by Rodney Hall
So why stay in his house? Could it have been something as ridiculous as the dread of moving? With the lease under his name she had been able to keep it—as his wife. Simple. She loves this quirky place. She has made it her own. Well, when they married they were both so very young. Carried away by the carefree gesture of going the whole hog. Commitment, when that’s the very thing their friends avoided. Everybody envied them. But nothing lasts. Six months later it ran out of steam. Casually, indifferently fizzled. He confessed to being irresponsible. She had never thought of it as particularly legal anyway. She told him not to worry. And soon none of it mattered much because, with Adam gone, Ryan came along. That’s the truth.
She received two emails from the war zone in Iraq. And she replied to say she was managing all right and that she had found someone else. Stay safe, she had added, love Bridget. From then on there seemed no point in a divorce. It felt wrong anyway while he risked his life in the army. The leftover ends could be tidied up when he got back: nothing was ever a bother to Adam. On balance, although it wasn’t love, she had been happy with him. Ryan didn’t last either. He was too ambitious. Fixed on success. She kept having bad luck with men, except that the break-ups were easy. She went on hoping for a long-term relationship eventually. She told everyone the problem was herself.
She thinks back on this. She thinks long and hard. There is no way of undoing what’s done, time being too slippery.
So, now she must make the best of a bad job. Maybe his survival had to be kept secret for some military reason, who knows? Whatever. Here he is: Adam, publicly returned to her—still amazingly full of high spirits—as a lifelong invalid. He has become prodigious. His necessary routine, like an invisible vampire, sucks the energy from her. What can be done? She’s to blame for her feelings. Bridget bears the unbearable. Sick at heart and worn out with weeping, she’s too young for this. Upstairs (in such privacy as she has there), she clenches her gut. She promises herself she can leave . . . and she will. There’s nothing to stop her walking out. Except the freedom to do so. This is what makes the possibility impossible.
He is her monstrosity, hers and hers alone.
Next thing the medics return to hoist him off the bed. They prop him in his exo-skeleton. The technician materializes to oversee another circuit of the room. Encased in the Contraption he struts, slow as a monument. Next it’s his arms, a separate command being needed to lift the elbow then the wrist and finally guide the fingers. Taking a break, Adam glances up at Bridget. He knows he has a twisted face. He tries it out. She meets his eyes then looks away. When he begins to explain, nothing comes.
Blank.
Flat on his back in bed, he has to get used to sudden changes. The experts have packed their things and gone. Seeming calmer now, Bridget reaches out to touch him until his limp arm, as she releases it from the frame, encircles her neck with an awful parody of intimacy. He hacks off a joke.
‘Looks like. I scored the. Big one, a. Life sentence.’
‘I’m happy to have you safely home,’ she soothes him, with sinking heart.
Adam sums up the situation: truth is, I’m fucked. I need help to eat and to shit. I need help to stand up and sit down. Plus learning to speak all over again. It takes an hour to cope with the bathroom gadgets installed by the government. Lunch takes another. My own survival has nothing to do with me. Others keep the old sideshow going. The medics can set everything up—painkillers and entertainment, screens and refreshments, plus a couple of books and lifestyle magazines—but all the rest is for Bridget.
‘What year is. This?’ Adam asks, glancing at Men’s Health in surprise because he can see for himself. Now he seeks confirmation through the fog of anaesthetics. ‘Has so much. Ar. Time been lost?’
Bridget follows her own train of thought, leading to the same black hole of an unexplained void.
‘At first you were posted as dead, you know. So this is better than that.’
He thinks what the news must have meant for her. He thinks of their separate existence. Her normal life of traffic jams and cafés, governments coming and going without his knowledge, even to other wars breaking out. A profound weariness kicks in. He nods off. Shapes merge and fade. Shadows nudge the furniture. It’s an ambush. Ragheads swoop from the cupboards, weapons ready at the shoulder, while prisoners-of-war huddle under guard. An outbreak of sporadic shots summarizes the danger. Betrayers with swathed faces vanish under archways. Yet the end when it comes (a blinding flash) happens in the safe zone.
‘I need to. Ar. Explain to,’ he blurts as if she is not there. ‘To Bridget.’
