A to Z of You and Me

by James Hannah

  “Ah, I don’t know anymore.”

  “Or if you didn’t want to go there, at least a little bit of massage, and maybe some gentle exercise.”

  “Mmm.”

  “Nothing too strenuous, just something to take your mind off things. And we’ve got a woman who’ll come and do that for you—Karen. You’ll like her; she’s lovely. I can book you in for one, if you like? I’d like to see you up and about more, please.”

  “Mmm.”

  “Or there’s a Reiki healer? Some of our residents get a lot from that; the woman comes in and realigns your chakras for you.”

  She does an admirable job of saying it seriously, though I suspect at the center she thinks it’s nonsense. I shake my head. No, no.

  “No, I didn’t think that would be quite your bag, somehow.” I give her a smile. “Honestly. You’ve got to help yourself as much as you can, and I’m not saying that because I don’t want to do it myself. I can do whatever you want. But you’ve got to help yourself.”

  “Mmm.”

  “Promise me you’ll at least think about it.”

  “OK.”

  “Promise?”

  “Promise.”

  K

  Kidneys

  I’ve put off making this call for as long as I can.

  I must have picked up the phone fifty times today and put it down without pressing a single digit.

  Now I’ve pressed them all, and it’s ringing.

  It’s six weeks and four days since we split up, and we’ve spoken—what?—four times? And each of those calls has stuttered to a halt in the end. You need space. You don’t know if it’s worth it. At any rate, you need to concentrate. You don’t know if it’s even possible to keep a relationship going and get through what you’re trying to get through.

  “So many of the other women on the course have split up from their partners,” you said. “I sometimes wonder if nursing and a private life mix at all.”

  And in each of our halting conversations, with a leaden heart and closed throat, I’ve said, “Can you tell me absolutely that there’s no hope of anything happening at all? Ever?”

  And that’s what’s left those long static silences. You haven’t been able to kill it completely.

  There has always been that finest thread of hope.

  The finest thread, which I’m about to snap forever.

  “Hello?”

  Heartbreaking warmth in your voice when you pick up. You’re showing a guarded pleasure from seeing my name light up on your phone.

  “Hello,” I say simply. And then I realize I’ve not really thought this through. What can I say? “I’m…I’m sorry for ringing you.”

  “No, it’s nice to hear from you.”

  “How are you doing?”

  “Ah, not brilliant, if I’m honest. I’ve got my final exam coming up, so I’m flat-out busy and completely stressed. It’s a bit of a classic deadly combination.”

  “It’s never-ending,” I say.

  “But it’s good to have a break. I was quite hoping you might call.”

  Oh, don’t be nice to me. Don’t. I don’t need hope now, when I’m about to throw the whole thing away.

  “Look,” I say, “I…I wanted to say something, but I don’t really know…”

  “OK…”

  “I’ve got some…some shit news from the doctor’s.”

  “Oh no, what?”

  Think quickly. I need to get this out there quicker—because you think I might be dying now, and I don’t know… I don’t know if I am dying or something—

  “I’ve been trying to get to grips with a few things since…you know, lately…and I’ve been for a bunch of checkups. I’ve been referred to the renal consultant.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “I had the appointment this morning.”

  “And what—”

  “He says I’ve got high levels of…creatinine? In my blood.”

  Silence. I think for a moment you might hang up.

  I think you might say Serves you right.

  I think you might say I told you so.

  You say, “Shit.”

  “He says there are signs of kidney failure.”

  “Fuck.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me? I could have come along with you. What—”

  “I’m sorry for phoning you. I just… I’ve been such a dick. You’re the only person I know who I could talk to about it. And you’re a nurse, so I thought you might know something.”

  You sigh heavily, and you sound much more shocked than I thought you would. The tiny ember of hope still glows in the middle of all this suffocating ash.

  “I don’t know. I don’t know,” you say. “Is it a stable result? Did they test a full day’s samples?”

  “He was talking about Stage 2 kidney failure.”

  “Ivo, why didn’t you say anything? You must have been beside yourself.”

  “I didn’t think you’d want to know. You said you don’t need to watch someone else fuck themselves up.”

  “How could you think that?”

  “Kidney failure. Exactly what you said.”

  “I would never turn you away like that,” you say. “Come on, you know that.”

  I heave an exhausted sigh. “I don’t know if I do anymore.”

  “Listen,” you say, slotting into a practical gear, “I’ve got a whole load of notes about renal care. Let me dig them out. I might be able to find some pamphlets I can send you that explain it all.”

  “Thank you,” I say, touched that you might care. “I’m…I’m really—”

  “Sorry, yeah,” you say.

  • • •

  “OK, lovey, here we go.” Sheila’s got a bottle and a spoon. “Nothing to it. What I’m going to do is measure out an amount in here”—she waves the spoon—“and then you’ll take that as you might some cough medicine, OK?”

  I’m scared. I want you. I want your arms around me. Where’s my blanket? I want my blanket. Should I ask now?

