Beautiful, but most of all, clean, was my verdict of Westville Hospital. I waited in the foyer for the lift to take me up to Dumisani’s ward, and inhaled only sterile air, not the dodgy smells of government hospitals.

Had we afforded to take Dad to a hospital as good as Westville Hospital, surely they could have detected the impending stroke that struck and halted his life? He was locked in a coma for four days, then he was gone. We cried our eyes out in the chaos and pungent smell of a government hospital. If we could have afforded Westville Hospital, Dad would still be alive and Simphiwe would be on the right path. My father loved him, you know. Simphiwe spent his whole childhood sitting on his lap. He looked so relaxed, so sheltered when Dad was alive.

I asked for Dumisani at the reception of the ward. A light flashed on the electronic board behind the nurse attending to me – a patient in the ward was in need.

“That is him, Ward four C. Follow me,” she said.

Dumisani had his own room. Through the closed door we heard him loudly crying out. The nurse looked at the amazement in my eyes.

“He wants a painkiller. That’s how the addicts are. Especially with the wunga boys. It dulls the senses so much that they need four times the required dose of pain killers. They also like the opiates in it – makes the detox bearable.”

“Those drops please. I’m dying of pain. Please nurse I’m dying here,” Dumisani moaned in a mumbly, thick voice as we entered.

Both his legs had multiple breaks and had a network of wires and screws running lengthwise along them. His left arm was in a cast, his other arm had stitches running down from shoulder to wrist. He was severely disfigured – his head grotesquely swollen, a stitched gash on his forehead. The upper front teeth were missing. I saw that, as he begged for a painkiller through his wired-shut, broken jaw. A big chunk of his left ear was severed. I had never seen anything like it before.

“Please nurse. Please!” Dumisani pleaded.

“I’m fetching it now, don’t worry,” she said.

“I only remember the ride from Umlazi to Claremont and absolutely nothing after that. I did not believe it when they told me what happened. I thought I had been in a car accident. These idiots got me good. I was told that rocks broke my legs, a panga sliced my face, a knife my ear, a hammer broke my fingers,” he mumbled through the wires, after the nurse left the room.

It was hard to understand Dumisani through the wired-shut jaw so I scraped the visitor’s chair closer. I could barely look – that close to him the injuries were nastier, bruises everywhere, every inch of exposed skin was black and blue.

The nurse returned and squeezed a few painkilling drops through the gaps left by lost teeth. Dumisani winced and adjusted back to a comfortable position. That grimace revealed to me that he had lost most of his bottom teeth as well.

“They tell me Simphiwe disappeared into thin air. But that boy has my respect because he has never been in jail but he plays the part of a crook well. He knows that the number doesn’t shift backwards, it only moves forwards.”

Dumisani went on rambling through his wired-shut jaw. Over and above the pain he suffered was a sense of pride in the events that led him to that hospital bed. It was a step up according to the warped crook mentality he picked up in juvenile jail. Just as well the painkiller took over quickly, because the drivel he was speaking made me want to shut him up. He fell asleep and even then that same careless proud smirk prevailed. I had to physically restrain my right hand with the left, because the right wanted to strangle the life out of him.

***

Tell us what you think: What is your opinion of Dumisani being proud still?