Free The Good Doctor by Damon Galgut Page A

gossip. But it was obvious that
Dr Ngema had an interest in Tehogo that went deeper than the professional side of things. She was solicitous and concerned. At staff meetings she went out of her way to draw him into discussions,
she called him into her office for personal chats, and once she’d asked me if I would keep an eye on him.
    I tried to do what she asked. But it was hard to get near to Tehogo. He was sullen and sour, continually drawn in on some dark core in himself. He seemed to have no friends, except for one young
man from outside the hospital who was frequently hanging around. I tried not to blame him; of course he must be embattled with the terrible loss of his family. But the truth was that he didn’t look
like much of a victim. He was young and good-looking, and he was always dressed in natty new clothes. He had an earring in one ear and a silver chain around his neck. There was money coming to him
from somewhere, but this was never mentioned by anybody. We had to treat him as poor Tehogo, dispossessed and damaged, and it was curious how powerful his powerlessness could be. He wouldn’t talk,
except in grudging syllables, and even those were always given in reply to something he’d been asked. He never showed any interest in my life, and so it was difficult to be interested in his. For a
long time now he had been a silent presence at the dark end of the passage, or sitting at the edge of staff meetings, saying nothing. I hardly noticed him.
    But now Laurence Waters had come, and I had to notice Tehogo. I noticed him because he was in the doctor’s room where Laurence should be. But what I’d said to Laurence was untrue: Tehogo wasn’t
moving anywhere. There was no space and nowhere for him to go.
    ‘Oh. Well,’ Laurence said. ‘He’s a strange person, Tehogo. I try to talk to him, but he’s very...’
    ‘I know what you mean.’
    After a pause he said forlornly, ‘I like sharing with you, Frank.’
    ‘Do you?’ I felt bad now, for my irritation as well as the lie. ‘Maybe it won’t happen.’
    ‘Do you think so?’
    ‘It’s possible,’ I said. ‘It’s possible we’ll all just stay where we are.’

6
    Laurence couldn’t sit still in one place for very long. He had a restless, angular energy that burned him up. If he wasn’t pacing and smoking, he was stalking around the
grounds, looking at things, asking questions. Why are the walls painted pink? Why is the food so bad? Why hasn’t all this wasted space been used? Why, why, why – there was something childlike about
it. But he also had an adult resourcefulness that wanted things to be different.
    One afternoon I came back to the room to find him struggling with the door at the end of the passage.
    ‘What are you doing?’
    ‘Come and give me a hand.’
    He was trying to put a chain and padlock around the handle of the door. There was no bolt in the wall, so he had to loop one end around a metal bracket for a fire extinguisher, which had either
been stolen or had never been supplied.
    ‘It would be much easier just to get a key for the door,’ I told him.
    ‘There isn’t one. I’ve been looking. Dr Ngema let me search through all the spares.’
    ‘What do you want to lock it for anyway?’
    He blinked in surprise. ‘You should know. You saw what’s going on in there.’
    I had to think about it before I realized that he was talking about all the stripping and stealing that had taken place in the deserted wing.
    ‘But that’s old. And what difference does it make anyway?’
    ‘What difference?’ He smiled uncertainly. ‘Are you being serious? It shouldn’t happen.’
    ‘Laurence, Laurence.’
    ‘What?’
    I helped him fasten the chain around the wall bracket and lock it. But you could see at a glance that the padlock was cheap and weak. You could break it with a blow.
    That was the sort of thing he did. On one of the days that followed I found him cutting the grass in the open plot between our bedroom and