A Hospital Visit
I promised my sister to bring our eighty-seven-year old aunt from the hospital in Brzeziny to her apartment in Koluszki. The hospital was some twenty kilometres from Lodz, where I was staying with my sister for several days. Having no car, I took a bus and arrived early, so that my aunt wouldn’t get worried that nobody was coming.
I couldn’t find my aunt’s room in the maze of the hospital, so I asked a nurse to direct me. She took me to her ward, commenting that my aunt was very lucky to have so many people visiting: her neighbours, my sister, my daughter and now myself. She also listed the extras my aunt had received in the last couple of days, such as an extra portion of chicken soup, an extra shower, and a gift of a comb, because she misplaced the comb which she brought with her, as soon as she was able to leave her bed. I was not sure if this information was merely factual or included a hint that I should repay it somehow. Whatever it was, I took from my bag a box of chocolates with an envelope including two hundred zloties, which I prepared before my trip, as a token of our gratitude to the nurses. I respect nurses more than any other profession so I’m happy to give them gifts. Besides, nurses in Poland, as elsewhere, are underpaid and I dread that I will spend the last years of my life in a world without nurses.
The room was for three patients, but it was occupied only by my aunt, who was perched on the edge of her bed. She said that in this way she prepared herself for the journey which was to last another twenty kilometres. She wanted to go home straight away, but I said that we couldn’t go without the discharge documents, for which we had to wait an hour and a half. She replied that her neighbours could bring them and we could just go as her bag was packed and she was ready, but I disagreed, as I preferred to follow the right procedures. My aunt didn’t argue, realising that there was no point; it was better to save her energy for more important battles. She was thinner than usual; her arms were covered with bruises from drips, and her legs with scars from numerous accidents, but she was not skeletal and gave the impression of being well looked after. This applied especially to her hair, which was completely white, but looked thick, shiny and combed. In anticipation of using her image in my future literary pursuits I tried to think about an object to which I could compare it, but my aunt’s body refused my attempts at metaphorisation; she was stubbornly herself. Was it a defence against the decomposing work of death and the subsequent rituals of commemoration? I had no chance to ponder on this thought, only tried to keep it at the back of my mind, to bring it forward when its time comes.
My aunt’s eyes signaled that she was at her most alert, which reassured me that she wouldn’t die during my visit, but also worried me, as they suggested that she planned to be in charge of our conversation, ignoring everything which didn’t suit her under the pretext that she did not hear me and force me to answer the questions which I preferred not to be asked. I tried to prevent it.
‘You have a nice room here, all for yourself. And the hospital seems clean and does not smell the way hospitals usually do. Must be better now in Poland than in England where patients stay in wheelchairs on corridors, waiting for days for free beds,’ I said. My aunt didn’t reply so I carried on: ‘Somebody brought you flowers?’ I inquired, surprised, as our family is rather immune to such gestures
‘No. The nurses bring them to every hospital room. Apparently they are unsold flowers from the local flower shops,’ she replied with a whiff of scorn.
‘That’s nice. Some British florists do this too,’ I said. ‘Did they feed you well, auntie?’ I asked.
‘Well, they didn’t allow any food for the first three days, just a drip. But after the operation they gave me broth and I must say it was very good: fresh, aromatic, maybe because they used plenty of celeriac leaves. The next day for breakfast I had rice flakes with milk and for lunch there was chicken soup with potatoes. Again, it was very good. I squashed the potatoes with a fork so it felt more substantial. For supper it was chicken soup again, but without potatoes. It was a pity, as it felt watery, even though they added something to make it thicker. Still, one couldn’t satisfy one’s hunger properly with such a soup. Yesterday, it was some cereal with milk for breakfast, not very good. It tasted like the artificial stuff from packets. For lunch there was vegetable soup with potatoes, and chicken soup with noodles for supper. For breakfast today I had again rice flakes with milk. Maybe they will give me soup before we leave.’
‘If not, I will cook some soup for you when we get home. I will make sure it has celeriac leaves. I like them too. Unfortunately, in England they remove them before selling, and sell celery instead, but it tastes differently. Was it painful, the operation?’
