Sitting on the balcony of her flat, Dr Bernice Jantjies looked down at the row of trees, and noticed just then, that the leaves had gone from green to red. Her lips let out an amazed ‘Wow,’ and she watched as the morning sun offered a line of flames to the street; a new sort of energy she could not put her finger on.
Still in her dressing-gown and slippers, she sat there in her usual pre-work ritual, and placed her coffee cup on the table. Fresh air on the tenth floor seemed to come straight off the ocean. She looked down at her hands, blowing softly. Nails had not quite dried. ‘Emerald green with little stars,’ she whispered, smiling to a mechanical seagull sitting on the railing. ‘I’m known for these, you know. Magic at the tips.’
*
‘EMERGENCY ENTRANCE’ shone twenty-four hours a day in big red letters, moths fluttered all night there, and daytime was the turn of butterflies. MediClinic, 21 Hof Street, Oranjezicht, Cape Town, was known for excellent private healthcare, and proud of its emergency room – a flagship service to the suburb and to clients elsewhere who could afford it. Success was due to a well-trained medical team but the ‘star of the show,’ as Administrator Diamond put it, was Dr Bernice Jantjies. So brilliant was her work, there was no shortage of young doctors and nurses wanting to train under her. Beyond her work, the beautiful gardens outside the front doors of MediClinic held a special thrill for Dr Jantjies.
The beds of roses were magnificent on the edge of the fountain; blood red and glowing in the sun as birds might do; yellow daffodils popped up in the shade nearby, catching the light under the tall Norfolk Pine. The oak trees on the edges of the great circle were as old as the hospital itself. Other trees with wide trunks gave a place for darting squirrels to lick their silver tails and make squeaking sounds in the afternoon. The hedge, of every colour imaginable, came into bloom every June.
Many of the plants were indigenous, never requiring watering or any attention at all, while others required a little help. Of late, the hedge had begun to show big buds and attract local bees and foreign wasps.
It seemed winter would come soon, this year. In all, the garden with its lawns was filled with every flower it was possible to grow in the climate of Cape Town; plants from all over having made their way there as gifts from grateful people.
Dr Bernice Jantjies loved the garden because all the plants grew and bloomed and grew and bloomed. She loved the cycles of the year, the seasons making things new, in the way a wound might heal. The garden fed her love for kindness and her passion for rejuvenation. She spent lunch-breaks sitting there in silence on a bench, sipping warm honey, watching the sun do its work, caressing every living surface.
But she loved the garden most of all because it held the circular road, designated for ambulances only. In her opinion, there was no better way to be delivered to her care than along a cobbled avenue inside a beautiful garden of welcoming tulips, rhododendrons, chrysanthemums and oh so many lilies.
*
That morning, the virus arrived like an evocation of horror, imagined only in Hollywood:
‘Pass it to me Sister,’ said Dr Bernice Jantjies to Sister Janice Peters, who was standing next to the suction unit, the sterile tube releasing a little bubble travelling slowly along a loop of yellow liquid that looked like puss. Sister Janice Peters watched the bubble carefully, recording its speed on a flat board, while rearranging a tray of stainless-steel scalpels against a stack of floating radiographs and occasion-waves.
‘Infusion pump,’
‘Clear it please,’ said Dr Jantjies.
‘Swab. Cleared for blood,’ said Sister Peters, wiping her brow. ‘Here, near the top. Occipital?’
‘BOTH!’ shouted Dr Jantjies.
‘Mask on, please,’ said someone. There were doctors and nurses everywhere.
‘Next to the ECGX’
‘Wipe, cranial clamp. Now!’ said Dr Jantjies. ‘Can someone please remove this KED. It’s in the way of the clamp.’
‘Clearing the scalp, Dr.’
‘Cleared.’
‘Yes.’
‘YES.’
‘Here Dr,’ said Sister Janice Peters to Dr Jack Solomons, who had just rushed in. ‘Dr Jack, Dr Jantjies needs you over here, now.’
‘The other gloves please, silver ones, there, yes,’ said Dr Jack Solomons in his loud voice.
‘Gold mask?’ said Dr Bernice Jantjies to Dr Jack Solomons, stepping over the orange spinal board the paramedics had left on the white linoleum floor after a lull in screams from every direction.
‘Get that jump-bag out of the way, please,’ said Dr Jack Solomons to Sister Peters. She shoved it with her foot, and the bag slid across the floor. Another nurse chased after it and swore to herself, they were running out of stock.
‘Sister, mask up please,’ said Dr Bernice Jantjies. ‘And that goes for all of you, immediately, thank you.’ Then, turning to the doctor nearest to her she asked: ‘Are there more?’
‘Four more ambulances have arrived; more are coming, Dr,’ said Dr Ishmael Bhorat, the newest intern.
