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  Rumble, rumble wakes me up again, and I’m poured onto a table in an operating room and they give me a shot and I pass out.

  This is what they do:

  When I’m asleep they put that damn tube down my throat again, but this time they aren’t looking, they’re pouring some white chemical-glop that glows in the dark, or on the x-ray machine, or whatever, into my lungs. They pour this stuff in, then haul out the tube and then, of course, they have to get the glop in as many corners and branches of my lungs as possible. The table I’m on tilts; they strap me on and then turn me upside down, over and around, swirling me this way and that to swirl the stuff around in my lungs. Guess when I wake up?

  I’m staring at the floor, and my hands and arms are tied down and my feet are tied up in the air, and there’s glop spilling out of my mouth and some of my hair is in it and is stuck to my face. I start screaming then, but evidently it only comes out as meek little groans.

  One of them notices.

  “I think she’s waking up,” she says.

  “Well, we’re almost finished,” says another. So they don’t give me another shot, they flip me over and right side up and make soothing noises at me.

  “Almost done,” they coo. “You’re such a brave girl.”

  This is meant to pacify me.

  They prop me up in a corner against a machine and take a million x-rays. Then it’s back to the tilt-a-table where they hog-tie me into position, flip me upside down and start pounding on my back. This is to get the glop to run out of my lungs, so I don’t get pneumonia, or something. I am heaving and spitting gobs of white glop into a basin. This is all too much for my brain, and it rolls over and plays dead.

  I wake up much later in my room. They have left lemon-flavoured throat lozenges on my bedside table. Evvie is asleep, her turquoise robe spread over the top of her bed like a blanket. Late afternoon sunshine is pooling on the floor and climbing up the side of Evvie’s bed. I suck quietly, snivel a bit, and watch yellow sun on turquoise chenille.

  CHAPTER 28

  The social worker back at the San is a guy from Sydney River who comes into the hospital two days a week. He does practical things. He finds places to farm out kids when their parents have to go to the San and don’t have any family to look after them. He helps people with their disability applications if they can’t read or write or haven’t taken a course in bureaucratic gobbledegook. He finds them bus fare when they get released, certifiably healthy but flat broke. Other than the practical stuff, all he ever talks about is bantam hockey, which he coaches at the forum twice a week. He wears brown Hush Puppies and a corduroy jacket of the mustard colour you can always find hanging in Frenchy’s or the Salvation Army second-hand store. As far as we know he only owns one tie at a time, and throws it away at Christmas when his kids give him a new one. A decent sort of mind-your-own-business kind of guy.

  The social worker here at the Alex is another life form altogether. Miz-Anderson-do-call-me-Alicia has aspirations towards psychiatry; she’s planning on going back and getting a degree in that fine discipline. She wants to be Dr.-Anderson-do-call-me-Alicia. She’s hoping to compile enough material here for all the papers she’ll have to write in medical school. She wants to talk—actually, she wants you to talk while she takes notes. She’s a pain in the ass.

  She shows up shortly after I arrive for a little bedside chat to welcome me, and suggests I drop by her office sometime. I don’t quite get what she is about because it’s been a bad day and I am tired and depressed and I think the words “social worker” mean she wants to talk hockey or something.

  “Sure,” I agree, politely, thinking sometime-or-other, maybe next month, maybe never.

  When I fail to show up she sends her goons after me. They bully me into a wheelchair, trundle me up to her office and hand me over to her. Soon as she closes the door behind them, I begin to get suspicious. It’s not like we’re going to plan strategy for the next season on the ice together; it’s not like the place is overrun with spies for the other teams. She starts prying, in what she imagines is a delicate, sensitive fashion. Alarms go off in my head. I can see by her eyes that when she read my file she practically had an orgasm. I can also see that she is longing to put a couch in her office and force me to lie down on it.

  I’ve dealt with these people before. Never, ever get mad or upset. They really like that. Anything you say can and will be interpreted against you. If you say nothing they put you down as hostile, or profoundly depressed, but that’s better than having them pick apart your words like chicken guts for meaning and inventing all kinds of crap about what they think is going on in your head.

