Rain falls from the sky in quantities ranging from slight to steady, hitting the windshield; it is easily tossed aside by the sweep of the blades arching back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. By this measure, this is not rain, not simply rain in any case. It is a serious downpour, and you wouldn’t be driving a battered sedan through this at night if you fell like you had other options.
“Can I have a turn at driving?” the younger brother asks.
“Yeah, sure,” his brother replies. “When it slows down a little. I am sure you’re a perfectly good driver. It’s just that this is really nasty.”
When they talk normally, the drumming of the rain on the roof drowns out their voices, so they raise their voices to the edge of shouting. The water charges down the windscreen in waves. The wipers make the relentless sheets thinner and the shape of the road is visible. Wipers have been at full speed for a good hour and the lights at high-beam. Still, visibility is awful. The boys see twenty metres when things were good. Lots of the time, it is half of that distance. Eventually, the older brother pulls the rusty, old Datsun to the side of the road.
“We’re running pretty late,” the younger brother says. “I hope they let us in.”
“We’re just going to have to be a bit later. I just can’t see well enough in this to drive. So what did they say was wrong with Mum?”
“They had to take her to the hospital, something to do with her breathing.”
“Who called you?” the older young-man asks.
“Some doctor at the hospital. It wasn’t her usual doctor. Did you hear that Mum’s usual doctor tried to kill herself?”
His brother considers this for a moment, regarding the sheets of water flowing down the outside of the car.
“I know this is going to sound awful,” he says, “but I’m not sure that I entrust my medical care to a doctor who couldn’t successfully kill herself. If she’d got it right, well, that would be another matter.”
“You know…you’re absolutely right. That does sound awful. And callous.”
“Well, I did warn you.”
They laugh uneasily as the rain continued to drum on the roof.
Eventually the older brother says, “We may as well keep moving.”
“Can I drive?”
They get out of the car quickly and run around the car in order to swap seats. Once back in the car, they are both soaked to the skin. The younger brother flicks the headlights on, pushes down the indicator, and pulls the car back out onto the road. The continue along the road, through the night and the rain, and on their way to the hospital.