Three Books by S. L. Grey E-Book

S.L. Grey

• Herausgeber: Corvus
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

Longlisted for the Sunday Times SA Fiction Award The Mall Dan works at a bookstore in a deadly dull shopping mall where nothing ever happens. He's an angsty emo-kid who sells mid-list books for minimum wage. He hates his job. Rhoda has dragged her babysitting charge to the mall. Now the kid has run off, and Rhoda has two hours to find him. She hates her life. Rhoda bullies Dan into helping her search, but as they explore the corridors behind the mall, they are pulled into a terrifying world... The New Girl Ryan Devlin has taken a job as a handyman at an exclusive private school, Crossley College. He's losing his battle to suppress his growing fascination with a new girl who seems to have a strange effect on the children around her. Tara Marais fills her empty days by volunteering at Crossley's library. But Tara has a secret, an obsession that is as dark as it is dangerous. Both Tara and Ryan are being drawn into a terrifying scheme. The Ward Lisa is a plastic surgery addict. The only hospital that will let her go under the knife is New Hope: a grimy facility dubbed 'No Hope' by its patients. Farrell is a celebrity photographer. His last memory is of a fight with his fashion-model girlfriend and now he's woken up in No Hope, alone - and blind. Farrell persuades Lisa to help him escape, but the hospital's dimly lit corridors only take them deeper underground - into a twisted mirror world...

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

PART 1 >>

chapter 1: FARRELL

chapter 2: LISA

chapter 3: FARRELL

chapter 4: LISA

chapter 5: FARRELL

chapter 6: LISA

chapter 7: FARRELL

chapter 8: LISA

chapter 9: FARRELL

chapter 10: LISA

chapter 11: FARRELL

chapter 12: LISA

chapter 13: FARRELL

chapter 14: LISA

chapter 15: FARRELL

chapter 16: LISA

chapter 17: FARRELL

chapter 18: LISA

chapter 19: FARRELL

chapter 20: LISA

PART 2 >>

chapter 21: FARRELL

chapter 22: LISA

chapter 23: FARRELL

chapter 24: LISA

chapter 25: FARRELL

chapter 26: LISA

chapter 27: FARRELL

chapter 28: LISA

chapter 29: FARRELL

PART 1 >>

chapter 1

FARRELL

I can’t see.

I try again. Open my eyes.

Nothing.

Or rather, when I open my eyes there’s a shear of pain which might be light if I could see. But I can’t see and the light goes straight into my cortex and becomes pain.

This can’t be happening to me. I turn my head away from the doorway, and try to make the rest of my body follow, but it’s heavy and it takes all my effort to budge. When I do manage to twist my legs and arms over, there’s a rip in my right arm and a pinch and pull on my dick. I stay where I am, squeezing my eyelids closed, panting, head pressed against something hard and cold.

Someone grabs my sore arm and shoves it off my side with an impatient tut, and pulls at something embedded in the soft skin in the crook of my elbow. I try to move my fingers but my hand is bandaged. I smell sweat, bad breath, something medicinal, the reek of burned stew. Something’s clamped onto my finger, then there’s a liquid slosh and a rustle of cardboard or plastic. Finally the pain in my eyes recedes with a flash. Now I recognise it: somebody’s turned off the light.

Where am I? I open my eyes again, but I only see darkness for a second before the acid burn returns. I close my eyes and feel around with my left hand. Sheets, narrow mattress with a metal rail. Tape in the crook of my right arm, a narrow tube leading upwards. Muffled rattling sounds and beeps from outside, loud conversation, crying, a resigned moaning.

I’m in a hospital.

Where’s my iPhone? It’s an effort to pat down my body to check my pockets but I realise I’m wearing a short gown, tied loosely at the back. Where did I leave my camera? Where the fuck’s my stuff?

Hospital beds have call buttons, right? I feel along the cold edges of the bed – nothing – then probe my unbandaged left hand into the space beyond it. On my left, some sort of cabinet. On my right, nothing until the drip tube stretches and tugs at my vein. I try not to imagine a void, but the vertigo makes me want to vomit. I clutch my hands over my chest for a few minutes until the panic subsides. I feel behind me. Blank wall, then a plastic plate of some sort. I finger it for the call button until I realise it’s an electrical socket.

Fuck. What kind of a moron built this place?

Christ, I need my phone. How did I get here? What happened to me? I don’t feel like I’ve broken anything. I don’t feel any serious pain, except for my eyes when I try to open them. But I’m weak, and moving hurts. ‘Hello?’ I call. ‘Hello?’ My voice is too feeble. I try to knock my knuckles on the bed’s railing. Nobody comes.

I close my eyes. I draft a MindRead post in my head. 140 characters or less. MRers, help. Pls check my FindMe app and report back. Don’t know where I am.

I’m sure if I crowdsourced this problem one of my followers would help me out in minutes. But then again, if I could get online to post the problem I wouldn’t need to crowdsource the fucking solution in the first place.

I could just call Katya. She’d take my call, even after what happened. I could use the hospital’s phone. But I don’t even have the strength to turn over, let alone walk around looking for a phone. Oh yeah, and I can’t see to look for a phone. And nobody can hear me fucking calling. Jesus Christ!

This would be funny if it wasn’t happening to me.

‘Hello? Hello?’

Come to think of it, what did happen with Katya? I know something happened, but, when I try to think about it directly, it’s like I’ve got a blind spot. All I have in my head is this still of her leaving, crying. That doesn’t help. She’s done that a few times before.

But I didn’t do anything to hurt her, not that I can remember. What the fuck happened? Did Glenn do this? Where am I? And what’s wrong with me?

Maybe Glenn thought I cheated on Katya or something. That would give him the excuse he needed. Maybe Katya told him that. But she’d never do that if it wasn’t true. She loves me.

Oh Jesus. Glenn’s going to find me and kill me. He’s going to find me lying here, wherever the fuck I am, blind and half naked, and he’s going to kill me. Christ. Oh Jesus. Oh Jesus.

‘Hello? Help!’ At last I’m shouting loud enough.

‘Yes? What?’ A woman’s voice barks at me.

‘Where am I?’

The woman sighs. ‘New Hope Hospital. Green Section,’ she finally says, like a prisoner of war giving up his name and rank.

Oh shit. ‘New Hope? Why am I here? I’ve got medical aid.’

‘No. Medical aid had no record of you. They brought you here.’

‘What do you mean no record?’

I can just imagine her smirking at me. Rich man lying helpless in a state hospital, finding out how the other half lives.

‘Expired, actually.’

