Trapped

Valerie Tagwira

Description

Valerie Tagwira has a gift for capturing the mood of a social or political moment: its concerns, unease, compromises and hopes. So it is with her second novel, Trapped. Trapped explores the lives of three characters: Unesu is a doctor, Cashleen trained as a journalist and Delta qualified as a chemical engineer. Unesu is employed, but his work exposes him to the deficiencies in the system every day as he faces the challenges of life and death. Each of the two young women, good friends, daunted by having their job applications repeatedly rejected, make moral and ethical compromises in order to find work, or at least an income that will pay their bills. These three individuals provide the pivot around which the action unfolds, introducing the reader to people and situations that paint a vital picture of life in Harare at a time of crisis, when survival depends on courage, determination, friendship and humour.

Informations

• Publié par: Weaver Press
• Date de parution: 27 février 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 9
• EAN13: 9781779223715
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

T RAPPED
T RAPPED
Valerie Tagwira
Published by Weaver Press, Box A1922, Avondale,
Harare. Zimbabwe. 2020
< www.weaverpresszimbabwe.com >
Valerie Tagwira, 2020
Typeset by Weaver Press
Cover Design: Farai Wallace
Photograph of the author by Paavo Shooya, Am Photography Studio, Windhoek
This book is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organisations, or locales are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used fictitiously. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the author s imagination and are not to be construed as real.
All rights reserved. No part of the publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means - electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise - without the express written permission of the publisher.
ISBN: 978-1-77922-370-8 (p/b)
ISBN: 978-1-77922-371-5 (e-pub)
ISBN: 978-1-77922-372-2 (pdf)
Valerie Tagwira is a specialist obstetrician and gynaecologist who lives and works in Harare. The Uncertainty of Hope (Weaver Press, 2006, Jacana Media 2006), her first novel, won the National Arts Merit Award for Outstanding Fiction in 2008. Her short story The Journey was published in the Caine Prize Anthology 2010. Her story Mainini Grace s Promise was published in Women Writing Zimbabwe (Weaver Press, 2009) translated into Shona for the anthology Mazambuko (Weaver Press, 2011), included in the anthology, New Daughters of Africa (Myriad Editions 2018) and re-published in Windows into Zimbabwe (Weaver Press, 2019). The Way of Revenge , a short story, was published in Writing Mystery and Mayhem (Weaver Press, 2015).
For
Rudo Ellen
1
U nesu was ready to drop. Emergency on-call shifts at the hospital were not for the faint-hearted. The pace was intense and there was a relentless influx of patients arriving at all hours. Some presented profound clinical challenges after being referred in extremis from provincial and district hospitals. Without dexterity, speed, and attention to detail, a life could be lost in a heartbeat.
Despite being on duty with a competent team of nurses, his weekend on-call duty in the gynaecology unit felt unusually brutal, though having John as his counterpart in obstetrics did give him some small measure of relief. His colleague was a deeply religious young man with whom he shared a good professional rapport. It was a given that there d be no disappearing acts or malingering, no matter how hectic the shift. John was always conscientious and considerate of his colleagues.
Throughout the weekend, both young doctors were constantly on their feet. They made spirited attempts at cross-covering each other for periodic breaks and the briefest of stolen power-naps. They needed to rest because without exception, and despite a forty-eight-hour weekend on call, Monday was considered a normal working day. They d be expected to be fresh-eyed, clearheaded and coherent during the morning ward round.
Unesu knew that they had it better than their specialist registrar, Dr Muchaneta (secretly referred to as Doc Muchy), their immediate senior on cover for both obstetrics and gynaecology. She was inevitably busier than they were, but, as usual, she seemed to take everything in her stride.
Since Saturday morning, their on-call consultant, Professor Chaka, had already been to the hospital three times to assist with patients who had complications. While he was a good clinician and teacher, Unesu felt that he was strict and fastidious to the point of being irrational.
During the Sunday morning ward round, he made Unesu feel small and incompetent for not being able to recite a seriously ill patient s medical history and blood test results from memory. Unesu was verbally paralysed as he stood there, fuming inwardly, while the man berated him.
The patient s records were right in front of them. All the professor had had to do was allow him to refer to the case notes during his presentation. Unesu knew that he would ve given an excellent presentation because he was always thorough in his clinical assessments and record-keeping. In consultation with Doc Muchy, he d drawn up appropriate management plans for all patients. No errors had been made and nobody had deteriorated or died because of any act of commission or omission on his part.
It wasn t his fault that the urea and electrolytes machine hadn t been working for two days. Neither was it his fault that the two patients for whom he d ordered urgent blood transfusions were still waiting while their relatives searched for money to pay the hospital for the blood. Intravenous drug stock-outs were not of his making. So why did the Prof have to be so obsessive?
Afterwards, it took John s good sense to mollify him. Don t take these things personally, Unesu. Prof doesn t mean any harm.
Listen, the man practically dissected me in front of patients! He doesn t mean any harm ! You re joking, right? Get real, John! What s the chance that anyone receives excellent care in this dump?
Of course, it s possible. But it starts with us always giving our best and having the courage to change the things that we can change. John defaulted to his motivational speaker mode.
Unesu couldn t help laughing. The absurdity of this little speech eased his emotional indignation. If not from a biblical verse, John was always sure to draw from an apparently limitless source of inspirational quotes. With the change in mood, they returned to their respective work stations.
Checking his mobile phone, Unesu found nothing on voicemail. He switched on mobile data, which had been off since Saturday. His phone pinged through a flood of WhatsApp messages that had been on hold.
MedSch Class of 14 group was at it again. There was a heated exchange about their worsening working conditions in government hospitals. What were their employer s obligations? Weren t such poor working conditions a violation of their constitutional rights as employees? Should they go on strike or not? What about their responsibility to patients?
Unesu noted that instead of group members providing decisive answers, even more questions had been raised. To what extent did working with inadequate resources put them and their patients at risk? By accepting the status quo, were they not being complicit in this perpetuation of poor service delivery? And for how long could they continue working for such laughable salaries? And on it went. But there was still no consensus regarding strike action.
He held back from posting a personal comment because most of the sentiments expressed in the thread echoed his own. Besides, he just wasn t sure what, if anything, could be achieved by going on strike.
He scrolled down to a hullo message from Cashleen, a childhood friend. She had such a good heart that she d surely be the right person with whom to discuss that delicate matter of his mother. She was a girl, so she d know what to do. But this wasn t the moment to arrange to meet, so he replied with a thumbs-up emoji, and almost instantly received a smiley one in return.
And then of course there was Takunda with a cryptic text: Got a ryl beauty this tym. U shld c this doc! A real beauty? Was his friend talking about a woman, a car, a diamond or a gun? For someone who lived on the edge like Takunda, you never knew what to expect. He d have to call him sometime.
There were several forwarded jokes, mostly from Delta, another friend. Couldn t she be serious for once? The girl was the antithesis of anyone s idea of an engineer. He chuckled, and decided to ignore the rest of the messages.
The brief interlude had given him a glimpse into the outside world, stirring up a sense of envy. He had to get back to work.

