Stroke

by Ricky Monahan Brown

  He indicated the little yellow flowers crowding into the stairway and told me in quiet, halting English, ‘When the gorse is in bloom, it is the kissing time.’

  I smiled back and nodded.

  When we reached the top of the hill, we could smell the salty sea air blowing across the flat, open expanse of the park. Above, a plane sliced a contrail across the blue sky, having turned the shoulder of North Berwick.

  That was always my favourite part of the flight back from New York, seeing the harbours of Leith and Newhaven laid out 5,000 feet below. Like the map I once poured across my parents’ living room floor, tracing from where Mum fished me out of Newhaven harbour at low tide to where my father watched as I righted myself after capsizing under the Forth Rail Bridge. I never took that flight often enough. Not even after the desks at Cantor Fitzgerald, eighty floors above the desk of my ex-wife, had been turned to dust. Dust that had silted up the Hudson River, the Diamond Reef and the lungs of New York City’s rescue workers.

  Having taken a few breaths of recollection, I smiled at Beth and we started towards the top of the monument. Just a few steps into the 143 whitewashed stairs spiralling upward, the frame of a recessed window relayed the message, ‘Almost there’.

  ‘How brilliantly Edinburgh!’ I exclaimed.

  ‘It’s still inside me,’ I thought. ‘Almost twenty years later.’ Even now, when I took one of my little solo trips into town, I could feel the petrifying stoicism spreading outwards again to cold fingers and toes.

  Closer to the top of the tower, another message in neat black paint exhorted us to ‘Keep going on!’ So we did. Of course. All the way to the thin door in time-travelling blue that, if we pushed it on one side and a stranger pulled on the other side, could be opened out onto a spectacular view over the National Monument, towards the Kingdom of Fife. In another direction, I could see that boutique hotel that looked out over North Bridge.

  ‘Flexible thinking, Sonoko!’ I thought. Maybe I didn’t take criticism well because I knew what I was doing! Or maybe I had just been very fortunate. I put the old version of Ricky back in his box, and turned to look out over the Forth.

  The ships in the firth contrasted with the boats of the new Scottish Parliament lying keels-upward in the shadow of the tower, wishing their architect’s Mediterranean sun could dry them out. The ships out in the water were alive and productive, like the fishing boats Hugh’s friends had sailed. I thought of him taking me to see Jimmy, who would lie on his waterbed in Seafield Hospital changing the channels on the television by blowing into an air pipe. The fisherman had broken his neck falling through an open hatch in the deck of his boat. The waterbed was to prevent bedsores, but Jimmy would let a fascinated wee boy hop up on it, too. Of course, I didn’t see the tragedy at the time, only the excitement of the new, and the generous, garrulous fisherman. Now the boats just reminded me that Hugh and Jimmy were gone, as well as my mother. Back in Auld Reekie with my tail between my legs, taking this particular walk for the first time in in too long, it would take time for this to become a new version of home.

  I brought my view back down to Edinburgh’s Folly, the landmark we had really come to see. Scanning the National Monument from our telescopic eyrie, I tried to map for myself how the balance of Playfair and Cockerill’s plans for the monument might have lain. Particularly the catacombs that were intended, two hundred years ago, to form Scotland’s Valhalla, a place where the nation’s heroes would have been put to rest. A place where Hugh might have been comfortable, after those wartime special operations in Albania and Malaysia. Not somewhere for a Scot who should have died three thousand miles away after a day spent eating fancy pizza, drinking, smoking and shagging.

  I had no more success building the chambers in my mind that I had previously had picturing our old apartment on 15th Street, so we tumbled back down the narrow stairs of the tower to have a look from ground level. Down here, the monument’s few pillars were overwhelming, and I was aware that it had acquired a power to move as a palimpsest that it could never have had in its complete state.

