Cold Fire

by Craig Saunders

  ‘Helen, I didn’t know. I don’t remember any of that.’

  ‘Will you see the doctor?’

  How could I say no? If I said no, we’d take another step back. We’d already taken one, one we couldn’t afford, and I had nothing to do with it.

  ‘Sure,’ I say.

  She smiles, but not the easy smile I love, the unsure one. I didn’t know how to fix it.

  We wait. She won’t even let me risk a cup of tea. I sit in my chair in the living room, drinking juice. She sits on her couch, being nervous. We don’t talk, just sit, thinking our own thoughts apart for the first time since the tennis ball. I realise then how fragile we still are.

  The bell rings and Helen goes to get it. I hear a man asking if we could put any pets out.

  It doesn’t bode well.

  ‘Sam?’ he says, as he comes in.

  ‘Hello. Dr. Davies.’

  ‘Helen tells me you’ve been having some problems.’

  I think about covering up, but Helen’s looking at me, like, don’t fucking dare. Me and Helen, we can’t take me being a dick.

  I understand she’s scared. So am I. I don’t want there to be anything wrong, but it doesn’t matter that I’m scared of bad news. I’m more afraid of the distance in Helen’s eyes.

  ‘I had a bad headache yesterday. It made me sick. It scared Helen. It scared me, too.’

  I give her a smile, a tentative one.

  ‘Then I suppose I must have passed out, or had a fugue, or something. Last night I was walking and talking, but this morning the last thing I remember is being sick, sitting by the sea. Helen…I think I need a check up.’

  ‘That’s what I’m here for.’

  ‘I’d rather not have to go to the hospital. I feel fine now.’

  I see Helen’s look. It’s like I’m walking a tightrope, and she’s the ground.

  ‘But I’ll go if you think it’s for the best.’

  ‘We’ll worry about that in a minute. Let’s take a look at you first.’

  ‘Where do you want me?’

  ‘Right there’s fine.’

  So he sets to. I feel like a lab rat, but I’m relieved. I didn’t know just how worried I was until he started in on me.

  ‘Any problems with your vision?’ he asks, after checking out my heart. Pulse, blood pressure, that sort of thing.

  ‘No more than usual.’

  ‘You can’t see yellow, right?’

  ‘Yeah. Going to the toilet’s interesting.’

  He laughs.

  ‘Korma?’

  ‘I was talking about number ones, but OK.’

  He laughs again and I like him. Helen’s frowning, but me and the doctor, we’re under man rules and I figure I’ll be alright.

  ‘You read my notes?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘I thought they kept those just for some shady government database.’

  ‘No, believe it or not, we read them. Sometimes. That’s quite unusual, you know. Not being able to see yellow.’

  ‘I know,’ I tell him.

  ‘Any numbness?’

  ‘I’m still a bit numb where I was before. In my arm and my leg. But it’s better, not worse.’

  ‘Have you been overdoing it lately?’

  I shrug. ‘Maybe. I walked up a hill yesterday.’

  He nods, moves on. Takes out a penlight and shines it in my good eye, then my dead eye.

  ‘Eye the same?’

  ‘Same for me.’

  He finishes up and stands straight.

  ‘Well, everything is what I’d expect it to be.’

  ‘That’s good, right?’

  ‘Yes, Sam, that’s good. I’m not too worried about the headaches. That’s normal, too.’

  ‘Good,’ I say.

  ‘But,’ he says, ‘I want some tests, just the same. I’m going to make an appointment for a scan. I want to know what’s going on. The memory loss could indicate a problem.’

  ‘What kind of problem?’

  ‘Could be nothing. It could be a mini-stroke. I see no outward signs of that, but I want to be sure. But if I thought there was any immediate danger I’d call an ambulance. I don’t see any need for that.’

  ‘If he’s having mini-strokes, or something, shouldn’t we go straight to the hospital?’ says Helen. She sounds angry, but in control.

  But I’m alright. I could wink at the doctor, but I don’t. He understands just fine and he’s not going to treat me like a baby, and whatever happens from here on out I know I don’t want to go to the hospital.

