THE FINAL FLU JAB

A lifetime's not long enough for Reuben to forget his mother's death.

When Reuben was old enough to understand anything he knew that he had to find a way of avenging the death of his mother. He remembered her as a cosy, cuddling, laughing piece of love that had dominated every aspect of his life forever, though, of course, forever was really only a few years. But that few years, naturally grew as he left childhood and then his school years behind and went out into the world. But that didn’t in any way soothe his need for revenge.

She had been murdered, and he had seen it happen though the killer had ignored his presence because he assumed that babies don’t understand what’s going on, not that Reuben was actually a baby, he just looked like one smothered in a push-chair under a blanket that almost covered him up. He was better described as a toddler.

But he’d seen it, and what’s more, he remembered it.

There had been a knock on the door whan mummy was in the kitchen doing the sort of things she did every day. He wasn’t sure what it was but he did know that when she had finished the smell in the room made his tiny mouth water.

Mummy had opened the door and a man had pushed his way into the very kitchen where she was creating something he knew would be delicious, and had shouted at her. He didn’t know what the words, loud and spiteful, had meant, but one of them stuck in his mind as a key that one day would unlock a door because even though the number of words in his vocabulary was hardly anything like a full dictionary he retained the word Sampara as if it had been scorched into his brain.

Because the man had attacked his mother with a blade as long as the one she used to carve the meat on the one day a week when dad was home for dinner as well, and shouted that’s for Sampara you b***h!

It wasn’t until he had grown out of that push chair and even short trousers that he discovered that the wonderful woman who had given birth to him had been a nurse in a life before he’d been born. It was his dad (not as wonderful as his mummy had been, but when are dads that wonderful because, they didn’t have a womb, did they) told him the big secret. His mummy had once been a nurse and had been present when a particular patient had died. It was a child and her name had been Sampara, and her young father had blamed mummy even though it wasn’t her fault. But he, the father of the deceased Sampara, held her responsible. He needed someone to blame and she was that someone. He told her it was her negligence that had caused his lovely though terminally ill Sampara to die the way she had.

“And a couple of years later his anger had been eating away at him and he had found out where mummy lived and had killed her. With a knife. A carving knife.

And then he had gone, leaving Reuben’s precious mother to bleed to death before she was discovered by himself when he returned home from work.

“And there was nothing I could do, Reuben. she was dead. And you were there. You saw it happen. It was dreadful. You were in such a state for ages. You must have seen everything.”

“I suppose I did,” Reuben replied, “but I wasn’t much more than a baby.”

“You poor boy,” dad had said, and there were tears in his eyes.

“The police did catch him, though. He had your mum’s blood on his shirt and he didn’t even try to deny it. His own daughter, he told the police, had been ill and he blamed your mummy for not saving her. But it was sad. The child was dying and there was nothing mummy could have done to save her. Te father, the murderer, went to prison for years. But you can’t go around killing people just because you think they were careless, which she wasn’t.”

And more years passed. Reuben left school and, being brighter than the average boy he went on to University. But whenever he was troubled or distraught the simple word Sampara came into his mind as if it had been etched there.

Years passed, and Reuben became a pharmacist working at the local pharmacy, the one in town where people could go for their annual flu injection if that’s what they needed, and it was whllst he was answering a query at the front desk that he heard the word Sampara again.

An elderly man was there and at the back of his mind he thought there might be something familiar about him, and when he spoke he knew what it was.

“I believe I can come here for my flu jab?” the man had said.

The voice took him back to that dreadful day when he had been a tiny child in his push-chair

“Of course,” he had said, fighting the certainty in his mind that he had met this man when he’d been a tiny child, and wanting to hit out at him.

“I have one every year,” the man had said, “I suffer from asthma. I have since Sampara died…”

And that was the key that opened so much foulness as far as Reuben was concerned. He’d lived by far the greater part of the last forty years without a mother and this must be the man who had been responsible! It was the only time he’d ever heard the name Sampara other than the shadow of despair in his mind that had been there it seemed for ever.

“Flu jab?” he queried, “yes we do them here. Who was Sampara? You mentioned the name…?”

“My daughter,” replied the man, “she died when she was little. She was very poorly, and the nurse in charge neglected her…”

Reuben wanted to say that his mum never neglected anyone, but he kept the thought in his mind rather than tell the man anything.

“Will Thursday afternoon do? Two-fifteen?” he asked.

“Pardon?”

“For your vaccination? What you asked for?” Reuben reminded him.

“Oh. Of course. My mind was wandering. Thank you…”

“Then I’ll see you on Thursday,” Reuben said, “be prompt because there’s often quite a queue.”

The man smiled, and left.

Thursday came, and he was led into a tiny consulting room by Reuben, dressed in a white coat and having an array in front of him on his desk, including a syringe already loaded, and a sticking plaster.

The man sat in a chair and looked up at him before smiling.

Reuben was grateful that his patient was dressed for warmer weather because the last thing he wanted to do was touch his skin more than ne needed to, and undoing shirt buttons might involve more than minimal physical contact.

“You’ll feel the least of pricks,” he said, “Keep your arm stiil and it’ll be done in seconds.” murmured Reuben, and he vaccinated the man with the contents of his syringe.

“You mentioned Sampara? You said she died?” he asked when he’d stuck the small plaster in position over the injection site.

“You’ve got a good memory,” replied the man, “and, yes, my daughter She was terminally ill even though she was so young.”

“My mother died too,” Reuben said, “she was a nurse on the children’s ward, and she was killed by a madman with a knife. Well, that’s it. You won’t catch flu again. Not ever. You’re safe for as long as you live. Take care…”

And his patient did take care for as long as he lived, which was long enough for him to reach his bus stop and climb aboard rthe number 23 for his final journey through the streets of Brumpton.

And Reuben watched him go, saw the slight stagger as he climbed aboard the bus, and smiled to himself. His mother’s death had been avenged.

© Peter Rogerson 23.09..22

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