doctor.
You can’t take her. She has to be discharged.
I am taking her. We’ve got her on a flight to South Africa and we have to leave for Bombay right now.
No, that’s not possible. You heard what the policeman said, there’s an investigation. You can’t take her.
I want a DAMA, I say with false confidence, and I must have it right now.
You will have to wait for the doctor.
I’m not waiting. To show how serious I am, I signal to the others to get Anna out of bed. Give me the form to sign or I’ll take her anyway.
Furious and steely-eyed, the nurse brings the form. I show Anna where to sign and then we hustle her through the crowded corridors to the side-entrance and the waiting taxi. At every moment I expect the venal hand of the police to close around us, and as we swing out of the hospital gates the sense of freedom is enormous. When they make the movie, I say, I want Tom Cruise to play me.
Faye Dunaway for me, Caroline says.
Even Anna joins in. Julia Roberts, she says, and we’re all laughing. But the levity doesn’t last long. In minutes it dawns on Anna that we’re not going back to our hotel, and she starts to moan and protest. I want to go back to the beach, she cries, I want to finish my holiday. You have no right to do this. When I tell her the police will come looking for her there, she falls temporarily silent, but then she starts up again. Just give me my money-belt, give it to me. You can’t have it. Give it to me and drop me at the side of the road. Fortunately she’s wedged in at the back between Caroline and Paula, or she might make a break for it. Do you see what they’re doing, she yells at the taxi driver, they’re kidnapping me, they’re criminals, they’re thieves.
This taxi driver, whose name is Rex, has seen a thing or two over the last week to astonish him. He’s come up to the hospital ward a few times and witnessed Anna in action, but she’s setting new standards today. When we get to the clinic I ask Rex to come in with us, just in case we need an extra hand. When she sees the room where she’ll be sleeping and hears that a nurse will be in the spare bed to keep watch, she goes berserk. I demand to leave right now, she shrieks, and makes a break for the door. I stand in her way and grab hold of her wrists and for half a minute we grapple silently together in a pantomimic frieze for the benefit of the open-mouthed Rex. I am, in this moment, physically afraid of her. She has power far beyond her muscular strength, there’s a lunatic gleam in her eye. But she finally relents and slumps and then, once I let go, lashes out in a screaming fit, punching the walls and kicking the door, before collapsing in a howling heap on the bed.
All through the drive back to the village, Rex relives that moment. Pow, he says to himself, crash. He makes kicking, punching movements and shakes his head in wonder. It’s safe to say he’s never witnessed anything like it. A year or two later, out of the blue, he will send an e-mail to me in South Africa. In part it reads, how is your work going on. I hope that you may sell lots of books. I’m fine and do good business. I always remember your good words, your words are a great knowledge to me. In future if you publish a book you should write about that girl, who wished to die.
She is heavily sedated now and much calmer than she was in the government hospital. But this doesn’t stop the endless stream of abuse, the accusations of failure and neglect, as well as the demands for various items. There is a telephone in the clinic where patients can make calls on credit and she rings him obsessively at the hotel, numerous times each day, with an inventory of requirements for his next visit. She wants her shoes, her money, her rucksack. He isn’t willing to hand any of these over, for fear of what it might lead to, but what he can bring he does. There is never a thank you, only a litany of charges against him, which he hears out wearily.