~~~~
Renal failure, they said. Curtains for me too. Wake up, you bastard. I didn’t agree to this suicide pact. We didn’t talk about it. You broke the rules. Get him off me, the son-of-a-bitch. Amputate before gangrene sets in. Can it be done? In the ‘fifties one twin carried his dead brother for five days and then died in agony. Not me, pal. I’m going under the knife.
They hook Rick up to a specially modified machine in Intensive Care and I lie beside him fuming. They give me something for shock. I wake to find doctors and surgeons congregating from all parts of the city and beyond to see this perfect specimen of Dicephales Tetrabrachius Dipus, and to decide who will have the honour of doing the surgery. A freak show for Consultants who gather in excited huddles and talk of state of the art techniques. There is no downside risk. Who would sue? Reputations can be made. I think of that time in a carnival side-show when a woman prodded us and said we were a fraud, just tied together with string. Oddly, I felt upset. We were genuine, the real thing. Now it’s all coming to an end. After half a life-time. Rick is still breathing with the help of a ventilator, so we have to wait.
A surgical team is selected and remain on stand-by, cancelling all further work until further notice. Almost brain-dead, Rick is slipping fast. They can start the surgery soon. The half life will soon be over. Or was it a double life? An even number anyway, despite the oddness. To my amazement I begin to feel grief. And a sad irony. Rick was the one who wanted independence, yet I am to be the beneficiary, the victor. There’s something wrong. I need time to think.
“There’s no time,” the chief surgeon says. “We have to proceed immediately.”
We were our own universe, my brother and I. A lonely vista opens up before me, a void on my left side, phantom pain. There was nothing we could do separately we couldn’t do better inside that universe. So I hesitate....And then I sense Rick’s will as if he were speaking, “Take your chance. Please, for me...Brother...friend in blood....” His thoughts flow into me before they pronounce him dead.
“Now,” the surgeon says. “Everything is ready. You must decide quickly.”
There is no choice after all. For that you need at least two possibilities. We were but one, a single locus around which we formed each other. Maybe one soul after all, forged by time and conjoined tissue. There is no individual death; the world dies each time. I place my arm around Rick. And wait. Oh, my brother.
And that is how we wake together in our own bed, the alarm-clock beating a tattoo on the night table.
“Oh, Christ, my head,” he moans.
“It’s just a hang-over.” I pat his forehead. The last time he was drunk I’d had bad dreams too. It’s good to be back to normal again. I hope Margaret doesn’t step in anything to-day.
Eileen and True Hunger Page 4