He floats in numbness, a curled foetus bobbing on an ocean of discomfort, baffled that death repeatedly fails to finish him off. Right from the first moment when he regained consciousness he knew he’d been reduced to living pulp, pulp cupped in the belly of the beast—forehead jammed against a hole torn in hot steel—unable to move. He could not even recoil when the face of a rescuer filled the frame with moving lips. Pitying eyes locked with his. Too close for a man and a man.
He had witnessed enough injuries in his time to guess what the fellow saw, even to exposed organs working at obsolete tasks of digestion and blood-pumping, filters and gossamer sacs trembling at the touch of air, mauve- and green-tinged . . . membranes webbed with dark veins . . . the bludgeoning of midday. All in the silence of deafness. His arms had no sensation. Legs wouldn’t move. A priest scooped someone’s heart in gory hands. Then terrifying vibrations started up and a wave of pain broke over him, exhausting the last residue of life he had left—for saving himself from being saved—and his throat contracted to utter words he spoke but could not hear.
‘Don’t touch. Me, mate.’
Awake and propped among pillows. Astonished. Here’s a magazine article that quotes William Burroughs: ‘A paranoid schizophrenic is a guy who just found out what’s going on.’ The silence around him implodes with joy. His mind, sidestepping pain, opens on the brilliance of wit. He gets it. So, beyond survival, even while beckoned by familiar things (named in the words he tries teaching his lips to master) is the brain busy remaking itself? This promises actual opportunities. He can conceive of anything. Anything at all. He can imagine. And his imagination is fully aware of the fact. Enormous prospects beckon. There might even be such a thing as collective human experience. Deep as a well. If so, it should be available to tap into. A new world seems probable. How good is that!
Strangely wakeful, he becomes aware of an unearthly clarity transfiguring the room. It’s his eyes, of course. Problems must be expected. The clock is stuck at noon. Sun-caressed air from the garden shoulders in. Sweet breath of lost childhood. Not even the day has changed. A drinking straw stands by itself in the water glass, stillness takes shape as a bottle of pills, the open page, his own jutting feet.
‘This old world. Is. Ar. Not so bad. Ay?’
‘Provided you have a twisted sense of humour,’ says Bridget, surprising him with her bitter tone.
Yet he’s the one who must grit his teeth to achieve the simplest gesture. He’s the one who has to be ready for Tim the Technician when Tim comes back. And he can’t let Tim down because Tim depends on him. With buckles clipped he tries switching on. So far so good. Next, communicating the brain power. Yes. The exo-skeleton stiffens and lifts. Whoa! Too jerky. Pain shoots around his ribs to rob him of breath. Holy shit! Eyes closed. Eyes open. Stand. Thus he stands like the first man ever. Balance. He balances. Arms down. Left foot forward. Right foot forward. Hey, how about that! The old one giant step for mankind shit. Ah yes.
‘Brilliant,’ Bridget cries out with amazement, all trace of bitterness gone.
The fact is that for too long Adam has been helpless and isolated, delivered on a steel trolley from one operating theatre to another, smooth as a glider aloft on the thermals of coma. Cocooned in his own silence. The time to break free has finally come. He’s ready, but does he have what it takes?
He does. He has. He must. Furled wings unfold. His brain fires with spasms of comprehension. Apparently he has more than enough time to himself. Steering a passage to the desk he lowers his bulk into the chair. Awkward. Bloody perilous! Okay.
On television another world crisis unfolds, six million refugees appear and reappear in different outfits and different locations to put their case to the camera. Does anybody listen? Crowding this tent metropolis or that, nerves worn raw by screaming children, the powerless hunker down, pleading for clean water and starvation rations. But a small voice in Adam’s brain objects that, to all appearances, they don’t seem to be doing too badly after all—give or take the children—so does it count against these people that they maintain decent standards? That they have the normal use of arms and legs? He has had enough of the bad news on offer.
Is this what war has done to me: lowering expectations? Shrivelled heart, mean and pinched?
