Last Days of Ava Langdon

by Mark O'Flynn

  ‘How fast were you going?’

  ‘Not fast.’

  ‘How fast, exactly?’

  The townsfolk return to their interrupted business. In her café Marjorie, busy with the lunchtime rush, must be wondering why the traffic has backed up past the window and down the hill.

  The drama moves on. Much as Ava likes to be the centre of attention she does not like to be the cause of a commotion, unless it is a literary one over her opinion on the latest bestseller, say. However, at the moment that is not important.

  ‘Please, please don’t—’

  But they do. They close the doors and she is trapped like a sparrow inside a mausoleum. Immediately she wants to go to the toilet. The driver, Ahmed, goes round to the driver’s seat and starts the engine. She weighs up her options, breathing rapidly. Going with the flow seems to be the most sensible course at the moment. Resistance, as they say, is useless. She does not tell them, for instance, that the hospital is located on the way home to her hut (she passed it this morning, remember) so this is cheaper than a taxi. They’re doing her a favour. It will save her some shoe leather when she is ready to make her escape. They don’t need to know her ulterior motives. She hopes the young driver won’t have to go to gaol for his part in the misadventure. He probably needs someone to take him aside and give him a pat on the back. Would nice Officer Fowler have that in him? she wonders. She lies back and lets the ambulance medic examine her, laying his cold fingers on her skin like a soothsayer at the ouija board.

  His cursory field study has already uncovered the machete beneath the coat.

  ‘What’s this for?’

  ‘Dogs.’

  ‘What dogs?’

  ‘All dogs. It’s very useful.’

  He accepts this. He’s been around. Seen everything. He can see she’s nervous. Helping her into the ambulance he sensed her resistance. Some people hate hospitals, it’s true.

  ‘My hat,’ she squawks, but she’s not wearing a hat. She’s like a stubborn cat on a flywire screen that will not be moved. She wilts. Should she scream? She’s one step from death, lying there on the bench. Her hat gone. Ben, in the back with her, asks her how she feels and she replies:

  ‘Short of breath. Dizzy. Peripatetic.’

  She asks for some oxygen just so she can hear the hiss of the cylinder. Ben obliges.

  ‘What’s this for?’ she asks, reaching out for something silver and shiny.

  ‘Don’t touch that.’ He slaps her hand softly. Tut tut. ‘It’s been an all right day, hasn’t it? Apart from the rain.’

  He’s trying to keep her talking, to distract her, but Ava feels more tired than in pain.

  ‘A great day,’ she says, dissembling. She rubs her shoulder. He holds the mask to her face and Ava breathes in the smell of rubber and metal. Ahmed, the driver, turns a couple of corners. Too soon they are at the hospital – it really is only down the road a way – idling up the Emergency ramp. Hardly worth the effort. They didn’t even have to turn the siren on.

  The rear doors are opened by an Emergency nurse. Ahmed and Ben help Ava down to a waiting wheelchair.

  ‘Thanks very much,’ she says, putting on a brave face, ‘I can walk from here.’

  ‘No you don’t,’ says the nurse, placing a restraining hand on her shoulder, easing her with some authority into the chair. The automatic doors glide open and the nurse wheels her through. When the door shuts behind them again, Ava feels immediately breathless, like the air has been sucked out of the building and she’s breathing cement dust. She doesn’t want to share the air. There’s only enough for her. The Emergency department opens out before them. At the same time this desperate urge to micturate – right now – comes over her again. If she doesn’t she’ll burst, here all over the floor. But the urge is distracted (what urge?) by another nurse, who appears like an archangel with a clipboard, asking her name. What to answer? Ava or Oscar, or something else? There are so many choices.

  ‘Oscar,’ says Ava. Oscar will come to her rescue.

  ‘Really? Oscar.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  She pursues the matter of the surname, which takes a little clarification.

  ‘I have a certificate of deed poll somewhere here.’

  She ferrets about in her bag.

  ‘Never mind,’ says the nurse, ‘I believe you.’

  This exchange is followed by the query: ‘Address?’

  ‘Olympus.’

