Cold Fire

by Craig Saunders

  I put my head down. Tired.

  Next thing I know the sun isn’t coming in through the window. I can see the reflection of the room in the window instead, like the world’s been reversed. They don’t believe in curtains in hospital. It confuses me for a while.

  The lights are out overhead, but the door’s open, letting in light from the corridor. I can hear night time hospital sounds. The soft conversation of nurses at their station. Some snoring. Some coughing. Pain sounds, too, in an old man voice. Insistent and repetitive. I want to tell someone to go see him. I can’t speak.

  My private room is in a corner of the ward, near the exit. The ward goes round in a rough circle, more like a hexagon, though I never counted the sides. Beds are in rows off the sides. It’s from there that I hear the sounds.

  I hear an alarm, muted, like all the sounds of night in here.

  I’m glad I’ve got a private room. I could probably sleep in a public bed, but the coughing and wheezing and complaining that goes on in the public areas would drive me nuts after a while.

  I lie there, watching the ceiling. Listening to the sounds.

  Something’s out of place.

  A sound. It takes a while to register it. Heels on the cold, hard floor. Out in the corridor.

  Maybe a doctor. The nurses wear soft shoes, so they don’t slip.

  This sounds like leather soles. Leather soles on a hard floor. The sound’s unmistakeable. I know. I’ve worn leather soles shoes for nearly twenty years.

  But I don’t know half as much as I think I do.

  The door widens.

  The footsteps are louder.

  Not footsteps. Not exactly. Something’s wrong about that. They’re too soft. Too swift. Clicking. At the foot of the bed.

  But there’s no one there.

  ‘Hello?’

  My words come out all slurry. I’m tired and I’ve had a stroke. I’m not sure what comes out.

  I can hear breathing. Calm, slow breath. But low. It’s not a doctor. It’s animal, this sound.

  The footsteps move. Paws. Claws. To my right. My dead side.

  What the fuck? Has someone let a dog into the ward?

  Then I feel pressure on the bed.

  I cry out. I think I cry out. I don’t know. But nobody comes.

  Something’s on the bed, moving up toward my head. My face. I feel warm breath on my face, the right side.

  It’s a cat. Pure black.

  Just breath. No purring.

  The breath is warm. Hot, even. But it’s not there. There’s nothing there. Just the sound of breathing, warmth, pressure. Of course there isn’t a cat in my room.

  I try to raise my hand, fight it off, push it away, anything.

  It cranes its head forward, stretching its neck. Going for my eye. My dead eye.

  I struggle, try to roll away.

  It climbs on my chest.

  I’m trying to cry out. I try to crush it to my chest with my good arm, but the cat is far too heavy. The weight of the cat is pushing the breath from my chest and it leans forward and opens its mouth. With my good eye I see yellow teeth.

  It bites into my eye.

  It brings a bright flash of pain that starts in my dead eye and burns through me. It burns, but it’s a cold fire. It’s a freezing cold kind of fire, the kind I imagine would burn blue.

  I scream for help, but what comes out is a mush of syllables. In my terror all I can manage is a confused jumble. I scream, struggle. I thrash my head from side to side but the cat just pushes back with its mouth. It’s so strong. I fight. I fight so hard and I scream but I can’t beat it.

  I think I’m going mad. Then thought is a luxury. There’s just pain.

  It’s really tearing at my eye. I hear wet sounds, but I don’t know if that’s my chest under the weight or the flesh from my eye draining onto my cheek. Onto my pillow.

  I can’t move and I can’t scream.

  Then the cat is gone. The pressure, gone. So, too, the cold and the pain.

  And I can see. I can see with my dead eye.

  I can see the cat sitting on my chest. It has no tail.

  The cat is licking its paw and rubbing the wet paw over its face. Cleaning the remains of my eye from its mouth.

  I can’t scream. I want to. I want nothing more than to scream.

  But I can’t make a sound.

  The cat is pure black but it shines. I have to squeeze my eyes shut against the glow. He’s so bright I can’t see him. I can’t see anything. The light is bringing tears to my eyes. I squeeze my eyes hard shut. But the light’s still there. I can’t turn it off. I cry out. Mumble.

