Medusa Frequency

18 Louisa, not Luise

Watchful in her space of light the night sister sits at the edge of the dark ward. At three o’clock in the morning the moments patter like rain on the roof of night; the silence is a road to anywhere.

At the far end of the ward someone cries out, ‘Luise!’ There is a rush of nurses, a trundling of apparatus; the fluorescent lights flicker on; the curtains around the bed are drawn; the curtains are opened, a man is wheeled away.

The name he cried out must have been Louisa, not Luise. Yes, it must have been Louisa. The bed remains empty, the man hasn’t come back. What did he look like? I hadn’t noticed the occupant of that bed earlier, he must have been in the day room or asleep or hidden behind a newspaper.

He never did come back. Later they cleared away his things, stripped the bed, and put on fresh sheets and pillowcases. I asked the night sister whether he’d had a snake-and-dagger tattoo and the name Louisa on his left arm.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Did you know him?’

‘We chatted sometimes but I never knew his name. Who was he?’

‘Gombert Yawncher.’

‘Do you know what he did for a living?’

‘He was an actor but I don’t think he’d been in work for quite a long time. He told me he used to do the voice for the old Pluto Drain Magic ads on TV, the cartoon ones where Pluto hurled himself down the drain like Superman.’

I remembered those ads, they were done before the account came to Slithe & Tovey. Back then their slogan was ‘PLUTO GETS THE DIRT UNDER THE DIRT’.

‘His heart gave out, didn’t it?’ I said.

‘Yes, it was a coronary thrombosis. He said to me this morning, “It’ll be tonight,” and I said, “What’ll be tonight?” and he just looked at me and said, “I can’t remember my lines any more.’”

‘It could happen to anybody,’ I said.

I went to the day room and stood there in the dark at the sliding glass door that opened on to the balcony. From where I was on the fourth floor I could see, beyond the roofs and dormers of the old part of the hospital, the upper parts of houses on the far side of the Fulham Road. The road itself was not to be seen.

Looking towards the unseen road in that three o’clock in the morning of the November night I imagined Orpheus running, running, saying to the night, ‘I have no name but the one you give me, no face but the one you see.’ Orpheus as athlete, his limbs and motion graceful in the darkness; Orpheus seen from a distance on the dim Fulham Road under cold November lamps, on the dim Thracian road wending into darkness, the dim white of the road that runs behind the eyes to otherwhere. Orpheus running, running night into day, day into the long road, night into the long world’s music. I’d never thought of his body before, only the head.