  A caravan of Spanish tourists in bright anoraks was rolling down towards the road. As their laughter blew over Holyrood Park towards Duddingston Loch, and Beth wandered over to look at the Playfair Monument, it seemed I had been left with the place to myself. I sat on a low rock and rooted myself down into the land. Eyes closed, I imagined the grass spreading over my boots and pulling me in. When I opened my eyes again, I could see Beth heading back along the path towards me, the Doric columns behind me scattering sunlight around her. It was time to go home.

  At the end of the summer, we headed to South Carolina for Beth’s brother, Kevin’s, wedding. When the celebrations were over, Beth stayed in Greenville and I returned to Edinburgh alone. Her partner visa application still hadn’t been approved, and we had been advised that it was best for her to stay in the US for a bit while things were sorted out. It was a reminder of how the emigrant’s – the well-to-do emigrant’s – experience had changed since I made my original move to the US. We could continue daily video calls just as I did my weekly ones with Elizabeth, and we could regularly text each other. We kept each other up to date with what we’d been up to.

  I told Beth how well NHS Scotland was taking care of me. My new GP had dismissed the key ingredient of the US-designed drug cocktail I had been taking to combat my high blood pressure as being a couple of generations out of date. Now I was taking just one set of pills once a day, with no sign of any side effects.

  When I first checked in with her, the doctor told me that due to my stroke, I would have to take an assessment test before resuming driving. That was no biggie. We didn’t have a car, and while I’d finally gained my NY licence not too long before the stroke, I had driven very little during the preceding decade. We had lived in New York City, after all. When I had taken my very first driving test in Edinburgh, so many years ago, it hadn’t gone well. It had taken place not long after I had herniated that disc that had led to maraschino cherries and Oscar Wilde, and I had been uncomfortable and nervous in the lead-up to it. Suffice to say, the test was cut short after the examiner pulled on the handbrake and asked if I had been trying to get us both killed.

  However, there tends to be a waiting list to sit the assessment test, so when a spot opened up I thought I’d better take it. I found myself back at the Astley Ainslie Hospital for the first time since a series of detailed neurological evaluations that had taken place shortly after we first arrived in the country.

  The Astley Ainslie is an odd little city secret. It specialises in rehabilitation services for people who have suffered brain injuries, strokes, orthopaedic injuries, limb amputations and neurological disorders like multiple sclerosis. Unlike the Western General Hospital and the Royal Infirmary, our fellow Edinburghers didn’t seem to be terribly familiar with it. Maybe this was because it was low-lying, and hid behind stone walls on all sides, spread across rolling grounds. Inside the walls, it felt like I had entered a time warp. As I made my way to the South-East Mobility and Rehabilitation Technology Centre, it was like roaming the grounds of an Edwardian sanitorium.

  Then I was plunged even further back in time when I passed a building that, while of reasonably modern construction, presented a wooden gable end to the pathway, and a plaque declaring:

  Here stood the Chapel of St Roque

  who inspired many to succour

  victims of the Plague, 1506–1646

  Finally, I reached the southernmost edge of the grounds. I took a seat on a bench, and called the DVLA. Revisiting the materials I had received about my assessment, I had found that in order to be allowed to sit the test I had to have informed the authorities of my condition. The guy who answered the phone asked a series of questions that I interpreted as intended to lead to a point at which he could reasonably advise whether I was fit to drive. However, he did indicate that a fuller questionnaire would be sent. In any event, an opportunity to regain a little driving confidence with a professional t
herapist and dual controls seemed like a good thing, so I moseyed on in.

  Here, hiding behind another building as if embarrassed to disturb the time warp, sat the SMART Centre, all low-slung modern efficiency. When the clock struck eight thirty, they could check me in.

  I wasn’t what my assessor expected.

  ‘The file says you’re a solicitor. You don’t look like a lawyer.’

  ‘Thanks! I’m not.’

  Soon enough, the assessment began. We ran through initial neurological and physical tests, before I was set up in a rig for peripheral vision and reaction testing, all computer-measured to determine whether I had passed or failed. Then, we would have a wee hurl around the grounds, and all being well, we would end with a drive around residential Edinburgh and the city bypass.

