About Suffering
About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position: how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along.
W.H. Auden. “Musée des Beaux Arts.” 1938.
March 15 2019. I wake in my hotel in Dean's Ave. I haven't slept well. It is wet outside. I walk round the corner to a cafe in Riccarton Road for breakfast. I hope the weather will clear up so that I can take what has become my usual walk across Hagley Park to the hospital. The rain doesn't stop. There is a shuttle outside the hotel that will take me to the hospital for five dollars. I decide to take that instead.
I know Christchurch best as the place I first learned clinical medicine in the 1970s. It is not a city I know well, or have ever been particularly fond of. Christchurch in the past has modelled itself, with some success, on English cities. The people have inherited a well-laid-out system of streets, stately buildings, and a love of parks and gardens. They have also surprisingly been able to import aspects of the English class system; the strange belief that some people are born better than others. Social standing in some circles, at least in the past, was partly determined by one's family background. As a New Zealander of mixed Celtic origin, this is not something that I approve of, or agree with, or even pretend to understand.
Since February 2011, the city has become better known around New Zealand and around the world for an earthquake that killed 185 people, destroyed whole suburbs, and damaged several buildings in the central city. The people of Christchurch have become admired for their resilience and for a resurging sense of community. There is evidence around the city of an ambitious rebuild. Everywhere I look, new construction is going on beside the memorials. Today, the city will gain a new infamy.
I am back in Christchurch to learn more clinical medicine; in the 21st Century. With advances in new and more expensive technology, Christchurch Hospital has become the only place in the South Island able to offer some specialised stroke services. There is the possibility that some patients will be able to travel from other areas, including Central Otago, to access dramatically effective new treatments. I am spending a week with the Neurology team at Christchurch Hospital learning about acute stroke care.
Today on the shuttle I arrive much earlier than I would have after my usual stroll across the leafy park. I decide to explore. It has not been easy navigating around the hospital corridors. I had trouble on previous days for example finding my way through the hospital from the Neurology ward to the Emergency Department to witness acute stroke calls. I have relied on following others. I find my own way today using the sparse signage to the back entrance of the Emergency Department. I convince myself that just through the door is the place I have been with the team on a few occasions earlier in the week to observe patient care.
It is the wrong door; it doesn't matter. On my right, I see a chapel. It looks welcoming. Probably the best place in the hospital, I think, to kill some time before starting my day's work. I have a look around. It has a peaceful feel. The banners round the door have a purple theme, signifying Lent. There is a display of religious iconography: a greenstone koru; a delicately-carved wooden cross; a Russian painting of the Madonna and Child; a Jewish candelabrum; a stained-glass window from an Anglican church.
At first, I am on my own. Then a woman bustles in. She looks startled at my presence, then pleased to see me there. She introduces herself as one of the hospital chaplains. I congratulate her on the eclectic feel of the chapel. "We are deliberately interdenominational," she explains. "We have what we call an ecumenical focus." She takes me to a plainly furnished area to the left of the room containing prayer mats and some prominent inscriptions from the Koran. "This is where the Moslem people come to pray," she says proudly.
The discussion reminds me of time spent relaxing in the leafy gardens of the Grand Mosque in Paris, which we discovered when we visited were a welcome refuge from the busy city streets outside, a quiet peaceful place to have a cup of tea by the ornamental pool. It reminds me of the Al Fateh Grand Mosque in Bahrain, a country where our daughter was teaching. The institution there makes a feature of hosting visitors from other countries. We were politely asked to remove our shoes at the front door. My wife was given a black abaya and head scarf to wear, her eyes smiling out at the unfamiliar and opulent surroundings. A kind and thoughtful gentleman welcomed us and was proud to show us around. At the mosque in Bahrain, people of all faiths were welcome and were catered for. As they are in the Christchurch Hospital chapel.
This is my last day at the hospital. I am booked to fly out later that afternoon. I find my way to the ward to follow up on the patients I have seen during the week. They are a mixed lot: an elderly woman from Fendalton who is destined for a rest home after a disabling stroke; a Māori man who is hoping to get home after a series of strokes have left him blind; a young French woman who has made a miraculous recovery after treatment from an unlikely stroke that left her unable to speak; a woman with Parkinson's disease who has developed a delusion that there are worms in her food; two people with a new diagnosis of motor neuron disease, both of whom have googled the disease and came up with "Stephen Hawking" in their first search; a grey elderly man with a recent stroke whom I recognise best through the constant presence of his flamboyantly-dressed Samoan partner; a young Iranian woman with a disabling muscular disease who prefers to be seen by female doctors and is in permanent communication with her husband via a mobile phone.
