With his parents gone Kai inhabited the house less and less, and then only in the hours of darkness. On weekends, when not with Nenebah, he was with Tejani, and when he was with neither of them he simply returned to the hospital.
A Sunday they’d operated upon a miner. The man, a Guinean, spoke only French. He’d been given an epidural rather than a full anaesthetic, nobody anticipating quite how awkward the procedure would prove to be. A steel pin, a repair to an earlier fracture, had slipped downwards into the knee joint and needed to be removed. They’d struggled to locate the tip of it within the femur. All the while the man had lain upon his back, gazing at the ceiling, apparently indifferent to the bone-jarring drill.
Afterwards they’d emerged to a darkened city, thinking at first it was later than it was. In the staff room there was talk of a coup. The Europeans went to the phones and began to dial their embassy switchboards. Kai left the hospital and entered the curfew-quiet streets. On his way he saw others, ghosts flitting through the narrow lanes away from the main roads. On a corner he collided with somebody’s shoulder. The other man reached out to steady him, a moment later Kai was on his way. Not a word had been spoken, the only sound the softly uttered grunt at first contact.
The moon was a waning crescent, a sliver of light escaping through a slit in the sky. Just enough to outline, faintly, the edges of the house. Kai waited outside until he saw Nenebah leave the sitting room. He stood up and skirted the house, walking in parallel to her, she inside, he outside, they both reached the bedroom at the same time. His fingers found the edge of the shutter. When she returned from washing, still drying her face with one end of the towel, he was lying on his stomach across her bed. A quick breath, her eyes darted towards the door. Silently she let the towel drop and slid into his embrace.
‘You’re crazy,’ she told him. ‘What if my father finds you? You’re not supposed to do this. You’re supposed to say the password.’
‘Sorry.’ He pressed his face against her belly, his chin rested in shower-damp hair.
‘Go on.’ She lay back and placed her arms above her head. And then, a small giggle. ‘Not that. I mean say the word.’
So he’d whispered their password, there and then, but she didn’t hear it, rather felt his breath, and arched her back slightly to meet him, placing her hands on his shoulders, pressing down with open palms. He loved the even pacing of her breathing, the intake and release, until the rhythm fell away, like a musician missing a string of notes, crashing down upon the keyboard.
Later, tracing her form with the back of his hand, feeling the new dampness upon her skin, he caught her nipple between his index finger and middle finger and held it the way one would hold a cigarette.
‘You’ll have to stay,’ she said. ‘You can’t go now. It’s too dangerous.’
‘I know,’ he replied. Not knowing if she were talking about her father or the coup. From Kai’s room in the student halls of residence, the return to their family homes restricted their lovemaking, bringing to it a new anticipation. Many times he had knocked on the shutter, whispered their password; never had he slept there. That night he had not slept, either, but lain awake and watched the changing light upon the bare wall, dawn slowly highlighting the shape of her beside him. It had rained hard in the night, the pattern of the rain played out upon the wall; the sound wrapped itself around them as they lay in the huddle of each other’s arms.
In the morning he had slipped out, the air clammy with dew and the exhaled breath of sleepers. By then there was a new order.
Kai awakens from dreaming of her. From outside comes the sound of rain. For a while he imagines it is some part of the dream, surely it is too early in the year for rain. The water resounds upon the roof. Kai rises and crosses the sitting room to turn up the music, Jimmy Cliff. ‘Wonderful World, Beautiful People.’ He goes to the door and opens it, watching the rain, feeling the water splash up and touch his feet, his ankles. Gradually the glory of the music, the soothing sounds of the rain absorb the memory of the dream.
On the fifth day Kai opens the door of the bedroom to find Adrian up and half dressed. At Kai’s entrance he slumps on to the bed, apparently defeated by the effort of buttoning his trousers. There are faint shadows between his ribs, tracks of purplish veins run beneath translucent skin.
‘Where do you think you’re going?’
‘I have to go in.’ Adrian struggles with the buckle of his belt.
Kai shakes his head. ‘Man, you can barely stand.’
‘Just for two hours. That’s all. I have to see her.’
‘Who?’
‘My patient.’
Kai stands regarding Adrian’s efforts for a moment. Then he crosses the room, takes a striped cotton shirt from the cupboard, hands it to Adrian and watches as he forces one arm and then the other through the sleeves, a sheen of sweat upon his forehead. Kai steps forward to help with the buttons.
‘I’ll drive you,’ he says.
Kai recognises Ileana from her voice over the telephone.
She takes one look at Adrian. ‘My God, you look awful.’
‘Don’t worry. I’ve brought my doctor.’ Adrian smiles faintly and waves his arm at Kai, a lolling gesture, like a barely animated rag doll. ‘Kai, Ileana. Ileana, Kai.’
Ileana looks at Kai and nods briskly. Her attention immediately returns to Adrian. ‘Listen, I’m really sorry,’ she says.
‘It’s malaria. Everyone gets it. Or so I’m told.’
‘No. I mean I’m sorry, Adrian. Agnes’s gone. I’m so sorry. I should have called, but you were sick.’
The drive back takes place in silence. Adrian, his head resting upon the glass, gazes sightlessly out of the window. Kai understands the dismay that goes with losing a patient, in whatever manner. Each time you start work on a patient, you begin — he does not know a surgeon who is different — with total belief. It is a belief in the possibility of life, almost a spiritual belief which dwarfs all scientific knowledge, all medical learning. No information about the chances for the patient can assail it. You tackle a one-in-a-hundred with the same vigour you bring to a one-in-three or a one-in-two. During the worst days of the war, the doctors would walk down the corridors picking the injured men and women who might have a chance, leaving the others to die. He had experienced less conflict over doing so than he imagined. Yet once a patient had become their own, once the team became united in that goal, the loss was bitterly felt by all.
In the event it is Adrian who speaks first, to ask if the air conditioning might be turned down. Kai reaches across and rests the back of his hand briefly on Adrian’s brow.
‘Your temperature is right back up. What you need is to cool down.’ He leans back and gropes about on the rear seat until he finds a plastic bottle of water. He hands it to Adrian. Kai sees him take a few sips, bracing himself against the jolting of the vehicle on the uneven road. He slows the vehicle and says, ‘From what you told me she’ll be back in a few months.’
Adrian stares ahead and wipes his mouth. ‘Yes. Only I don’t know if I’ll still be here when she does.’
When they reach the flat Adrian heads straight to the bedroom, and Kai into the kitchen. Presently Kai hears the sound of the cistern and Adrian returns to the sitting room.
‘Christ, I’m exhausted. By the way, is that normal?’
‘To be exhausted? Yes.’
‘No, I mean my piss. It’s the colour of orangeade.’
Kai laughs. ‘I forgot to warn you about that.’