The Greenhouse

Nine

When I wake up I don’t immediately remember where I am. For a moment I feel I catch a whiff of wet soil and vegetation, like waking up in a tent in the rain, and yet everything is white. I’m all alone in the room, which my eyes scan before settling on the bedside table beside me. Three green stalks have been placed in as many plastic glasses; I recognize them, they’re my rose cuttings. A handwritten note has been squeezed between them. I reach under the covers to grope the body that has been cut open and patched up to make sure it’s real, that I’m still alive. I check my pulse and then feel a heartbeat. I move farther down and gently stroke my stomach muscles, once clockwise, and also take the time to investigate other parts of the body. Finally I reach the bandaged spot where I was operated on and gently press the wound. Then I hoist myself up on my elbows and, despite my light-headedness and the stretch on my stitches, manage to fish out my dictionary from the top pocket of the backpack. It takes a while to decipher the whole message, word by word: I took care of your rose cuttings and passed the word on to my colleague in the next shift. Am taking time off to visit my parents in the country. Speedy recovery, red-haired boy. P.S. Found Christmas package in the backpack when I was checking the plants.

She’s left the package from Dad on top of the quilt. It’s wrapped in Christmas gift paper with reindeer and bell patterns and a curled blue ribbon.

I open the package. It’s a pair of pajamas, thick flannel pajamas with long, light blue stripes. They look like Dad’s stripy pajamas and those he bought for my brother Jósef. I take them out of the plastic and remove the cardboard. Dad has removed the price tag. As I lift the pajama top up, a handwritten card falls out of one of the sleeves:

Lobbi lad. There is much to be remembered and to be thankful for over the past year. Jósef and myself send you our warmest regards and hope that these unpretentious pajamas will come in useful in those “perilous storms” (his quotation marks on the card) they have overseas.

Yours, Dad and Jósef.

He has even got Jósef to scrawl his initials underneath. What did he mean by “unpretentious”? He knows I normally sleep in my underpants; is it pretentious to sleep without pajamas the way I do?

I’m going to get out of bed in my bare feet, but the stitches hurt and I feel dizzy. I feel how heavy I am, as if I were up to my knees against a strong current, so I lie down again and doze off.

When I wake up again there’s a woman in a white coat standing by my bed, with long brown hair tied in a ponytail, but she’s not the same one as the last time. I get some sweetened teabag tea to drink and a slice of toast with cheese. She talks to me, as I drink the tea, and shows some interest in the plants.

— What species is this? she asks.

I choose words that are befitting to this new lease on life.

— Eight-petaled roses, I say, in an unrecognizable, husky voice.

— Are they all the same species?

— Yes, two of them are extra cuttings, in case one dies, to produce some offspring, I say with a thick tongue and in this stranger’s voice; my body and voice don’t seem to match anymore.

— Your voice will soon come back to you, she says, that’s the anesthetic.

I’m incredibly sleepy and feel I’m dropping off again, as if I can neither shake off my dreams nor stay awake.

The next time I wake up there are two people in white coats standing on either side of my bed talking to each other. One of them lifts up the duvet on my bandaged side, and although I manage to grasp a few words here and there, they’re talking fast and I can’t place the sentences in any context. I’m still finding it difficult to stay awake. They’re talking about me, asking me about something, and as I try to formulate an answer I start to fade again, dozing off mid-conversation.

— He’s out of it, let’s just let him sleep, is the last thing I hear.

Because I regularly fall asleep when people try to talk to me, I get to stay two days longer in the hospital. No one makes any remarks about the rose cuttings; each new shift seems to be filled in and I’m allowed to keep them in peace.

Every time I doze off I have the same dream. I dream I’m in new and pretty good blue Wellingtons and that I’m working in a famous and remote rose garden. I have a clear picture of the boots as I awaken; they’re probably one size too big. Nothing else is in color in the dream, not even the roses, just the blue boots. Then the dream takes a sudden twist, which I’m forced to follow. Looking down a narrow alley, I see Mom standing at the end of it, silhouetted against the light. I follow her in the blue boots up a long staircase and to a door she disappears behind. I knock on the door and she comes to it. She offers me teabag tea with sugar.

When I finally wake up properly, I’ve missed three days on the calendar. Now that I’m alive again there are countless options open to me. Because I wake up in a sweat after the dream, the nurse who is on duty on my last morning at the hospital wants me to have a shower before I check out. I follow her to the bathroom, taking one short step at a time because the stitches hurt. This one has brown eyes, too, but short brown hair. I would have preferred to be left alone, but she stands there watching me, in case something happens to me, I suppose; there’s no denying that the women who have been looking after me have shown great care. I shed my hospital clothes and place them on a chair in front of the bathroom mirror. When I step out of the shower she has already wiped the steam off the mirror. I contemplate my mortal flesh as she changes the bandage on the right-hand side of my stomach. Black bristles protrude from the skin. Right now, the moment after I’ve stepped out of the shower with the nurse on my left-hand side, I feel like I’m nothing more than this new body with a scar. Feelings, memories, and dreams no longer make me what I am, but I’m first and foremost a male body made of flesh and blood. Having experienced death and resurrection and communicated with three brown-eyed nurses in as many days, I graduate from the hospital and am given a box with four pink painkillers to take home with me.

I get dressed and pack the rose cuttings back into my backpack along with the plant collection and pajamas. When I dig into the backpack in search of a clean T-shirt to put on, I find Mom’s last jar of rhubarb jam, which Dad stuck in there. The nurse hands me a few sheets of newspaper to wrap around the plants, and I immediately notice they’re theater reviews.

— Do you have anyone to go to? the doctor who checks me out asks.

I tell him I’ll be in good hands.

The only challenge I face in this life right now is zipping up the fly on my jeans. I do my best to fend for myself and manage to slip into my pants unassisted, but I’m sore around the wound, and in the end the brown-eyed woman comes to my rescue.