  ‘Well, you could, but I don’t see any strong indicators that there’s anything urgent wrong. In fact, Sam seems healthy enough for a recovering stroke victim. Figure in a heart attack, too, and if anything, I’d say his progress is remarkable.’

  ‘I’d be happier to get it checked out,’ says Helen.

  I can see the doctor feels the same way I do at the moment. But he doesn’t live with Helen, so he can say no. Thank God. I don’t want to go to the hospital. If he says no, I get a reprieve. He has to say no, because I can’t.

  ‘It’ll be within the week. In the meantime, you watch for changes to Sam’s speech, balance, any loss of motor function. If anything changes, use your judgement.’

  He smiles, and it’s a pretty good smile, because Helen doesn’t claw his face off.

  ‘Now, Sam, I’m going to give you some pills. Are you going to take them?’

  ‘Sure.’

  What else can I say, with Helen watching me? I hate taking pills, but I love my wife.

  ‘I’m not really happy about this,’ says Helen.

  The doctor is very patient. He’s gone up in my estimation.

  ‘Mrs O’Donnell, I’m confident that Sam is in no immediate danger. He bears watching, true, but I won’t send him to the hospital on the evidence I’ve seen, and if anything Sam needs to rest, not spend the day waiting for a test. I’ll phone through today. You’ll have an appointment within the week. Straight in, straight out. No A and E. It’s the best we can do, all round, I feel.’

  His tone doesn’t allow any argument. Helen’s mouth goes down into a fine line. He touches her on the arm. A curiously personal gesture from a doctor.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he says. ‘Rest is the best thing at the moment.’

  She’s not so easily appeased. She fumes for a while, when he goes, but when she eventually calms down she bustles me off to bed.

  I’m asleep in ten minutes.

  *

  19.

  The doctor is true to his word. The hospital calls while I’m asleep. Helen takes the call. She agrees to an appointment two days away.

  A letter confirming the appointment, instructions for getting to the hospital and a lot of other stuff comes through. I don’t read it. I let Helen take charge. It’s all quick, but that’s because we pay for it. Maybe if we couldn’t pay for the care, I’d be dead. I don’t like to think about it. When the thought steals in, I don’t want to live in a world where people with money live longer than people without. But then I’ve got the money, and the luxury of such thoughts. I’m not giving up the money, though. And I’m not going to give my appointment to someone else, either.

  So why waste time feeling guilty?

  I feel nervous, instead. That seems like a valid response.

  The hospital’s easy enough to find. It’s in Norwich. Norwich is big. It’s right in the middle of Norfolk, so we just follow the road south.

  The hospital itself is pretty big, too. It’s well signposted.

  Inside is like a warren, but we make it. We wait for about thirty minutes in a standard issue waiting room.

  I’m strapped in, there’s some mechanical noise and the bed I’m on slides into a tunnel. I can hardly move my head, but I don’t try. I’ve been told to stay as still as I can. I’ve come all this way. I don’t want to fuck it up now.

  So I lie still. The machine makes a clanking sound while it’s working. It’s loud, but it’s not freaking me out lik
e they said it might. It grates on my nerves, though, after a while.

  I don’t complain.

  Then it’s back to the waiting room. Boredom. Helen’s quiet. She’s kind of forgiven me. That’s why I don’t kick up a fuss. We’re still tender.

  It’s not like it’s anything I knew I did, but just the same, I can understand how she feels. Good me became bad me, the stranger, if only for one night.

  It’s not quite enough to completely scupper the progress we’ve made, but it’s a step back, for sure.

  I don’t like the stranger. I thought he’d died, in an ambulance, at 12.03. The fucker’s back, though. I’m pissed off about it. I don’t even have a choice.

  So I’m trying. I’m really trying. I take Helen’s hand while we wait. She lets me.

  The Doctor calls me in. He’s got a grave face, grey skin, pockmarks. He’s too young to have a face like that. I put him in his fifties. I hope my face doesn’t end like that, if I make fifty.

  I guess I’m about to find out if that’s even possible.

  He shakes my hand. Shakes Helen’s hand.

  Good start.