  “And you’ll start to feel the benefits more or less straightaway. All right? So by the time the local news comes on TV, you should be feeling more together.”

  “They should give this to everyone who watches the local news.” Weak smile.

  Sheila laughs.

  I want you—I want you to tell me. Am I doing the right thing? If I take this, I’m not coming back.

  Fetch my blanket. It’s in the cupboard, isn’t it?

  I want to ask Sheila. I should ask her. I’m not sure about this. But you can’t even ask doctors, can you? They’re not allowed to tell you what to do. You’ve got to decide for yourself.

  Your health in your hands.

  But I’m not the one who’s been through seven years of medical school.

  “I don’t know,” I say to her.

  “What’s that, lovey?”

  “I don’t know if I want to. Do…do you think I should?”

  “Yeah.” She smiles. “I’d take anything that’s going.”

  Oh. She is allowed to tell me what to do. Is she?

  “I just…I don’t want to get addicted. I know, it’s stupid. But…I’ve been addicted, sort of. I mean, why does it have to be down to me? You’ve got all”—breathe—“all these people who are supposed to help you and…and all they say is, ‘I don’t know. What do you think?’”

  She pauses a moment and sits down in my visitors’ chair, unhurried, offering all the time I need.

  “Listen. No one’s going to make you do anything you don’t want to do. I’m not. Dr. Sood’s not. But I’ve seen a lot of people go through what you’re going through. Every day. I don’t want you to do it the hard way.”

  “No.”

  “And it’s only a ligh
t solution, OK? It will ease the anxiety. It will ease the symptoms. It’ll stop you worrying. Give you a bit of space in your head.”

  “Right.”

  “So let’s pause a moment, OK? Let me get your blanket for you.”

  “Yeah.”

  “In here, is it?”

  “Yeah.”

  She fetches it from the cupboard and helps me draw it around my shoulders. I hook my fingers through the knots.

  “I tell you what. I’ll make you a deal. You take this now, and I’d say by late this evening the effects will have worn off. So, I promise to come back to you this evening, and if you don’t want it, you won’t have it ever again, and that is my absolute solemn promise, OK?”

  “OK.”

  OK.

  “Are you ready?”

  She takes up the bottle, carefully charges the spoon, and proffers it.

  “Down the hatch.”

  Down the hatch.

  Tighten fingers, clutch through crochet. Feel the knots.

  “Now a sip of tea. It’ll take the taste away. There.”

  Sip.

  Cup rings back into saucer.

  “All right?”

  “Right.”

  “OK.”

  “Is there anything else I can get for you? Your wish is my command.”

  “No. Thank you.”

  L

  Lips

  Your lips. The most delicious kisses.

  Oh, when I remember your lips.

  Lying back here now, I long to think of them, but…I can’t.

  The perfect pout…

  I’m scared to even begin.

  Can’t even bring myself to think, to think of the kiss…

  No.

  • • •

  Think about it differently. Lips. What was that first kiss?

  The first ones were Grandma and Granddad. Granddad’s was always over-slobbery and beery. Laura used to hate it. I remember every time she would cringe on the way in. I used to quite like the smell of stale beer. Quite fruity.

  But I shrank away from Grandma’s kisses. She had thin, dry lips, cold and without resistance, like the kiss of a ghost. But the worst bit was there must have been this one-off piece of stubble or something on her top lip, a little to the left of center—it must have been where she regularly plucked out a hair because every time I had to kiss her good-bye I would be pricked by it, like a little electric shock.

  I can’t believe how she put up with me writhing to get away from her, whining, There’s a spike on her lip! It hurts!

  What must the older generations put up with?

  First serious girl kiss: Nicola Peterson.

  Aged fourteen, out in the middle of the school playing fields, far away from anyone.

  The lunge that girl used to make. The first thing I would see would be this great wide chasm of a pie hole launching itself at me like it knew what it was doing. For a while I thought maybe it was me who was getting it wrong. I didn’t know, did I? Because no one really teaches you how to kiss; where would you start? You have to make it up as you go along.

  Her kisses frightened me. That’s not right, is it?

  Kelvin thought it was hilarious, but he’d never kissed anyone.

  There were four or five in between, all bases reached, virginity merrily dispensed with, but it really was you who taught me to go back and love kissing.

  No.

  No—I can’t. I can’t unlock it. It’s too… I’m scared to. It might release it all again, just be too much. Too, too much.

  • • •

  Here comes the cavalry.

  I venture into my mum’s bedroom, where I’m not really allowed, and find her sitting on the edge of her bed, gazing into her mirror, a collection of makeup shrapnel slithering in beside her on the comforter.

  Twenty minutes since Laura slammed the front door behind her and left the house shivering, Mum still seems sad.

  She sees me—“Hiya, kiddo”—and her mouth automatically straightens into a smile, but for once she can’t sustain it, even though I smile back.

