THAT AFTERNOON, GOLDBLATT DID his last round with Ludo and the HO. Ludo turned up on time, which made Goldblatt think his sacking genuinely must have been an important event. To her, at least.
‘Are you really leaving?’ asked the HO as she pushed the notes trolley out of the office.
‘Yes,’ said Goldblatt.
‘You’ll have to do things you don’t understand now,’ Ludo said to her.
‘She does that anyway,’ said Goldblatt.
‘Only when I have to,’ said the HO.
‘Only when she has to,’ said Goldblatt.
They went around the patients briskly. Most of them were the usual Fuertler’s bunch. They spent some time with one of Dr Morris’s patients, a young man admitted two days previously with haemorrhagic lesions in his lungs and renal failure. They were waiting on a test result to confirm their diagnosis. The young man was scared and confused, as anyone would be. Goldblatt sat down with him and explained what the treatment would be if the result came back as they expected.
And then they were finished. The rest of the Fuertler’s patients took about two minutes each. They had seen everyone.
They went back to the office. The HO pushed the trolley into place beside one of the desks. She sat down.
‘What do I write for Sandra Hill’s death certificate?’ she asked.
‘Number one, immediate cause of death, toxic megacolon,’ said Goldblatt. ‘One A, pulmonary fibrosis. One B, Fuertler’s Syndrome.’
The HO wrote it down on a piece of paper.
‘Happy with that?’ asked Goldblatt.
‘Yes,’ said the HO.
‘Understand?’
‘Yes,’ said the HO.
‘All right,’ said Goldblatt. ‘Have you got much else to do?’
The HO took one of her innumerable pieces of paper out of her pocket. ‘A few things.’
‘There’s no one booked to come in.’
‘What about Sandra Hill’s bed?’
‘We’d borrowed that ourselves. Go home after you’ve finished what you have to do. Ludo will cover you, won’t you Ludo?’
‘I was hoping to get away early,’ said Ludo.
‘Ludo will cover you,’ said Goldblatt. ‘Won’t you, Ludo?’
‘All right,’ said Ludo grudgingly.
The HO stood up. ‘Well. Thanks, Malcolm.’
‘For?’
‘I don’t know. Everything.’
‘Did I ever tell you nothing gets in the way of lunch except a cardiac arrest?’
‘Yes,’ said the HO.
‘Remember that. It’ll be a lot more useful to you than anything else I ever said.’
The HO shrugged.
‘And don’t do Accident and Emergency. I forbid it.’
‘All right,’ said the HO.
‘Really?’ said Goldblatt.
‘Maybe,’ said the HO. She pushed her glasses back up her nose.
Goldblatt watched her. The HO would be all right, he thought. As all right as anyone ever was. He smiled. Good luck, HO. Do what you have to do to survive. But don’t change too much. Don’t lose the anger. Not all of it. May the smoke still come out of your nostrils once in a while.
‘Anyway...’ said the HO.
‘You’ve got stuff to do. Go on. Go.’
The HO nodded. She glanced at Ludo for a moment. Then she looked back at him. ‘See you around, Malcolm.’
‘See you around,’ said Goldblatt.
The HO left, closing the door behind her.
Ludo was still there.
‘Don’t you have a Dermatology clinic on Thursday afternoons?’ he asked.
‘Sometimes,’ said Ludo.
Goldblatt leaned back in his chair. Ludo. In a purple woollen skirt and white coat, sitting in the doctors’ office, just as he had found her on that first morning so many weeks ago.
‘So how was the concert last night?’ he asked.
‘Malcolm, don’t,’ whined Ludo. ‘She asked me. What was I supposed to say?’
Goldblatt didn’t know. Suddenly he didn’t care. He felt light. It was over. He just wanted to get out now. He just wanted to leave and go and find Lesley and throw her into bed. Laugh with her. Be with her. Recover the things in himself that had made her want to be with him all those years ago. Recover them for his own sake, as well. Tell her he loved her. Tell her that if he had to find the most difficult way, at least he had done it. He had found it, and there was no going back.
And tomorrow? What of the agony to come? He knew it must. What of the sense of loss? How long would it take to be dulled?
Who cared? Today there was no tomorrow.
He grabbed a results sheet, scrunched, swivelled, and threw. In!
‘So the drink’s off, I suppose?’ asked Ludo, shaking out her long hair as if she didn’t really care. She had been waiting all day, hoping that Goldblatt would ask the question for her. Now, at the last minute, she was forcing herself to be bold.
‘I guess so.’
‘Was there ever going to be another one?’ asked Ludo quietly.
‘I don’t know.’
Ludo nodded, as if she knew what that really meant. But she was wrong. He had told her the truth. He didn’t know. He really didn’t. She didn’t know how close he had come.
‘Look, Ludo, all I would have done is...’
‘What?’
Fucked you, he thought. And then got away from you as quickly as I could. And then come back for more.
Maybe she wouldn’t have said no to that. Maybe that was all she’d ever had.
But that’s what this world was. Or it was for him. Pleasure and pain, mostly self-inflicted. Passion and remorse. An endless cycle, one feeding on the other. Addictive. Destructive. He had to get out of it. If he didn’t get out of it now, he never would.
He scrunched another results form and threw. The ball hit the rim of the rubbish bin and bounced out. Ludo picked it up ungraciously and tossed it back to him. He aimed and threw. In!
He wondered how much Ludo was in love with him. He hoped it wasn’t much. Everything about her was so sad and slow. She didn’t need something else dragging her down.
‘Come on,’ he said cheerfully, largely to stop himself heading down into the sink of all hopelessness where Ludo spent so much of her time. ‘You’ll be all right, Ludo.’
‘I’ll never pass the second part, Malcolm.’
Goldblatt laughed. She was probably right. ‘Why do you want to?’
‘It’s easy for you to say! What else am I going to do?’
‘I don’t know.’ His elation had returned. He was in danger of uttering platitudes. Trouble was, they seemed to be true. ‘It’s a big world, Ludo. That’s all I know. It’s a fucking big world! Go and explore it.’
Ludo grimaced. ‘What about a coffee?’
Goldblatt shook his head.
‘Come on, Malcolm,’ she whined. ‘Just one more. For old times’ sake.’
‘No, Ludo.’
Ludo lapsed into silence. ‘Remember you asked me that question that time?’ she said eventually.
‘Which question?’ There had been so many. ‘The causes of polycystic kidneys?’
‘No.’
‘The causes of pneumothorax? The causes of hepatosplenomegaly? The causes of—’
‘Malcolm! The one about the bat’s CT scan.’
Goldblatt laughed. That question? Of all the ones for her to remember! ‘Don’t worry about it, Ludo. It’s not worth it. It’s a trick question.’
‘What’s the answer?’
‘Do you want to know?’
Ludo nodded.
‘If we were bats, what would our CT scans look like? Is that the one you mean?’
Ludo nodded.
Goldblatt shrugged. ‘They wouldn’t look like anything. They’d be noise, Ludo. Sounds. We wouldn’t see the world. We’d hear it.’
‘That’s it? That’s the answer?’
Goldblatt nodded. ‘That’s it.’
Ludo looked unimpressed.
Goldblatt stood up, unclipped his bleeper from his pocket, and laid it on the desk beside the phone. He took his jacket down from the hook where he had hung it at five o’clock that morning on the way in to see Sandra Hill.
‘Good luck, Ludo,’ he said, and opened the door.