Putting the Contraption through its paces again, he lifts one wrist at a time, working his fingers to pick up the remote . . . steady, aim, fire . . . closing down the world. So be it. Anyway, at this moment, real people materialize around him, filling all three dimensions, more and more visitors crowding the room with flesh. He knows them, the barely remembered colleagues from a café where he was once barista in that other life which now seems remote as the Stone Age. Though back in the day he only ever hung around the district because he knew he could leave at any time. He never really saw himself as a permanent local. Now he must face the fact that he is. And therefore, ironically, destined to remain alone for the foreseeable future. A fixture in suburbia and stark staring awake. If only he could avoid seeing pity in their eyes. Alienated among wellwishers, he fully feels his strangeness. He tries his best to rally. The old spirit willing.
Bridget recognizes the emergency.
‘I’m going to chase everybody out,’ she announces briskly, though they’ve only just arrived. ‘Lovely that you came. Actually he’s not supposed to have visitors at all. But thank you so much for the flowers. Just seeing you makes a huge difference. I need to get him ready for therapy now. Thank you. Thank you all. Lovely gifts.’
They’ve gone as suddenly as they came.
He is alone again in the disturbed air. Or, at least, alone except for Bridget.
‘Them seeing me. Like this. I hate that.’
‘Give them a break, sweetheart. They weren’t to know. They read about you in the paper. The owner closed the café for an hour specially. They needed to show willing perhaps. Just to catch up.’
The flowers strike a chill note.
‘I suppose.’ Adam’s exhaled words sound remote as an oracle. ‘And I reckon. I will. Ar. Recover.’
At every stage he makes it harder for her.
Bridget wakes early with a premonition that he has died during the night. Choked with grief she runs downstairs. But there he is. Sprawled on his stomach, one arm flopping over the edge of the bed. He moves. He groans. She breathes. Taking the blanket with him he rolls away from the lancing sunlight. Grafted skin stretches across a plump saddle of neck tight as plastic. Big patches of his American eagle tattoo are missing. His reconstructed back reveals an expanse even more pathetic than his chest. Its boneless softness unnatural—and appallingly unlike the corded muscle of the old days. She compares the Adams. That boisterous boy who had perhaps found his confidence too soon. Of course, she ought never to have married him in the first place. Her mistake. It seemed a fun thing to do at the time, but they were just kids and kidding.
‘A stolen. Ar. Season?’ he suggests from the recesses of sleep, as if reading her thoughts.
Or perhaps he is thinking of football.
‘Are you awake?’ she whispers.
He wasn’t . . . but now he is.
‘How’s tricks?’ he groans.
‘Just asking if you’re awake.’
‘Sorry, sweet. That ear doesn’t. Work much.’
Centrifugal energy is written on the swirl of bedding, pillows, bottles, jars, nail scissors and surgical equipment, all lifelessly exact. In a moment of rebellion—now reassured that he has survived the night—Bridget gets up from the bedside and crosses the floor. As she opens the street door a mat of morning sunshine drops at her feet. 6:26 am. That’s how flat she feels, too.
Nothing alters the fact that Adam ought to have died. So now he confronts a mockery of opportunities. He can choose to enthrone himself in bed or on the chair at his desk, or the couch. He can strut a few steps to visit the window with its framed trees and a far-off flock of clouds penned in the cubic sky. He can take a sip of water. The paradox is that, despite his best efforts to ignore being mostly dead, the need to remain a hundred percent alert constantly reminds him of the hot core of longing he’s been left with.
Great choices for a man of action, by the way.
Impatiently he reviews a second set of options offered by circumambulation, using the support mechanism provided. He can request it to sit him down or stand him up, face him in or turn him about, raise his arms or let them drop. Pathetic. Just enough to get him by. Yet need and habit die hard. His body dreams of walking free: the natural balance of an evolved hunter, able to leap and pounce. He has to think his way back into the present.
No sooner up than active, he gets busy chipping away at recovery, one micro-achievement at a time. Working the moment, his priority is to keep himself from toppling over. Lord of experimental decisions, dazzled by an oversupply of sunshine out there, he keeps a lid on the pain. He adjusts. He pauses for the scourge of a spasm to pass, then steadies his bulk and shuffles around cheerfully enough. The beauty of an exo-skeleton being its neat articulation, every joint a little masterpiece, emitting delicate clicks, the movement a sequence of frozen frames. A model of mathematical logic. Beauty.