I’m going to fucking kill Lizzie. She’s supposed to handle my medical aid and bullshit like that. Jesus. I’ve heard horror stories about this dump. Everyone calls it ‘No Hope’. I can’t believe I’ve landed up in here.

‘You need to call Da Bomb Studios. Speak to Lizzie Gebhart, my assistant. She’ll sort it out.’

‘I’m not phoning for you. It’s your problem.’

‘Okay, then. Tell me where my phone is. I’ll call myself.’

‘Your personal belongings are in your cubby.’

‘Do you mind? Could you—’ But she’s gone.

I say, ‘Hello? Hello?’ a bit but I know I’m wasting my breath. I try to feel around the bed for my cubby – wherever that is – but I’m really tired. I curl up and imagine what I’d say if I could get online.

MR alert: &JoshFarrell has found self. In fucking No Hope, can you believe!?

&LizzieGstring you’re in deep shit. Prepare for a month’s mail duty.

At least that brings a smile to my face as I fall asleep.

I struggle to wake up. Someone’s talking to me. A man.

‘… so apologies for the cramped conditions. I’m afraid New Hope doesn’t have any private wards.’ He pauses, no doubt sharing a joke at my expense with the grumpy nurse. ‘But, after last year, nobody’s keen on a measles epidemic again.’

‘Measles?’

‘That’s what you’ve got, Mr Farrell.’

Measles?

‘As you can tell, it’s a serious disease. Especially in adults. It’s notifiable. Any idea where you caught it?’

‘No. How—’

‘Could be anywhere. I keep telling the board that it’s only going to end when mandatory immunisation kicks in. Eventually it’s going to kill everyone who doesn’t get vaccinated.’

‘Can measles make me… make me not able to see?’ I can’t even say the word ‘blind’. I can’t go blind. I’m a photographer, for God’s sake. Seeing is my work. Seeing is my fucking life. ‘I’ll get better, right, Doctor?’ I say in as deferent a tone as I can manage, as if he’s personally in charge of whether I will see again or not.

He breathes out a long pause. ‘Uh, there are rare cases of permanent eye damage. At the onset of the measles we typically advise that you take twenty thousand units of vitamin A and that will usually protect you. Your GP should have prescribed—’

‘I didn’t go to a GP. I don’t know how I got here. Or when.’

‘There is a good chance your sight will recover,’ the doctor says. ‘But it’s crucial that the ophthalmologist sees you and prescribes an antibiotic suspension. It’s a shame we missed him yesterday. He’ll be doing his rounds in this section again tomorrow.’

‘But… if I need the medicine now to prevent—’

‘We’ll see what we can do. The best thing to do is get the virus out of your system and recover. You need to rest and replenish. You have severe liver damage and bronchitis and your kidneys are in distress. All you need to do is lie still and let the drip do its work.’

The doctor leaves and I start to probe the space around my bed for the cubby.

‘Can I help you with that, Mr Farrell?’

I jerk with fright and then pretend I didn’t.

‘I’m Nomsa,’ the woman says in a comfortable, attractive voice. She’s standing near me, and she smells of quality soap and hand lotion. ‘I’m a supply nurse here. I’ve just come on shift.’ She presses something into my left hand. Her hands are leathery, but smooth. ‘Here’s a call button. We rigged up a remote one for you. I bet you don’t know you’re bedded in a supply closet. Closest we get to an isolation ward in Green Section.’ She laughs.

She makes me feel at ease for the first time in… since I came here. ‘Thanks. That other nurse…’

‘Sister Elizabeth?’

‘She’s not very helpful.’

‘No. But she’s good at her job. She’s here all the time. Almost runs the section. It’s thankless work and terrible conditions. At least I get a chance to work in the private clinics half the time. Get a break from all this.’

‘I suppose.’

‘You were looking for…?’

‘My stuff. She said it was in a cubby.’

Nomsa rustles next to my bed, and pushes a plastic bag into my hands. The bag’s handles are tied together at the top and I can’t open them with my right hand bandaged. Under the dressing, my palm hurts like hell. Nomsa takes over and opens the bags. ‘We should get that to the laundry, probably,’ she says as the stench hits me.

I dig around inside. I can feel my jeans by the oversized Batman belt buckle. They’re damp with what smells like rotten vomit and ammonia. I grit back the urge to puke as I rifle around for the pockets. Thank God. I drop the bag over the edge of the cot and wipe my iPhone and wallet on the edge of the sheet.

‘Is there a camera bag in there?’ I ask Nomsa.

I put my hands over my eyes while she shuffles through the cubby next to me. ‘No. Sorry.’ Jesus. Where could I have left it? I can’t even remember how I got here, where I was.

‘Nomsa, do you mind dialling a number for me?’ I hold out the phone in Nomsa’s direction.

She takes it. ‘Looks like it’s off.’

‘You can just turn it on. Little button on the top.’

A minute. ‘No. Nothing. Maybe the battery’s dead.’

Fuck. ‘You don’t have an iPhone charger, do you?’

She just laughs. ‘May I take your valuables for safekeeping at the nurses’ station? Safer than leaving them in here.’

I hesitate.

‘To be honest, patients’ valuables go missing all the time. It’s much safer to lock them up at the nurses’ station.’

What am I going to do with a dead phone anyway? ‘Okay. Thanks.’ She lifts the handset and wallet off my chest and I can actually feel my phone getting further away from me. It’s fucking ridiculous. I think about asking her to give me the photo of Katya from my wallet. But what would be the point? I can’t fucking see it.

‘Just press the call button if you need anything.’

‘Nomsa?’

‘Mr Farrell?’

‘What day is it?’

‘The sixteenth.’

‘What day of the week?’

‘Wednesday.’

It was Monday morning when Katya left. I must have been here two days. I can’t remember anything. What did I do?

Shit. Maybe Katya caught the measles too. I’ve got to get hold of her.

‘I need to…’ I try to sit up and a slump of blood pressure makes me woozy and nauseous. ‘Ugh.’

‘You just need to rest. That’s the most important thing, Mr Farrell.’

‘Nomsa?’

‘Yes, Mr Farrell.’

‘You’ve been really helpful. Can I ask you one more favour?’

‘Ask away.’

‘I need to get hold of my girlfriend, and someone at work. Could you call them for me?’

‘Of course. What are their numbers?’

Jesus. They’re in my phone, not in my head. But, with effort, I piece together Katya’s cell number and give it to her. ‘Work should be in the book, under Da Bomb Studios. Speak to Eduardo da Gama or Lizzie Gebhart.’

‘I’ll give them a call, let them know you’re here. You’ll have to pay, though.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Oh, don’t worry, Mr Farrell. Just joking.’