  For some insane reason people like Miz-Anderson-do-call-me-Alicia are convinced if I talk about “it” I’ll feel better. Why is that? What the hell good would that do? I don’t even want to think about it, let alone talk about it. Maybe someday, a million years from now, I might want to talk about it. Someday when I’m a million years old and don’t care about anything. When my brains are soup. Talking changes nothing, thinking changes nothing, nothing you can do will change one single second of the past. We’re moving in one direction and one direction only, and the only thing you can do about the past is to try to get as far away from it as possible.

  Fortunately there is a window behind her desk. I stare out at the sky and begin a list in my head.

  Papkaos (light, easily manoeuvrable kites, female, with tails)

  Chulas (male, strong, slowly moving kites without tails)

  Levitor (a string of four hexagonal kites)

  Flying Saucers: The Blue Moon and The Pink Moon, The Fish, The Flower

  Box Kites: The Hexagon, The Lozenge, The Double Lozenge

  Delta Wing Kites: Hummingbird, Seagull, Kingfisher, Pheasant, Golden Eagle, Polynesian Bird, Siamese Owl

  Flying Snakes: Longest Snake In The World, Giant Pink Cobra, Little Blue Naga, The Grass-snake

  The Crescent of Isis

  The Mighty Chinese Dragon

  “Gwen,” she says, “if you don’t feel like talking right now, I don’t want to push you. What are you thinking about?”

  “All kites must be perfectly symmetrical to the right and left of their vertical axes.”

  “Pardon?” she asks, grabbing for her pad and pencil. I have foolishly given in to the urge to play with her head.

  “If the kite spins around in the wind, it means that the tail is not heavy enough and needs to be made longer. If the kite won’t lift off, the tail is too heavy and needs to be reduced in size or weight.”

  “Are you interested in kites?” she asks.

  “Not in the least.” Then I clam up until she has to let me out because it’s rest period and I’m supposed to be in bed.

  I have refused to go back, though she continually attempts to ambush me in the halls. What she has done is notice that I hang out with Denise a lot, and has started hauling Denise in to see if she can worm some juicy bits out of her. Denise is enjoying it immensely. She makes up stuff and then feeds it into Miz-etc.’s eager ears. First she told her that I only talk when we are out of the ward, walking around, so Miz-etc. has arranged it so that when we split, the nurses don’t make a fuss and try to drag us back. As long as we spend two hours in the morning and two hours in the afternoon resting every day they pretty much leave us alone. We’re just supposed to tell the duty nurse where we’re going.

  “Sure thing,” agrees Denise.

  “Why would we tell them where we’re going?” I ask her. “If we do that they’ll know where to find us.”

  She tells them we’re going to the gift shop to look for magazines, or Rehab to hook rugs, and we all pretend that’s what we do.

  “Also, no more liver and cabbage,” says Denise.

  “Okay.” I say. “Why?”

  “I hate the smell of cabbage,” says Denise, “and I loathe liver. I told Miz-etc. you had liver and cabbage for supper the night your mother got shot and every time you smell it you get to feeling suicidal. She s
ent a memo to the kitchen that liver and cabbage aren’t to be served on this floor until further notice.”

  “Tell her I like wine with dinner,” I suggest. “Tell her it makes me want to live.”

  Evvie has been sitting up in bed, listening to us, saucer-eyed.

  “Youse are so bad,” she says. “Youse are gonna get in big trouble.”

  “What’s your favourite dessert, Evvie?” asks Denise.

  “Lemon meringue pie,” she says. “I love lemon meringue pie more’n anything.”

  “No problem,” says Denise and the next day lets drop that lemon meringue pie is the one thing that really cheers me up. The day after we are served lemon meringue pie for lunch. Denise and I give Evvie our pieces and she eats them both, as well as hers, as a sort of pink ecstasy blooms on her face. It’s the first natural colour I’ve seen on the girl. After that we get lemon meringue pie fairly regularly. This does two things: it keeps Evvie happy, and it serves as a distant early warning that Miz-etc. is on the hunt and hoping to corner me in a good mood. Evvie finally starts to gain a few ounces and I know when to watch my back.