‘It was. They couldn’t put me to sleep, because I was too old and weak, and they starved me before and after. And then they put a tube into my ass.’
‘I guess this is a rule which applies to most operations and especially those which are on one’s guts. They don’t do it out of cruelty.’
My aunt’s eyes were blank, showing that she hadn’t heard me or rather that she didn’t like to be patronised. After a short silence she said: ‘Ania was here every day. She is a good child, this daughter of yours. Is she still visiting her father? Is she giving him money?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said, feeling angry that I let her hijack our conversation after all and was powerless to stop her.
‘How it can be?’ the aunt continued. ‘He didn’t pay child support when she was small. He turned his ass on her when his sons were born and now he wants her to help him because he is penniless and useless? Do you know what I would do if he asked me for money? I would kick his ass so hard that he would fly into the air and tell him that this is what a father deserves for neglecting his child.’
‘You are right,’ I said. ‘But she doesn’t want him to starve. He is still a father to her.’
‘If I were you, I wouldn’t let her visit him or spend a penny on him.’
‘She is an adult. I cannot control her like that.’
‘She is an adult, but still takes money from you. She told me so herself’ said my aunt. ‘She needs to stand on her own two feet.’
‘She tries, but it’s not easy. Wait here and I will check if these discharge documents are ready and if they give you soup before we go.’
I went to the nurse’s room who said: ‘The documents are ready, but the doctor hasn’t signed them yet. As for the soup, it would be better if your aunt didn’t eat it, to avoid getting sick in the taxi.’
As soon as I returned and conveyed this to my aunt, she continued: ‘And how is he?’
‘Who?’ I asked.
‘You know who, the other motherfucker, Justyna’s ex?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t ask her about him. It’s not polite to enquire about one’s old partners, even if this person is a sister,’ I said, knowing that my aunt would ignore the hint. She did and carried on:
‘He is a bastard. And your mother told me that as soon as he split with Justyna, he got himself a new woman, big and fat.’
‘Justyna and Roman got divorced. They both can do what they want to do with their lives.’
‘But it’s not right. Justyna and you work hard to help your children, while these bastards walk free.’
‘This is all in the past,’ I said. ‘Was anybody visiting you except the family and the Ks.?’ I asked, my last attempt to change the subject.
‘Grazyna came twice because she has a cleaning job in Brzeziny. The poor woman always works like a donkey and for what? The money was first squandered by her crippled husband and now by Karolina. She is 28 and has never worked a day in her life. Instead, she is drinking every day with her husband and they have this boy who is two years old now. Grazyna says that if not for her, he would starve to death, as often they don’t have enough money to buy bread. Still, they find it to buy vodka. When I first saw Karolina, with her eyes squinted and froth coming out of her mouth, I told Grazyna “Don’t take her. She is defected. There will be nothing good of her.” But she said it was too late and it was the only child they offered her in the orphanage. If she wanted to get a better child, she had to pay a private adoption agency and she had no money for that. Of course, I was right as Karolina has epilepsy and she has to wear glasses so strong that the she doesn’t look like a human being, but an insect.’
‘Are you comfortable sitting like that, auntie?’ I asked.
‘Yes, I’m fine. I’ve had enough of lying flat like a log for five days.’
‘So you won’t mind if I lie down?’ I asked.
‘Go ahead. You must be tired with all these errands in Warsaw and Lodz.’
I lay down and my aunt continued:
‘If Karolina is so useless, why have a child on top of that? You should have kids only if you have means to support them because there are enough old and sick people to look after. Now Grazyna says there will be a trial in court. I don’t know what this trial will be about, but I suppose it will be about the kid. I suppose they will try to give him up for adoption. But they should examine him, as judging by his parents I’m sure he has defects and the people who adopt him should know about it.’
‘Everybody has defects’ I said. ‘Either you are born with defects or life cripples you.’
‘I don’t like when you talk like that. You and Justyna had no defects. You were like pure gold. When I saw you for the first time, I told your mother: “she will be our treasure.”’
