Then he spews out all the medicine, and spits some more for good measure.
Where most infants would have conceded defeat and swallowed what they had to, here was a baby determined to fight to the very last. Four to five grown-ups would have a long-drawn out battle with him whenever it was time for his medicine, emerging bruised and sore and with cricks in their joints.
(My mother had wished for a stout and strong baby when she was carrying him. Nowadays we joke about her not being able to say she had not gotten what she had wished for.)
One of little Jan’s pastimes, when he was still plump and round and running about everywhere in his walker, was boxing. I do not know how my mother got the idea, but she stuffed some old cloth into a plastic bag, then tied it to a knob on a chest of drawers such that it was suspended exactly at his eye-level. He would skate up to the bag in his walker and happily give it a pummelling with his tiny fists.
Then he grew bigger. A mere four grown-ups trying to get Jan to do anything he did not want to often turned into a travesty of a Charlie Chaplin film.
My baby brother was not only strong. He was smart, and he was fast, and it took only a split second’s opening for him to get a good one over his opponent.
When I make the calls for an ambulance and request extra manpower for the job, the officer at the other end of the line usually adopts either a patronising or an amused tone.
Here’s another panicky family member exaggerating things, he thinks, with the air of one who has been on the job for years and seen it all.
The conversations usually run like this:
‘I’m telling you,’ I say, trying to make my voice heard above the ruckus in the background, ‘My brother is very, very strong.’
‘I’m sure he is, miss. We’ll have our men down there, don’t worry.’
‘You’re going to send two men and that’s not going to be enough,’ I say. ‘We’ve done this before many times. You’re going to need at least ten men down here just to be safe.’
‘We’ll send the standard team, miss. We’ll call for backup only if it’s really necessary.’
‘Oh it’s necessary,’ I assure him, losing my patience by this time. ‘But fine. Do as you like.’
So two to four men would pop up at our doorstep ten minutes later.
My mum turns to me. ‘Didn’t you tell them they would need extra help?’
I reply with a nod. ‘These folks are going to learn something new today.’
My mother cannot participate in the scuffles, being a PID patient. Her earnest attempts to talk them into calling for extra help would be brushed aside, gently at best, but brushed aside nonetheless.
Oh, so this is the mother? It’s best to placate her. If anything, she’s going to be worse than the sister at making mountains out of molehills, they think.
They confidently go over to my brother. Then they find they cannot budge him. They try again, and still they cannot budge him.
They look at me.
I look at them.
My brother looks at all of us.
‘We’ll call for backup,’ one of them says, turning to leave the room immediately.
‘We’ll need the police down here, we’ll need permission to use binding straps,’ says another.
Our home would be invaded by medics, policemen and, on even better days, civil defence officers. Not one dares to approach him because he is sitting on his bed, huddled in blankets, looking very ill, very grumpy, and giving them all a look that plainly says, go away. He tries to bargain with me, anything to get himself out of a trip to the doctor’s. He promises to drink more water, to eat properly, to take his medicine and so on.
Too bad, I tell him. You’ve got to go means you’ve got to go.
I shall not detail the massive tussle that usually comes after, and the trip in the ambulance to the emergency room. Really, memories of this sort can only be revisited so much when they have not truly faded. (Also, each and every one of the paramedics and officers who have ever helped Jan deserves a trophy. Once they realised the gravity of the situation and got over their initial disbelief, they tried their utmost to do their job without Jan getting hurt.)
I do not face much resistance when I accompany Jan into the emergency room. Half-drugged and groggy, tied to the bed, Jan still manages to free his hands from the bindings. If the doctors and nurses are lucky and quick enough, their medical equipment survives my brother’s bad mood. The strong anaesthesia does not knock him out; it succeeds only in making him slightly sleepy.
The 6th Step
It has always been a problem for me to get my brother into an isolated ward at general hospitals. Once or twice, the staff would generously move us up to an A-class ward, if they had room.
Other times, when the air-conditioned B-class wards were fully occupied or reserved, Jan was put in the rooms with open windows. When I tried to point out the problems with this and asked that Jan’s case be given priority, I got sniffed at.
‘All the wards are the same, these wards are just as good,’ they said, imperious.
The staff knew that my mother and I had special permission to remain with Jan in the hospital till he was discharged. I suppose they got the impression that we were making a fuss to get ourselves an air-conditioned room. Indeed, it is a luxury. What is even more luxurious for everyone’s well-being, however, is that an air-conditioned ward has no open windows for
