Lucifer's Tears

20

Rescuing John meant I had to leave my car in the police garage overnight. I get up and leave early to fetch it, then drive to the hospital. In the waiting room of the neurology polyclinic, I browse household cleaning tips in a women’s magazine. The reading selection here leaves much to be desired. The polyclinic radiates sterility, but I stand instead of sit. The last time I took a seat in a public medical facility, when I left, my clothes smelled like piss.

Jari calls me into an examination room. He sees the gunshot scar on my face and flinches, but doesn’t comment on it. The last time we saw each other was three Christmases ago. He’s aged since then. His hair is grayer, he’s thinner. We share a quick brotherly hug, he tells me to sit down. I describe my headaches. He types the symptoms into a computer.

“On a scale of one to ten-one being mild discomfort and ten being the worst screaming pain you can imagine-how would you rate your headache at the moment?” he asks.

The pain is dull but nagging. “About a three.”

“You say that the problem started about a year ago, but that you’ve had a constant headache for three weeks.”

“Yeah.”

“Would you describe the headaches as increasing in severity as well as duration?”

“They’ve gotten a lot worse over time,” I say.

“On that one-to-ten scale, how would you rate the worst episodes?”

I picture all my teeth being drilled through to the roots without anesthetic as ten. “Eight.”

“You’ve always been laconic,” he says. “I think you’ve been through some intense suffering. Why did you wait so long to have this taken care of?”

“I saw a general practitioner six months ago. She gave me extrastrength Tylenol and something she called a pain diffuser. She said they give it to people with chronic problems, for instance, who’ve lost limbs but still feel pain in the missing parts. I took it for three days, and it helped the headaches but made me so stupid that it was hard to speak. I threw it in the trash.”

“Does the Tylenol help?”

“It used to. Not anymore.”

“Are your nerves so bad that you can’t eat or sleep?”

“I’m a little off my feed, but I eat. I can’t sleep.”

Jari has me track his finger back and forth with my eyes, checks my balance and reflexes, a few other things. He runs his fingers over the scar on my face, tells me to open my mouth. He looks inside with a medical penlight. “The bullet took out two back teeth,” he says.

“Yeah.”

“Do you have chronic pain or any paralysis as a result of the wound?”

“Just some stiffness in my jaw and minimal paralysis. My smile is a little crooked.”

He grins. “That’s no big deal, you don’t smile much anyway.” He sits, ponders the situation. “There’s a bundle of facial nerves in the vicinity of the bullet wound. Damage to them could cause your headaches, but your lack of other symptoms makes me think that’s not the case here. There’s nothing readily visible wrong with you,” he says. “We need to run tests.”

“What do you think the problem is?” I ask.

“This is largely a process of elimination from the most to least likely causes. Let’s see if you have a brain tumor, then we’ll check for nervous system disorders.”

This alarms me. “Those are the most likely causes?”

“Little brother, you don’t seem to understand the gravity of the situation or how very fucking stupid you’ve been. You need an MRI. The waiting time for an MRI in the public health system in Helsinki is nine months. You could die while you wait. It happens all the time.”

“The police have private medical coverage,” I say.

“Screw the system, both public and private,” Jari says. “I’ll twist some arms and get you as far up the line as I can. You’ll get the MRI in at most a couple weeks, and a blood test as soon as you leave this office.”

“Okay,” I say. Something occurs to me. “I thought you were getting rich in private practice. What are you doing here in a hospital?”

“The pay for public doctors is so abysmal that most of the good doctors have fled to private practice. So what you have left is recent graduates from medical school, some bad doctors, some older doctors, and lately an influx of foreign medical workers. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that, but many of the foreigners speak poor Finnish and often depend on English.”

“But foreign doctors have to pass a language test in order to practice.”

“That doesn’t guarantee spoken fluency. Two parents brought a child with an ear infection in to see me last week for a second consultation. They’d seen a foreign doctor and his language skills were so poor that all he could tell them was, ‘It’s not cancer.’ And when, for instance, elderly people come in and don’t speak English, they sometimes feel that they can’t relate their problems. They feel neglected by the system. I come here two mornings a week to help out. I think of it as my civic duty.”

Jari always was a good guy.

“How’s your bum knee?” he asks.

“Worse every year. There’s not enough cartilage left to hold it together. I have to sleep with a pillow between my knees to keep the pressure off, or it starts to go out of joint in my sleep and the pain wakes me up. At least it used to, back in the days when I slept.”

“Getting kneecapped with a bullet has a tendency to do that. Have an orthopedist examine it again. Reconstructive surgery probably won’t fix it, but might improve it.”

“I’ve got a baby coming. Better to limp than not walk at all.”

We share an uncomfortable silence. I wait for him to ask the inevitable.

“Why have you been avoiding me?” Jari asks. “You don’t return my phone calls.”

I’ve been asking myself the same question. I discovered the answer but can’t share it with him. It’s about old hurt and anger. Dad used to beat the hell out of me. Jari is older than me, but never did anything to stop it. Maybe he couldn’t.

When Jari got out of high school, he told Dad he wanted to be a doctor. Dad asked him who the hell did he think he was, told him he thought he was better than his upbringing, to come down off his high horse and get a job. They argued. Dad punched him in the face. Jari left that night, and I didn’t hear from him for almost two years. He had moved to Helsinki and gotten into the university. He abandoned me.

“I don’t know why,” I say. “I didn’t realize I was doing it until Kate and I had been here for a few months and I hadn’t gotten in touch with you.”

He nods. “I get that, but I’m still your brother.”

“I know. For whatever reason, I’ve been distant, but it has nothing to do with you and I’ll make myself get over it. Kate’s brother and sister from the States are here visiting us. Why don’t you bring your wife and kids over on Thursday. I’ll cook us a big family dinner.”

“Sounds good,” he says. “You have to go now. Patients are backing up.” He hands me some papers. “These are the order for your blood test, which I expect you to take now, and prescriptions for some new meds.”

“What kinds of meds?”

“Opiated painkillers, tranquilizers and sleeping pills. I want you to use them freely. You need rest and relief from pain.”

I grab my coat and start to protest. He pushes me out the door. “See you Thursday,” he says.