Although the door and the window in the room were open, it was very hot and I was falling asleep, half-hearing my aunt saying:
‘Grazyna says Karolina’s husband is forty-four and has four children of his own. I don’t even know if they were married. I guess not – he used her as a whore, except that he didn’t have to pay her, as she was too dim to refuse him or ask to be compensated. But he should have had mercy on her and used contraceptives.’
I was awoken by a nurse who brought the discharge documents. She was a plump and jolly woman with a loud voice, of the type the protagonist of Coetzee’s ‘Slow Man’ rejected on the grounds of her patronising manners and vulgarity. But she was the right type for such types as my aunt, as they need to be shouted at so they cannot pretend not to hear. The nurse was ultimately good-natured and aware of the absurdity of the situation with me lying on the bed as if I was a patient. What was even more absurd was some of the advice offered to the aunt, given her advanced age and her general state: avoiding cigarettes and alcohol, refraining from sex for up to four weeks and undertaking additional tests in one to five years. She was even giggling when talking about sex and looked at me, perhaps assessing whether I was also in a category of those for whom warnings about sex is a pure formality. I gathered that the verdict was inconclusive.
It was time to leave. As I was putting my aunt’s remaining belongings into her bag, her neighbours, Mr. and Mrs. K arrived, announcing that they would take us home; no need to waste money on a taxi. Somehow I thought that it would be better if there were fewer of us for the journey, but it would be impolite to say so, so Mrs. K and I walked my aunt slowly down the stairs, while Mr. K ran in front of us to fetch his car. It was a scorching day and I started to have bad premonitions, as five minutes had passed and the car hadn’t arrived.
‘Where is the car?’ I asked eventually.
‘I don’t know. There were no free spaces at the hospital car park, so Tadeusz had to park it on a neighbouring street. He will be here any minute now,’ she said.
‘Wouldn’t it be better if he brought the car first and then we walked auntie down?’ I asked, feeling stupid that I hadn’t thought of this before.
‘Perhaps, but it it’s now too late,’ said Mrs. K.
It was indeed too late, as it became impossible to keep my aunt in a vertical position.
‘Can you help us?’ I asked a large man, smoking nearby.
‘I cannot, I have a sore back. Find a wheelchair,’ he said.
The car arrived as aunt lost consciousness and looked like the victim of the tie man from Hitchcock’s ‘Frenzy,’ with a tongue sticking out sideways and eyes looking ahead without seeing.
Mr. K found a wheelchair and we transported aunt to the ward where she had been previously. There I was told by a nurse whom I hadn’t seen before that her case was closed and I had to take her to admissions, where she would be treated as a new patient.
‘What if she dies, when I’m waiting?’ I asked.
‘Maybe she won’t,’ she said. ‘I will go with you to say it’s urgent.’
In the meantime, the Ks. left as Mr. K. had to go to work, so I was again alone with my aunt, who recovered, asking me what had happened. When I explained that she fainted, she said:
‘This was because of hunger. If they gave me the chicken soup for lunch, I would have been fine.’
After dealing with the formalities I was taken to a doctor’s office, who was eating hard-boiled eggs with tomatoes and onion when I arrived. Although he was still rather young, he gave the impression of being tired and disillusioned and sighed, at the sight of my aunt.
‘Oh boy! I understand you,’ I was thinking. ‘It must feel like seeing a student who after being given an extensive tutorial returns, tells you that he didn’t understand anything and you cannot even say “fuck off!”’
‘Please wait at the corridor,’ he said. ‘We will have to run some tests on the patient. It will take a while.’
