picket fence and passed the checkpoint at the entrance of the village where the guard didn’t ask for his permit, though I held it in my hand. We parted to take the different roads. We gave each other the hand under the declining fireball when the young colleague told that he did write a farewell letter which he will bring the next day.
It was twilight. I reached the flat and opened thoughtfully the verandah door. I pulled off the sandals with the sweaty cork soles and entered barefoot the sun-heated sitting room. I washed my hands over the sink in the small kitchen and put the dented kettle with water on the flame of the gas stove. It was a remarkbale day. Again, a good doctor and human being said goodbye to the hospital. The new gap could hardly to be filled as the gap what Dr van der Merwe had left had not been filled. I took a seat on the step outside the verandah door and put the cup of tea to my right. I lit up a cigarette and looked into the nightfall with the stars coming up. The day gave reason to feel sad. A colleague of outstanding qualities was leaving who were needed so much at the hospital.
The first line of a Goethe’s poem said: “The human being should be noble, helpful and good”. This was the young colleague in an exemplary way. As a writer of the story about the forbidden love, he hit against the concrete wall of a system with its inhuman laws and rules. In other words, he hit on the ‘concrete’ heads because of the hopeless stubbornness with the wall rules of segregation and apartheid. This anachronistic wall had to be bulldozed down. The punishment for a human love between black and white had to vanish, this to bring life back to its given value and dignity regardless of the skin colour.
The telephone rang on a Saturday morning
It was the superintendent who asked, if the operation for the axillary lymph node removal on the young woman with the breast lump could be done at nine o’clock. He said that the patient urged to get the operation done. The malignancy apparently had affected her that she could not sleep. I agreed, though the weekend was the time for reading and writing. I put the receiver down and went under the shower when I enjoyed the silence of the morning with the colourful light of the sunrise which came through the window. A pastel-red ray touched the pile of the written papers on the verandah table as the spirit would emerge from the written words to give them the efflorescence of life. After the cup of instant coffee and the morning cigarette, I left the flat for the hospital. I took the way as a morning walk and looked at the trees and bushes and appreciated the songs of the birds and their jumps from branch to branch. There were still some cocks crowing as they had overslept. The guard at the checkpoint yawned when I said good morning and held the permit in my hand. The potholes in the gravel road were driven out to large dents. The gatekeeper at the hospital had already eaten his morning egg, while the shell pieces lay around the chair. Koevoet had done the nightly raid and had left fresh tyre ruts of the Casspirs with a bizarre pattern on the square in front of the outpatient building. Some ruts went off to the ring road inside the hospital premises.
I went straight to the theatre building. The superintendent sat already in the tea room and waited. He apologized for the inconvenience and stated for the delay that the meeting with the medical director had lasted longer in the previous afternoon. He did not say a substantial word about the meeting and I did not ask for that. It was in connection with the patient that I asked the private doctor, if the operation could be done under local anaesthesia which should be sufficient. The private doctor thought about it longer than expected. Then he said that he would prefer the general anaesthesia that the patient did not feel anything. I did avoid a discussion about the pros and cons. It was no doubt for me that the preference for a general anaesthesia was related to the higher anaesthetic fees which he would charge from the patient what obviously the private doctor had theoretically already in his pocket.
Both doctors changed the clothes in the dressing room and went to theatre 3 where the young woman lay on the operating table. When I came from the washing passage, the right arm lay extended in a right angle on an arm support. The skin of the right chest, shoulder and upper arm were cleaned and the rest of the patient was covered with green sterile sheets up to the anaesthetic frame. The private doctor held the anaesthetic mask on the patient’s face and said: “You can start”. Since the operation had a diagnostic purpose to confirm by a histological examination on the lymph nodes that the malignancy of the breast lump had reached an advanced stage, I made a small skin incision in the armpit and removed some enlarged lymph nodes as suspected metastases. The removed lymph nodes were incised and put into a small glass container half-filled with four-percent formaldehyde solution. The specimen had to be sent with the other specimens from other operations with the hospital bus the coming Tuesday to Windhoek to the lab in the Central hospital. I closed the skin and put a dressing on the wound.
The surgical intervention lasted circa ten minutes, while the patient needed further thirty minutes to get back her consciousness. The length of the anaesthetic time from induction until the state of the regained consciousness was chargeable plus the higher tariff for an operation on the weekend. The private doctor thanked for my work and wished me a relaxed weekend.
I made a short round through the wards. The old man with the inoperable colon cancer had given up his will to live. He breathed deeply toward the relief from suffering and kept his eyes closed in the haggard face when I stood at his bed. The old man was ready to die and kept his mouth closed to avoid any word about life. The other old man was the patient referred from the Finnish-Lutheran mission hospital in Engela on whom the broken femoral neck was fixed. This man read in a well-thumbed bible. He thanked for the operation done that he could use again his leg very soon.
The old woman whose left leg was cut off due to a malignant bone tumour had kept the will to live and to help her daughter with the two small grandchildren as far as possible, since there was no man who did care for the family. I changed the bloody dressing on the short leg stump. The woman asked when she could be discharged and I spoke of two to three weeks. I passed in turned direction the theatre building and went to the intensive care unit next to the square. The patients of the high risk were in stable conditions what were recorded in the patients’ files. The nurses told that the injured brought by the military helicopter and got the right arm amputated were picked up by a military ambulance the previous night at around nine “as it was agreed what the men of the ambulance told”. I took note without mentioning the useless discussion with the officer in the theatre dressing room. I wished the nurses a quiet day and left the ward.
I made a turn to the post office where the box was empty, and to the mini-supermarket to buy a grey bread of the tastelessness, a spread sausage, a tin with orange marmalade and a pack of Stuyvesant. I arrived at the flat when the young colleague came from the other side and passed the place between the guesthouse and the flat. I put the bag with the goods bought in the kitchen and waited at the open verandah door for the young colleague. He entered the small sitting room and stood in front of the verandah table and looked at the written paper sheets and piled-up papers what had reached the height of some centimetres. The young colleague found the extent of the writings remarkable.
I brought two cups of coffee and put the cups on the small table between the out-seated armchairs. The colleague praised his time in Oshakati where he had learnt so much for the future and did regret for the neglected condition of the hospital which many people were depending on. I told that I came back from hospital now where I had removed