THE JOYS OF RECOVERY
Truth is, I'm quite tired, and my fingers are thudding down onto the keyboard like the heavy legs of a shire-horse. But I had in mind to share one thing with you, and one day you too could be like me...
In my abstinence, and occasional serenity, I somehow won a little short story competition, and I thought you might, or not, like to read it...
Here it is...
ON GOING BLIND
Amok in copses, wild in
municipal allotments we’d run, throwing matches lit over blazered shoulders,
hoping our uniforms wouldn’t be identified by uncalled-for onlookers. Jet-black’n’wet in our wake, Morrissey danced
a zigzag through nascent flame. It was too
early to know if we were in trouble yet, as we tore across the Town Hall
car-park, and into the air-raid shelter, ivy-clad.
Morrissey panted and
pawed in the grit, seeming to know we’d overstepped. Through mesh, David said small fires were
forming, pooling their rapacity to flourish as one. This was more than just knocking on doors, or
stealing gum. Can’t undo the done, I
thought, in honour of a senior family member.
I could almost feel myself telling myself off on their behalf.
David had to take Mozza back
- he walked him for an agoraphobic lady, who stayed indoors making lavender
potpourri. He said we should go, but I
was afraid, half-thinking to earnestly seek assistance, making out to anyone
who’d listen that we’d stumbled on the blaze, playing Doctor Who among the
plum-trees. My head was aching
again. Was it guilt, as that same senior
relative had once suggested?
Lead jangling, the pair
shuffled out, and I followed, smelling smoke, choosing not to look back. Down the subway slope at speed in a
shopping-trolley, dog chasing, David dared on, as I stumbled in his wake,
dodging broken glass and dog-mess. Then,
surfacing by the bingo-hall, we parted at the pillar-box.
Home, I could hear a
sibling strumming, smell a joss-stick.
In my room, Kate Bush was still spinning, needle having missed the
cradle. Sibling had a guest, the
record-shop owner, bearded and bespectacled, demeanour of a Timelord, but for
the beard – Timelords rarely have beards.
He was at the top of the stairs, and I wondered if my face looked convincingly
innocent as he smiled and waved goodbye.
From the end of my bed, I
could see into nextdoor’s garden - even the mouldy Satsuma I threw down the day
before was still there, gleaming by an upturned bucket. The back door showed activity, a figure, vertical
and vitric, made many behind corrugated glass.
It was Wendy, and out she came with bin-bag hanging. She looked up, waved, and when our eyes met it
felt as if I saw beyond her face, and she mine.
My brain felt probed, researched, lovingly reconnaissanced. She did a little jig with the bin-lid spinning,
like those ladies in Mikado. Then,
closing the door, multiple Wendys vanished in shade. Sibling called up the stairs, asking did I
want cheese on toast. Mum and dad were
at a parents’ evening for the other one.
I called down yes, and lay on my bed, cos my eyes felt gritty.
Later, when mum and dad
were back, I ate some salt’n’vinegar crisps, but they made my mouth sore, and
they weren’t even that vinegary. My eyes
had kind of sleepdust on the lids. Mum
took my temperature, and it was a little bit high. I watched Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em in my
pyjamas, and went to bed, but felt hot, even though it was November, and the
window slightly open. I thought about
the fires, those orange demons we’d left to their own devices amid municipal
plum-trees.
When I woke, something was
wrong. My eyes were all crusted up, wouldn’t
open, and my mouth was like paper. I
called out, and mum came, and when she saw me I could tell there was more. She said I had a rash on my face, and when I
swivelled round and put my feet on the floor, there were blisters all over me,
like bubblewrap, on the souls of my feet too, and I couldn’t put any pressure
on them, for fear they’d burst.
‘I’d better call an
ambulance,’ mum said, and used the phone on the landing. Her voice sounded unfamiliar, like a blackbird
singing in a minor key at unrecognised weather.
I’d been in trouble with the ambulance and fire-brigade before, for
sending them to fake emergencies, reporting a fire at Lance Baxter’s house,
whose dad was a racist, then watching the engine arrive from the end of my
road, to no blaze. Mum sat me up, but I was
breathing with a wheeze, and her hand on my forehead felt so cool it almost stang. She wiped my eyes with a wet tissue, and they
opened a little, but were gritty. The
light through the window seemed to glare, and I shrank from it. I had a glass of Ribena by my bed, but when I
tried to swallow it, that hurt too.
It wasn’t long before an
ambulance came, and a woman and man took me out on a stretcher. I couldn’t put my feet down cos of the
bubblewrap. Out on the street, I was
slotted into the back of the ambulance, and the siren began, and my mum sat
next to me in her red jumper. It was
like being in the womb of a screaming woman.
When I got to the
hospital, nurses circled like vultures of altruism, put a thermometer in my
armpit, and when a doctor came, he said I should be put in isolation. Soon I was in a cubicle on a creaking metal bed,
with a tube down my throat. Before me,
thick glass, the children’s ward beyond, to my left a window showed the garden,
where a man was smoking in the drizzle.