  The therapist explained that the neurological testing would be less extensive than in my prior visits to Astley Ainslie. We were simply here to check that I was safe to drive. The testing was pretty low-intensity compared to what I had been through previously.

  ‘Tap your finger each time I say the letter “A” among this list of random letters,’ he began.

  ‘Now, I want you to draw a copy of this two-dimensional representation of a cube.’

  ‘How many words beginning with the letter “C” can you name in a minute?’

  I set a new record for that last one. Or so he told me. Then we proceeded to the rig. It was totally steampunk. I strapped into a regular car seat, and Terry, the therapist, turned up the volume on the impossibly dated electronic ‘vroom’ noise that activated when you pressed the accelerator. Just above the faux dashboard was a big yellow light. I was to slam on the brakes each time it lit up.

  Above that was an array of LEDs set into what looked like a repurposed garden sprinkler. Each time one of them lit up, I slammed on the brakes. That was the test for my peripheral vision.

  Surrounding the big yellow light were two green lights and two red lights. More green than red light up? Hit the gas. More red than green? Hit the brakes again.

  When I was done, the computer said I had passed, so we hopped into a Nissan Micra and tooled around the grounds until Terry was ready for us to cut loose. Fourteen miles and forty-five minutes later, we returned to the SMART Centre in one piece, and I felt a little less nervous at the wheel. As I made my way past the former site of St Roque’s Chapel, checking my Edinburgh buses app to see when the 41 would roll up, I was amazed to reflect that a year had passed since that bank of neurological assessment tests I had taken to establish my eligibility for disability benefits.

  It already felt like a lot longer, and it felt like a lot of things had changed for the better. Regardless, though, when I related the story to Beth after I got back to my father’s house, she was still four thousand miles away. Our latest attempt to secure her re-entry to the country had included details of previous international trips we’d taken together, photos of us on those trips and pictures of us together at Kevin’s wedding.

  Then, at the end of November, our immigration lawyer asked if we could all get on the phone together.

  ‘Thanks very much for getting on the call,’ Anushka began. ‘And Ricky, apologies for bothering you so late.’

  ‘No problem. Nothing is more important than this. What’s going on?’

  ‘I just wanted to update you. I followed up on Beth’s application today and was informed by a contact of ours in Sheffield that the caseworker is not entirely satisfied with your application, and has refused the application on that basis. We’ve not received any notification of this or any paperwork, so I’m anticipating that the decision is with a manager.’

  We discussed what further materials might be assembled and remitted to the Home Office by the following day. We rustled up one final letter and sent it to Sheffield. I went to bed with no idea what we would do if this failed, then time stood still for three days.

  Finally, another email arrived from Anushka.

  ‘Ricky/Beth,’ it read. ‘Are you both available to speak now?’

  We got on the line again.

  ‘We’ve heard from our contact again,’ Anushka said. ‘The manager has reviewed the initial decision on your latest application for leave to enter the United Kingdom.’

  ‘Anushka, you’re a ham,’ I thought to myself.

  ‘Congratulations. It’s been approved!’ She sounded as delighted as we were. She had read all the letters from the friends and families and doctors, and seen all the pictures.

  Exactly one month later, another Hogmanay was approaching. Another birthday, and the first anniversary of my stroke, had passed. It was a time for reflection. Back in New York, another stroke survivor friend liked to use Shabbat as a weekly milestone to gauge, and possibly adjust, his trajectory, noting that it was a bite-sized amount of time that lent itself to this kind of exercise. Passing from one calendar year to the next lent itself to a similar exercise, but taking a view of longer cycles. Having passed solstice, while dawn was staying at roughly the same time in Edinburgh, we were slowly digging out from absurdly early sunsets and taking the first steps towards the long evenings of summer. That is to say, we were emerging from the darkness.

