Tuesday 15 January 2008

....and more John John

This day John John buys only a Guardian, avoids the grey scrambled eggs, has cereal, tea and toast for breakfast. The day shift greet him by his new name. He smiles; and again he has his temperature, pulse and blood pressure taken. Osman Rustar returns from the bathroom and grumbles to him, in Urdu, asking how can they expect him to get better when they wake him at such an early hour and then feed him such insubstantial victuals.
John John reads the paper. The news is much as yesterday's. All that he reads in full are two articles; one a woman’s opinion on how to treat male child molesters, the other a technical analysis of suspected nuclear weapon proliferation and current capability. He spends mere time comparing the solution to yesterday's two crosswords with yesterday's clues. He cannot understand the exact process whereby some of the solutions were derived from their clues, although those solutions were the same that he arrived at, if for no other reason than they could have been the only answers. Even so, though pleased that his answers were right, he would have liked to have known exactly how he did it. Sighing over his incomprehension, he deems the fault his own, and he lends his attention to today's crossword.
So the day passes, subject to the hospital routine and the procedures that Mr Assan and the detective have set in train. At ten thirty a porter comes to take him to Neurology. In the corridors the wheelchair overtakes women patients in dressing gowns carrying handbags. In Neurology he is laid on a raised bed and has pads stuck to his temples and a wired rubber hat fitted to his skull. He is told to relax. Fat chance. The white-coated operator, apart from gruffly informing John John that there are ten billion nerve cells in the human brain and so they have at best a billion to one chance of discovering why he has amnesia, is apparently preoccupied with weightier matters and is uncommunicative. The porter equally so. John John is returned to the ward little the wiser.
Osman Rustar has been taken somewhere for tests. John John concentrates on the crossword, has his blood pressure, pulse and temperature taken. He notices that, to distract from their ministrations, the nurses chat to the other patients about their families, their jobs, where they live. With him the nurses tell him of their own families, of where in town they live, of where their husbands, brothers, sisters and boyfriends work, asking him always, he thinks without ulterior motives, it he knows of the place.
A small Pakistani nurse from another ward, as slight and as slim as Osman Rustar is heavy and fat, stops by to test his Urdu. Her accent is different to Osman Rustar's. She says that her family comes from the Chagai mountains. John John doesn’t knew of the Chagai mountains; although he does, she tells him, speak better Urdu than many of the Pakistanis she knows here.
Osman Rustar is returned burping just before lunch. Osman Rustar complains about his lunch. Osman Rustar looks a profoundly tired man, a man weary of living, a man unable even to pretend to the tiniest appetite for life.
After lunch a young man in jeans comes to John John. He introduces himself as an odontologist, apologises for any deficiency in his bedside manner, says that he is more used to working with cadavers. Or bits of their jaws. Asking John John to open his mouth he picks pieces of John John's lunch out of his teeth, makes notes on a pad.
"Three fillings, one front upper crown," he tells John John, "Shouldn't be too difficult to trace."
During the afternoon lull in hospital activity other patients come up to John John with a smile, intrigued by his mystery, discuss him with Osman Rustar. Both John John’s English and his Urdu are pronounced impeccable. Many conclusions are reached concerning his possible identity, none verifiable. John John smiles, but greets each of these amateur sleuths with nervous unease, lest they trip him and he fall pell mell into his past. Yet the certain knowledge of a past would save him from being this object of such easy familiarity, such public curiosity.
He is saved from their speculations by being taken for a brain scan. Glad of the rest he lies passively on the metal bed, lets the metal tunnel move over him. By the time he is returned to the ward the other patients are quiet in their beds.
The library trolley appears during afternoon visiting. A passing nurse informs the bangled woman is charge of the trolley that John John is an amnesiac. Rising to the challenge, guided by his reading of The Guardian, the women selects three books for him — a biography, one detective mystery and science fiction. He is flipping through the books when the social worker arrives.
She laughs her squeaky laugh to see ‘John John' written on the bedhead; and setting her bulging case on the bed she tells him of the difficulties she has had in defining him for the DSS. No category exists for his precise circumstances. However they did agree to grant him a daily allowance, five days of which she has been given, but which are reclaimable on the return of his memory. She hands him the money in a small plastic bag,
"If you'll sign this receipt."
Again he holds the pen sketchily over a dotted line, then — with a beam of inspiration — he carefully writes 'John John'. The social worker studies the signature: the laboured handwriting is at odds with the reading matter on the bedside locker. But a signature is all that is required; and with a promise to bring his money again next week, telling him to contact her if his memory returns, in a rush she is gone.
He starts reading the biography of the opera singer, darling, understanding little of it, darling. When next his temperature and blood pressure are taken he asks the dark-haired nurse where he can buy some shaving soap and toothpaste. The nurse doubts that he will be allowed to go to the hospital shop on his own, tells him to make a list and she will go for him. Borrowing a sheet of paper from Osman Rustar he laboriously writes his list; shampoo, toothpaste, razors, shaving soap, deodorant and comb. Osman Rustar earnestly tries to dissuade him from buying anything in the hospital shop, says that if John John gives the list to his wife that evening she will buy them cheaper outside. John John thanks him, but says that he will need the things tomorrow morning.
The dark-haired nurse returns during afternoon visiting. John John gives her the plastic bag of money, tells her to take the pound, that Mr MacMaster gave him, for the nurses' fund. She is gone ten minutes, comes back with a white carrier bag and the price of each item written beside it on the list. As soon as she leaves Osman Rustar takes the list and shakes his head over the prices.
John John studies one by one his purchases, reading all of the print on all of the packages, before arranging them in his bedside locker. With each new possession he feels himself becoming more substantial, more here.
For the rest of the day he perseveres with the biography, darling.

Voice Off. Most human beings spend the greater part of their lives in a semiconscious state, being forced to evaluate their circumstances only in moments of crisis, of drastic change. These semiconscious lives are based on the fiction of non-change; thus change must always unsettle them, force them to address the frightening realities of their lives that, in their semiconscious state, they are avoiding.