  “You guys owe me big time,” says Denise.

  ALCOHOL

  The consensus of opinion on the question of the alcoholic habit especially predisposing to consumption is considerable…it impairs the tissues, making them more suitable soil for the rooting and growth of the bacilli.

  The alcoholic cares nothing for proper nutrition, substituting spirits for nourishing food, further causing a decline in health and the ability to withstand the bacillus….

  Lack of behavioural restraint, caused by alcohol, leads to situations that threaten the health of the individual, i.e., dancing, exposure to inclement weather, exhaustion, etc.

  We may allude to the popular fallacy that alcohol kills the disease germs in drinking water; an idea which is a frequent excuse for taking spirits…

  -The Cape Breton Book for Prevention and Treatment of Tuberculosis

  CHAPTER 29

  Denise and I almost never get company. The Alex is too far for our families to travel to easily, so when we’re wandering about we often hang around the reception desk, pretending to read old Family Circles as we examine the visitors. I’m training myself to be observant, to notice quirks of manner, dress, and expression. Denise likes to critique clothing and hairstyles, especially hairstyles. She was training to be a hairdresser before she came to the Alex. Also, we are trying to figure out who the bootlegger is. The hospital does spot checks on the staff, so we don’t think it’s one of them (there is the possibility of bribery, of course). We think it’s a visitor, a fairly regular one, who brings in forty ouncers to one of the patients. It gets divvied up in jam jars and mouthwash bottles and resold at a considerable profit. Patrick buys the jam jars, he knows who brings it in and who divvies it up for sale, but he will not give us any names. He won’t even give us a hint. He’ll tell you anything else in the world, but not that. For the rest, half a jam jar and he’s a spillway.

  “It’s a sad thing to see the profession of bootlegger come to this. My da, he made moonshine; he was an artist of the highest order. He put his heart and soul into his whiskey, he made poetry in a bottle. His standards were that high, he makes the distillers nowadays look like a pack of dirty little boys pissing in bottles.”

  He pauses to roll some pills in his hand—PAS and izoniazed—then swallows half of them with a grimace.

  “The Water of Life, he called it. Clear as a mountain stream, it tasted like the North Wind come down off the glaciers and it burned as blue as a sun-lit sapphire. One bottle was enough for an all-night party with a half-dozen good strong men. Overproof? My darlin’, the bottle could scarce contain it. It shimmered and shimmied like a djinn in a lamp. Magic it was, magic to make a man shout for joy, to break his heart and leave him a tender, crying babe. It set men free, you see, let them feel and love and believe. And when it had wrung them out and bleached their souls clean, there was no bloody evil devil tom-toming in their skulls, their insides were still inside and they still had a dollar in their pocket. The government’s in cahoots with these fellows, making their greedy pile with this crap, this god-awful poison.”

  Patrick swallows his last few pills, flushes them with a shot from the jam jar.

  “Look at me now!” He flings his arms out in a dramatic gesture. Denise and I duck. “I’m a lost dithering fool. A drunkard of no substance or style. My da would be ashamed to see me drinking this horse piss.” He sucks another off his jam jar and begins to croon “Washed In The Blood Of Jesus.”

  “I’d like to join the Sally Ann,” he says, halfway through the chorus. “I look good in a uniform.”

  Denise thinks the bootlegger is Nick Sangster’s aunt, because she comes every week and lugs a big bag of knitting she won’t let anyone else carry for her. I suspect the Anglican minister, myself. He looks rumpled and malnourished and sympathetic and he always carries a canvas bag of second-hand spy novels and hard candy he passes around. I think he is a secret drinker himself and bootlegs out of a misguided sense of brotherhood.

