Literary Indulgence

Chapter 4

As I was packing, Madeleine arrived with travel gadgets – blow-up pillows, eye masks, drink bottles, lip salves that spilled across my dining room table.

“Freebies,” she announced, “from one of my clients.”

“No problem going away?”

“James can handle the business with his eyes closed.”

Madeleine had built her landscape-design business to a level that she now employed staff.

“I’ll probably become obsolete,” she added.

“Hardly,” I said, and meant it. My sister was the creative and business genius behind Gorgeous Gardens.

“So…” She arranged the items on the table distractedly. “I didn’t ask you what you found out about Kos.”

“Not much.” I told her the little I knew.

She rifled through her handbag to produce a notebook that she waved at me.

“What’s this?” I took it from her.

“The fruits of my own research.”

I was surprised and she saw it on my face.

“Well,” she said to my crooked eyebrow, “I didn’t think you were up to it and…”

“You were.” I laughed, grateful that my sister was predictably unpredictable.

* * *

The bathroom door opened. Madeleine paused, forming a striking silhouette in the door’s frame. “Let’s get out of here,” she said, but I couldn’t see her lips moving and the statement was strangely unsettling. Obediently, I slid from the bunk and dressed.

We took our chances with the unwelcoming crew and other passengers. The engines ground down and the ferry slowed its pace. From the windows of an almost-deserted lounge on an upper deck, we could see a smattering of island lights. The voice over the loudspeaker crackled that we were arriving at Kalymnos. Peering into the dark as the ferry went astern to dock, we could see an old fort tinted by amber lights brooding above the port. Only a dozen or so people disembarked and were swallowed by the night at the end of the pier.

“Not long now,” I murmured, as much to myself as to Madeleine. She didn’t answer.

* * *

A sigh of relief had escaped me when we’d finally boarded the plane to Greece. Farewells weren’t my strong point, and I was irritated by my mother’s sudden display of affection. On the way to Singapore, Madeleine was hyped. By the time we left for Athens, she’d burnt herself out. I shared her eagerness to leave Melbourne, and in fact my life, but at the same time it felt as though I was running away. I’d always taken pride in my ability to complete whatever I began and to go an extra step.

My father, though encouraging and proud of my achievements, would, in his most diplomatic way, suggest that I take things a little easier.

“You’ve achieved so much, Dana. What more do you need to do?”

I appreciated his concern, but I didn’t feel that I could ever push myself too far. I thrived on the challenge of learning more, especially about my profession, and I thrived on success. Leaving felt like admitting defeat, and I wondered if I should have stayed to face my critics and resume my work. Somewhere along the way, though, I’d lost the inclination to do so.

On that long flight, my thoughts drifted to the day that changed my life, as they had for nearly every minute of every day for months. While Madeleine slept, I tried to steer them away, but the energy required was draining. Over and over, I had replayed the events of that day looking for something I might have missed – a sure sign of my guilt or, and I hated to admit it, someone else’s – but there was nothing I could pinpoint, and the events had become distorted with time.

Everything about that day seemed to be wrong, even ominous, though it was a feeling born in retrospect. I’d had my own consultations and a delivery; I’d assisted two others, one a difficult birth and the other a seriously premature baby. After 14 hours without a break, I was tired. Just as I was getting ready to go home, Bonnie, one of my own patients, was rushed into Emergency with a profuse haemorrhage. Even though I was well used to the sight of blood, this time it shocked me and, for weeks afterwards, it ran as a stream of plasma with dark, malevolent clots that tinted my dreams.

I remember throwing aside my bag, raging with frustration when the rubber gloves curled in my palm as I hurriedly pulled them on, and I remember Bonnie’s husband, grey with panic. Bonnie needed an emergency caesarean, but the anaesthetists were tied up with equally urgent cases. I had no choice but to administer the anaesthetic myself, but I couldn’t place the tube in her throat. Bonnie’s strangled gasps for air haunted my days afterwards.

From that point, my memory became blurred with time and shock. In the dreams that followed, I forced the tube deeper and deeper into her throat. In those dreams, Bonnie’s eyes watched mine with unnerving attention, in others they pleaded with me to save her life. By all accounts, I acted swiftly and competently – that was the verdict, based on the testaments of those who had been present – but I wasn’t convinced. Bonnie died from asphyxiation and her daughter was born soon after.

I leaned back into the seat, feeling the familiar despair rising in my chest. Deep-breathing techniques only pushed it further into my viscera. I fumbled for the bag I’d stowed beneath the seat and took out some of the material Madeleine had collected for research – two slim texts and some pages of notes she had jotted down from heavier volumes in the local library.

I opened one of the books, a treatise on a selection of the writings of Hippocrates and thumbed through its pages. The introductory section was academic and tedious, but the pages that followed were a collection of letters and speeches attributed to him.

On the left-hand-side of each double page, the text was written in Greek – Ancient Greek, I reasoned, and the English translation was written on the right. The early part, I read, was a plea from the people of Abdera to Hippocrates to heal their revered Democritus because they were afraid that he was going mad. But Hippocrates suspected that Democritus was showing the signs of attaining greater wisdom, the outward signs were being interpreted as madness. I wondered if my own outward signs over the past few months were consistent with some form of mental derangement.

I read on as Hippocrates recounted a dream: “I seemed to see Asklepios himself… snakes accompanied him. I turned and saw a large, beautiful woman with her hair braided simply… ‘I beg you excellent one, who are you and what shall we call you?’”

I was stunned. Though a particular style of language was used, the woman in Hippocrates’s dream resembled the one in my own. I reread the passage to convince myself that I was being fanciful, that I had latched on to one or two elements – the snake and the woman that could be represented in a million people’s dreams.

The more I read it, the more profoundly it affected me. From the bag, I took out the letter from Kos and laid it on the tray in front of me. I ran my finger slowly down the Greek translation of Hippocrates’ dream carefully comparing the Greek letters with those on the page of the note. In Letter 15, I identified them.

Madeleine stirred and opened her eyes, becoming alert at the sight of the letter and open book.

“Find something?”

“Mmm…” I steadied my breath. “Have a look at this.”

I told her about my dream and what I’d found in the book. She sat up, excited, but not surprised. Nothing was a coincidence to my sister.

“Which parts of the dream do the Greek letters parallel?” she said, shifting in the seat.

I read aloud the preceding translation: “And what shall I call you?”

And there were the three words of the note: “‘Truth,’ she said.”

My hand trembled and Madeleine placed hers over it as she had when the first of the hate mail had arrived before my exoneration.