Back at Home in Dresden

I was waiting, sitting there invisibly among other patients. Some had company and some were there on their own like me. The clinic in Dresden was absolutely silent despite people whispering to each other and doctors and nurses running up and down the corridor.

And suddenly it was Gary sitting there on the wheelchair and not me, waiting for the doctor to pick him up for more tests. He was about 12 years old, his dad had brought him to the university clinic and had waited there with him for about an hour before he had had to go to work. At that time he knew that complaining was not going to make any difference so he was just watching everything with a cruel patience, watching the time he did not have anymore go by in the hectic of the university clinic in Dresden. Sometimes he just watched the adults around him and sometimes he stared at the shiny stones under the wheelchair.

The pain was unbearable but he had stopped reacting to it, for one because he had already had enough of painkillers and for another, cause at that stage he knew how little difference it would have made, it would just make other patients mad at him or what was even worse, it would have caught too much attention and then pity of the grown ups, esp. since there was no one by his side. He thought of how he would have loved to shout at his twin brother and tease him again but then the memory of Georg's crying all the time made him regret his wish. No one had felt so desperate, so horrified by the thought of what was happening inside Gary's young body than Georg.

The two of them never understood each other well although they were the only ones who knew what the other was really thinking, what he wanted and how he felt. Nothing ever changed this absurd closeness of the brothers, not until death did them part.

So Gary did actually miss Georg while he was sitting there on his own, focusing on the wheelchair in order to feel less pain and in order to at least look patient on the outside while waiting for the doctor, who had already passed by him several times without even looking at the young boy awaiting more and more tests and examination than he had already went through.

At the end, it was Gary Schwarzinger on the wheelchair the nurse picked up, it was Gary shivering in pain, it was Gary holding back tears and not me.