MEIN GOTT, WALTER!

• By ebotpandayan
• Posted in Uncategorized
• On April 7, 2024
• 6 Comments.

Walter told me his thighs, legs, and feet were swollen. He showed me his legs, which looked like sausages with tightly wrapped skin filaments, extraordinary and massive, and that they could burst anytime. Walter has diabetes, and this could have been a factor. He experienced the same a couple of days before our flight to Vienna. Still, Walter didn’t bother to see a doctor, hoping the swelling would subside with the help of some diuretic medication. He may also have developed vein thrombosis during our long flight back to Vienna, being immobile for long periods, with little leg room sitting in a cramped space.

“Go see your doctor this time, and do not give me any alibi as to why you cannot go,” I said. On Wednesday, his reply.

“Why not on Tuesday?” I asked. There were too many patients, he said. The day before was Easter Monday, a holiday, so you don’t go to your doctor right after a holiday when people often get sick or need something from their doctors. I made Walter promise me he would go on that Wednesday. “I promise,” he said. I doubted it. I know him very well.

Of course, he did not go. He had an inadequate sleep that night and thought he would go on Thursday. Walter is a poster boy or Lolo (grandpa) for procrastination. “Would you keep me company?” he asked. You bet I would, but you had better be ready when I get to your place. I know you very well, I told him. Yes, he said, but again, I did not believe him and came to see him an hour earlier before the clinic could open.

I found him working at his computer, naked from the waist down, with just his underwear.

“The clinic opens only at 1 pm, so we have enough time,” was his justification for being half-naked.

We arrived at the clinic a half-hour earlier. The clinic is on the second floor, so Walter and I took the elevator. True enough, there was already a long queue of patients waiting at the door for the opening hour, not to mention the number of patients sitting on the staircase. I politely asked a young Fraulein in the queue if we could go before her, Walter being disabled. She looked at Walter, who looked much frailer that hour and said yes with a sincere smile. I could not stop thanking her. We would have waited forever until the closing hour had she refused. The clinic hours that day were just from 1 pm to 4 pm.

Walter’s doctor gave him an infusion after taking his blood pressure, which registered at 260/79. He had his blood taken for a blood test. Still, he decided to call an ambulance to take Walter to the nearest hospital: the Vienna General Hospital.

“Can you walk?” the ambulance attendant asked Walter, who said yes, but slowly. On the street to the ambulance, Walter said he needed a smoke. “Is it essential?” I asked. Of course, he said. The attendant smiled and said it didn’t bother him but asked Walter to smoke while walking towards the ambulance car parked some steps away. Walter did not seem worried. I was even nervous. You have no idea.

On the way to the hospital, the young male ambulance attendant asked Walter about his relationship with me, his accompanying person. “My husband,” Walter said spontaneously. My jaw dropped, not prepared to hear what Walter had just said. I have yet to get used to referring to Walter as husband. I still say “Mein Freund” (my friend) until now, two years after being married to one another.

“Oh, that’s nice,” the guy said and offered his congratulations.

“But we don’t live together,” I explained after recovering from the shock.

“That’s even nicer,” the guy said, laughing. When I mentioned that I had been living in Austria for 46 years, he was surprised, said I had lived there longer than he had, and laughed more. Right, rub it in, I wanted to tell him.

Walter was brought to the hospital’s ER, where they did another blood test, and was put to bed in a room while I sat in the waiting room. A Filipino-looking guy in a blue hospital uniform came out of the reception area, smiled, and nodded upon seeing me. I bet he was a Pinoy, but I was unsure, so I hesitated to ask him in Tagalog if Walter was still in the treatment room or brought somewhere else without me being notified. We spoke in German to each other. His Pinoy accent gave him away, and yet we continued talking to each other in German. He phoned someone to inquire but decided to go to the ward to check on Walter when no one picked up his call. “Yes, he’s still there,” he said.

Meanwhile, the room was getting crowded, and the ER personnel were busy. A middle-aged-looking guy, completely bald, walked to and from with a walking stick, but he could walk fast. He would cough now and then. I did, too. I thought it must be the weather, but then I picked up these coughs and colds even before I left the Philippines and lingered until that time in the waiting room.

A hundred-year-old man was lying in bed in the middle of the waiting room. I learned about his age when an ambulance attendant told a nurse about him. No secret stays secret in the waiting room.

I amused myself watching patients and ambulance attendants come and go until Walter came out of the emergency ward.

A woman in her sixties, maybe, with messy hair, came hopping to the ER counter and was soon settled in the waiting area in a wheelchair. The bald-headed guy and I looked at each other, wondering what had happened. Suddenly, this woman could not walk when she qualified for a marathon game a while ago. Then she started terrorizing everyone by doing errands for her, like getting a glass of water and discarding the empty plastic glass in the bin. Every time a new person came in, she would surprise that person with an order to get her another glass of water or unwrap a bar of chocolate for her, which she would take out of her bag, saying she could not do it herself. I watched her every move and noticed the time when she unwrapped a bar of chocolate herself. She did the routine the whole time she had been there, from 2 pm to 10 pm. The ER personnel learned to ignore her. 

It was 7 pm, and Walter was getting hungry. He asked me to get him a sandwich in the lobby, but before I could, an ER attendant came to take Walter to the radiation room for a lung X-ray.