I hear a clink as she hangs another drip. As my nausea settles, I feel sleepy once more.

I wake up screaming. Acid scours along the veins in my right arm. I forget my eyes and open them wide; the pain belts me as I make out the figure of a large man standing by my bedside. Someone’s trying to kill me. I feel three drops of something fall onto my face. I give in to unconsciousness.

I dream someone’s lifting the sheets, removing my gown. I feel something soft running over my body, like a delicate fingertip. In the dream, I try to open my eyes to see Katya, but my eyes are glued shut. There’s a flash like lightning through my eyelids, then the sheet is replaced again.

When I wake, Nomsa is changing the J-loop of my drip. ‘I don’t know how this happened, Mr Farrell. Someone… did it wrong. Let’s replace it. This might…’ As she draws the needle out, it feels like she’s dragging a fish hook through my veins.

‘Hang on, hang on.’ She puts my arm down for a second and I hear the snap of rubber gloves and feel the slickness of blood trickling down my arm. ‘Eish,’ she says under her breath and squeezes my arm above the entry point. I try to open my eyes to see what’s happening. I see the vague shape of Nomsa silhouetted against a shaft of light from the doorway, in the exact same position as the large man in the night, then the pain kicks in and I have to flinch away and squeeze my eyes shut.

I saw! I saw for a second there! My eyes are getting better. They’re getting better!

‘Orderly!’ Nomsa calls into the corridor. ‘Orderly!’ Trying to disguise the panic in her voice. Someone else runs into the room.

‘Shit,’ he says.

‘Hold this,’ says Nomsa.

The fingers on my upper arm change owners. There’s a tug and a rub and another couple of tugs at the wound in my arm, then a dressing is pressed over it. Another scrub and a dressing is finally taped in position.

‘That… that was…’ Nomsa starts, but stops again. ‘We’ll need to put the drip in your left arm, okay, Mr Farrell?’

‘Mm,’ I mumble, worrying about the numbness in my right arm and wanting to sleep again.

Soon I’m hooked up again and my head tilts comfortably to the darker side of the closet, the side away from the door. I test my eyes. Open one-two-three burn. MR alert: &JoshFarrell can see. Open one-two-three-four burn. Open one-two-three-four-five burn. Then my eyes are too heavy to try again.

Chapter 2

LISA

‘Now, Ms Cassavetes,’ the doctor says, yawning and scanning my chart. ‘You haven’t been entirely truthful with us, have you?’

I’ve never seen her before. She’s a spindly woman with cheap hair extensions and late-onset acne, and she doesn’t seem to be bothered that I’ve lied about my medical history. The doctor I saw yesterday just before the op was an ancient man with a paunch, and to be honest I hadn’t actually had to lie to him. The consultation took less than ten minutes. He’d peered at my face, asked me if I was allergic to anything, outlined the procedure, and the next thing I knew I was being prepped for theatre.

I should have known then that I wasn’t going to get away with it. It had been way too easy, and it’s never that easy.

‘Ms Cassavetes?’ The doctor runs a hand through her plastic hair. ‘Do you understand what I’m saying?’

I flutter my eyelids, pretending that I’m still woozy from the anaesthetic.

‘Before we can let you go, I’m going to insist that a CAT scan is done. Just to be on the safe side.’

Oh God. That’s not good. How much will that cost? If they charge me extra, I won’t have the money to pay for a motel to hole up in while the bruising fades. If I’m forced to go home early, Dad will have a conniption when he sees the bruises. And Dr Meka will totally flip out. She’d flatly refused to condone any more surgery, even though she must know it’s the only way. Worst-case scenario I can phone Sharon, ask her to help me out. But after last time she’ll probably tell me to get stuffed and grass me up to Dad. I open my mouth to tell the doctor that I don’t want a scan; that all I want is to be let out of this hellhole, but I can’t get the words out and I end up just nodding meekly. Pathetic.

Shaking her head in exasperation, the doctor chucks the file on the end of the bed and stalks off. The nurse with her – the one Gertie has nicknamed Lumpy Legs – glares at me and angrily whips back the curtains shielding me from the rest of the ward.

Gertie looks up from her You magazine. ‘What was that all about, doll?’ she asks.

I shake my head and shrug. Luckily Gertie isn’t that interested. I get the idea that she thinks I’ve had some sort of surgery on my sinuses and there’s no way I’m going to put her right.

‘Ag shame,’ she says. ‘Still feeling kak?’

I nod. I’m usually pretty good at keeping myself to myself in hospitals, but my silence hasn’t stopped Gertie from going on and on about her ‘kak bowels’, the trouble she’s having with her ‘bitch’ of a daughter and how many months she’s spent in and out of various Joburg hospitals. This one, she insists, is the worst of the lot: ‘If you’re not at death’s door when you get here, doll, you will be when you leave.’

But I don’t really mind her constant chatter. Listening to her is better than being alone with my thoughts, and she hasn’t tried too hard to pry any personal details out of me, apart from the usual ‘Where you from?’ and ‘What’s a chick like you doing in a place like this?’ And if she thinks it’s weird that I’ve chosen to have the op in Johannesburg instead of a hospital closer to home in Durban, she hasn’t let on.

‘At least they’re giving you some attention,’ she gripes. ‘Count yourself lucky, doll. I could die just now and no one would even notice.’

I close my eyes and pretend to sleep.

‘Check it out, doll. New arrival,’ Gertie says, snapping me out of my doze. I have no clue how long I’ve been out, and for once I don’t remember dreaming.

I sit up as a new victim is wheeled into the ward. All I can see of her is a lump under a sheet and a whorl of grey hair. There’s something about the way the nurses are uncharacteristically fussing around her that makes me think she isn’t going to last much longer. A middle-aged man with a face as round and flat as a plate follows in the gurney’s wake, and the nurses swish the curtains around the bed, leaving him stranded. He pulls out a Bible and starts mumbling under his breath.

Gertie watches him carefully. She leans over to me and murmurs, ‘Don’t be fooled. He’s probably already plotting how to spend the inheritance. I know the type.’

I try to smile at her, but the painkillers are wearing off and it hurts when I move my cheek muscles. My nose feels as if it’s blown up to the size of a balloon, and I have to keep reminding myself to breathe through my mouth. Did it feel as uncomfortable and painful as this last year? I touch my nose gently, trying to feel if the bump has gone, but unlike last time, when the doctors used a discreet sticking plaster, this dressing is bulky and attached to my cheeks with layers of tape. Still, at least the bandages hide most of my face.

The Bible-toting man glances around the ward, clearly trying to catch someone’s eye, but, apart from me and Gertie, the other patients are all comatose, sleeping or attached to rusting oxygen tanks, battling for each breath. His eyes drift to mine and I look away, feeling blood rushing to my cheeks.

