John Simpson - Change of Course

What more could I tell her with confidence? What was she thinking? What would she want to know? I was certain she would want to revisit her father’s death – I knew I had not satisfied her on that. I decided to let my eyelids sag and feigned a yawn, hoping she would take the hint.

She leaned forward and tapped my arm to be sure I was not asleep. ‘Who actually pronounced my father dead?’ She stared at me as though she expected to see an imprint of her father’s body on my retinae.

I felt the colour rise in my cheeks. ‘The doctor,’ I said.

‘Did he do it there and then or …?’

‘She,’ I said. ‘The doctor was a woman. Yes, she did it there. She arrived a few minutes after I did, and the others of course.’

‘And she signed off what was written on that death certificate? “… injuries received in a road traffic accident”?’

‘I doubt it. The documentation in Angola would have been in Portuguese. She, Maria, was Portuguese and she knew the circumstances at least as well as the rest of us did. No, I don’t think she had anything to do with that.’

‘Was she a competent doctor?’

‘Very. She did a good stitching job on me once.’ I rubbed my left eyebrow at the memory. ‘And I know for certain that she saved the lives of Armando’s wife and child.’

‘Armando? The Angolan foreman?’

‘Yes. His wife had problems with the birth of their baby boy. They would both have died without Maria. She had to perform an emergency caesarean in the surgery room at her house. She was as good as they come; your father thought so too. He was dead when she arrived. There was nothing she could do. They were friends; she would have saved him if she could.’

‘Did anyone else check him before she arrived?’

I shrugged. ‘What do you take us for?’

‘I guess that did sound a bit off,’ she smiled apologetically. ‘I guess we’re both tired. It’s all been a bit weird, sort of surreal for me; bringing a father I never knew to life. And to death, I suppose.’

We agreed to leave it at that and arranged for her to come round again the following evening.

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