‘See this swelling here, the left half of the globe is being pushed up against that side of the skull by the bleeding.’ The surgeon was twirling his pencil around a sketch of Dom’s brain. Dominic was an uncle. ‘We would go in here, and put in a drain to get the blood out. This is pretty standard, it’s what we normally do.’
Behind us, in casualty, parked in a station surrounded by machines, Dom was writhing, twitching, unconscious. He had always been so welcoming and amiable. It was a wrenching sight. He had fallen in his bathroom that morning and deteriorated during the day.
‘Sure,’ said the brother who had come on behalf of Dom’s Order. I was not so sure, but rationalised: ‘The brother probably had the legal right to decide. Dom probably wouldn’t survive the surgery, so what had we to lose? He would go that night, with it or without it.’
Playing for time to think, I asked, ‘Can you decide by yourself, or do you need to check with someone?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I can sign.’
Casualty was worse than usual: they were renovating, it was half its normal size, noisy and messy. The people, though, were poor, ugly and squabbling—that was usual.
They got ready to wheel him to the theatre. It was time to go. The brother stood a foot from the bed and did not touch him. He peered at him. There was no evident emotion. Dom had been in this all-male religious Order for 60 years, as if in a family, and still the bonds had not softened into touch.
Angry—about a lot of things—I made sure I kissed Dom on his prickly sweaty forehead in front of the brother.
I was rung the next morning. Dom had made it to intensive care. He had a dedicated nurse, the cheerful Delia, who managed all his machines. She was trying to get pregnant. In her loud, nasally Australian voice she negotiated over the phone with her husband and doctor about whether this was a good day or not to make love.
Despite her fly-swatting voice, Dom writhed, unconscious for 36 hours. The longer he was unconscious, the more I regretted the decision to do the operation. The chance was that if he did regain consciousness he would have brain damage from all the internal bleeding his fall had caused.
The surgery had left him with a giant question mark traced out in