  I thrash, because the sudden dazzling light is hurting my dead eye. I want it to be dead again. I want the dark. I wish for the dark. I wish for anything other than this terrible light stabbing into my eye.

  *

  25.

  The light becomes bearable. It fades on the right, settles into my left. I risk opening my eyes.

  There’s nothing there but sunshine. Brilliant morning sun, blazing in through the window. Of course there’s no cat. Of course a cat didn’t eat my eye.

  My dream fades, but I’m still frightened when I lift my left arm up to my face. I sort of sneak my fingers over to my eye socket. My eye’s still there. There was no cat. There never was a cat. It’s a fucking hospital. I’d had a bastard of a dream and slept through ‘til breakfast but after I’m sure my eye’s still in my head I smile, a good solid smile that doesn’t crack my teeth.

  I smile because Helen’s there.

  ‘Morning,’ she says, and for a while there, I forget all about the cat.

  My breakfast is on the table.

  Helen smiles back at me, but her smile is guarded. I wish it wasn’t. I feel lonely in here. Like there’s something I should remember. For some reason I feel scared, but I can’t explain it to her. I had a dream. I know I had a dream. Something bad. But dreams fade and I can’t remember it anymore.

  I try to tell her, something about a cat. All that comes out is mush and by the time I swallowed the saliva stopping me from speaking the dream mists then evaporates to nothing in the bright sun.

  I want her to hold me, but she’s not going to. She’s going to feed me like I’m a baby. I hate being fed, but I’m starving. She’s sitting on my good side, between me and the door. I don’t know how long she’s been waiting for me to wake up.

  But there’s porridge, and I’m so hungry.

  ‘Seetha told me you walked a little.’

  No, I try to say, I fell.

  But I don’t. To fall, you have to be standing.

  I shut up and let her spoon some porridge in. She wipes my chin with the spoon and plops the rest in. Feed, wipe, feed. She gets into a rhythm.

  ‘I called your office. Told them what happened. I don’t know if I should have called sooner. They’ll understand, though.’

  She says it like she thinks I’ll be going to work in a couple of weeks. Like I’ve got a broken finger, or a toe, or something.

  I don’t think that’s the case.

  ‘I brought you some clean pyjamas. I put some chocolate and Lucozade in the cabinet.’

  I nod. I can do that. I want to punch myself in the eye. Knock whatever it is loose.

  A nurse comes in.

  ‘How are you feeling this morning?’

  I think I try to say ‘tired’. I’m not sure what comes out.

  ‘I need to take your blood pressure. Someone will be coming round later, to take some blood. Doctor’s rounds are at ten. He’ll see you then.’

  I need to go to the toilet. I say so. Neither the nurse nor Helen understands what I’m saying. I’m reduced to pointing to my crotch.

  It could be misinterpreted, but they get it.

  There isn’t a toilet in my room. No en suites in the hospital, private room or not.

  I expect her to help me up. I expect something a little more dignified than her picking up a bag of piss from a hook on the side of the bed and jiggli
ng it about.

  The bag of piss fed by the tube up my cock that I didn’t know was there.

  The nurse goes out, after she’s taken my blood pressure and written on a chart kept in a slot at the foot of the bed.

  ‘You want me to help you?’ Helen asks. She gets it. She knows me. I don’t have to tell her how much I hate the thought of my piss draining into a bag. But I shake my head. I don’t want Helen to pull the tube out, or to help me go to the toilet. She would. I know she would. But I don’t want things to be like that. If Helen’s helping me go to the toilet, then things are fucked beyond repair.

  Helen talks. I listen. Sometimes I lose the gist of what she’s saying because I doze from time to time, but each time I come around she’s talking.

  Later, a doctor comes by. I haven’t seen her before. She asks me some questions about how I feel. Sorts out my medication. Takes me off a pill I’d been put on at first, puts me on something else.

  I sleep after the doctor goes. It’s a deep, real sleep. When I wake up, Helen’s gone. There’s a dinner on the table, but it’s cold. I can’t cut it up. Nobody thought to cut it up for me. My cock burns a little, like I’m pissing into a tube and have no control over it.

