by James Hannah
‘I– I don’t think that’s going to be enough, mate.’
‘Listen, Kelv, isn’t it enough that I have to forget about everything just to make her feel better? I mean, she hasn’t even got the guts to come here herself, has she? She’s sent you, hasn’t she? Do you think that’s good enough? Do you think I should see her?’
‘I think you should see her, yes.’
‘Look, when it really mattered to me, when she should have chosen to stick by me, she didn’t, did she?’
‘No, she didn’t.’
‘Her instinct was to stick with Mal. So that’s that. And if she wants to know if that’s fine, then fine, that’s fine. I accept that she did that. You can tell her she doesn’t have to worry about it any more. She did it, and there it is. But don’t pretend she didn’t.’
‘There’s more to it than that, mate.’
‘What more? The last time I saw her was seven years ago, and that was only because it was Mum’s funeral. That’s a lot of time to show there’s more to it than that. Sometimes these things are simple. You don’t need to make it more complicated.’
Kelvin sighs a deep and defeated sigh.
‘It’s just – it’s breaking people up. Even now. It’s breaking Laura up, it’s breaking Mal’s mum and dad up. And yeah, you know, it’s breaking Mal up as well. And you’re the one who can sort all that out. If you can find your way to just talk to her. You know it’s not a normal situation.’
‘It’s not me that made it not normal, Kelv. Ask anyone you like. What he did–’
‘No one’s ignoring what he did. No one. But if you can just talk to her, it would help.’
I do my best to draw in a deep breath.
‘I don’t know why you’re running around after her, Kelv.’
‘I’m not,’ he says.
‘She’ll have you wrapped round her little finger if you’re not careful.’
‘All I’m doing is saying what needs to be said, OK?’
‘Listen,’ I say. ‘I don’t have a problem with you. You know this isn’t easy to talk about.’
‘Yeah, yeah. Totally. But you wouldn’t want me to lie to you, would you? I can tell you this stuff. You know I’m straight with you.’
‘To be honest, mate, I think I’d prefer it if you lied.’
Fuck, fuck. This is bad, this is getting bad.
I can’t. I can’t breathe. I–
I can’t – make my chest go out enough. I can’t breathe in enough.
Chest
Breathe in, chest out. Breathe out, chest in.
Come on, now. Keep it calm, keep it easy.
Chest goes out. Chest goes in.
And now it’s me, conscious, as I breathe.
Out in out in outinoutin …
My pounding heart.
I just want to – just want to heave a sigh.
Is it too much to ask? To heave a great and heavy sigh?
Mini, now. Mini, mini, mini-breaths.
Is it – is it bad enough to–?
To push the button? Call Sheila in?
No visitors, I should have no visitors. All just fucking complication.
You’d think, wouldn’t you, that all this shit would stop at some point. You’d think that there would be a point when the fucking past would leave you alone.
I don’t have to forgive anyone anything any more.
This is me.
I can’t believe they thought it would be OK. I can’t believe Kelvin thought it would be fine to swan in here and ask me if I’d meet up with her. What does he know about it? He knows nothing. He’s just trying to get in Laura’s knickers like he always did, and he never will.
They don’t know me at all, do they? They don’t know me at all. I could tell, the way Kelvin was saying it. None of them understand what I’ve been through. Every day I’ve had to live with this. Every day. Ten years. Putting my life back together. Losing Mum, too, dealing with all that on my own. Fucking dialysis three times a week. That’s something, isn’t it, calling a dialysis machine your best friend, old buddy.
No one can just waltz up and suddenly fix all that. And it’s not me they want to fix, is it? It’s not me they care about. It’s themselves.
Creatinine
That’s it – if I’m going to do a real A to Z, then I’ll need to include all the things I’ve got but I don’t even know about. The things I never paid attention to in Biology at school.
That must mean pretty much everything in my entire body.
My body is not my own. I don’t understand it.
I don’t know how the fucking thing works.
When Dr Sood turned round and started talking to me about creatinine levels and dialysis and–
I didn’t know what a dialysis machine was. I mean, I’d collected for a dialysis machine they had an appeal for on some children’s TV show. Probably 1984. I got it into my head that a dialysis machine had flashing lights and numbers, but I think I was mixing up the dialysis machine with the totalizer they had on the show. Every time they reached a new landmark, a whole load of bulbs would light up, and the number would get higher.
My dialysis machine was dreary off-white. Perhaps I was given exactly the one I collected for, thirty years before. It looked like it was made in 1984.
What’s the shelf-life of a dialysis machine? How many different people’s blood had chugged through mine? Now mine was chugging through, and it was cleaning out the creatinine.