The ward round does not take up the whole morning. I go to the Neurology Department to thank the head of the stroke service and debrief on what he and his team have taught me. He is away for the rest of the day. It is still raining. I have an early lunch and think about my options. My flight does not leave till evening. I have enjoyed my walks across the park on my travels between the hospital and my accommodation. The green open space has been a haven away from the bustle of the city or the ward. Yesterday I detoured across the southern side of the park, past the Al Noor Mosque, to see the Hagley Oval where the Black Caps are preparing to play against Bangladesh. But today it is too wet. The rain doesn't look like it is going to stop. I make a decision to get a taxi from the hospital entrance, pick up my luggage at the hotel, and go out to the airport early.
I check in for my flight, buy a magazine, and sit down to read it. People come and go around me. I detect a new excitement. Several flights are cancelled. Mine is still OK. People are phoning relatives. Something dramatic is happening. One man tells the person at the other end of the phone, "I have never been so pleased to be getting out of Christchurch." There is an announcement. I hear something about "no need to panic" but cannot hear the details because of the noise around me. Earthquake? I have not felt any tremors. Not being a fan of technology, I have no access to the internet on my phone at the time. I text my wife: "At the airport. Something is happening in Christchurch city but I am not affected." Later, another text: "Boarding soon."
It is a cloudy flight to Queenstown. I keep reading my magazine, sitting quietly next to a woman who is equally engrossed in something on her laptop. As soon as we are allowed, people get their phones out to look at news websites. I walk through the airport, pick up my bag, find my car, and hear the news from Christchurch on the car radio: a shooting; up to fifty people killed; worshippers running in all directions from the mosque in Deans Ave; another mosque under attack; police combing the city for suspects; ambulances racing to and from the scenes; the hospital overwhelmed with casualties; other buildings in lockdown; widespread grief and support for the Moslem community. I missed it by minutes.
There are heroes. Some confront the shooter. Others distract him to prevent further injury within the mosque. Police bravely ram his vehicle. First responders, though conscious of the continuing risk, race in to deal with the injured. Christchurch hospital swings into action, following well-practised protocols developed after the tragedy of the earthquake. Other treatments are set aside. The ward I was in will empty out. The peaceful chapel I visited will be overcrowded. Hospitals throughout the country will take a few patients with more complex injuries. People ask me if I would like to have stayed and helped. "Yes," I reply. "But no. Anyone who doesn't know their systems would just be in the way."
I email the head of Neurology in Christchurch: "Thanks to you and your team for hosting me this week ... I learned a lot about acute stroke care ... I came away determined to do my part in reducing some of the inequities, between urban and rural patients, and between stroke patients and patients with other conditions ... It was probably lucky for me that you were not around when I looked for you late this morning ... I got a taxi to take me out to the airport earlier in the afternoon ... I was shocked to hear during my journey what had gone on. We are all thinking of the people in Christchurch who have had to go through it."
He emails back: "Great to meet you and it was good to have you here with us. Not at all the way we were expecting the week to end, but I was thinking about you and whether you got away ... We are keen to keep sharing the good news of what can be achieved for stroke patients throughout the region. A big challenge still remains for us to develop the right solutions for every area. But if we can take anything from what’s happened here, it is that we are all one."
The event dominates the headlines for weeks. The world watches. The Prime Minister hugs a grieving Moslem woman; the image is projected onto a skyscraper in Dubai. A Moslem girl in Christchurch with a headscarf, days after the event, is prevented from boarding a bus; her school friends who courageously condemn the incident are widely praised. A medical colleague is on the list of the dead. Christchurch holds a concert, mourning the dead and demonstrating solidarity with the Moslem community. Young Moslem leaders reveal they are not surprised by the attack. Brown friends and family tell me stories of the casual racism that is part of their normal lives. One, a Pacific Islander, a young man who happens to have a beard, recalls being abused by some youths in Dunedin, who wanted to know if he had a bomb in his back pack. "Islamophobia!" he says. "And I am not even Moslem."
Nor am I. I am not Moslem. I was not targeted. I was not involved. But I can't help thinking about it—a strangely remote form of survivor syndrome. What if the weather had been fine? What if I had come across the park back to the hotel? What if I had gone into the mosque? Could I have become a victim? Could I have done anything to prevent it, anything to intervene, anything to help? Why am I thinking about me, and not about the real victims, who have been so strong in their grief? "You are us," the Prime Minister tells them. Why can I not just accept it as their suffering, their loss, their event, and grieve with them?
Other stories push the event off the front pages. Sports teams win and lose. A volcanic island tragically erupts; tourists and their guides are killed. There is a global viral pandemic. Politicians come and go, shuffling themselves—Kings, Queens, Knaves, Jokers. We are occasionally reminded of what happened that wet afternoon in Christchurch. The shooter pleads guilty, is condemned in court by the survivors, by the media, by the world, and is sentenced. He is best forgotten. The survivors and families are, less appropriately, forgotten at times by the media. Some of them, it emerges, are forgotten by ACC. But those who were directly affected can never forget. New Zealand can never forget, can never regain its innocence, can never stop hoping that it will not happen again.