She called me an idiot. That’s why we South Africans will continue to live under the illusion of freedom, she said, unaware of how we remain captive to white supremacy.
I told her she needed to surrender all her anger to You. I said I’d never had a racist experience at work and that the people there are actually quite nice, if you bother to get to know them. Everyone is nice, once you get to know them.
She gave me one of her looks.
I’m not going to let her get to me. She’s always looking for drama where there isn’t any. Sometimes I want to tell her to go back to her own country and fix her own problems and stop meddling in ours. But I’d never say that. It’s not a nice thing to say. I was blessed to be born in South Africa. It’s not her fault that she wasn’t. Those who have should give to those who don’t have.
❖
We seem to fight a lot these days, Nyasha and I. Maybe it’s me. I’m so tired all the time, tired and irritable. I can’t remember the last time we had a good weekend. Was it as far back as when we brought home all the leftover champagne from the departmental Christmas party? We stayed up watching movies, laughing, then stuffed our faces with cheese samosas, piri-piri potato wedges, and prince prawns. I’m surprised we didn’t vomit. We were so happy. We couldn’t believe we’d both managed to avoid being on call that weekend, the entire weekend! Nyasha said it felt like the sleepover she’d never had. When she moved to South Africa as a teenager, her mother forbade her from sleeping at other girls’ houses in case she got molested. She didn’t trust anybody in this crazy country. I laughed, and called her xenophobic. She laughed, too, and said that South Africans thought they owned xenophobia. It was a happy day. A happy weekend.
I’d never been allowed a sleepover either, so it meant a lot to me, too, although I didn’t say it. At home there were always large maroon towels on my bed. Hard towels, not soft, new ones, because that would just be a waste. Hard, dark towels that could keep a secret.
❖
On call, last night, the paramedics brought in this white lady at about 1:30 a.m. She was at home with her boyfriend when four men broke into their flat, raped her, shot her in the head, and ransacked the house. I didn’t get the full story because the specialist doctor on call was panicked and sent us all running around. I was told to take femoral blood and get it to the blood bank. When I came back the surgical team was preparing her to operate. She was fully conscious and speaking despite the shot to her head, which was weird. On my way to the blood bank I heard one of the paramedics telling a nurse that the police had found blood splattered across her living room walls and her boyfriend had died at the scene, but she hadn’t been told yet.
When I went back to bed after taking the emergency blood to the operating room, I pictured those walls.
I told Nyasha the story this morning when I got home. The white interns were saying in the morning meeting that this was the reason they were taking the UK PLAB and US MLE exams and getting out of the country.
“Let them go,” is what she had to say. “Our people are just rag dolls for them to perfect their clinical skills for the white people they’ll be serving in the private sector. Let them go.”
You know mos Nyasha, Lord.
❖
Do you ever get that feeling that this is me and that is them? That I am me, and you are you, and that we are separate? That I am here, and you are there? That this is my life and that is yours? That these are my thoughts and you have your own, and they are apart from mine?
❖
I asked Nyasha if being a doctor ever felt scary for her. Did she sometimes feel like she couldn’t breathe? Like there was a large invisible boulder on her chest?
I shouldn’t have bothered, because instead of the empathy I was hoping for, I got a scolding instead.
“Stop talking nonsense, Chaba! Your problem is you spend too much time with those white interns. They’re getting into your head. Can’t breathe? Why can’t you breathe? Do you have TB? Are your airways clogged with pneumocystis pneumonia? No? Then why can’t you breathe?”
❖
Tomorrow I’m going to wake up early and get to the hospital on time. I’m going to be in the lab first thing in the morning and make sure I have all the patients’ results before the ward round. I’m going to check their temperatures myself if the nurses haven’t done them yet. I’m going to stop others discharging them before they’re well enough to go home. I’m going to ask them how they feel, instead of making it up.
It probably won’t change anything. I’ll probably be back in this same empty place by lunchtime. No, by half past eight. But I’m going to try, anyway. I’m going to wake up early and make a list of all the things I need to do for the day. I’m going to read around every patient’s condition so I can be of some help to them. Maybe I’ll find something clever in those scientific journals. Maybe I’ll find a way to save some of them. I’m going to be different. I’m going to stay on longer in the afternoons and I’m going to offer to help the other doctors with their work when I’m done with mine. And