  ‘Take a seat,’ he says. Two chairs face his desk. I take the one on the right. The doctor sits to one side of the desk, positioning himself so he’s more facing me than Helen, but he makes sure to look at her, too, as he’s talking.

  ‘First off, I’ve seen your notes. I’ve seen the scan. I got the old scan by email this morning. The miracle of the modern age. Time was, I’d be waiting six weeks for that. Before you both get worked up, there’s nothing wrong.’

  I hear Helen’s sigh. Small, but I was waiting for it.

  ‘Let me show you. Did you see the original?’

  ‘No. I never did.’

  ‘Here,’ he says, and turns the monitor on his desk round so we can both see it.

  I was expecting a back lit film, like you see on TV. But then I was expecting to be told I was dying. It’s nice to be disappointed.

  He clicks a few pop-ups on the computer, then a picture shows. My brain.

  The doctor does some more clicking. He’s got very thin fingers.

  Another picture comes up.

  ‘People like to see this. Fascinating, isn’t it?’

  He points with his narrow index finger.

  ‘Here, this black spot on the left? That’s dead tissue. Sounds bad, but it’s relatively small. Your motor skills are here,’ he indicates a dark section of brain on the left hand side. ‘Speech, memory, at the front, here. Your stroke knocked out your right side, pretty effectively. Your speech, your reasoning, in short the parts that make up your personality – see? Unaffected.’ He points to a lively looking red section of my brain.

  I’m feeling queasy.

  ‘This indicates normal blood flow, and usually normal blood flow means normal function. But, here’s the thing.’

  He uses two hands, traces an area of my brain with each finger.

  ‘See the difference?’

  I nod. ‘The new picture’s brighter.’

  He beams. I’m a good boy. I haven’t learned my lesson. I’m still doing tricks.

  ‘That’s good. The brain’s the most complicated organ a person has. We see this a lot in brain trauma, tumours, accidents, strokes. The brain takes up the slack. It’s normal. Your brain’s working overtime.’

  ‘That’s good, right?’

  ‘Perfect. The best outcome we could hope for. You’ve improved dramatically since your stroke. You’re walking, talking, using your right hand again. Things will probably continue to improve.’

  ‘Probably?’ says Helen.

  I don’t want her to bring him down. He seems like he’s enjoying himself.

  ‘There are no guarantees, but everything is as it should be, if not better.’

  ‘The memory loss?’

  ‘I’m not worried about it. There’s nothing on the scan to indicate a reason for it. I would say, although this isn’t standard medical parlance, that it’s a blip.’

  A blip, I think. Doesn’t seem like something quite that inconsequential.

  ‘Can we expect more blips?’ I ask.

  ‘Maybe. I can’t rule it out. If it were to become frequent, then I would definitely recommend more tests. But a one-off, with these results? I don’t think you should worry overly.’

  ‘The headaches?’

  ‘I’m surprised you’ve only had two bad ones. Your brain’s been injured. The blood flow has changed. There are some major changes occurring in your brain. A headache or two is to be expected, and a headache doesn’t indicate a stroke. Any other questions?’

  Helen’s got some. I want to know about my eye, but for some reason I don’t ask. I just want to get out. Before he changes his mind.

  Helen wants to understand. I don’t. I like the doctor. He sounds sure. That’s his job. I get a clean bill of health, he gets to move on to the next job. He’s busy. I don’t want to take away any more of his time.

  That said, I know Helen needs to take some control. I leave her to it and stare at the dead space in my brain.

  I wonder where the part that controls my right eye is. I wonder where yellow was, and why it got rewired. I figure the doctor wouldn’t know where yellow should be, anyway.

  Helen finishes.

  We stand. Shake hands again. I don’t know if he’s a surgeon or just someone who reassures people by interpreting pictures on a screen. He might be a surgeon. I guess surgeons need delicate fingers. There’s no chance of me hurting him, though. We shake righties. Maybe he’s not a surgeon, after all. Maybe a surgeon’s hands would be too precious to shake.

  We drive home, in time for the sunset.

  It’s a fine day. We get some chips for dinner from the chippy in town, plus a saveloy for me and a spring roll for Helen. We share a cream soda.