  She is very sad.

  She unclicks her lipstick lid, twirls out the waxy stick, and aims it at her mouth. But before she sets it to her lips, she sighs and lets her hand drop back into her lap.

  It’s on instinct that I step forward and reach for the lipstick myself. She lets me have it.

  Delicious smell. One of my favorite smells.

  I reach up toward her mouth, and she turns her face toward me to oblige. I begin to apply, top lip, and then bottom lip, in vague imitation of what I’ve seen her do more or less every morning of my childhood. And like more or less every drawing of my childhood, I go over the edges.

  And I know I’ve gone over the edges, so I keep going. And Mum keeps her face there. She keeps it there until I’ve drawn a big smiley lipstick face almost all the way up and out to her ears. As I apply the lipstick, the skin of her cheeks is stretched out sideways, and I worry it might be painful, but she doesn’t move, and I need no more encouragement than that.

  When I have untwirled the wax and slipped and clicked the lid back into place, she turns and looks at herself in the mirror.

  She smiles, a small smile in the middle of my great big one.

  It’s still possible to smile when you’re crying.

  • • •

  In the unfamiliar pitch-black, lips press themselves passionately to mine. Not like yours. Different from yours. They open, and my lips open, open together, drive deeper; a tongue pushes between m—

  No. No. I can’t think of this.

  • • •

  “Are you all right, lovey?”

  Sheila, doorway.

  Her voice is like… It’s like listening to the radio when I’m falling asleep.

  Somehow clearer, more acute.

  “How are you bearing up?” She’s speaking slowly too.

  “Yeah,” I say, “good.”

  “Well, I’ll check in on you in a little while, see how you’re going on. You’ve got your button if you need me.”

  I look at the button. There it is, snaking across my bed. Friendly.

  “I’ve got my button.”

  “OK, lovey.”

  She’s not there anymore.

  Is this working? I think the morphine might be working.

  It’s gentle. I feel gentle.

  It’s like sitting in the back of the car, the voices and the radio around me, swirling and stirring me to sleep.

  M

  Muscles

  “Our concern is over muscle wastage,” the consultant mutters to your mum.

  Plastic mask marks your face.

  Bedbound, the ventilator breathes out, you breathe in; clicks; in, you breathe out.

  A ventilator is not a part of the body. It absolutely is not.

  Brain branded.

  We’ve been sitting with you for two days now. The ventilator breathes out, you breathe in; clicks; in, you breathe out.

  “We have to hope that she is going to be able to breathe unaided before long. The concern is that, with the ventilator doing all the work, the muscles she uses to breathe will become too weak to work on their own.”

  No—no.

  Bitter, evil memory.

  • • •

  That’s where poor Amber will be now. Her brain will be branded with the memory of her mum, lying there in the bed. Like the blinding blink trails of a dark sun, repeating on her retina.

  It took me over a year to blink away those final moments of you, even for a little while.

  N

  Nose

  That Crayola crayon in my first year of primary school.

  That’s why I remember that.

  After wearing it down to something the siz
e of a pea, I stuck it up my nose and was surprised to find it stayed there. I distinctly remember not being able to pincer it out with my thumb and forefinger. It just went farther up.

  I didn’t panic.

  I sat there, looking at my rectangular cat drawing, a deep scrunch of my nose every few seconds. Even then I knew I should act as if nothing had happened. And there was no way I was going to go ask for help. I basically selected another color and carried on coloring, and sat with the pea-size crayon up my nostril for half the afternoon.

  Then the brainwave: I could try squeezing my nose from above the crayon, and it might come out like that.

  Squeeze. Pop. Rattle.

  I looked down, and there it was on the desk.

  Maybe this moment of simple harmony between my thoughts and my actions—that is, the reflection upon and the execution of how to remove a crayon from myself without needing to go ask a grown-up—was the absolute high point of mental achievement in my entire life.

  • • •

  Eyes open suddenly. Why?

  Daylight. Daytime.

  At the window, sliced through with strip-lit reflections, a man’s face is staring in.

  Unkempt, unshaven.

  The face of a man in a maroon jacket, some yellow detail on the top pocket—?

  Then he’s gone. Wh—?

  I don’t know what if—

  He was definitely—

  Push the button. Push now. Push to the click.

  My heart leaps to racing. Beat, beating, beating in me.

  Footsteps in the corridor. Sheila.

  “Yes, lovey, are you all right?”

  “There.” I jab my finger at the window.

  “What’s that?”

  “There—there. There was a face.”

  She finally wanders her way over to the window and levers it open.

  There was a face, definitely.

  I wasn’t imagining it. Not a hallucination—if this was a hallucination, it was the most solid—no. Sheila’s—I know she is—she’s going to turn and tell me there’s no one there.

  “Oy!” Her voice sounds washed out, projected over the lawn outside. She barks a few demands, and there he is again: the man, drifting in from the right. He’s explaining himself to her with a hint of dumb petulance.