Eshkol Nevo - World Cup Wishes

We had a rough night, he told me. I think they’re only just starting to comprehend it now. Noam called out to her in his sleep. And Nimrod got up this morning and said he wasn’t going to school till Mummy came back.

What did you tell him?

That it was OK not to go to school today. And then Noam decided that he didn’t want to go either.

Of course.

To cut a long story short, I promised them both I’d take them to the amusement park. And I don’t know when we’ll get home. And in what … condition. So I think we’ll postpone the meeting for a week. Will you let everyone know?

*

Maybe it’s better this way, Ofir said when I told him. So he doesn’t waste his … chi.

You see, I told you nothing ever comes of Amichai’s ideas, Churchill asserted, and didn’t show up at the first, historical meeting of the NPO, which took place — despite all our scepticism — a week later.

*

Where’s Churchill? Amichai asked when Ofir and I sat down. Maria and her daughter went to the twins’ room and Ofir watched them worriedly. Her big smile had shrunk during that time. She stopped hugging us. And she almost completely stopped working in the clinic. One night, Ofir got up to go to the toilet and saw her sitting and crying in the living room, so he sat down next to her and captured her tears with his tongue as they ran down her cheeks, and when she calmed down a bit, he suggested that they go to Denmark, maybe that would make her feel better, but that only made her angry and she started crying again and said that he doesn’t understand, he doesn’t understand anything, there are only seven hours of light in Denmark now, and darkness is dangerous for her, she’s afraid that the darkness will creep inside her and fill her from within, and besides, there are the twins, she can’t just get up and leave them.

She went to Amichai’s three times a week to be with them, and they were very happy to see her. Perhaps because they felt, with the sensitivity of children who’d just lost their mother, that while all the other grown-ups only pitied them, she also needed them. Or perhaps because her daughter, the object of their great love, came with her, and now that they were motherless, their love for her had become desperate.

*

Where’s Churchill? Amichai asked again.

He … he wanted to come, I said evasively. But he’s busy with that case of his, you know.

A look of bitter hurt flared in Amichai’s eyes. Too bad, he said, I especially wanted to hear what he had to say.

We were silent. We let his disappointment fade. Across from us, on the living room wall, hung a picture of Ilana. The serious expression. The pale freckles. The decisive nose. The vague sense of disappointment (with life? with herself?) around the lips. Of all the pictures of her, this was the one Amichai had chosen to enlarge — a picture that didn’t flatter her at all, but captured her as she truly was. I suddenly missed her, missed the good, simple, close conversations we could have had and never would. I missed her home-baked burekas . Her astute, psychological analyses. Her quiet, inexplicable liking for me.

It’s like this, Amichai said, bending towards us. It turns out that the compensation money from the insurance company isn’t as much as I thought. The clinic admits that they hid from her the fact that the operation could have complications, but they found some clause in the agreement form she signed that protects it. To cut a long story short, in the end, together with the insurance, we’re talking about a few hundred thousand shekels. But that has no bearing on our plan. I want to establish an NPO in Ilana’s name that will represent the patient’s side.

The patient? we asked. What do you mean?

You know, he said, looking at us both. When you go to the hospital … when the ambulance … with Ilana inside … reached the hospital … the paramedics ran into A & E with the trolley … and I ran in after them … I ran as fast as I could … but the guard stopped me. He wanted identification. I yelled that my wife was there, inside. So he said, ‘Please don’t shout, sir’, and checked me slowly … on purpose … that’s why I got inside about a minute after them. And no one could tell me where Ilana was. The nurses sent me to admissions. At admissions, they sent me back to the nurses. No one knew where she was. Finally, some patient who was sitting in the corridor — a patient, get it? — said that maybe they didn’t have time to admit her and I should check intensive care. I ran to intensive care and it turned out that she really was there. I asked to go inside … to see her … they said I couldn’t. I wasn’t allowed. I asked … so what am I supposed to do now? They told me to sit on the bench and wait for them to come to me. So I sat and waited for hours. I don’t know if it was hours, but it felt like hours. Let’s say that I sat there like a dog for at least an hour and no one came to talk to me. Then all of a sudden, some doctor yelled from inside, ‘Where’s Tanuri? Is Ta-nuri here?’ and the way he said my name … I can’t explain it … as if he thought it was funny … that already gave me a bad feeling about him … then he came over to me, and without introducing himself, he started asking me about Ilana … what illnesses she’d had … allergies to drugs … hereditary diseases … I answered him, and all the time, I was waiting for him to tell me what was happening … and he didn’t … so I finally asked him … what’s happening with her? And he didn’t answer … he didn’t give me an evasive answer, you understand … or a partial answer … it’s like … like I’m not there … and he turns around to go … so I saw red and I grabbed his shirt from behind and said, I want you to answer me, doctor, and he shoved my hand away … hard, you know … and said, don’t you raise your hand to me, Mr Tanuri … and I said … I didn’t raise my hand to you … I just asked … and he interrupted me and said it wasn’t his fault that we went to a private clinic instead of doing the cosmetic surgery in the hospital … was it?! That really made me mad … I didn’t understand what he was getting at … so I asked him straight out what his credentials were and if he was even qualified to treat cases like this … and again he didn’t answer me … so I said that I demanded a second opinion … and he shut up for a minute, then gave me a kind of crooked, disgusting smile and said, you want a second opinion? So take your wife and go to another hospital.

That’s what he said to you?! Ofir and I said.

Yes.

Unbelievable.

After he went, a nurse came over to me and said that Dr Gabrinsky is an excellent doctor. Don’t worry, you’re in good hands, she told me. And that … that just pissed me off even more, because the last thing I felt was that I was in good hands. So I sat in the corridor and thought I was going mad … that I was dying. There was no one to talk to. No one came over to me. Till morning. And all the time there was this strong smell of drugs and cottage cheese. Once every few minutes, there’d be a wave of the drug smell. And then a wave of the cottage cheese smell. I haven’t been able to eat cottage cheese since. I just hear the words cottage cheese and I remember that corridor. I sat there like some kind of homeless guy, like a soldier they forgot to relieve from guard duty, and at five in the morning, a different doctor, not Gabrinsky, came over to me. And from his face, I already knew it was over …

Amichai was choked up. The picture he was seeing in his mind must have been painfully sharp.

We poured him a glass of water. But he didn’t touch it.

He coughed and went on, the second doctor was actually OK. But that Gabrinsky. Where had he disappeared to at five in the morning? He didn’t have the guts to come and talk to me even … no … the fact that he didn’t even bother to come out to me … that’s what …