  Not all of the men in Ward D drink. Quite a few of them don’t, but they don’t tell on the ones who do. All except Lance. Lance is a stoolie and he sucks up to MacConnell so no one tells him anything. Patrick loathes him, he makes up musical limericks about him and the men sing them in the showers. Lance is under siege and it makes him meaner and nastier than he was when he first came in. He’s afraid to leave his bed because he never knows what he will find when he returns. He lugs a bag of possessions to the dining room with him so they won’t take feet in his absence. What he hates most is the low, contemptuous laughter that drifts behind him in the halls. His jaw is always clenched.

  “Chicken-necked bastard,” growls Patrick.

  Lance has a wife. She comes to visit once a week with her friend, Ruth. Ruth stays a quarter of a minute at Lance’s bedside and then excuses herself to read National Geographic in the coffee shop. The wife, Annie, brings cakes and candy, flowers, magazines, bottles of Pepsi, new slippers, books—she brings him stuff by the carton. Then she sits in a plastic chair by his bed and nods and agrees with everything he says. She clucks in sympathy, she coos in support, she shakes her head at the awful, awful abuse he suffers.

  Lance is snarky to Annie because she doesn’t visit him more often. It’s his fault, although she never reminds him of that. They have a car, but he would never let her learn to drive in case she scratched or dented it. Now she has to depend on the kindness of her friend Ruth to drive her. Annie won’t ask Ruth to bring her more than once a week. Ruth works and it’s a long drive; it’s a great deal to ask a working person to give up their Sunday afternoons as it is. Annie can’t take the bus; it’s a mile from her house to the bus stop. She could never carry his treats that far because she has a bad leg and her doctor has forbidden her to walk any great distance. Lance thinks the walk would be good for her and she agrees that he’s probably right and her doctor is probably wrong, but she doesn’t do it. He grouches about how she shouldn’t be so timid, she should get Ruth to teach her to drive in Ruth’s car. Then she could borrow Ruth’s car and come to see him more often. Annie agrees it’s a good idea, but she doesn’t ask and she doesn’t learn.

  She stays for two hours, then kisses his freckled old sour head, waves at his roommates and smiles goodbye to the nurses. Patrick always blows her a kiss and it amuses her, he can see the quirk at the corner of her mouth, the sparkle under her lids, but she is careful not to let Lance see. Patrick says nothing to Lance about this though he would dearly love to torment him. Patrick imagines himself in love with Annie and he tortures himself with daydreams about her pretty mouth and her soft, pillowy bosom.

  “Chicken-necked bastard,” he mutters.

  Annie walks down the hall in Ward D, smiling and saying her goodbyes.

  The elevator doors close behind her and Lance starts stuffing treats in his mouth. Patrick positions himself near a window so he can watch Annie
leave. Annie collects Ruth from the coffee shop, then they head for the front door at a brisk trot. Bum leg or not, Annie rockets through that door to the outside world and if you’re not careful you’ll get sucked into her wake and find yourself mashed into the front seat of the car, slippers scattered across the parking lot.

  They drive the long way home along the coast, stop for Kentucky-fried, and then go to a seven o’clock movie. Ruth is Annie’s best friend. I guess she’d probably drive Annie to the hospital more often. If Annie’d ask.

  CHAPTER 30

  The writer George Sand dragged her lover Chopin and her kids and a pile of household goods off to Majorca in an attempt to stave off Chopin’s demise from tuberculosis, and to have some kind of life together as a couple. It wasn’t a total success. The weather was cold and damp and they had trouble finding a place to live. The owner of one house they rented threw them out when he discovered Chopin was tubercular. Chopin and Sand and their entourage ended up in the monastery of Valdemosa, where he attempted to write music and she attempted to write fiction. No one would work as a servant for them out of fear of contagion. Eventually they gave up and went home, but because of the regulations in that part of the world regarding consumptives, nobody would loan or rent them a carriage to take Chopin to Palma to catch a ship home to France. Anybody who did would have had to do such extensive cleaning and restoration inside their vehicle that it wasn’t financially feasible, and Sand couldn’t afford to buy an entire carriage and then abandon it. They ended up wheeling Chopin over bumpy side roads to the coast in a sort of a wheelbarrow affair.