  I think back. Did I have a tube in my cock when I saw Seetha the first time? When I went to speech therapy?

  I think I did, and that I’d been so fucked up I didn’t even realise.

  I feel shit. I feel shit because I’m basically wetting the bed. My dinner is on my dead side. I can smell it, but I can’t get to it.

  I can manage to pull the tube out of my cock, though. I can do that.

  I go to sleep. Wait for Helen to come back. An orderly wakes me up. Takes me downstairs.

  Seetha’s there.

  I must have just slept for something like 16 hours solid and my pyjamas are dry. They let me sleep through speech therapy. Maybe they’re not so bad, after all. Even so, I manage to tell Seetha where to go.

  And that’s how it goes. Like hell, but somewhere on the edge. Not the whole way, but close enough to sweat.

  *

  26.

  Like a muppet, I let them gang up on me. Helen, when she was there. Seetha, when Helen wasn’t there. Simon (the speech therapy guy) when neither Helen nor Seetha were around.

  If not him, then the doctors, the nurses…all working from the same song sheet, all singing the same tune…whatever.

  And me, muppet, in the middle, unaware of the grand conspiracy. Me, doing tricks. Like a fucking dog.

  I came to believe that if she could, Seetha would have ridden me like a horse round the rehab room. It was only because she was restricted by some arcane handbook that she didn’t beat me every time I gave up. I gave up a lot. Seetha’s mantra – walk the line. Mine – I give up.

  Even then, I was firm. I didn’t go in for pleading or whining. It was just a simple statement of fact – I give up. Then she’d wind me up and I’d go some more. Good boy. Fetch. Roll over.

  I’m not an idiot. I should have seen it. But they were all sneaking around behind my back, making plans. I should have seen it, but then they shouldn’t have done it. I was half blind, for fuck’s sake.

  It was a co-ordinated attack. Implacable, overwhelming force. If I’d been a country, I’d be Iraq, they’d be the U.S.A.

  It was still early days. I had a routine. Speed of response. My care was outstanding. I know that now. I guess I knew that then. Speed of response. That’s key. If the dead parts of my brain didn’t get massaged back to life, then motor control, muscle strength, co-ordination…none of that would come back. Those parts I’d lost, they’d stay lost.

  They explained it to me, when I cried, when I turned away from them, when I refused to get out of bed, when I wouldn’t talk to Helen.

  It was my brain that had suffered the injury. It wasn’t my arm, or my leg, or the colour yellow.

  Take the colour yellow. It’s still there. It’s there as a concept, as a colour, as a daffodil, a packet of Swan filter tips. It was my brain. Not the colour yellow.

  Same as it wasn’t yellow’s fault I was angry.

  So they hatched a plan. A tennis ball.

  Like I didn’t have enough problems. Yellow, everywhere, sneaking up on me, disguised as grey.

  Morning, speech. Afternoon, the line. And now, all day, the ball.

  Helen gives it to me.

  I’m sitting on the bed. I’ve gained some strength back in my good side. I can push myself up. I can stand on one leg, like a drunken sailor. If I hold onto something, anyway. With help, I’m kind of getting into my chair.

  I can go to the toilet on my own, now I’ve got the tube out of my cock. My left hand’s my stupid hand, though. I go through a lot of pyjamas.

  My speech is a little better. That’s coming back quickly. It’s still slurry, and there are words I can’t find and words I get wrong, but I’m communicating. That’s good. I can tell people to fuck off and they understand. Sometimes, a small thing like that can make the difference between a good day and a bad day for me.

  Helen’s spooning me mash and sausage. The sausage is cut up small. Chewing is a chore. I’m not exactly an adult when I eat, but nor am I a child.

  Still, a fair amount of sausage rests on my chest.

  ‘I’ve got a present for you,’ she says.

  ‘What?’

  She shows me a little package. It’s all wrapped and neat with a red ribbon tied around it, the big bow flopping over the sides of the box.

  ‘You want me to open it?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say. We’re still tender. I know why. The last few years. That’s why. But I’m still angry, and she’s here.

