* * *
Fraser had dragged his great feet from the cool car, up the few steps, to the baking porch and into the waiting room of the dialysis clinic. He pretended not to notice the heat. He and Ata said good morning and sat politely on the brown lino-and-steel chairs. The secretary, lost among filing cabinets behind the wooden half-wall, managed to find her way out and take Fraser’s name. There were only a few people waiting — four. Normal-looking people, waiting patiently. No one reading the curling diabetes magazines or doing anything, just watching each other’s hands and feet. Fraser crossed his ankles and clasped hands. Eventually, a man came out of the small corridor between what used to be bedrooms. The secretary looked up, nodded, and the lady with the umbrella went in. Dr. Turner came out, smiled at them abstractly, went back in, and the heat continued stacking under the peaked tin roof.
“It’s easy, easy. So simple, you wouldn’t believe how easy it could become. Just sit up there for me. One minute — just going to wash my hands.” Dr. Turner made two steps to the next room and Ata looked for somewhere to fit, out of the way. With the tiny room divided in two by a flimsy partition, the homemade doctor’s couch was only two feet from the cupboard-lined wall. More brown lino and sickly, meant-to-be-cheery yellow. Boxes were stacked up to the windowsill and a wire hanger hooked over the top of the partition. Bold sunlight pushed in, competing with the air-conditioning, winning gradually.
The doctor stepped back in briskly. “You want to lie down, Fraser? Yes, put your feet up.”
Fraser shook off his Birkenstocks and they thumped down, taking up all the space on the floor. He rocked back stiffly in his shell armor but he was shrinking daily within it.
“You have to eat to stop losing pounds. Lots of protein. I’m just going to take your pressure, okay?” Hands doing things all the time. She was turning easy in the little half’a room, moving packets, a bowl, scissors on the counter, gauze on the bed. She patted Fraser’s leg comfortably. “You like meat? Liver and beef, good things. This is okay. Let me just get a bag.” She dug behind the partition, half her body on Ata’s side of the room and the other still on Fraser’s side. She grabbed hold of a bag of clear fluid like it was any old thing, rested it on the bed against Fraser’s foot, and patted it. Fraser raised his head to look and flopped back down. His face glowed just before a dew of sweat appeared.
This was a lesson. Fraser needed to learn the procedure himself, but he just turned his face away and stared deadly at Ata. Her mixed feelings shone back at him. She couldn’t control it, her disappointment, judgment, and sympathy, close and overwhelming as the warmth in the room. He cut her slap of a look and turned away. Dr. Turner reminded him gently, after his minitantrum and sullen swipe at her, that he was lucky to have friends so close to him. Ata felt grateful but transparent. The warmth dampened Ata’s skin and slicked her armpits. She wondered if it wasn’t too warm for storing the precious solution.
Dr. Turner didn’t sweat a millidrop, while Fraser’s brow popped beads. He kept complaining, saying that even the usually cooling fluid wasn’t helping. Dr. Turner complimented him on his lovely feet. She was the coolest Queen of Saline and Ata couldn’t stop admiring her — her sure dry hands, the comfort with her full figure despite her unmatched clothes. Her face held saline secrets deep in understanding eyes and a tentative smile. The fluid is called dialysate, she explained. She should be worshipped more than God of Design. But no one knew about this quiet hero. Only families of the lives she had preserved a little longer, at a reduced cost whenever possible. Sometimes she had to send them on to gory hemodialysis at the hospital. Ata could not imagine how she could keep grace while having to refuse a patient treatment because they couldn’t afford it anymore. For years, this woman had dealt with her choice of speciality, saving dignity and souls instead of lives. If only everyone could find that grace when faced with sure death, or for a friend facing it. She looked at Dr. Turner closer.
* * *
The transparent viral feeling stays trapped in Ata on the day of the meeting, while Thomas is in cleaning heaven, polishing and prepping for the “event.” He loves anything he can help prepare for, as long as it is planned, and Ata has even told him what she will serve. He reports how many ginger ales and mixers there are and suggests he give Fraser’s bathroom an extra clean, because people will use that one. “We would need some more Ajax next time you go shopping, though,” he says cheerfully.
When she asks how the two tins could be finished already, he claims that it works best for limescale and everything, and that is what he does use all the time on all them sinks and even toilet bowls.
* * *
As they all settle round the table and onto the settees in the living-dining room, Fraser’s face and back are stiff as Ata’s insides. She chooses the arm of the settee, between those on it and Fraser, Pierre, and Helen at the table. Lawyer-friend, doctor-friend, Indi-Portagee couple-friends who have taken to visiting regularly, cousin, secretary, SC, Vernon, Marriette and her brother, chat away easy as the afternoon light on soft cotton and warm terrazzo floor. They chinkle up talk nice as ice cubes melting in their glasses, cool-cool as the water droplets dripping past knuckles onto a knee. Rum and ginger with a piece of lime. Fitting. Even big mouth Marriette-brother’s comments about the drink and SC’s turkey laugh aren’t too loud.
Fraser clears his throat, stretching his neck up as far as it can go. He has received the compliments on how well he is looking, with perfect grace. He ahems again, commanding attention just as God of Design could do. “I should say, before we begin, that we all have choices. I made mine, without regrets, and am fully aware of that. I am the one living with my choices and so you should be able to, to deal with yours, whatever they may be, without it being … stressful.” He goes on to “publicly” thank Ata and Pierre for their hospitality and open home and all his friends for caring for him, in the most cold, meeting-like language. “But it is stressful — for me, for Ata and Pierre, to keep this up. The … bickering and demands … I have had enough.”
Everybody freezes, staring at his straining face.
“I want a nurse. A nurse who will be there when I need her and help with the obvious.”
They breathe a sigh of relief and all the different tones of relationships with him start blending again, babbling all at once. Relief — that what might have been a standoff difficult discussion is now agreeable terms — spreads, in Fraser’s posture too, now that he has said his bit.
“And en’t dat is what we been telling you all dis time, eh?”
Marriette boxes her brother lightly.
“Yuh brain so harden in yuh blasted skull, you never like to hear — but of course dat go be better for everybody, including you!” Talking as if he ever came to help with the obvious. He was one of the culprits who was always ready to start a lime by the pool, talking off whoever’s ears he caught, while bawling about the lack of a flow of alcohol.