‘Would you like to pray with me, miss?’ he asks.

‘Don’t bother,’ Gertie says to him. ‘You won’t get a word out of her.’

‘Would you—?’

‘No thanks,’ Gertie says, cutting him off mid-sentence. ‘I’ll meet my maker soon enough. Then we’ll talk.’

He swallows and nods at the body behind the curtain. ‘It’s my mother,’ he says.

‘Oh ja?’ Gertie says, radiating boredom. Leaving the new patient’s curtains closed, the two nurses emerge and murmur something to him. He nods his head, bites his lip and sits down on one of the plastic visitors’ chairs.

‘Hey!’ Gertie calls to Lumpy Legs. ‘Where’s lunch? I’m wasting away here.’

‘On its way, Mrs February.’ She waddles over and fiddles with Gertie’s drip. ‘Have you managed a bowel movement yet?’

Gertie snorts. ‘You managed to stay off the doughnuts yet?’

Lumpy Legs tuts. ‘I know you’re uncomfortable, but there’s no need for that,’ she says in her no-nonsense voice. ‘Nothing wrong with being a larger lady, is there?’

‘Obesity is the number-one killer in the world,’ Gertie says to her, winking at me.

Lumpy Legs glares at me again as if it’s me who’s just insulted her. I clear my throat and force myself to speak. ‘Um. I’m supposed to have a scan. Do you know when it will be?’

‘When they’re ready for you,’ she snaps, before exiting into the corridor. I swallow the lump in my throat. If I start crying, that’ll be it. I won’t be able to stop.

‘Don’t mind her, love,’ Gertie says to me. ‘Miserable bitch. Shouldn’t let people like that be nurses. The caring profession, se gat. They’re all sadists.’

I’ve done my best to be as cooperative as I can, but it’s obvious that the nurses hate me. I’ve heard them grumbling in the corridors about the hospital’s new policy to attract private patients by providing non-essential procedures. They wouldn’t know that I’m here because I don’t have a choice. Even if I had the cash to splash out on a private clinic, I’d have to find a doctor willing to perform the operation. And with my history I’ve run out of options.

An orderly pushes a trolley piled with lunch trays into the ward.

‘Finally,’ Gertie says, clawing in the grubby water glass on her locker for her teeth.

I’m grateful that I can’t smell anything; the sight of the food is enough to turn my stomach. It looks like minced roadkill, the cracked plates slopped with gritty-looking meat and a smattering of lumpy mashed potato. The thought of watching Gertie shovelling that down her gullet makes me feel instantly sick. I kick my blankets away. Even the juice they provide is the colour of bile; the cheap concentrated kind that comes in huge plastic tubs.

‘Where are you going, doll?’ Gertie asks.

I have no idea where I’m going. All I know is that I have to get out of here. ‘Not hungry,’ I say.

The religious man looks up from his Bible as I swing my legs off the bed. I can feel his eyes grazing my thighs, hovering over my stomach and my breasts, barely concealed beneath the flimsy hospital gown. I know what he’s thinking: ‘How can a monster like that show herself in public?’ I grab my robe as fast as I can, and wrap it around my body. Ducking my head, I scurry out, slippers squeaking on the linoleum.

‘Hey, Lisa!’ Gertie calls after me. ‘If you’re going to the cafeteria bring me back a brandy and Coke.’ She roars with laughter which ends up in a coughing fit.

I know she’s got a packet of menthols hidden in her bedside cabinet. But her secret is safe with me. If she wants to kill herself slowly that’s her business.

God. This place is beyond grim. What would Dad say if he saw me here, shuffling down these crappy corridors, the green paint peeling off the walls, the linoleum on the floor scratched and worn with age and overuse? He’d probably say that it serves me right. That I’m getting what I deserve for lying to him again. At least the corridor is empty, the patients all tucking into their lunches, the nurses doing whatever nurses do when they’re not being mean – thinking up ways to torture the patients, or whatever.

I keep my head down to avoid catching a glimpse of myself in the glass that surrounds the nurses’ station, concentrating instead on the floor, the walls, the sounds of lunch being trundled into wards and forced down. My gaze is drawn to the sluice room; the door is propped open and the shelves are piled with overflowing bedpans and sputum bowls. I pass an abandoned cleaning trolley parked at an angle next to the shower room, the mop head thick with filth, a muscular cockroach skittering under its wheels. I’m glad I have the dressing over my nose so I don’t have to confront what it smells like in here.

I need to find somewhere quiet, somewhere private, so that I can go over my options again. But where? I can’t leave the ward – it’s blocked by a rusty security gate. The sight of it totally freaked me out when I arrived. I mean, I know that Joburg is a violent city, but this is a hospital, not a prison. When I was still able to convince Dad that the only way I was going to get better was to have another op, he booked me into a series of private clinics which specialised in cosmetic procedures. They were more like hotels, with private rooms, satellite TV and nurses who didn’t treat me like crap. A million miles from this dump.

Just past the men’s toilets there’s a grubby ‘Waiting Room’ sign tacked next to a door, and I creep towards it. I hesitate, then turn the handle and peer inside. I’m hit with a waft of smoky air. Two wizened patients are sitting puffing away under a huge ‘No Smoking’ sign, their drips standing behind them like disapproving relatives. They immediately stop speaking and stare at me in disgust, and I scuttle away as if it’s me, not them, who’s been caught doing something illegal.

Stiff with self-consciousness, I walk on. I’m nearing the end of the corridor, and the snoozing security guard jerks awake, glances at me distrustfully, and then rests his head on the gate again and closes his eyes.

I’m about to turn around and head back when I spot a narrow alcove diagonally opposite the security gate. There’s an open door leading into what looks to be a small, darkened storage room. Maybe I can hide in here. Gather my thoughts.

I head towards it, the sound of a cough stopping me dead.

No ways. There’s a man in here, lying on a narrow bed, a drip snaking out of his arm. What the hell is a patient doing in here? The cot he’s on barely even fits into the room. He’s one of the few people under sixty I’ve seen in the ward and he’s lying there, eyes closed, his face covered in a fine sheen of sweat. I creep closer, careful not to wake him. Even though he looks like he’s at death’s door I can’t tear my eyes away from his stubbly face and his shock of black hair. He reminds me of someone, someone familiar. I edge even closer. That’s it. Robert Pattinson. That’s who he looks like. But not like Robert was in Breaking Dawn, more like when he was in—

‘Ms Cassavetes!’ Lumpy Legs calls.

I jump guiltily and turn to face her.