The rest of the day progressed as expected, but the evening was one of unrelenting pressure. There were many admissions, and he had to act as Doc Muchy s surgical assistant for two patients. They performed an oophorectomy on a young girl who d presented in the late, necrotic stage of ovarian torsion. Their second procedure was a hysterectomy on a woman with a badly lacerated uterus. She d come in haemorrhaging from a botched backstreet abortion.
During her surgery a deluge of memories overwhelmed Unesu. An emergency hysterectomy had failed to save his young sister s life under similar circumstances. Chipo had been only nineteen and in her first year as a pharmacy student.
Time had not done much to ease his pain and the guilt that he still felt for having failed to recognise that she d been pregnant, until one day when their mother had found her lying on the floor of her bedroom, the carpet soaked in blood.
He took a deep breath. He had to focus on the operation. Ethics and professionalism demanded no less. As soon as the surgery was over, he was back in casualty where a long queue of patients had formed. John hadn t fared any better as he d spent the night shuttling between the maternity wards and theatre for emergency caesarean sections.
Thankfully, there was an unexpected lull around 4.00 a.m., and John told Unesu that he was going for a break. True to character, after an hour of rest, he came to cover Unesu, so that he could also have an hour s rest before Prof Chaka s morning ward round.
Unesu dragged himself to the on-call room. He hadn t realised how exhausted he was until he stopped. Never had the promise of oblivion on a bumpy bed in the airless little room been so appealing. His last thoughts as he drifted off were of the rather attractive new student nurse he d met in casualty. Then he was out like a light.
But it seemed that he d hardly fallen asleep when his bleep wrenched him into wakefulness. He blinked, reac