I took a seat in the corridor, in front of a door with the sign ‘Don’t knock. Don’t enter. Wait for a call,’ behind which – I guessed – my aunt was being examined. It was one in a row of identical doors with identical signs, in front of which sat patients and their relatives. The younger played with their mobile phones, the older amused themselves the old way – by talking. I joined the latter, both on the grounds of my age and inclination. We started with exchanging illnesses and hospital experiences. There was more than a whiff of competition between us, with the grand prix going to the most ill patient. I won on aunt’s behalf, telling my interlocutors about her multiple sclerosis, which was detected when she was nineteen, her two heart attacks, pacemakers, arthritis and a plethora of minor operations. They nodded their heads in respect, even the runner up, a guy in his late sixties, who had bowel cancer behind him and only a 20% chance of survival, and expected to be diagnosed with another cancer, this time of his spine, as his GP warned him. We also compared our experiences with different healthcare systems: Polish, British and German, as the bowel cancer man used to work in Germany and apart from me, an older woman was in a hospital in Leeds when visiting her daughter. Poland won, as we were all fierce patriots and we didn’t want to jinx the chances of our relatives or ourselves to leave the hospital in better health. Germany came last, being a country which for centuries exploited Poles and, when they stopped being useful, killed them. British came in the middle, as a paragon of neutrality, a country where one would not be mistreated, but wouldn’t receive anything extra, unlike in Poland whose social care is made of extras.
After three and a half hours all the people who began their waiting with me were seen to and I got tired of telling the stories of my aunt’s illnesses. After a short consultation with fellow relatives I knocked on the door with the sign ‘Don’t knock’. It was opened by the same doctor who ate the hard-boiled eggs before. He didn’t turn me away, but apologised for the delay. He said that my aunt had fainted because she lacked potassium in her blood. She got it via a drip and was basically fine, but needed to stay overnight, just in case. The next morning she would be taken to her home by an ambulance.
I spent a bit more time with my aunt, to whom I repeated what the doctor had said. She accepted it with humility and said:
‘Go home, love, as you must be starving.’
‘You must be starving too,’ I replied, ‘but probably they won’t let you eat anything till tomorrow morning.’
‘I will be fine,’ she said.
As I was leaving, my aunt started to cry, with her lips tightened, which added to the impression of suffering, while looking me straight in the eyes, so I couldn’t hide from her pain. I know that her tears were reserved for me, as they contained the reproach that I dared to emigrate and leave her, risking that I miss her death.
‘When will you come again?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know yet precisely. Next time I am in Poland.’
Although it was 5pm, it was still scorching outside – that day, the temperature in Lodz was meant to reach 34 C. I went to the bus station which was next to the hospital and discovered that the bus which was to take me to Lodz had just left and I had to wait 57 minutes for the next one.
I was tired and hungry, but there was a bonus to my suffering, as my head cleared and it occurred to me that I had discovered the secret of my aunt’s endurance and the point of her seemingly pointless existence. She carried on to become a total social Darwinist, measuring every human act by its value in advancing the interests of its performer and being able to detect behind the deeds that do not conform to this model either hypocrisy, cold calculation or plain stupidity. But, obviously, my aunt had still some distance to go. There were some remnants of altruistic love in her, most likely for Justyna and, on occasions, she was unable to peel off the veneer of fake altruism from the acts of some people, like the Ks’. Perhaps, when she frees herself of them, she will die. It was strange to think that she nurtured such a mindset under the Polish version of communism, but maybe this system made us particularly mercenary and insincere. Or maybe it just shows that the ways of God are unknown, as they say. I started to think what plans God or his atheist substitute held for me. Will I go the same path as my aunt? Is this already happening? Am I in the second half?
‘Hello?’ somebody’s voice woke me from my thoughts. I looked in its direction and noticed the bowel cancer man approaching.
‘How are you?’ I asked.
‘Great. It turned out that I had only an ulcer on my spine. They removed it, just like that,’ he said and clicked his fingers, to show how easy it was. ‘With a laser, I think. It’s amazing; I’ve never been so happy in my life as today. What a gift. What about your aunt?’
‘She is fine, just needed more potassium. Should be back home tomorrow morning.’
‘I’m really pleased to hear that. Please wish her all the best and a hundred years.’
‘Thanks, but she might wish to live longer.’
The bus arrived five minutes later, and in slightly more than an hour and a bit I was in my sister’s apartment. Justyna had just returned from work and I told her about my day. She sighed and went to the kitchen to prepare supper, while I lay down on the sofa to rest.