‘Watch me. Ar. Now,’ he invites her when she appears at the door to the kitchen.
The touch of triumph in his fractured voice pierces her heart.
He doesn’t hear it himself, being intent on overturning the world order. The secret victory of intoxication. Willpower as history. Now he has taken the decision he wields the axe, he is the executioner, the Viking bloodlord, he sets fire to the monastery, he’s being parachuted behind enemy lines, he digs the escape tunnel, he leaps on the barricade, he has survived Star Wars and Transformers, he lets fly with his special powers.
‘When it’s. Ar. Bad,’ he confesses, while she loyally pretends not to hear, ‘My body feels. Like cooked jelly. Separated from the. Bone and. Ar. Afloat in soup.’ Because, of course, the only way he’ll ever get started again in this suburban Melbourne backwater is to risk ending it all by hoisting his carcase out through his own front door and pitching headfirst down the rockery steps.
Truth to tell, there were times in hospital, beyond reach of hope, when terrors and arousal, sex and surrender, overwhelmed him in a silent spool of violence. Death above and all around. A loop of resurrected scenes played over and over. Grit and rubble. Miserable hovels and the delicate minarets of Samarra. A stench of explosives snatching at our lungs. Out on patrol with the guys. Engrossed in hardcore fury against fanatics who persist in defending their squalid hometown as if there’s nowhere sweeter on earth. Roaring vehicles kick up the barren dust, rags and plastic and garbage airborne in their slipstream. Temperature: 50-plus. A stink of food, dead flesh and sewage hangs about the streets. Holding a new squad together is tough in itself. Gear not yet broken in. Squeaky-clean kit. Pants with folds in them. Endless inspections and drill. The thing of managing the helmet complicated by the helmet-cam and communications system. Already we waddle like toads. Weapons change the game. The other squaddies swagger for effect. Nobby, Ratso and Killer. Keep on your toes! Seems the Moqtada are holed up in that ruined compound. Movement among the stumps and upright slabs. Got it. Contact. A dozen fighting men, minimum, in a lane that looks a hell of a lot like a dead end. The whole town muff
led. Deep dust coating every surface. A couple of Brits on a roof across the way let fly with Gimpys. Good men. Instant bullets reply, pinging off the corners. Concrete chips snick and whiz. Yow! Fuck! Proof in itself—these idiots don’t fool around. Spotting an RPK machine gun on its bipod. Aim at the turban behind. Let her rip. Here it’s kill or have your head shot off. Shit! More ragheads. One of them thrashes in the dirt, screaming into the crazy din. But . . . was that my shot? Half the magazine gone already. Did I? Hard to tell, except for a glad feeling of release. Cool. How weird and weirdly gratifying. Death-dealer. Not so much ashamed as sick in the gut. What’s the lesson? Forget the lesson. The dangerous bastard had it coming. You can’t afford to think too much. These foreigners are fearless . . .
Adam dozes, propped up in safety, staring into a time chasm.
He re-runs echoes in mind. He interrogates his conscience, choosing to revisit the moment when he killed his first man in the chaos of billowing filth and smoke. He tests out the justification that it was, at least, a clean kill. An excuse unworthy of him. But at least the fellow was saved having to survive an Iraqi version of this: carbon-fibre crutches in the form of a crucifixion, an Iraqi Contraption, and an Iraqi hospital bed with levers. But no, cut the crap. Enough to point to the cold-bloodedness of war. Fighting men dissolve into it and become part of it. Constantly stretched to breaking point while the renewed racket of rapid fire breaks out on all sides, fragmentation grenades, ear-splitting noise, fumes, whining shells and flung shrapnel. The vibration and concussion. Fuck! Spinning shards big enough to kill. That was a mortar going off back there. The whole place shaken. Don’t tell me the Gimpy boys copped it? Hey—Jesus!—shit a brick!—an immense tank cranks into view, grinding, squealing, roaring. One of ours. The monster cannon swivels, smooth as oil, homing in. You beauty! Listen to me, I’m telling you.