  She unwraps the package. I see it’s a box for a watch. Inside is a grey ball. Lines round it, where the fuzz doesn’t grow.

  ‘It’s a tennis ball,’ I say.

  She nods.

  ‘It’s for your hand.’

  ‘What am I supposed to do with it?’

  ‘Squeeze it. Throw it. Catch it. Hold it.’

  ‘And how the fuck am I supposed to do that?’

  She closes her eyes for a moment.

  ‘Just start. That’s how. Seetha says it’s the same as walking the line.’

  ‘Seetha says?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You and Seetha talk?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘About me?’

  ‘Of course.’

  She stops talking. The spoon’s out there, midway. Hovering.

  ‘I don’t want the fucking ball.’

  She’s crying. I’m shouting. A nurse peers round the corner. My room’s private. I just glare. The nurse backs off.

  ‘It’s not my fault,’ Helen says, quietly.

  ‘What?’ I say.

  ‘It’s not my fault. It’s not the ball’s fault.’

  ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘You know.’

  ‘That it’s my fault?’

  She’s silent. I rage. I take the ball with my good hand. I throw it at her, but I’m weak and it’s my stupid hand. The ball just falls to the floor. It bounces. Then it rolls.

  ‘It’s my fault? Is that it? I’m a fucking cripple and it’s my fault?’

  ‘I told you. What did you think would happen? Coke! You promised! You promised. So many times. I love you, but you’re a…a…’

  She wipes her eyes, but doesn’t stop talking. ‘Of course it’s your fault, you selfish, arrogant prick!’

  She’s shaking, I’m shaking. I can feel the blood pounding in my head and I know that’s not good.

  It could have gone either way, right there. There are plenty of moments in your life when you can succeed or fail in an instant.

  She was right. It wasn’t yellow’s fault. It wasn’t the coke’s fault. It was mine.

  Sure, a stroke’s a random thing, but being a twat isn’t. That’s a personal choice.

  Sorry? She’s shaking. She won’t look at me. Tears are there, but I can see she’s holding back most of them, because s
he’s so fucking angry, and I realise she’s been this angry since she first found that wrap in my jacket pocket. Anger that had grown through a hundred nosebleeds, a hundred credit card bills through the roof.

  Losing her husband to coke, then a stroke?

  Sorry just doesn’t cut it. Not in the face of that kind of anger. I didn’t even know what kind of husband I’d been for the last three…four…fuck. Five years? Fuck.

  Fuck.

  Five years ago a choice led to this.

  I had tears in my eyes now, too. I hadn’t even known, ‘til right then.

  No, sorry didn’t even come close. This wasn’t a sorry.

  ‘Give me the fucking ball,’ I say.

  *

  27.

  That night, after Helen goes home, I sit on my bed, holding the ball in my left hand. The lamp in the corner is dim, made even more so by the blindness in my right eye. There’s been a shadow there for a couple of days now. I’m hopeful. More hopeful than I have any right to be. But I don’t want to tell the doctors. I don’t want them to break my hope. It’s a fragile thing. It needs me to be gentle with it.

  I turn the ball, spinning it around with my fingertips. I nearly drop it. My left hand is good for holding things down, but pretty useless for anything else.

  I slow the rotation. Then I just hold it again. I try to remember the way it feels. I close my eyes. Fuzzy. But not like peach fuzz. Rougher. Not unpleasantly so, but you couldn’t mistake it for natural.

  A bare line that I trace with my thumbnail. It’s not easy, without my other hand.

  Light, but sturdy. It won’t break.

  I squeeze it. I expect it to give, but it doesn’t. I squeeze harder. It’s tougher than it looks. I put my all into it, so the veins in my forearm are standing out, and it gives, just a tiny fraction. Probably not even a sixteenth of an inch.

  I know what I’m doing. I’m concentrating on the ball because I don’t want to think about Helen. I don’t want to think about five years of marriage disappearing up my nose. That the whole thing is my fault. Maybe not all…but the stroke? Helen’s got no part to play in my stroke. I don’t want to think about my wife living with a dead man for the last five years. Walking and talking but dead, just the same.