  The nurse writes that down, thinking it might be a street name. She no doubt has her own problems which Ava can’t begin to imagine at the moment, although if she put her mind to it …

  ‘Am I under arrest?’ Oscar asks.

  ‘No. Of course not.’

  ‘Am I then free to go?’

  ‘Well, yes, but we want to make sure nothing’s broken.’

  ‘As in?’

  ‘As in bones.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Let’s go in here.’

  She wheels Ava into a cubicle and whips a rattling curtain about them to form a Bedouin’s tent.

  ‘This is cosy,’ says Ava.

  ‘What happened?’ The nurse asks this of the ambulance medic, Ben, who is loitering in the background waiting for a tip like an attendant at the entombment of a pharaoh, the one who extricates the brains piece by piece with a spatula and puts them in a ceramic jar.

  ‘Pedestrian hit by MV. Minor lacerations to right thigh. Also arrhythmia.’

  The nurse nods, writes this down.

  ‘Don’t forget my scybalum,’ says Ava.

  Ben, his duty done, goes away, far away, to his own narrative beyond the doors. It is impossible for her to keep track of them all.

  ‘Where does it hurt, dear?’ The nurse turns back to Ava. She must have a name too. A whole history behind those green eyes.

  ‘My duodenum,’ Ava answers. This makes the nurse open and shut her mouth a few times.

  ‘Anywhere else?’

  ‘My throat is a limekiln, my brain a furnace, and my nerves a coil of angry adders.’

  ‘That sounds serious. How about we make sure your leg’s not fractured for starters. Do you want to put your bag on this chair?’

  ‘No.’

  There are a few further questions which Ava cannot remember and to which she lets Oscar make up the responses.

  ‘Are you allergic to penicillin?’

  ‘I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.’

  The nurse (Susan: it’s on the ID tag hanging from a little chain about her ivory neck), who has had a busy morning, casts Ava aside to wait, for how long she does not know, and in that time Ava manages to close her eyes, which is pleasant. It’s nice here in this tent. She listens to the hustle and bustle of medical emergencies going on about her. It’s like a radio serial. In a while the nurse returns and continues with her esoteric procedure, filling in a few more forms.

  ‘Now let’s have a look at this leg.’

  Ava unclasps her braces and stands to lower her strides. The machete handle clatters on the floor (the blade is still in its sheath). Susan does not even glance at it. She puts her face to the gash on Ava’s white thigh. There is a loose triangle of skin flapping and a strawberry slick of blood descending her leg, drying around the edges.

  ‘Nasty. What caused that?’

  ‘Figs.’

  ‘Figs?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It might need a stitch or two. We’ll get doctor to take a look.’

  ‘Bugger doctor,’ says Ava, and the nurse laughs. Human at least, they agree on something. Nurse makes a few phone calls. Ava wonders if she is calling the wardens, if she is being sectioned again.

  Her bladder burns. In a while a young doctor appears, whisking the flap of the tent aside. He has sleepless eyes and eyebrows that almost join toge
ther. Ava can see the pores in his nose. He perfunctorily examines Ava’s leg.

  ‘Nasty. What caused that?’

  ‘Time’s winged chariot.’

  ‘I thought you said figs,’ says Nurse Susan.

  Ava shrugs.

  ‘Right,’ says the doctor. ‘Well, it’ll need a few stitches. Can you clean her up, please, nurse?’

  ‘Yes, doctor.’

  Ava cannot stand the hierarchy of the place, the condescension. The doctor steps out of the tent while Susan swabs Ava’s leg with moist cotton-wool balls. Ouch. The water in the little bowl turns pink. The doctor returns with an upright hypodermic syringe. He jabs it into Ava’s thigh – Ouch! Fuck! Ouch! – just above the hypotenuse that still joins the flap of skin to the rest of her.

  ‘Did that hurt?’

  ‘Of course it bloody hurt.’

  ‘It’s just a local. You won’t feel anything in a moment.’

  And he’s right. The anaesthetic quickly starts to work. She can’t tell if the wound has been caused by glass from the broken headlight or glass from the sherry bottle. What a tragic waste. Ava watches the doctor as he sews six evenly spaced sutures, three along each open side of the triangle. She can feel the pressure of the needle as it pierces her skin, the tension of the thread drawing through, but no pain, thank goodness. She leans nearer the doctor. She’s close enough to see the beginnings of tomorrow’s whiskers. She wonders what would happen if she bit his ear?