My dad arrived, cos mum
had rung him at work, but they were only allowed into my cubicle with masks
over their mouths, not because they’d catch what I had, but because their germs
might harm me. Dad looked like stone,
his trapezium face rigid, eyes almost crossed with bewilderment. A nurse said it was best if I was left for a
while, and it wasn’t long before I was staring, leaning back on a pile of plumped
pillows, at mum, dad, and the siblings, lined up behind the glass, their faces
like I’d never seen them, zipmouthed, due to lack of reference points. I think I’d been given something to make me
go to sleep, cos next thing I just woke up with my head hanging down, like a
puppet whose strings had been cut.
Next morning, my eyes
were gummed up, and my skin felt so tender.
The Scottish nurse came in, with cream for the inside of my mouth, which
was all roughed up with thrush. The
medicine was called Daptharin, and meant to be orange flavour. She dabbed my eyes with wet cotton-wool, and
slowly I pried them open. She said, ‘Can
you see the locum in the garden?’ I
looked at the window, asking, ‘Is it foggy?’
She dropped the wool in the bag on my locker, and said the doctor would
be in soon. The orange flavour stang my
throat, and I felt like I was lying in leaves.
Feeling down my side, the
blisters had mostly burst, but the skin around them had peeled off, and I was
lying in flakes, feeling nakeder than naked.
Then I realised it wasn’t foggy outside at all, it was foggy everywhere,
a white veil had fallen between me and the world, outside and in. I held my hand out, but saw little more than
a flesh spectre, unsure even as to how many fingers I was holding up, failing a
test that I myself had set.
My mum had stayed over in
a room for family, and was soon at the end of my bed, her voice kazoo-like, due
to the paper mask. I mentioned my
vision, thinking I might need contact lenses like one of the siblings. I’d never known her so uncertain, so not
knowing what to say. If she couldn’t
console me, then something very serious was afoot. And when the doctor came, they went outside
and I could hear them discussing me. It
was his belief that I had something called Stevens Johnsons Syndrome, which was
probably due to a toxic reaction, maybe to a medicine, and he asked her what,
if anything, I’d taken in the past month.
She told him about a few painkillers, something for a sore throat, then
began to cry, in case she’d given me something harmful.
Later, dad arrived. They were both allowed in, masked. I was given a portable telly, but I couldn’t
see it, and it was too far to reach from the bed. I wondered if I would get lunch, but that’s
what the tube was for, putting liquid goodness down my throat on my behalf,
because I couldn’t swallow. My
temperature was now really high. Mum
stayed in the family room for the next few days, as I, peeling and delirious,
listened to programmes I wouldn’t normally have watched, or listened to. Each morning, I was eased sideways onto a
waiting stretcher, so my bed could be changed, and I could hear the dead skin falling
to the floor, like confetti at a ghoul’s wedding.
News of my demise had got
home, and to school, and one morning my mum brought in a get well card from
Wendy. She handed it me, I ripped open
the envelope, and pulled out the unreadable card. I could never see Wendy again, I thought, because
of what I’d become, like someone in Doctor Who who gets turned into one of the
monsters, and although they have a human mind, they’re now a flailing thing,
with pincers and the eyes of an insect.
Mum read Wendy’s words, but I felt like I was in a different universe,
and the portal was like a funnel, you could only go one way through.
Days passed, and once my
skin begun to heal, and I could swallow again, I was allowed to eat something soft,
jelly and blancmange, but I just had the jelly, cos the blancmange had skin,
like custard. It was November 5th,
and the hospital was having fireworks, and I was wheeled out into the
children’s ward, where I could watch the display. By now, my temperature was nearly back to
normal, but even propped up on four pillows, and pointed at the window, I could
still only see fireworks that rose above the level of the windowsill, the top
half of a Catherine Wheel, the fizzing tip of a Roman Candle, and other jubilant
flourishes. Then, festivities done, I
was wheeled back into my room, where I spent the next few days.
And then, one morning,
the doctor said I could go home, but it didn’t feel like me going at all, or at
least not the me who’d arrived. Seems I
couldn’t see, and my new skin was shiny and sore. It hurt just to put clothes on, but off I
went in the car in a pair of dark glasses, because daylight was now too bright,
and I said to mum I was like a pop-star who didn’t want to be recognised – but
there’s a thin line between vanity and paranoia. At home, one of the siblings gave me a card
from both of them. Dad described it. It had a TARDIS on, but the words inside
sounded awkward and unsure.
Dinner was soft, mashed
carrot’n’potato, with melted cheese, and it wasn’t long before David came round. He’d been walking Morrissey down the
municipal. We went upstairs, and he said
our fires had petered out, because it was damp, but there were dark patches
where some had nearly taken. Nextdoor, a
dustbin-lid rattled, and David confirmed to me that Wendy was in the garden. I pictured her little jig with spinning lid,
her corrugated selves shifting behind glass, the mouldy Satsuma, and how I’d
learned to see, and be seen, in a way I’d not known before. David read his card, without even handing it
me first, and I felt ashamed I could no longer run amok with him, making fires,
doing dares. Had she seen me?
End. Thanks for dropping by. Here's a song...