  Beth landed at Edinburgh Airport and walked past a big picture of Edinburgh Castle bearing the salutation ‘Welcome Home’ on Christmas morning, a year and three months after my stroke.

  19

  Jacobite Warriors

  Over the next two and a bit years, Edinburgh did become home for both of us. Beth and I became fixtures at the pub quiz at the local bar, down the road from my father’s home.

  ‘Where are you from?’ the locals asked.

  ‘I’m from New York,’ Beth told them.

  ‘Why on earth would you move here from New York?’

  She nodded in my direction. ‘This guy. Also, are you kidding? I love it here.’

  She interviewed for a job at a business that had just been taken over by an American company. The Chief Financial Officer asked her to tell him something interesting about herself, and she told him that she used to play in a competitive darts league in Brooklyn. It was the most interesting answer he’d heard all day, and she got the job.

  Elizabeth and I maintained our weekly videos calls, and I spent some time with her in the States when Beth and I were able to make it across. She thrived, and I learned that, while Dr Grunwald was right about Elizabeth being a child and me being a grown-up, she felt more able to open up and talk when I shared some of the details of my new life with her. It wasn’t always as boring to her as I would have assumed, I guess.

  I went back to university and continued the perennial task of building a new Ricky. We travelled. Beth saw Mosstodloch in Moray where my family lived when my father worked in Buckie. We went to Ireland, where she sat exams to be fully qualified as an accountant on this side of the Atlantic. We settled down in Stockbridge in Edinburgh because it reminded us of Park Slope, all coffee shops and charity shops and a bike store and an independent record shop. We spent a weekend tooling around Inverness and sailing along Loch Ness in the Jacobite Warrior to visit Urquhart Castle.

  The next day, we took a walk along the lochside. The path was quite rugged, but this stroke bloke was coping well. At a quiet spot with a view across the loch to the other shore, I stopped to tie my shoelaces. Beth looked down, horrified. We had discussed why we were taking this trip up north; our experiences with the vagaries of immigration law and healthcare law had pushed us towards what was about to happen, and in any event, it felt right now. Beth hadn’t been thinking about that, though. We were sweaty, and there were midges everywhere, of course.

  I had passed the test designed by Beth’s former marriage counsellor, then therapist, then friend, some five years previously. Later on, during our balcony chats, we had agreed that neither of us was particularly interested in marrying again. The point wasn’t to have to be together, but to want to be together, and it had turned out that we had wanted to be together. It had turned out that we had to be together.r />
  On the bank of Loch Ness, Beth was aghast. ‘Oh my god, Ricky. No. Not now!

  ‘But yes. Of course, yes.’

  That was how, just under a year later, we found ourselves standing in front of a small group of American expats, university classmates, pub quiz teammates and other friends in the South Queensferry Registrar’s Office on the south shore of the Forth, with a view of the three bridges from three centuries that spanned the firth.

  After saying a few words, the celebrant called forward our witnesses. Then, just as I had done in front of the jukebox at Harry’s a month and a bit after that night on the bench, I went first.

  ‘In the spirit of Our Thing, and before these friends and witnesses, these are my promises:

  ‘To be grateful for, and to make the most of, this opportunity to be with you.

  ‘To be open to spontaneity, and new experiences and adventures together.

  ‘To keep making the choice to round you up to The One.

  ‘To always try to help your life be better for sharing it with me.

  ‘To always speak to you from the same room.’

  I break that last one all the time, and Beth busts my balls for it every day.

  Then it was Beth’s turn:

  ‘I promise to never give up on Our Thing, because we’re keeping this.

  ‘I promise to never stop making you laugh, because let’s face it – the vast majority of my jokes are tailored for a very specific audience of one.

  ‘I promise I will never stop encouraging you.

  ‘I promise not to make any unilateral decisions. Also, I promise to support decisions that are important to you, even if it means you decide to turn down your honour from the Queen, and I don’t get to go to Buckingham Palace.

  ‘Finally, if you ever have a stroke, I promise not to let you cry.’