  ‘That should knit together nicely,’ says the doctor, packing away his sewing kit. ‘You’ll have a little war wound to boast about.’

  ‘What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger,’ says Ava.

  ‘Something like that.’

  The doctor glances at her as if suddenly aware that she is a person. She smiles sweetly. He exits the Bedouin tent leaving the curtain wide open. Nurse Susan swabs the war wound with some antiseptic and places a bandage over it. What is all the fuss about? Ava wonders.

  Ava glances around at the Emergency ward. The silver stands – hat racks, are they? A man on crutches. A woman with her arm in a sling. When they look at her through the door of the tent, absorbed in the tall story of their own crisis, she becomes nothing but a bare-legged woman on a gurney. One of the broken. Is that her only story? You are no more than your disease. Well, that’s a lot of horse shit, thinks Ava. It’s barely a scratch. Now’s the time to get out of here; she has been co-operative long enough. Susan opens up the sides of the tent. Lying on a nearby stretcher is another fellow with a white patch over one eye, waiting patiently for the eagle to return and peck out the other. Hospitals are places of poisoned memory for Ava, not recovery. She slides off the bed and picks up her trousers, with the machete swinging loosely.

  ‘Let’s leave this here, shall we?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It’ll make the machine go berserk.’

  ‘What do you mean? I want to leave.’

  ‘Not yet, dear. There’s a few more tests to be done.’

  It’s all too much. Ava slumps back into the wheelchair. Without her helmet she’s like jelly.

  ‘If you must,’ she says, resigned. ‘I suppose I shall have to die beyond my means.’

  Soon, she knows, the eagle will come for her.

  ‘No one’s going to die,’ says Nurse Susan, presumptuously, as if she knows something more than she’s letting on.

  The nurse places the machete on a nearby chair.

  ‘It must be returned to me untarnished and unscathed,’ says Ava. ‘In fact I would like a surety.’

  ‘We don’t do sureties.’

  ‘What sort of outfit are you running here?’

  ‘Let’s get you X-rayed, then we’ll see. How are you feeling?’

  ‘Not ill,’ says Oscar, ‘but very weary.’

  ‘Let’s leave your pants here too. What lovely material.’

  ‘Thank you. We like them a lot.’

  Susan fingers the cloth as if it is cash. ‘I love your … what is that? A cravat?’

  ‘Indeed. And I love your bib,’ replies Ava. ‘Isn’t this a lovely little chat we’re having about fashion.’

  The nurse doesn’t appreciate Ava’s tone.

  ‘You can pop this gown on, please.’

  Against her instincts Ava struggles into the gown, open and breezy at the back. She only does it because Susan is being so nice to her.

  ‘What’s this on your stomach?’ the nurse asks.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘It looks like ink.’

  ‘My stock-in-trade,’ says Ava, wrapping the gown around her.

  ‘Good. And here, take these.’

  She gives Ava three pills, which Ava knocks back without water.

  ‘I actually meant for later. It’ll throb when that local wears off. Here, these are for tonight.’

  Susan hands Ava some more pills in an alfoil sachet, which she hides in the breast pocket of her linen shirt. Thankfully it has remained relatively untarnished through this ordeal.

  ‘Tell me, when did you last eat?’

  ‘I’ve just had lunch,’ says Ava, ‘thank you.’

  ‘What did you eat?’

  ‘Soup.’

  ‘And is there anyone at home for you?’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘That’s good.’

  ‘Yes, Plutus and Bacchus.’

  Nurse Susan gives this information a moment’s digestion, then shrugs to herself.

  She wheels Ava off in the chair down a squeaky-clean corridor. Lights reflect in it like Chinese lanterns in the Yangtze. They turn a corner. Another. They’re getting further and further from the exit. It’s a rat maze.

  ‘I need to micturate,’ says Ava.

  ‘Really? Can’t you wait till after the X-ray?’

  ‘No.’