She’s striding towards me, puffing with exertion. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’

A bored-looking orderly is trailing behind her, pushing a wheelchair. I drop my head, hiding my face behind my hair.

‘Are you deliberately trying to make my life difficult?’ she says.

‘Sorry.’

‘They need you in X-ray,’ she snaps, gesturing to the wheelchair.

‘I can walk.’

‘Hospital policy.’

I glance back at the storeroom. ‘There’s a man in the—’

‘Yes, yes, that’s none of your concern. Now please,’ she says, voice heavy with sarcasm, ‘if it’s not too much trouble.’

I do as she says. The chair is surprisingly comfortable and I lean back and pray that the orderly won’t try to chat to me. Thankfully as soon as Lumpy Legs is out of sight he plugs earphones into his ears and pops a strip of gum into his mouth. He mutters something to the snoozing security guard, who yawns, stretches and takes his time unlocking the gate. The orderly wheels me through it and into a lift, its stainless steel walls smudged with fingerprints, a wad of filthy tissues balled in the corner. We rattle down, my empty stomach turning in on itself, the orderly humming along to ‘Beautiful’ by James Blunt, popping his gum every so often. The lift shudders to a halt and he sweeps me out into another long corridor, this one painted a tired yellow, a stretch of wall scored with deep circular marks that look horribly like bullet holes. The strip lighting crackles and hisses, and we crawl along for what feels like miles, squeaking down corridors lined with foldaway beds containing passive patients, weaving around a woman in a wheelchair stranded outside the open door of a filthy toilet, and trundling past a group of skeletal, yellow-skinned men and women queuing patiently outside a barred dispensing window.

At last we draw to a stop outside the X-ray department. The wooden benches outside it are full of patients in hospital gowns waiting for their turn, but no one looks up as the orderly parks me behind a gurney containing an elderly man with a dried-up face and clawed hands. His mouth is open, revealing stumpy blackened teeth. A middle-aged nurse with bloodshot eyes pushes through the black doors, and for a second or two our eyes lock. Then she flinches and turns away, just like I knew she would.

‘You took your time,’ Gertie says, as I’m wheeled back into the ward. ‘You’ve been gone for hours. You missed all the excitement.’

She points to the bed opposite. It’s empty. The blankets are puddled on the floor, the mattress covered with a yellowing plastic sheet. It had once held a woman with swollen, blue-veined feet, dyed red hair and a hectic cough. ‘Another one bites the dust,’ Gertie says. ‘Off to the great morgue in the sky.’ She cackles.

I’m relieved to see that the religious man is gone, although his mother is still hidden behind the curtains. The woman on the other side of Gertie farts loudly and then moans in her sleep.

‘Charming,’ Gertie says.

Lumpy Legs bustles in. ‘Doctor’s on his way,’ she snaps in my direction.

‘Twice in one day, hey, doll?’ Gertie says to me. ‘I’m lucky if they remember to change my drip.’

‘Oh, Mrs February,’ Lumpy Legs tuts, whipping the curtains around my bed.

Another doctor appears behind her, this one an Indian man with tired eyes and a worried expression. He glances down at my chart.

‘Ms Cassavite,’ he says, mispronouncing my name. ‘We have your scan results here.’ His voice is high and girlish, heavily accented. ‘I am sorry to have to inform you that the news is not so good.’

Lumpy Legs looks at him with a mixture of reverence and fake concern. She fiddles with my sheet.

The doctor rattles off a flurry of medical jargon. ‘Are we clear?’

I shake my head, doing my best to smother the growing excitement. I understand exactly what he’s just said, of course, but I want him to repeat it. I want to be sure.

‘In the terms of that of a layperson, Ms Cassavite, if we do not operate again, you could have serious complications.’ He checks his notes again. ‘I see here that this is not the first time that you have been having this procedure. And that you were not informing this hospital of these facts. It is pertinent that you must sign another consent. And we must also be sure that you will be liable for the extra expenditure.’

‘When will you operate?’

‘In a few days. As soon as a theatre is available.’

‘And afterwards? Will I… will I look… different?’

‘Different? I am not understanding you fully, Ms Cassavite.’

‘Will I still look like the same person?’

‘We will not know for sure until the operation is over, Ms Cassavite,’ he says. ‘But you must prepare yourself for the worst. The shape, it could alter quite radically. The damage is extensive. Much reconstruction might be necessary.’

Okay, a couple more days in this horrible place, but it will all be worth it. The doctor’s eyes widen in disbelief as he takes in my expression. I’m not surprised. He wouldn’t know why I’m smiling.

Chapter 3

FARRELL

I know it’s night because the ward sounds different, more subdued. No ringing phones, no clattering carts or running children.

I listen to the quiet conversations of the nurses, the old women moaning in pain like mourners at a funeral, the building breathing, the stale air circulating, the tick of the drip machine. And underneath it all, a distant thrum, like the hospital is built over a massive beehive, or a full stadium buried hundreds of metres deep.

I’ve been drifting in and out of sleep all day, my rest more like a series of naps than the dead semi-coma I was in before. I’m more alert now, feeling more, and I scan my body: the ache in my right arm, the jag of the drip in my left, the pinch of the catheter, a sharp pain in the palm of my right hand. My lower back feels bruised and my throat is still acid-burned. My hands and toes are freezing and I can rub them together for a few minutes before I grow tired again. I don’t feel hungry or thirsty – the drip has kept me hydrated – but my lips are dry and cracked. My hair is filthy, unwashed for days. I must look and smell like shit.

I test my eyes compulsively, but I can’t get past the count of eight before they sting shut again. And while they’re open, I can’t really see anything, just blurred shapes as if something’s grown over the lenses. Christ, I can’t go blind. I can’t just lie here and lose my sight.

The light floods on and I hear what sounds like a drawer opening. I turn my head and force my eyes open.

One. The distorted outline of a man’s huge frame at a cabinet. White jacket.

Two. The shape turns to me. A smudge of dark grey over the hazy white of his coat.

Three. He looks down. Finds what he’s looking for in the drawer. Four.

Five. My eyes are burning, screaming. The man comes closer. I open them wide as a headlit deer’s.

Six. He looms over me. Takes my arm. Other arm under the pillow. I can’t find the fucking call button.

Seven. Two round blurs on his grey face. Massive glasses. Drops of sweat from his face fall onto my cheek.

Eight. He opens his mouth and his breath smells like rotting flesh. I have to close my eyes. He’s gripping my arm. Where’s the fucking button?

My eyes refuse to open again.

