The other nurse didn’t say anything, she just looked at me mutinously, and I recognized her instantly. She was the woman I’d seen in the Spur bathroom that day. The one with the black eye who I saw with that racist, Klein Maynard Coetzee. I looked down at her name badge.

Mimi Coetzee. His wife.

“Get out of my way,” I said. “I’ll help them.”

I tried to calm Mandla then as I held him down, gently shushing him and whispering his name over and over, telling him how much I loved him.

As I reach out now to try to move his hands away from the mask, I feel that his skin is hot to the touch. Before I have time to call out to the nurse that Mandla’s temperature has spiked again, he starts having a seizure.

“Help! Someone help!” I shout as the machines he’s hooked up to start wailing. There’s movement at the door and I spin around to appeal to whatever medical personnel has come to my aid. But the person standing there, their face pale with shock, isn’t a nurse or a doctor. It’s Vince clutching a teddy bear.

He takes one look at us and spins around, joining me in screaming for help.

•   •   •

Two more days pass and still the grim expressions on the doctors’ faces don’t ease. Mandla is in a critical condition. My fear is a feral thing and obliterates every other emotion.

Vince stays with me the whole time, alternately holding my hand and Mandla’s. He asks once if it’s okay that he came. Apparently Dee told him what had happened when he called on Boxing Day. I tell him honestly that I’ve never been as grateful to see him in my life. Dee and Riaan are there most of the time too, bringing us food even though I can’t eat a bite of it. Zodwa has tried to come see him but it’s a strict family-only policy. The hospital thinks Vince and Riaan are our husbands and Dee and I don’t correct them.

On my way back from the bathroom one day, someone blocks my path in the corridor. I step around them and am about to pass when I feel a hand on my arm. I look up, thinking it’s one of Mandla’s doctors, only to find that it’s Klein Maynard Coetzee. He’s wearing his AWB uniform again, and he’s not the only one. Looking around, I see a whole group of AWB supporters with him. It looks like they’re staging some kind of demonstration.

“We don’t want that AIDS-infested kaffir in our hospital,” Klein Maynard says.

In my exhausted state, I’m reminded of something, an echo from a conversation with Dee months ago.