  The sunset’s beautiful.

  Our sunsets are out of synch. Hers comes before mine, like her orgasm.

  We talk about our sunsets while we eat. When it’s dark we sit there talking. It’s getting cold by the time we go back to the car.

  I’m so tired, but I tell her I want a cuddle on her couch. We don’t do that so much since Samantha died. We stay that way until Helen falls asleep. I stroke her hair, and think about dead space in my brain and my dead sight.

  Some part of me didn’t make it back when I died. I’m carrying dead flesh. That feels strange in a way that hasn’t bothered me until now.

  I wonder if the ghost of the stranger lives there, in the dead parts of me.

  I fall asleep holding Helen. Maybe she keeps the bad dreams I’m due that night at bay.

  *

  20.

  I don’t have a bad dream. It’s just a dream. One I’ve had before.

  It’s a dream, but it’s déjà vu, too.

  Samantha’s there. She’s standing outside a house, one of those paint-by-numbers houses you get on estates right across the county. In the dream I can smell the house. It smells of home cooking. I think maybe there’s a hint of cookies about the house, and that makes me think that this could be a good dream. A dream where you smell cookies has to be a good dream, right? My dream mind isn’t so sure. My dream mind thinks that maybe the cookies are burned, and maybe charred, and maybe they’re not cookies.

  But dream minds are malleable. It’s cookies I want. I can do that sometimes, believe what I want and make it real.

  I want Samantha to turn and be alive and laughing like she always was, apart from at the end, but even the stranger can’t make that happen.

  But this isn’t the stranger’s dream. This is mine.

  I hold up my hand in front of me, just to make sure. My right hand is like a claw, but it’s not dead flesh, it’s just a crippled hand and it’s all mine.

  Satisfied, I let the dream roll on. It’s like tapping the pause button twice. Checking out a frame. Yeah, that’s what I thought I saw. Tap. Play.

  The house is dark inside. The lights aren’t on anywhere in the estate. It’s just on th
e dark side of dusk. I can tell, because there’s still a hint of yellow in the western sky.

  Samantha’s wearing a yellow dress. She’s older, too. She’s the age she would be now if she hadn’t died. I know this from the shape of her, her build, and from her size. I’m not the director of this dream, though. I can’t swing the camera round. I try to walk forward, but I can’t do that, either. My control is limited.

  Samantha’s looking at the house, looking up, her head pulled back. She pulls out her phone, a newer model than the one we’d agonised over when she was eleven. Eleven’s early for a phone, we thought, but then all the kids had them. We got her a cheap one. She was always losing things.

  I don’t hear the conversation.

  When she’s done talking, she hangs up. I’m behind her, but I don’t need to see her face to know it’s her.

  I want to walk forward and hold her, but I’m not as in control as I think I am. I strain, will my feet to move. Everything’s heavy. I push against the dream. Fight it. I can hear myself panting with the effort. I can’t hear anything else. It sounds like I’ve got my head in a box.

  Something snaps, and I look down to see my arm getting longer and longer until my hand hovers just over my daughter’s shoulder.

  I touch her shoulder and she turns.

  She doesn’t have a face. But that’s OK. She never has a face in the dream. It’s not a bad dream. How can it be, when my daughter’s there? Right there. It’s her, face, no face, it doesn’t matter. I can feel her shoulder under my hand and it’s beautiful.

  But she’s shaking and her skin crawls under my hand.

  ‘I’m lost,’ she says.

  That’s new. I try to speak, to tell her we’ve moved. My words are slurred, though, like they were when I’d just had my stroke.

  ‘We movened Sam. Movened...’ No matter. She’s not hearing me or she doesn’t understand me. I give up trying to speak. She doesn’t recognise me. She’s got no eyes to see. My voice is different. How could she know me? By the touch of my hand?

  I look at the hand on her shoulder and I see that it’s not my hand. It’s the stranger’s hand. Her skin’s not crawling. My hand is running white with crawling dead flesh. I jerk my hand back and some of his flesh stays on her shoulder, a sick stain on a pristine sheet.