I feel him roughly pull the needle out of the J-loop, and he mutters something in a thick voice that I can’t make out. Then silence. As soon as my eyes can stand it, a minute, maybe two, later, I open them again and look. He’s gone; left the light on, but there’s nothing to see except the fuzzy glare of this storeroom.

It takes me three eight-second bursts of vision to find the remote. Once I have hold of it, I slump back and press the button, not letting go until my thumb stiffens. Minutes later a night-shift nurse stands in the doorway.

‘Yes?’ Shit. It sounds like Sister Elizabeth, the Ugly Sister.

‘Someone… changed my drip.’

‘Yes?’

‘What’s in it? Is it the right thing?’

‘Yes,’ she says from the doorway. She doesn’t come closer, she doesn’t check. She has no fucking idea.

I’m crushed by a wave of exhaustion. As I drift off, the panic becomes muffled. Someone – someone who shouldn’t be here – is putting something in my blood.

But I’m so tired. I can’t do any more.

‘Sister? Sister, have a look at this.’

I recognise Nomsa’s voice in my sleep haze. I feel her wiping my arm where she’s inserted another fresh drip needle.

The sister says something to her that I can’t make out.

‘But he can’t keep getting new needles. His veins are bruised.’

Sister Elizabeth lowers her voice and mutters again.

‘And I don’t know who put…’ I can sense Nomsa looking at me, probably trying to determine if I’m actually awake, although I’m doing my best to pretend I’m still asleep.

‘Besides,’ says the Ugly Sister, this time loud enough for me to hear, ‘the hepatitis is clearing up. The bilirubin counts are coming down. He’ll only need a drip for hydration.’ She leaves the storeroom.

It’s getting worse. I open my eyes and there’s no pain. Its absence is unnerving. All I can see are blotches over the doorway’s blurred radiance. I can feel the mould eating into my eyes, and, unless eyes spontaneously regenerate, I’m fucked.

‘Mr Farrell,’ Nomsa says. I hadn’t heard her come in. ‘How are you feeling?’

‘Okay, actually. I feel stronger. More awake… But my eyes…’ Suddenly I have an embarrassing urge to cry. I don’t want to go blind. And Nomsa is the only person in the world who seems to care. I hold myself together.

I feel her fingers opening my eyelids and she shines a light into them. ‘There’s much better reaction. And the conjunctivitis is clearing up. The antibiotics have worked well on that. Doctor will say whether we should extend the course. You say you still can’t see?’

‘Everything’s blurred. I can see light and shapes.’

‘I’ll ask Doctor about the ophthalmologist. But he’s only doing rounds this afternoon.’

‘But what if it gets worse? If it becomes permanent? If there’s something I can do now to avoid…’

‘I’m going to ask Doctor, and I’ll try to find out.’

‘Nomsa?’ I ask, not sure if she’s still in the room.

‘Mr Farrell?’

‘Did you manage to get hold of Katya and the studio?’

‘No answer. I left messages, so I hope they’ll get them. I’ll try again later.’

If I could get hold of Katya, she could call an ophthalmologist for me and he could come see me. I don’t want to go blind. Jesus… From fucking measles. There must be something simple I can do. If I can just get to the nurses’ station, they’ll let me use the phone. I’m sure I’m strong enough.

I push myself to a sitting position, and need to take several deep breaths before I have the energy to move again. I have to hoist my legs over the short railing at the side of the bed. Either that or work out how to lower it, which I guess would take more energy. I get my left leg over the side, but with it dangling there I can’t find the purchase to hoist my right leg over with it.

Then I make a stupid decision. I assume that, if my torso goes over the edge of the bed, my right leg will follow the rest of me. I’m correct. My body crashes onto the floor, my head hitting the edge of the cabinet. The drip line stretches, still attached to my vein. A jag of pain rips through my arm. At last the drip stand teeters and crashes down on top of me. The hook at the top thumps onto my skull and furious sparks fly through my brain, but at least the pull on my vein is slackened.

The Ugly Sister runs in bellowing something at me. The blurry shape of an orderly follows. As they manhandle me back onto my bed, I shout, ‘I need to use the phone. Nomsa? Can I speak to Nomsa?’

‘Nomsa is with another patient. Don’t do that again.’

When she leaves me, I’m too weak to move but my mind doesn’t stop racing. I can’t remember what happened that morning before I came here. All I have is this picture of Katya crying, leaving. I have the feeling she was going back to her parents’ – she always does. What happened that morning? My hands throb, as if in answer to a question I don’t want answered.

D &KatyaModel Please D me now. Please. R u ok?

I’m stuck here, with no way of knowing if Katya’s okay. I have to find out. But I can’t even get myself out of my fucking bed.

Later, Nomsa says I can try to walk. She reaches down and loosens my catheter. I feel like I’ve been released from a ball and chain.

She lowers the railing on the bed and this time it’s easier for me to flip my legs over and stand. I push myself up against the bed and Nomsa steadies me against the drip stand. I test my weight for a moment. Good to go. I start to shuffle off.

‘Keep left and don’t go too fast. Don’t overdo it.’

‘Ja, right.’

‘And don’t get lost.’

‘Thanks, Nomsa.’

‘It’s a pleasure, Mr Farrell.’

Once out of the storeroom I do as Nomsa suggests. I keep left, trailing the foot of the drip stand along the plastic skirting, stopping every minute or so to close my eyes and catch my breath. My sore hand throbs worse from gripping clumsily onto the drip stand. The top layer of the dressing is starting to come loose. I stick it back down as well as I can and shuffle through the blurscape at ten steps a minute, listening to the keening geriatrics, the rhythmic slap of a physiotherapist beating phlegm out of some old man’s lungs. There’s a limbo chatter in the wards, the trundle of gurneys, the pained circulation of the airconditioned air, and always, always, that subterranean thrum, like thousands of excited voices interred in the city’s rock. I get the eerie sense that we’re locked in, that nobody leaves this place except out the smokestack.

It’s just the isolation speaking. I wish I had my phone. Jesus, who knows how many followmobs I’m missing while I’m stuck in here. I’m going to lose serious Kred points.

The effort of my next minute of shuffling pushes the thought out of my mind. I reach the nurses’ station, their hustling dark-blue shapes whirling around in a complex dance like bees at a hive. The bustle makes me nauseous and I need to calm my stomach before I even think of asking someone for my phone. I move to a quieter stretch of hallway, press myself to the wall, close my eyes and catch my breath.

In the room next to me, a machine starts making a panicked alarm, but softly, as if it doesn’t expect anyone to listen.

‘I’m afraid she’s passed on, Mr du Plessis,’ comes a voice from inside the ward – it’s the Ugly Sister, sounding a touch less bitchy than usual. ‘I’ll call Doctor to prepare the certificate. My condolences for your loss.’

