Stom

Stom

‘Are you sure about this?’ my bodyguard once asked, one hand on the door, the other on his gun.

I think about that first day often now, when the whispering becomes too loud. The stares and pointing I’ve gotten used to, being what we are you get used to the misguided attention.

I stack up the bedpans by the sink in the ICU, waiting for my beeper to send me to yet another clean up. I’ve begun tallying them up, the catheter and bedpan changes. The patients that soil themselves in front of doctors but were otherwise apparently incapacitated to help. So far, this week my count brings me up to forty-nine. My beeper buzzes. I sign fifty in the air.

I keep my head down as I walk the corridors, my blue uniform signifying the rank of Dr. has no standing with these people. It doesn’t matter what I know, that I am here to help, no- to them it matters what I am. Where I came from. The slight variation in my DNA. The humans have gotten better over the years at spotting my kind. They said we moved different- too straight, too rigid. That just made me think humans were lazy with their bodies. I often thought humans were so terrified of us because they couldn’t understand us, they couldn’t kill something that frightened them. Twenty years after my birth and still they’re unsure what will kill us in the end. My guess? Social isolation.

The bedpans are cold in my hands as I make my way through the corridor, the screech of an orderly driving a bed too fast around a corner makes my head snap up from the dot coloured floor. It’s too late, I’m directly in its path. The foot of the bed smacks straight into my hip, sending me flying. The bedpans clatter to the floor. The orderly comes rushing to my side, I should make up a sign not to bother. I collect up the bedpans before standing easily.

‘I’m so sorry, the wheels on these things are for shit. I didn’t watch, I’m so-.’

I cut him off with a wave of my hand, signing that I’m fine. The change in his expression is instant. He looks me up and down, realising that I am unharmed. My hand unconsciously is tapping out words in Morse code on my right shoulder. I cup the hand underneath the bedpans.

The human leans in close to me, his eyes flat discs of loathing.

‘If I’d have known it was you I would have taken the corner faster.’

I breathe a sigh of relief when he goes, spewing apologies to the patient in the bed. I sign two words behind his back, my jaw clenched that tightly I can almost feel my teeth crack.

Dr. Dent is waiting for me outside the cover of the curtain around bed twelve. She checks her watch impatiently. ‘What took you so damn long Camille?’ She throws her hands in the air.

‘Sorry.’ I tap out in Morse code, having to balance the bedpans on my uninjured hip.

‘You know I don’t know that.’ She snaps.

I set the bedpans down at the foot of the patient’s bed. Turning back to her I sign sorry with my hands.

‘That either.’ She dismisses me with a flick of her wrist.

I grab a pen and pad from the inside of my pocket. I begin to write sorry, explaining the incident with the hospital bed. Dr. Dent blows exasperated air out of her nose, she hits the pad out of my shaking hands. ‘I haven’t got time for charades. Get him cleaned up, he needs to be prepped for an OP.’

I nod, my head cast to the floor. I pick up the pad and pen once she leaves. Dr. Dent’s outline stands irritably on the other side of the curtain.

I am quick to clean the patient up, removing his bedpan and redoing an IV that he managed to pull out in his sleep. The man stares up at the ceiling while I work, flinching when I draw a fresh blanket up to his midriff to keep him warm. Even though he doesn’t understand I sign him 'good luck' for his operation.

Dr. Dent is waiting for me when I’m done. She crosses her arms over her chest- a sign I’ve picked up from humans that means they are displeased. At least with me that is normally the case.

‘Camille, that’s the fourth patient you have been less than prompt to this week. All you need is three reviews for misconduct in this hospital and you’re gone.’ Her eyes narrow on me. I made no sign of communication to her accusation. ‘DO YOU UNDERSTAND?’ She says slowly and loud enough for people to start turning our way.

I meet her eyes for the first time since I’ve started. The shock of blue startles her, I can tell. She takes an involuntary step backward. I reach for my crumpled-up pad in my pocket. The pen fly’s back and forth, tearing the paper free I shove it to her chest. My words are capitalised, she can’t help but whisper them under her breath. ‘Have some humanity. All I am trying to do is help your kind. Even when they took my own parents away from me.’

I didn’t stay to see her reaction, I stormed off to my usual deserted supplies room. Once the door was safely locked I let the tears come. My mind drifted to a name an African woman once said to me on the train. Halfway through the trip, she pointed at me and yelled, ‘Stom!’ over and over again. After she saw me tapping out the words to a song on my shoulder in Morse code. I never learnt what the word meant, it felt like my word, said just for me. I told my parents about it that night when I got home. I think of them often now, whenever I feel alone- which is mostly on an hourly basis these days. One thing I will always remember about my parents is the love they held for one another. You could see it. Feel it. My father would stare at my mother when she was doing the most ordinary things- lacing up her shoes, opening a window- and he would turn to me and say, ‘Your mother’s love is like a streetlight that washed in with the tide. He never explained to me what it meant and I never asked. I believe he meant that her love always came back to him, guiding him whenever he felt himself lost.

The humans took them from me. They were killed trying to protect me from a mass of protestors. Ironic isn’t it? To die protecting something that can’t be harmed? Love, it seemed to me, doesn’t always have its reasonings. Even though they say I can’t feel pain, I felt their loss through and through me. It felt like I didn’t breathe for a week. I hated the humans then, for what they took from me. But something no one ever tells you is that hate is more devastating than grief. At least with grief, you have some version of love to hold onto. But hate, well, you can’t do much with that. So, I decided to give the humans my love instead. Love that I would have given to my parents if they were alive, a love to help them when they needed it.

Our creator, Dr. Artemis a pioneer in genetics wasn’t so lucky, killed after the millionth of my kind was born and along with her the history of our beginnings. All she wanted was to remove pain from the equation of life. Most saw her meddling too far with the balance of life, by taking hers perhaps they thought they were righting the scales again.

Like Dr. Artemis I was the first of my kind to become an on-call emergency doctor based in a human hospital. Contrary to what the papers and my colleagues whispered behind my back I wanted to help the humans. Remembering why I walked through those doors on the first day I got from my spot off the floor, I met every pair of eyes that looked my way. Making my way to the Emergency unit I smiled at the first patient I saw, a young girl holding a bloodied cloth to her head. Taking a step towards her I reached for some nearby gauze.

‘I like your eyes.’ She remarked. ‘They’re so pretty.’

I smiled, opening her small hand. I drew a warm thank you into her palm. The girl giggled at my touch, her pain forgotten for the moment. She reached for my hand, clumsily trying to draw the same lines into my own palm. Perhaps this is where it started, I thought as I wound the gauze around her small head. Perhaps, a smile was my first step to living among them- to make them forget their pain.

*stom def: translates to mute in Afrikaans