“We’d noticed that a month ago. Mom’s obsession with flowers. On everything. Clothes. Sofa covers. Curtains. Tablecloths. Bedsheets. Nina and I started noticing it after we’d left her at the hospital one day. Maybe we were looking for bits of her. Something to hold on to.”
By Clyde R D’Souza
Mom was shouting at me. Well, scolding would be a more appropriate word. But hang on a sec; if I right-click the word scolding, Word offers up admonishment, reproach, dressing-down as synonyms. I think the most apt would be admonishing.
So yeah, Mom was admonishing me. Like I was a bloody ten-year-old. Like as if I had smashed her precious Elizabeth Arden White Diamond perfume. Like I hadn’t done my homework. Like I’d been a bad boy. Except I was now a man. A twenty-five-year-old man. And the bad thing I’d done? Forgot to bring her wig along with me.
‘Just give me the scarf,’ she winced.
‘It’s cooler than a wig, Mom,’ I tried.
‘Please just go and bring it from home, Edwin.’
Mom was lying on her back in ward No 315. The 2nd floor of St. Elizabeth Hospital, Dona Paula, which overlooks the newly landscaped gardens that most patients would never step on because they were either bedridden or in too much of a foul mood to walk around.
Two months ago, Mom’s chemo had gone well and the doctor suggested radiation. This, despite us being told five months earlier that the cancer had spread to stage 4 and that any treatment was purely palliative. Purely palliative. Meaning no cure. Great. Thanks.
Wikipedia says, ‘The World Health Organization (WHO), in a 1990 report on the topic, defined palliative care as “the active total care of patients whose disease is not responsive to curative treatment.”
Responsive or not, we went ahead with everything. Chemo. Homeo. Wheatgrass. Curd. Now radiation.
One week of radiation and yesterday Mom couldn’t move her legs. And she’d become squint. Cockeyed. Medically termed strabismus.
Which is why we were back at St. Elizabeth Hospital. The OPD wanted to know on whose watch Mom should be admitted. Cancer surgeon? GP? Neurosurgeon? Finally, we put her under all three doctors.
But right now —what Mom was really worried about was her wig. Irritated, she made do with my MTV Music Summit for AIDS bandana.
The nurses on the 2nd floor wing knew us well. Last time Mom had spent almost a month there. When she was discharged, we bought the staff a big bouquet and a box of Cadbury Temptations. After that, nobody bothered us about visiting hours. The official politeness disappeared. They treated us like people you know too well. They knew we were there for life. And death.
By the time I reached home to get the wig, I got a call from Nurse Sweety.
‘Aunty wants the green blouse,’ she said in her Mallu accent.
‘Which one?’
‘The one with the little flowers on it.’
I laughed. ‘Sweety, every blouse Mom has, has flowers on it.’
We’d noticed that a month ago. Mom’s obsession with flowers. On everything. Clothes. Sofa covers. Curtains. Tablecloths. Bedsheets. Nina and I started noticing it after we’d left her at the hospital one day. Maybe we were looking for bits of her. Something to hold on to.
When I got back, Sweety was feeding Mom dinner. She was the only one who could get Mom to eat the healthy but bland hospital food that showed up at 7 p.m. It drove Mom mad.
Thankfully Sweety had a way. Mom said when she ate from Sweety’s hands the food tasted spicier, the dessert sweeter. I think Mom just hated the idea of us feeding her. It reminded her she was ill. Dependent.
I was lying on the narrow visitors’ bed in the ward. There was a small cabinet next to Mom’s bed where we kept her clothes, file, medicines, the Bible. Beside her bed was an oxygen cylinder connected to a blue and yellow pipe running from ward to ward.
A single speaker played hymns so softly you had to almost stop breathing to hear it.
Sweety fed Mom half-sitting, half-standing on a stool. I was on my phone playing Opposites, beating my own score again and again because it numbed my brain.
‘Sweety was asking me why you aren’t married yet,’ Mom mumbled.
‘Coz I still have to find the right girl,’ I said. Normally I’d have cracked some joke like ‘I’m gay’ or something stupid. But that day I felt like being earnest. Mom looked at both of us.
‘He’s lying. He’s already found the right girl,’ she said, swallowing dal and rice. ‘Last one ah.’
‘How old are you, Sweety?’ I asked.
‘Twenty-one.’
‘And your parents don’t want you married?’
‘They do. But first I must go to London to do my nurses’ degree.’
‘Edwin, just go out for some time, no?’ Mom said, glancing toward the bedpan.
I stepped outside. Continued my game. Normally nurses didn’t do bedpan services. Family did it. Or you hired someone. But Sweety had become close to Mom. She stayed back after her shift most days. On her off days Mom would be moody.
Sweety, Mom had told me, had never been to a party. She lived in the nurses’ hostel next door. On off days they studied and helped maintain the hostel. That was their life. I’d thought of asking her out to a movie.
Nina walked in while I was outside. We were engaged. Hoping to marry once Mom could walk. Both of us knew that wasn’t going to happen. We communicated that without words.
‘Did the neurosurgeon come?’ Nina asked.
‘Yeah. Yesterday they had a doctors’ picnic. That’s why nobody was around.’
‘What did he say?’
‘Lumbar puncture.’
‘Painful?’
‘They’ll take cerebrospinal fluid from Mom’s spine. Send it to Goa Medical College. Check if the cancer’s spread there.’
It felt strange. We usually discuss our Mom’s fish curry. Chicken curry. Not cerebrospinal fluid.
We walked back into the ward. Mom was crying. Not loudly. Just a couple of reluctant teardrops down her cheek.
‘What happened…?’
‘Nothing yaa,’ Mom said. ‘This Sweety has never eaten KFC chicken and fries.’
‘Arrey Sweety, it’s rocking,’ I said. ‘Way better than hospital food.’
‘I’ll get it,’ Nina said.
‘Hospital won’t allow so late,’ Sweety said.
‘We’ll put it in a dabba. Say it’s home food,’ I said.
‘If you get it, I’ll feed Sweety first. Nobody else touching our share,’ Mom said.
It was 8:30. The KFC was about 20–25 minutes from Dona Paula.
‘Sweety, wait ok. I’ll go quickly and come,’ Nina said, picking up the dabba.
Mom asked Sweety to apply cold cream on her hands. So many needles had searched for veins there. Mom’s IV glucose was almost over. Last drops sliding down the tube into her.
Sweety removed her name tag. Shift over. She was officially a visitor now. We lifted Mom’s bed to a sitting position.
‘Sweety, call me for your wedding, ok,’ Mom said.
‘Aiyyo Aunty, you’re going to be my bridesmaid,’ Sweety said.
Nina came back at 9:45. Big grin. ‘Tada.’
The smell of KFC Chicken Burger and fries filled the ward. It reminded Mom of those days she took us out for nuggets and Happy Meals and coleslaw. On days she didn’t feel like cooking.
She sat up. Fed Sweety a bite. Fed Nina a fry.
And I sat back on the narrow bed and looked at the woman I love.
Clyde D'Souza is a multi-platform storyteller and the host of the Susegad Stories From Goa Podcast. Clyde would die/kill for Mankurad mangoes.
Banner image by Anderson Rian downloaded from Unsplash.com