The Patient by Mohamed Dr. Khadra

Author:Mohamed Dr. Khadra [Dr. Khadra, Mohamed]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Itzy, Kickass.so
ISBN: 9781864714968
Publisher: Random House Australia
Published: 2010-05-01T04:00:00+00:00

Two weeks after he received his pathology results, Jonathan Brewster went for his first treatment session at the Victoria Hospital.

He stood at a reception desk that read ‘Admissions’. There was no one there. The phone was ringing. The desk was cluttered with patient records, notes and X-rays. Down the corridor, he could hear a woman screaming. Doctors and nurses were entering and leaving a room, and each time the door opened the screaming sounded louder.

‘Help me. Help me,’ the woman called out in an Indian accent. She sounded young. ‘Please, God, make the pain stop. Make it stop!’ The nurse was running now, carrying a kidney dish with a syringe in it. A painkiller, probably, thought Jonathan. There was a time when he would have been able to block out the woman’s suffering, ignore it, but now his heart reached out to this poor woman. It could be me screaming out like that one day. He dismissed the thought.

The screaming down the corridor continued for several minutes but became softer, until eventually it stopped. Jonathan figured that the painkiller must have taken effect. The nurses and doctors came out of her room, walking slowly. One of the doctors came around behind the desk, sat stiffly on the chair and opened up a folder full of notes. He looked up at the clock behind Jonathan, and then wrote down the time. Jonathan became aware of a different sound. Sobbing. Wailing. A child was crying, almost screaming with grief. ‘Please don’t die, Mum. Please don’t die.’

‘Where’s the boy’s father? For God’s sake, the kid’s only eight years old,’ said one of the nurses under her breath to the doctor behind the desk, who simply shrugged.

‘Lives in another city now, with a new family. Hasn’t even been in contact with his son. Would you believe it?’ answered another nurse.

‘So who’s been looking after him all this time?’

‘The woman’s friends were popping in to look after him, I think, but he’s going to be a ward of the state now, poor little bugger. Child services have got a foster home lined up for him – I’ll call them to come get him.’

As she picked up the phone to dial, the first nurse finally noticed Jonathan and asked, ‘Are you OK?’

‘I’m here to have a dose of BCG for my bladder cancer. I have a letter from my doctor.’ He was surprised by how articulate he had managed to be. The blood had drained from his face, and he felt shattered.

‘I haven’t heard of that being given here. Let me see your letter.’ The nurse was the unit manager. She had a graduate certificate in Management and Finance and was well on her way to leaving the wards and getting her promotion to administration, where she would be free of this constant screaming that filled her daily life. She felt impatient with Jonathan for being unaware of the department he was due to attend.

‘This is the cancer ward. You need to be in the day-stay suite.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.