17

Where Are Our Dead?

We really tried but we couldn’t bring him back. By the time I got there he didn’t even have a pulse. He was a dark, fat man with a thick mustache. An intercity truck driver. They brought him in from one of the thermal baths that are so popular in Basmahane. When an attendant saw water running out from under the door he broke it down and went inside to find the man slumped over the basin. Clearly the man had had a heart attack.

I was in my second or third year in medical school. Those were my first days working ER till morning. I was fascinated by everything. It seemed every patient who came through those doors gave me the story for a film. After they finished filing the report on the deceased, they called for the nurse. She would take the body down to the morgue. I lingered at one end of the stretcher. The fact is I wanted to see the morgue. In a deserted hospital in the middle of the night we moved along the dim corridors. With a spine-tingling squeak of the cargo elevator, we arrived at the morgue. But there was just one problem. All the drawers were full. Grumbling under her breath, the nurse was opening and closing different drawers as she looked for an empty spot. She stopped and thought, then flipped through a registry book on an old wooden table for a while. She went over to a drawer, pulled it out and took out the body of a baby no bigger than her hand. She scanned the cooler for a moment. Then pulling out another drawer, she placed the baby beside the body of a woman.

Together we placed the body of the truck driver into the empty drawer. A strange grin stretched across my face, showing a mixture of fear and astonishment. I’m not exactly sure how I was looking at the man but the nurse felt the need to explain:

“She counts as a mother and so we’ve just put him in his mother’s arms!”

“But will they bury them together?”

“Don’t worry about that,” she said as she moved to the door:

“No one else can take your spot in the ground. Everyone gets his own grave.”

*

I am listening to the head nurse planted in the corridor. She is voicing her complaints about patients and the personnel working shifts.

“These attendants don’t understand a word I say. The night supervisor caught them sleeping again. And the nurses on duty have been taking away packets after packets of ER cotton.” She stood there waiting for me to ask her why. I was silent for too long and she went on as if overly ashamed:

“Forgive me, hocam, I mean I truly am ashamed to have to say this but, I mean, this is simply unacceptable … I told them not to tell the doctor, that he would be very angry about this. You don’t know what I am taking about, right? Unfortunately that’s the way it is. No matter how careful we are, sir, it just keeps happening. The new health official in ER spotted the activity and told me. I mean the young man’s face was crimson. I mean it’s shocking. At first I simply couldn’t believe it. Then I checked and found out that it was true. It turns out they are using the ER cotton as sanitary pads … For the love of God, how could they do such a thing? ER cotton! Such gall. Well of course I took the necessary steps. I asked them to defend their actions …”