A wail. A man howling. It’s deep and overloud, and it annoys me. I can tell he’s a fucking rebo phoney. ‘Lord, Thy will be done,’ he shouts. ‘Oh Jesus, please take her into your blessed arms and—’

‘Your Lord doesn’t have much practice at hip replacements, does he?’ says another voice, the harsh croak of an old woman.

‘Mrs February!’ the Ugly Sister barks.

‘Well, it’s not right, making a scene like that. Disturbing everyone.’

‘Muh-muh-mother!’ the man wails again.

Something sweet-smelling rushes out of the ward door and almost smacks straight into me. I can make out a blur of long blonde hair, and catch a subtle scent that reminds me of gardens, reminds me of the girls at work. ‘I’m… sorry,’ she mutters as she slips past me.

‘Doll!’ the old woman’s voice calls. ‘Where you going? You’re missing the drama!’

‘I can’t… I can’t, Gertie!’

She scurries away, her shape flitting down the main corridor like a mouse making a break across a cat-guarded floor.

There’s something about this woman’s smell, her voice, some subtlety in her accent that’s not exactly normal, but it’s familiar. Everyone else here – nurses, doctors, orderlies, caterers and all the old, dying patients – is part of the hospital, they are part of this building; but there’s something about the sweet-smelling blonde blur that makes me know she’s like me, that she doesn’t belong in here. Maybe she’s got a phone she can lend me.

I gather myself and follow. It takes minutes for me to shuffle up, dragging the clinking drip stand with me, to where she’s standing in a crook of the wall.

‘Hi,’ I say. Her shape jolts, turns its back to me. Her shoulders are shuddering as if she’s crying. Christ, maybe this was a bad idea. But it’s worth a shot.

‘I wondered if you had a cellphone on you? I—’

‘No,’ she says, swallowing a sob.

Jesus.

‘Sorry,’ she says. ‘That was rude. I… I did have a phone. The battery’s dead.’

Shit. ‘Uh. Okay. Thanks anyway.’ I close my eyes and prepare to make my way back. I take a few deep breaths then turn, catching my foot in the drip stand and landing up slumped on the floor.

‘What’s wrong with you?’ she says. ‘Can’t you see?’

‘Not much,’ I say.

‘Oh,’ she says. Her hand awkwardly flutters onto mine, trying to help in some way, and eventually I pull myself up on the drip stand.

‘Thanks.’

‘I th—’

‘Muh, muh, mother!’ the man’s voice echoes through the corridor.

‘Ms Cassavetes,’ the Ugly Sister calls her in that offensive voice of hers. ‘What are you doing out of bed?’ Her bulk shoves past me like I’m just another irritating obstacle in her day.

‘S-sorry,’ the girl says, and scuttles back the way she came.

‘It’s just one call, come on. You can’t be fu— you can’t be serious!’

‘I told you,’ the blurry-faced drone behind the nurses’ station says. I hear her yawning. ‘It’s against hospital policy. No patients are allowed to use the phones.’

‘Please. You want me to beg?’

‘It’s the rules.’ She sniffs and her large blue shape drifts away.

Fuck. Now what?

Not knowing what else to do, I walk away, testing myself again to see how far I can go. This time I make it past the blonde girl’s ward, past the nook where we spoke, and all the way down to the ward kitchen, where I can smell the coffee and chips the visitors have smuggled in and the stink of meat pies nuked in the communal microwave oven. I feel my way along the green-striped wall towards the next door. It’s closed but I can smell cigarette smoke coming from inside it. I find the door handle and let myself in.

I close the door behind me and peer into the blur, squeezing at my bandaged hand to soothe it. It feels like it’s been cut. I make out the shapes of a few chairs, a yellowish table and a maroon or brown couch. The blonde girl’s sitting on it.

‘Hello again,’ I say. ‘Are you smoking?’

She takes a few seconds to respond. ‘No.’ She shifts herself so that she’s sitting at an angle away from me. Almost turning her back. As far as she can without physically getting up to stand in the corner. ‘I don’t smoke.’

There’s something nasal about her voice. I can’t really make out her face, but there’s a whiter smudge in the centre of it, probably some kind of dressing or bandage. Nose job? I sit on one of the chairs. The thick plastic which covers the upholstery sticks to my bare thighs and I wonder when last they were wiped down. I make sure my smock is covering my dick.

‘What are you in for?’ I say, trying to sound chatty, conversational. Her muttering is really annoying me and in ordinary circumstances I’d just leave. But here, blind as a fucking bat, I might need her help to get hold of Katya.

Another long pause, then a sigh. ‘My face.’

Jesus. This is like a bad day at work. Interviewing a fifteen-year-old model pre-shoot, trying to get her to ease up. I challenge myself to get more than two words out of her. ‘What’s wrong with it?’

A pause. ‘I had an accident.’

Definitely a nose job. That’s what they all say, as if it’s some sort of disgrace when who the hell cares? But why the fuck would she get it done in No Hope? Christ, surely nobody’s here if they’ve got another option?

I lean forward in my chair, and she shrinks back into the couch.

‘Don’t worry,’ I say. ‘Remember, I can’t see much.’

‘Are you blind?’

‘No. Well… at the moment. I have a problem…’ She shifts into an easier position. I want to tell her – convince myself – that it’s just temporary, but I can’t force out the words. The ophthalmologist will be here this afternoon, and it will all be better. I rub my hand again; the ache’s not improving. ‘This place is stuffy. I’m thinking of going for a walk outside,’ I say to divert the conversation. ‘You want to come?’

‘You can’t leave the section without being discharged.’

‘What?’

‘They won’t let you out without the paperwork… I think they’re afraid of criminals.’

I give it some thought. ‘Nah, more likely they don’t want patients wandering around. Just as well, I suppose. You could have people who are sick with really bad stuff wandering into this section if there’s no control.’ I don’t want to think too hard about the diseases that must breed in this place. ‘Locked in for our own protection, huh?’

She doesn’t say anything.

‘I’m Josh, by the way. Josh Farrell. But everyone calls me Farrell.’ Only Katya calls me Josh.

‘I’m Lisa,’ she says.

By three thirty the eye doctor still hasn’t come. I lie on my bed, trying to stay awake; my long walk earlier has really sapped my energy. But I can’t trust any of the nurses to remember me when he comes. I feel I should be standing right at the nurses’ station, waiting for the doctor.

I dream that there are pigeons in glass jars arrayed on the shelves in this storeroom, flapping silently in their panic, suffocating slowly.