The hospital was huge and modern, unlike how I remember it before the reconstruction. Even calling a lift was new to me. There have been so many breakthroughs in the elevator industry that have skipped me after I retired from work sixteen years ago. New buildings have them. Digital is the word. My apartment building still uses the old-fashioned method. You no longer press the up or down buttons of the lift; you select your floor of destination by pressing a number shown on the screen of some glass monitor outside the lift. A voice would announce which lift is yours.

I entered the lift and wondered where it was taking me. I didn’t see the number you usually select in a standard elevator. Instead, there were these up-and-down arrow signs, nothing more. About three other people were in the lift, and I pretended I knew where I was going. I didn’t step out until only this other passenger and I were left inside. Based on her blue uniform, I assumed she was a hospital staff. The door opened again a few seconds later, and the other passenger was about to leave. Afraid I might get stuck in the lift alone, not knowing where it would take me, I could no longer hide my ignorance and finally asked her where I could get a sandwich.

“Oh, take the other elevator,” she said as she pointed to the elevator opposite ours. “Press number 5, which says Ausgang (Exit), and you will see a bakery or a store selling goodies.” I thanked her profusely and drew a sigh of relief as she disappeared.

When I returned, the bald-headed guy was in the ER corridor. I smiled at him. He started a conversation by asking me how long I had been waiting in the ER. I said for a very long time already. He had been there since 9 am waiting for his test results. He told me that he was an oncology patient. He had been in a wheelchair for four years and could not walk since he was diagnosed with blood cancer, but now he could walk again, albeit with a walking stick. He has a speech impediment, is squeaky when he does, and I could hardly understand his words. He said he had been coughing since December of 2023, but the doctors could not determine the cause.

His next question stunned me.

“How long have you been together, you and your friend?” I was speechless for a while. How could he know that Walter and I were partners? It takes one to know one. 

“We’ve known each other since 1982,” I said, “but we’ve been married for about two years now.” 

He and his friend have been together for ten years, yet they could not marry. This was getting weird, I thought. We did not know each other, and there we were, exchanging intimacies of our lives. He took a photo of his friend’s from his wallet. A young-looking lad from Pakistan, 28 years old. He, 50. His friend was 20 years old when he met him. 

The Austrian government does not marry a Christian and a Moslem, he told me when I asked why they were not yet married. I did not know that, I said.

When I got back to the waiting area, Walter was done with his lung X-ray. I introduced Walter to this new acquaintance. His name is Jan, he said. Not wanting the shaggy woman who was sitting very close to us to hear what I wanted to tell Walter, I whispered to Walter that Jan was gay and had a young Pakistani partner.

“Speak louder; everyone here is deaf,” Walter roared. Obviously not, when everyone looked in our direction. I stopped talking and instead browsed my phone’s pictures to show Jan a photo of a young Walter. Jan was not a slight surprise. He said he knew Walter. From where? Walter asked. Maybe in the gay bars or saunas when both were younger. Walter could not remember having met or known Jan before.

Jan got his test results and was ready to go, but before he did, he left me a card with his telephone number, saying we should keep in touch. As he walked out, the woman with the shaggy hair started to do an errand for her, which he ignored. The woman would not be ignored and continued with her tirades, but Jan could not be bothered. He did not even look at her.

“Oh, she was just acting out. She needed everyone’s attention,” Jan said to us earlier. The ER is her stage.”

A pair of ambulance attendants arrived looking for Mr. Hartmann. A patient told them he had gone to the toilet, referring to a man with an infusion going to the bathroom. Not possible, the attendants said. Their guy is one hundred years old and fastened in bed.

“That’s Mr. Hartmann,” I said, pointing to the old man lying in bed before us. “Not Mr. Hartmann,” said the shaggy woman. The attendants checked his tag name; true enough, it was Mr. Hartmann. They took him away. When Shaggy asked me how I knew it was Mr. Hartmann, I said I heard the nurses call his name earlier. Sitting there for almost 11 hours, you could not help but remember the patients’ names when they were called non-stop.

Soon, Shaggy’s turn to leave came, but only after the information counter spoke with her. She was talking much louder this time. The nurse who came to push her wheelchair returned her to the waiting area. Apparently, she wanted an ambulance to take her home.

With Shaggy gone, silence took over the ER. It was 11 pm when Walter got his test results. He had to stay in the hospital, and I could go home, but only after keeping him company once he was settled in his room.

On my way home, I could not stop thinking about why Walter had to undergo so many tests before he could be admitted. His earlier findings, like the X-ray results, showed that water had accumulated in his lungs. Was there more for admittance? His legs were swollen, too. Why wait until almost midnight for the hospital authorities to decide?

And, oh, I almost missed my last train. When I could finally get out of the hospital, it was 11:30 pm. I wanted to take the exit to the nearest street, two tram stops away, or so I thought, to the subway station, but all the doors were locked. I must have missed the signs, so I returned to where I came from and started again. Meanwhile, the clock was ticking away. A security officer saw me and asked if I wanted to go out. Definitely, I said. He unlocked a door to my street and caught a tram two blocks away. Obviously, there was a better exit. Use the main door next time, I said to myself.

I made it to my subway before it closed and got home at 12.11 past midnight. It was only then that I realized I was hungry but too tired to prepare something. I settled for a piece of Biscocho, which I washed down with tea I made in the morning and kept in a thermos flask, then dropped dead soon.

On my way out of the hospital, after I visited Walter the following day (he’s doing OK; his water retention is gone), I bumped into Shaggy. She was hopping as in the first day I saw her. She said hello to me, her grin reaching her ears. She was glowing, in high spirits, ready for another performance of her life.

Mein Gott, Walter!