August 9 2005
Wishers Well,
Misfortune seems
to plague the first week in Edinburgh for the Brinkman brothers. Last year I was knocked out after my
first show with strepp throat and had to cancel three shows in a row. This year no shows have been cancelled,
but Erik has already fallen prey to another kind of infection.
After the show a
few days ago we went with a group of C Venues people to the famous Spiegle
Tent, a restored 1920s cabaret tent where there was to be a swing dance party
with free entry. The tent is in a
park surrounded by a lit-up beer gardens and enclosed with a black wrought-iron
fence. Upon arriving we found a long
line circling around the outside of the fence, but were told by the doorman
that it would only take five minutes.
Standing in line
you could see through breaks in the trees and hear the tantalizing revelry
going on inside and Erik quickly decided to break ranks and jump the
queue. With a cheerful "see
you in there", he moved away from the crowd along the fence and attempted
it once, seemed to fall back, checked his shoe, then hoisted himself over and
disappeared into the bushes. Five
minutes later we were almost in, but Erik had already been fingered by an
indignant Brit (the British love to queue), and was expelled from the
grounds. So we laughed it off, the
reward for his impatience was to be that he would miss out on the Spiegle Tent
for one night, no big deal.
Later we met up
and danced and caroused at C Bar with the various thespians and festival types
who descend on Edinburgh this time of year, and when the bar closed at 5 a.m.
we cruised home in style, me on my bike and Erik on his roller blades, just
like we did dozens of times last year.
By the beginning
of the ride home Erik was visibly in pain, however, and complaining about his
foot, which he said he had hurt on the fence. When we got back he pulled it out of his roller blade and I
saw the extent of the damage for the first time. The fence had been lined with six-inch long black iron
spikes and he had put his foot on one of these as a step, trusting his shoe,
but it had punctured through and stabbed him. A treeplanter to the core, he ignored the pain and ran
around and danced on it all night.
Before we went to bed I cleaned up the cut with disinfectant - it was a
good centimeter deep in the ball of his foot.
This was Saturday
night. Sunday his foot had swollen
and he couldn't get it in a shoe or even wiggle his toes, but we went on with
the day, made our way to the theatre (the show must go on), in a cab this time,
and put on The Rap Canterbury Tales to a healthy audience of about forty. We should have gone to the hospital,
and kept saying so, but he didn't insist and neither did I, and it was Sunday,
and he didn't have travel insurance, so we went back to the flat and he watched
videos and put his foot up and rested while I went to the Fringe launch party,
which was amazing. The rationale
was that we would wait and see how it looked in the morning.
Yesterday when he
woke up it was worse, stiffer, more swollen, and he finally got the bus and
headed for the Royal Infirmary, which turned out to have a student facility
that didn't require insurance after all.
His foot was badly infected, they said, with visible tracks on his blood
vessels around the cut, a la Requiem for a Dream. I went to the theatre and waited for him, but at show-time
he still wasn't there, and I had to quickly train a new tech and put a
simplified version of the show on without him. They had him on an antibiotic IV drip during the show and
wouldn't let him go despite his protestations: "what's more important, the
show or your life?" Then they
released him last night on crutches and we went to a friend's for dinner.
This morning he
got up at seven and went straight to the hospital for a follow up, and I got a
call from him just an hour ago to say that the infection is worse, has doubled
in size, and they are keeping him in the hospital for the next forty-eight
hours at least to continue the IV drip and monitor the blood vessel
tracking. I am on my way there now
to check in on him and bring him a book.
In other trivial
news, the Rap Canterbury Tales is selling well after six shows, better than
last year already, lots of media attention, festival hype, etc, etc. Please send your prayers and healing
thoughts to my brother's foot; ironic as the circumstances were, blood
infections are no trifle. I'll
keep you posted when I know more.
All good things to you, bacteria excepted,