‘Four?’
‘And more still coming, they say.’
Dr Bernice Jantjies walked to the window and rubbed the pane with her glove as one might a bathroom mirror after a shower, looking out at the entrance and the garden road beyond. Within the green flashed little stars like a storm of fire-beetles. The lights made everything dance in macabre celebration of urgency there: ambulances in white, some in luminous yellow, some bright pink, in a vast tail down into Molteno Road, and down that road towards the city below. The howling sirens could be heard from faraway, echoing against the cliffs of Table Mountain, coming from all directions.
At dusk Dr Bernice Jantjies leaned to one side against the white wall of the entrance in silence, her legs aching, her head heavy against the window, cheeks cold in the heat, thinking back to the beginning of this despicable day. She wiped her mouth with her forearm:
The first ambulance had arrived at about 09h00, yes, not too early. Parking as it often did, coming head first into that bay with the red ‘A’ in a red circle painted on the tarmac. Doors at the back opened, facing the garden. She had been there with her team to receive the stretcher, little wheels spinning on the jets as they had been designed to spin, the paramedic jumping to the side, IV in his hand. She had taken over then, as was her conviction, parting the patient’s blonde hair. Two small bumps appeared either side, evenly spaced, near the top of the cranium. She had seen this once long ago, had written it down in a book:
‘My residency was in the province of Ethiopia during that hot April of 2049. I was new. Ambition drove me there like lust and also like repulsion, as far north as I could go. Near the top of our vast continental country, to learn from the best. He was the best. I had left without any delay, landing in silence on a warm cushion of air, on a slope in white dust. It was 05h00. Working for the neurologist Dr Chemere Zewdie near that forest in the Great Rift Valley was my dream. Now it had come true. He was glad to have ‘the top of the class’ as one of his new doctors. They called me Top of the Class there. “Hello Dr Zewdie,” I said, stepping from under the shadow of the drone. “We are working with these people from Nechisar Village, we have lost half the tribe,” said Dr Zewdie. “All our doctors are in the tents over there. All nine men. I’ve had them at it for days. But I’d like to take you to see the king,” Dr Zewdie had said, as we began our walk. “His palace is ceremonial and therefore the trees are untouchable. He is untouchable. In a sense the forest is the palace. The last trees in the North. Over four hundred years old, taller than buildings in cities. It’s where they bury the dead. His hut is in the middle,” said Dr Zewdie. The redness on the tops of trees was bright like blood. An island of peace. Scattering flocks of parrots whirled a jagged sky inside the trees making an island of wings. I looked around at the openness before we entered the forest. Grassland of alien white thorns: Nechisar Plains had seen many cattle, and too many people. That part of the country had seen farms become cities, in turn reclaimed by thorns. Nothing eats thorns. We entered the forest next to the mortuary tent, erected the day before, ‘AZANIANA’ on both sides in blue. The forest was dark until our eyes calmed to the green mist. A clearing came, soft light filtered on wings. The hut was tall like a totem and luminous. No dead wood. Walls and the roof of the circular room lived in growing trunks – vast juniper trees of the species Juniperus procera. The hut was empty except for him, lying there on his back on a stretcher on white sand. “It’s important that you are the last,” said Dr Zewdie, “because of The Season.”
We walked toward the king. “This is Dr Bernice Jantjies, from our capital, she was top of her class,” said Dr Zewdie. The king looked up at me, his eyes looked into my brain, through my flesh, into the curve of the back of my skull, or so it felt. “Sometimes there is nothing we can do,” said Dr Zewdie to me. “End of a season, and when he goes, the forest will go, too few trees, and they can only grow so high,” said Dr Zewdie.
“Because you are the last, you will be the first,” said Dr Zewdie. The king lifted his right arm – his hand in a glove made of leaves – patting the top of his head. I saw the two bumps for the first time: covered in fine grey hair, black near the bases, each about 10cm high, each about 2cm in diameter, shining in pointed bone at the tips.’
*
Dr Bernice Jantjies wiped the window pane of the emergency ward near the automatic sliding doors; condensation from her breath had misted the world. Ambulances kept coming in a constant line of red and yellow. She was about to lift her elbow to make a broader wipe with her full arm – not just the hand – when she paused, extending the long finger of her right hand, drawing a tree on the glass.
The team had worked through the night. The side aisle from the emergency ward into the main part of the hospital was littered with active stretchers, and nurses were busy there too, clutching ventilator-lung-transfers to supply air to those in distress. White bins along the walls overflowed with small boxes of spit and packets of stains. Dr Ishmael Bhorat sat in the first chair of a row of blue chairs, near the reception desk, below a buzzing florescent soother-light, talking to a middle-aged lady who shook as she cried. Her young son sat beside her in his pajamas, one finger in his nose, the other scratching just to the left, near the top of his head.
