Byker Books

 

 

A middle aged man slouched in a chair looking across the desk at a man half his age in a white coat. The tiny office smelt sickeningly clean. It was devoid of furniture except for the desk and a filing cabinet near the only window overlooking the dirty roof and chimneys of the hospital. Rays of sunshine dodged in and out of threatening clouds and projected a screen of light onto the opposite wall.

The doctor was nervously playing with a pencil between his fingers as if he was blindly trying to identify an unfamiliar object.

“You mean he’s going to be a cripple for the rest of his life?” the man spat in disgust.

“If that’s how you want to put it, yes… for as long as that is.”

The doctor sighed and sat back in his chair as though a weight had been lifted from him.

The man stared silently in disbelief. His face was blank for a few seconds while the statement sank in. The doctor looked apologetically across the desk at him. Neither spoke. The man looked straight ahead at the doctor, then his face crumpled and he sobbed into his hands.

The sun went behind a cloud and the white square of light on the wall disappeared.

* * *

“Hey, Deano?”

There was no answer from the seemingly lifeless mound in the bed.

“Hey, how’s it going Bro?”

The object in the bed didn’t answer or even indicate he’d heard. He lay still, facing the opposite wall. The boy tried again. “Everyone’s asking after you... down the club an’ that”.

Deano stayed silent. The boy carried on talking, “you’ll be coming home tomorrow then, good eh?”

I’m staring at this tiny crack in the wall. It’s all flaky round the edges. It’s getting bigger. Maybe it’ll get big enough for me to seep into it? Slip between these tiny, crumbling atoms in the plaster. Club?… someone’s having a baby? CLUB… biscuit! ‘if you like a lot of chocolate’… I don’t want a biscuit, I just want to squeeze inside this crack. Club... football. Home tomorrow. Home… ‘football’s coming home’…

* * *

“Fuck!”

I skin my knuckles as I scrape the wheelchair past the kitchen table on the way to the sink. I examine my fist and watch red pinpricks of blood rising to the surface of the shiny, white skin. I stretch up and try to turn on the tap.

I know you’re there. I can feel you. Looking at me, pitying me. Just speak for fuck’s sake, just ask me, just say it!

He’s just standing there, silently in the kitchen doorway, looking old and grey and tired.

Ok, I’ll save you the agony,

“Alrite dad, gonna give us a hand?”

I hand him a chipped, yellow cup. He fills it and takes a mouthful from the top before putting it on the table amongst various boxes of pills and tablets. He watches me add a small orange pill to the line of five assorted coloured and sized tablets already on the table.

“Beats me what all these pills are for son.”

“Just painkillers and anti-sickness and stuff mostly… you don’t need to know what they’re for dad, you just need to learn which ones and when… for later on… when I can’t…”

* * *

“You coming down the club with me today?”

I fall silent and scowl at my brother like a kid with a smacked arse.

“Oh come on Deano, you’ve got to go out sometime, you can’t stay in here forever.”

Huh, forever? You’re havin’ a laugh?

There’s an awkward pause.

I think for a minute then agree, reluctantly.

* * *

My brother sighs as the last of his mates get up and leave. He looks over at me sat staring down into the froth-rimmed glass in my hand. I tip it slightly, watching swirls of white foam making patterns in the inch depth of watery golden liquid.

“You could try and look like you’re enjoying yourself even if you’re not.”

I look sullenly into my patterns.

“You wanted me to come. I didn’t say I’d enjoy myself did I?”

God, I can be a bastard.

He knows when he’s beaten and swigs back the dregs of his drink.

“Come on then, let’s go home”, he says standing up.

I think for a minute, still looking into my glass, then I leave it on the table, not wanting to destroy the foam swirls.

* * *

God, I’m knackered… my head’s blurry round the edges… and heavy, everything looks…. heavy. Hey, Sunday roast!… who put that here? Is it Sunday? They must have put the tray on my lap when I was sleeping… while I was sleeping… ‘while you were sleeping’. I love Sunday roast… roast ‘tatoes, loads of gravy… get in! Tastes of…. nothing. Must be the drugs, what a downer… uppers?… downers? I wanna cry… like a girl… like a baby… what a girl!

“Deano? Deano, mate, what are you doing?” My brother takes my hands in his and gently lowers them to my lap.

I look puzzled. I don’t understand.

“I’m eating me dinner?”

“Deano, there’s nothing there mate. We haven’t had dinner yet….” He’s speaking really softly like I’m a proper thicko.

I look down and the plate’s gone. I look up and my brother’s staring at me, scared… like he doesn’t know who I am any more.

Do I know who I am anymore? I’m still me… aren’t I?

The box on my belt makes a clockwork whirr and a little click and a dose of liquid morphine is forced up the tube into my arm.

* * *l

What’s that?!… darkness… Fuck, what is that?!… they’ve got my legs! What are they doing? They’ve come for me, they’ve got me! Don’t!… leave me alone, please… don’t… oh God, please don’t! I can see them… they’re gonna kill me… please, don’t let them kill me… FUCK!! I’m scared, I’m so fuckin’ scared… don’t want to be here…. scared… I’m so scared I wanna wet myself… why is it so dark?…

uhhhhh, breeeeathe….. that’s better… soft… pure… is it still dark? Open your eyes… open my eyes… eyes wide open… ‘eyes wide shut’. No darkness… just light… not heavy… ‘he’s my brother’, ha! Lightness… ‘the unbearable lightness of being’… or not being? Breathe… breathe. Don’t breathe? No breath… no need.

* * *

A middle aged man opened the door into the tiny, hospital office he’d sat in two months earlier. His eldest son looked up when he heard the door shut. The man stared for a second at his son’s tear stained face, then put his arms around him and wept.

The first light of dawn came through the window and made a hazy square of shadow on the wall and the hospital chimneys poured out smoke into the grey sky.