I see a round grey face looming over the entire hospital like a malicious moon, an insane scientist watching his rats dying in their trap. There are people in the jars now, old people scrabbling at the sides, moaning, too weak to scream or kick, suffocating, coughing up mouthfuls of blood-streaked phlegm. The grey-faced moon watches over it all, its soulless eyes staring, sweat pouring down, dripping off its badly shaved chin. Dripping onto my face.

‘Mr Farrell, Dr Marx is here.’ Nomsa’s voice.

I try to rub the sleep out of my eyes, but my vision won’t clear. Then I remember.

‘Let’s have a look.’ The dark shape of Dr Marx’s face merges some of the dark spots into a shadowy patch. He shines a light into my eyes which glares and radiates. ‘Hmm. Yes, the conjunctivitis is clearing, but you do have quite serious ulceration because of the keratitis. We want to avoid this becoming an adherent leucoma. I’ll prescribe an antibiotic suspension, but it would have been better if we had seen to this earlier.’

‘But I’ve been waiting for—’

‘Nurse, please fill this as soon as possible. Two drops, each eye, twice daily.’

‘Thank you, Doctor,’ Nomsa says. The doctor bustles out without another word. ‘There you are, Mr Farrell. Your eyes will get better now.’

‘What does he mean “it would have been better if we had seen to this earlier”? The other doctor already knew what I needed yesterday morning. Why couldn’t he have given it to me then?’

‘Dr Koopman is not an ophthalmologist. He can’t prescribe—’

‘Okay!’ I snap. ‘Fine. Can I just get those drops now?’

Nomsa goes out without a word.

Dammit. I’ve managed to piss off the only decent nurse here.

Half an hour later, Sister Elizabeth comes in to check my drip.

‘Have you got my eye drops?’ I ask her.

Once again she barks, ‘No medical aid,’ as if that’s an answer.

‘What does that mean? I’m in a public hospital here. Free healthcare for the people and all that.’

‘You get generic if you don’t have medical aid.’

‘Okay, so? Where is it?’

‘There’s no stock at the dispensary. It’s on order.’

Oh God. ‘What?’ I’m biting my tongue, trying to keep myself calm, trying to keep the bureaucrat on my side. ‘How long will it—’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Is there stock of the medicine Dr Marx prescribed?’

‘Yes.’ She’s enjoying this.

‘So what do you want from me? What must I give you?’

‘You have nothing I want, Mr Farrell.’ She walks out.

Chapter 4

LISA

Lumpy Legs pulls at the Micropore tape holding the dressing in place, catching my skin with her fingernails. I try not to wince or let her know she’s hurting me, but I can’t help crying out when she yanks the cotton wool plugs from my nostrils. I breathe in through my nose for the first time in ages, but all I can smell is a faint tinge of disinfectant and the irony scent of dried blood. She drops the bandages and plugs into a stainless steel kidney bowl. They’re gross-looking, caked with black scabs and iodine. I lift my hand to touch the incision and trace the new shape, but she slaps it away.

‘Don’t touch.’

‘Sorry, I was just…’

Using a clump of cotton swabs she starts cleaning the bridge of my nose. It stings, but it’s not as painful as I was expecting – more a throbbing ache than anything else. She pushes my head back and wipes around my nostrils. ‘Eish,’ she says, scowling.

‘What does it look like? Is it bad?’

For a second her expression softens. For an instant I’m a real person, not some spoiled chick who’s had an unnecessary ‘procedure’.

‘It’s not too bad,’ she says.

She’s lying. I think about asking for a mirror, but there’s not really much point. I know from past experience that it will just make me even more anxious.

The Indian doctor rustles his way in through the curtains. He’s harassed and distracted and doesn’t even greet me or Lumpy Legs. He barely glances at my face.

‘The operation is to be done tomorrow night,’ he says. ‘So, Nurse, nil by mouth from midnight onwards.’

Lumpy Legs grunts in response.

I force myself to speak up. ‘So everything’s healing okay? It’s fine to operate again?’

He sighs. ‘That’s when we can fit you in. There are many emergencies.’

That’s not really what I wanted to hear. But before I can speak again he bustles out.

Lumpy Legs finishes replacing the dressing, her grumpy expression back on her face, and rips the curtains back.

‘Everything all right, doll?’ Gertie says innocently, although we both know she’s been eavesdropping.

‘I think so. They want to operate again tomorrow night.’

‘Shame. Sinuses blocked up again, ja? Like I said, my grandson Reuben – Larissa’s third – had trouble with his when he was a baby, and after his grommets we…’

I lie back and let her monologue wash over me.

If looks could kill, I’d be dead several times over by now.

Gertie’s daughter Kyra – a thirty-something woman with straightened brittle hair and a too-tight T-shirt – has been shooting me dirty looks ever since she arrived five minutes ago. I stare down at my hands and fiddle with the plastic hospital bracelet around my wrist. I’m way out of my depth here, not sure where to look.

I hate visiting time. Even the comatose women who are wheeled in here straight from theatre (‘the veggies’, Gertie calls them) attract crowds of family members every evening. I’m beginning to recognise some of the regulars. Most of the women look overtired and overworked, and they slump with relief onto the hard plastic chairs. They barely glance at the patients they’ve come to see, spending the time shouting at their children, who chase each other up and down the corridors, scattering bright-orange Nik Naks across the floor. The men all look bored and resigned. Still, the sight of all these families makes me feel homesick, painfully aware that I’m miles away from home, and that no one even knows I’m in here.

I’m itching to flee to the waiting room, but Gertie has asked me to stay for ‘moral support, doll’. And it looks like she’s going to need it.

Kyra curls a lock of limp hair around a finger. ‘Five hundred rand, Ma. It’s not much.’

‘Do I look like I’ve got five hundred rand?’ Gertie snaps. ‘When was the last time I was able to collect my pension?’

Kyra’s boyfriend hovers at the door. Well, I think it’s her boyfriend. He’s got a patchily shaven scalp, ferrety teeth and a lazy eye. His fingernails are dirty.

Kyra’s eyes narrow. ‘What you looking at, bitch?’ she says to me. ‘You looking at my man?’

Gertie snorts. ‘As if she’d look at that piece of kak! And don’t you talk to my friend like that. She’s worth two of you.’

‘Ma! Don’t call Jannie a piece of kak. He’s good to me.’

‘Good to me se moer. He’s a taker. A user. Just like you, my girl.’

‘I’m not a taker!’

‘What are you then? Coming to the hospital to beg from me! And what did you bring me? Fokkol!’

‘Ma!’ Kyra whines. ‘Don’t be like that.’

‘Get out. You’re making me sicker. You aren’t getting any blarry tik money from me.’