  Nurse Susan, with pretty wisps of hair floating from under her cap like shreds of spider web, takes a detour to the lavatory – and there are the two doors again, the eternal question. The dark fellow with the sickle and cowl. Homme or Femme? Ava’s dilemma returns. It never really goes away; it just resurfaces now and then in times of crisis, like the oil and jetsam fired from a torpedo tube masquerading as death.

  ‘I can walk,’ says Ava.

  ‘That’s good. Not broken then.’

  Ava stands. Her leg throbs but she can stand alone. A statue. A mountain. All praise to the vertical. Quick as a ferret she darts into the male toilet. The nurse calls out:

  ‘Oscar, that’s the wrong door.’

  But Ava is already through. Too late, sister. Homme. There is no one within and she locks herself into a cubicle. She breathes. Calm. Hardly claustrophobic at all. She opens the gown and examines her thigh. Just a scratch underneath the bandage. It’s a nice job. The bruise, she knows, will come up later, but bruises are signs of adversity and triumph. What she has had to struggle through for her art. It’s quiet here and she takes her time. The relief is like all her troubles being lifted at once, but there is never a total respite from trouble. That’s what being human is.

  Echo of her breathing. She rests her forehead against the cold white wall of the cubicle. How did she get here? To this point? She wishes she had taken better care of her topi. She feels desperately weary, wonders if it might be opportune to take a little nap …

  There is a tap at the door and she starts awake. How long has she been asleep?

  ‘Are you all right, dear?’

  The nurse is waiting with the chair, ready to humour her. You naughty little patient, her frown says, but she holds her tongue. Ava pulls up her underpants, flushes, then sits back down in the chair.

  ‘I was dreaming of the Cotswolds.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘No, but I’ve always wanted to say that, dreaming of the Cotswolds. Drive on,’ she says.

&n
bsp; Along the corridors there are pictures, old photographs of doctors and high-faluting administrators, scowling down as if scowling down was some sort of heritage. One of them is a dour fellow with a fine moustache, looking off into the distance. What she would give to be able to grow a moustache like that. Susan wheels her on to the X-ray clinic. A door to an inner sanctum. She hands over Ava’s chart to two other nurses. A technician lurks behind a thickened glass window. They examine her chart on its little masonite clipboard. At the top it says in important-looking letters: Western Area Health. Suddenly Ava is the sort of person who has a chart. She remembers what power they hold and what use they can be put to. Tool of the oppressor, the chart will be satisfied. The nurses manoeuvre her into the annexe with the expensive equipment. It’s like being in the bowels of a submarine, her torpedo tubes full of oil and detritus. One of the new nurses has powerful wrists like a man. Ava gives her a quick second glance: nope, she’s a woman. Through the window the technician looks at the instruments and dials.

  There is a grim, silver table on which they expect her to lie. It is like the slab in an abattoir. The nurses barely blink at the big white male underpants exposed at the back of the gown. Unexpectedly she whimpers.

  ‘Listen, Oscar,’ says Susan kindly, ‘we need to make sure your leg isn’t fractured, so we’re going to sit you up here and take a photograph.’

  ‘I can walk, can’t I?’

  ‘It’s a routine procedure. It won’t hurt,’ says the one with the thick wrists.

  ‘That’s what you all say,’ says Ava, but without her machete, without her coat, or helmet, she feels defenceless. She has been reduced. She is a patient with a chart and her brain in a jar. She cannot resist. They are relentless. Oscar fades away towards the back of the room, a little boy crouching in the corner, everyone laughing at him.

  ‘If you must,’ she says.

  They manage to get her on the table. Ouch and ooh and aah.

  ‘Lift your bottom, dear.’

  She does, and they slide the zinc plate or whatever it is under her leg. It’s cold. They position the camera overhead, a red cross shining on the target of her thigh.

  ‘Now lie still.’

  They go behind the lead screen and peer at her through the window. Ava lies still as a dead kangaroo in the grass at the side of the road. Let all the rot that hides in her keep still and silent; let no one sniff her out. She tries to think of nothing. She hears the machines click and whirr. The nurses come back in and roll her into another position, manipulating her like a sausage.