Fragile Monsters by Catherine Menon (100 books to read in a lifetime txt) 📕

straightens her legs and drapes her sari back over her swollen knees. They carry her past the cleaners: men in sarongs picking at a shared bowl of rice with their knees up like flamingos. To them, Ammuma’s only another patient, one more in an infinite series. They watch her go past, indifferently, detached as mathematicians.

‘Wait here, please.’

Haziq pushes the stretcher through the double doors. He turns to me and points at a row of metal chairs. Ammuma looks so small, flat on her back under these harsh lights. She turns her head away from me to stare out into the night. She can’t be doing with this fuss, that head-turn says. With Dr Rao and his impolite stethoscope, with nurses and their questions. Does it hurt when I press here? How about here? When did you last –? What first happened when –? ‘Questions again,’ she’d say. As though the answers ever did anyone any good.

I watch her wheeled away through heavy swing doors and slump into a chair. My eyes feel scrubbed with exhaustion. The chair digs into my hips, where my skirt pulls tight and lumped from everything stuffed in the pockets. Car keys, a few coins I snatched up from the hall table. The autograph book on one side. The photograph of Francesca on the other.

I pat the pockets again, then plunge my fingers deeper. The metal arm of the chair jabs against my elbow, but I barely notice it. I can’t find my mother’s plait of hair. It must have fallen out somewhere: in Mother Agnes’s house, in the jungle, even out in the car park. I stand up, digging my hands into both pockets and shaking out my skirt. Brushing myself down, checking pockets and waistbands and everywhere it couldn’t possibly be. I turn round and peer under the metal seats, but the plait isn’t there.

The nurse looks over at me and dabs at her acne again. Don’t touch it, I want to tell her. Don’t pick at it; you’ll only make it worse. She looks like the sort of woman to appreciate a metaphor.

The rest of the night passes slowly. I doze in the chair, waking to the flail and scurry of tiny emergencies. A child with measles, a man with stomach pains. People collect on the chairs, becalmed and waiting, and then disperse in flurries of alarm or relief. At one point I wake to hear the noise of metal shutters, and see the hospital café opening. A Sikh man lays out bowls of rice and pieces of wrinkled fruit, but nobody moves. An hour later I open my eyes again, and this time there’s a queue of men in vests and sarongs. Their toenails are sharp against their bare feet and they stink of cleaning fluids.

‘Durga?’

And then I’m awake. Properly this time, cold-water awake. Tom’s crouching in front of me. A stethoscope swings from his neck and he wears an unbuttoned white coat with green scrubs beneath.

‘Durga, wake up. I’ve just been in with Mary-Auntie.’

‘But …’ I’d been expecting Dr Rao, with his heron-limbs and apologetic face. I rub at my eyes, drag my hands over my cheeks.

‘Is she all right?’

He nods, then looks away. He’s uneasy, shifting his weight between his thighs. Europeans can’t squat – they hover, all stretched tendons and creaking muscles – and Tom looks uncomfortable in his too-tight scrubs.

‘I’ll take you in to see her, but … look, we should talk first. We’ll have a coffee.’

He tucks his hands behind his back as we walk to the café. His shoulders are set tight, chilled with disapproval and dignity. He doesn’t ask me how I take my coffee, just orders for us both – yes, sir; nice to see you again, sir – and picks up the cups without a smile. The Sikh café owner shrugs, watching as we scrape into aluminium chairs.

‘How did it happen, Durga?’ Tom asks, when we’re sitting down. ‘The equipment shouldn’t have broken like that.’

‘She bit it,’ I say. ‘It was … no, actually, it wasn’t. It wasn’t an accident. She did it on purpose.’

‘She bit it? What do you mean she bit it? How long ago?’

‘Oh … I – I don’t know. It’s been – I mean, I had to go out this evening.’

He nods. ‘So she did it while you were out?’

I look down at my hands. ‘No,’ I say quietly. ‘I went out afterwards. I thought she was OK.’

‘You did what?’ He looks disbelieving. ‘When she’d already started having breathing difficulties? You should never leave somebody in that condition, Durga. Never. Surely Rao told you that?’

I don’t say anything. Tom pushes a hand over his forehead. He’s tired, spots are breaking out under his jawline and he looks pasty and exhausted.

‘What are you still doing here anyway?’ he asks, sounding distracted. ‘I thought you were going back to KL yesterday.’

‘I was, but the road was blocked.’ That flooded road seems a year ago by now. Sitting in the car, turning to go to Tom’s house, and everything since is disintegration.

His reflection in the polished chrome table top looks smug and self-satisfied, his mouth still square from telling me how I should have managed better with Ammuma. I stare back at him. It’s been the longest night I can ever remember. And now Tom’s sitting there with the calm and cow-like expression of someone who’d never be careless. Who’d never leave anyone to run out of oxygen, Peony adds with a shrug of her thin shoulders. He’s a mirror image, flipped Tom; the opposite of anything real, and I want him to take his fair share of blame.

I met Alice, I could tell him. I met your wife. With her lacy English name I’ve never heard you say once. Not even by accident; not even how you say Peony’s.

And he’d try to explain – no, even worse, he’d bluster and bluff – and I’d be sarcastic, and then he’d say it didn’t matter anyway. And I’d ask what the