From under a blue curtain leaked piss and Dr Bernice Jantjies shouted: ‘Get a catheter over there.’
‘On it,’ said Dr Jack Solomons, as he rushed. ‘But we are going to have to start turning them away.’
‘There are no more clamps, and we’ve run out of saline solution xc557.’
‘We’ll make our own. Get me salt.’
‘And blood?’
‘THERE IS ALWAYS NEW BLOOD,’ wailed a man coming in on a bed.
Dr Bernice Jantjies dropped her pen on the linoleum floor and it rolled toward the open automatic sliding doors, cool morning air tumbled in on the scent of flowers from the garden. Lights flickered and ambulances still moaned. Ambulance men shouted outside as they wheeled a panicked man closer. He lay on a stretcher slightly tilted, lifting his head, before falling back on his back, the hissing mask pulled to the side of his face.
‘The Season,’ he said.
He shivered. She placed the mask back over his face, fastening the straps. ‘You need the air, old friend’ said Dr Bernice Jantjies.
The mask filled with a white cloud as he said softly: ‘I need light.’
‘I can’t hear you clearly Dr Abera,’ whispered Dr Bernice Jantjies, bending down to his right ear, pulling the blue curtain to make a wall, the rail singing on stainless-steel loops.
‘You remember me, eh,’ said Dr Negasi Abera, his Ethiopian accent strong, eyes deep in his head as he tried to breath. ‘Āmeseginaehu.’
‘Beselami wenidimi irefiti.’ said Dr Bernice Jantjies. ‘How can I forget? All of you were like brothers to me then, Dr. And Dr Zewdie…I miss him, you know. Every day. First, let’s sort you out,’ said Dr Bernice Jantjies, stroking his forehead.
Dr Bernice Jantjies removed the mask for a moment, the blue glow from the fibre cable connector flashing, releasing a faint beeping call like that of a songbird.
‘I’ve come from the Rift Valley. Do you remember the smoke when the forest died, remember the green smoke?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘It was not smoke.’
‘I don’t understand.’ Dr Jantjies said, perplexed.
‘It was the reason Dr Zewdie took you in, at the end, to receive The Season.’
‘Rest Dr,’ said Dr Bernice Jantjies, parting the hair on the top of his head. ‘You need the mask…’
‘It was the King’s Gift.’
‘Nurse. Bring me the swabs and the occipital clamp.’
‘Dr,’ said Dr Negasi Abera.
‘Rest.’
‘Dr Jantjies, the sky was seed. And you were the only woman. Oh, the sweetness of that air then, the fecund sky, and you, yes only you, could breathe it all in.’
‘Nurse!’ said Dr Bernice Jantjies, looking at the top of his head.
‘Coming Dr.’
‘Occipitals and clamp.’
‘Dr,’ said Dr Negasi Abede.
‘Yes, Dr?’
‘Wheel me outside.’
‘Dr?’
‘Please, wheel me into that garden.’ He began to cry.
Dr Bernice Jantjies stared into Dr Negasi Abede’s eyes, purple circles holding tears, and she pushed the stretcher toward the light.
The trees shone in the green warmth of the sun. Grey pigeons circled above, waiting to be fed on the paving stones. Spray from the fountain sent fine mist onto translucent lilies. The flowers bloomed because it was their time. Dr Bernice Jantjies pushed the stretcher across the forecourt, past the ambulances, the small wheels singing, and she shouted at people to move. The stretcher rattled, the mask leaking oxygen from the little square electric vibration-filter box glowing at its side. Hydrangeas and rhododendrons and chrysanthemums and irises brushed against her thighs and lower legs. When she reached the middle of the lawn, tears fell from her chin. She looked down at Dr Negasi Abede.
‘Look,’ said Dr Bernice Jantjies, lifting his head, the stretcher raising him in a slow bend.
‘Green.’
‘Yes. Feeds my soul. Listen to the birds. Smell it all,’ said Dr Bernice Jantjies, the heat coming down onto her face.
‘Help me with the mask.’
‘Dr?’
‘Look,’ said Dr Negasi Abede, pulling his arms out from under the blanket, removing the mask. He reached up to grab the sun. His long fingers – yellow at the tips – began to straighten. With a moan he sat up, lungs opening to the sky, chest lifting in the freshest glow. His translucent fingernails began to blush in the shades of leaves and he photosynthesized in the middle of that magnificent yet rare garden, the only garden left in Cape Town that was a vast city – like all cities – with no space for such things. He gazed up at Dr Bernice Jantjies, and said with a smile, pointing to the protrusions coming out of the top of his head: ‘We are not dying. These are not horns, they are branches.’
END