I think it was, anyway.
Cleaning out all the bad, the build-ups.
I imagined it like the build-ups of acid in my calves when I’d been running around.
Ahh – ah, my God. There it is.
I nearly made myself cry.
I haven’t cried for–
There are some things that you can’t – they’re unexpected. I haven’t thought about this for years. One of the clearest memories I have of my dad.
Acid cramps in the calves.
That’s it:
Calves
I’m lying, crying on the floor in the lounge of our house, on that horrible old white-and-brown swirly carpet. I’m on my back, and my dad has a hold of my leg, and he’s kneading the calf between his thumbs, and rubbing it gently with his palm.
Up, down, up.
Rub it better, little man. They’re just growing pains.
The agony of it. The worst ache I’d felt to date. And I could not get away from it. It was inside me, and I didn’t know what was causing it.
It’ll pass, don’t worry. It’ll pass.
I never wanted him to let go.
I kept the crying up for as long as I could, but I think he could tell when the pain had subsided. But he didn’t send me away. He patted the sofa beside him, and I hopped up.
Ha; ha; ha.
Fucking hell, this is – this is my heart. Is this my heart? A heart attack? No chest pains.
What if it was?
Push the button?
She should have sided with me, Laura.
Fucking– I was the one she should have supported. Her own brother.
She made her choice.
Trying to have it both ways now.
No.
Fuck, fuck, this is it. Fuck.
Push the button. Where’s the button?
There. Did that push?
Did that click?
There. I set that buzzer off down the hall. I think that’s what I did, with the button. Too late to go back now. Can’t unpush.
How many die of politeness?
C, C, corpse.
Body. My body.
No.
‘Hello, you all right?’
Sheila.
‘I’m – I can’t–’
‘Trouble breathing? OK, wait a minute. I’ll be back in a tick, OK?’
She knows. It was the right thing to do. Push the button. Not making a fuss.
‘Here we go.’ She wheels an oxygen canister before her, and carries a mask. Serious shit. Big deal, big deal. �
�OK, I’m just going to get you to sit up more here. And then we can get you some oxygen.’
‘I’m–’
‘Don’t talk, now. Let’s get you sitting up. Right, now, if you hold this mask. I’m just going to–’
Small olive-skinned hands fumble with knobs on the canister.
‘OK – I think that’s – can you just give me that?’ She takes the mask back off me and looks at it. ‘No, it’s – this is the one that’s been playing up a bit.’ She fumbles more. ‘Sorry – sorry, wait a minute. I’ll go and fetch Jef to give us a hand.’
She walks briskly out, and then comes back to deactivate my buzzer, and then walks briskly out.
No panic, now, no. She’s on the case. Sheila on the case. Trained and able.
Come on, come on.
Your hand in mine, mine in yours. Tight, tight.
Enthusiastic you.
Yeah, you can do it.
I can do it.
Of course you can.
Of course I can.
This is going to happen.
Sheila again, trailed by Jef.
‘–it’s been playing up, and I think it’s to do with the valve at the top. Because it’s not been right since–’
They fuss and meddle with it a bit, alternately taking the mask and trying it at their own noses.
Sheila looks down at me. ‘Sorry about this. How are you doing? Can’t clear your lungs properly?’ I shake my head. ‘It’s all right, I’ll get the other one if we can’t – oh, wait, oh there we go.’
Jef passes me the mask. Triangle of rubbery plastic over my nose and mouth.
‘There now,’ says Sheila. ‘Hold that to your face, OK? Don’t worry, it’ll pass, it’ll pass. I want you to concentrate on getting your breathing down, to slow down, so it’s more comfortable, OK? Breathe normally there, don’t try any great gulps, and just take in the oxygen. It’s going to help you.’
Jef gives me a small smile and leaves.
‘There we go,’ says Sheila. ‘Keep it on your nose and mouth, all right? You need to make sure you’ve got a good bit of oxygen going into your system.’
Through the door, I hear the woman in the next room has started up her groans again.
Uhhhh.
‘Oh, hello,’ says Sheila, ‘Old Faithful’s started up again.’ She smiles at me.
‘I’m, I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘Causing all this bother.’
You’re all right,’ she says, thrusting her hands into her tunic pockets, and balancing absently on one foot like a young girl. ‘I’ve got to earn my wages somehow, haven’t I? OK, I’m just going to look in on her now. Keep that mask on until you’re feeling better. I’ve reset your buzzer, but press it again if you want anything, OK? Don’t hesitate. That’s what it’s there for.’
Come on now, baby.
What have you got to say to me?
What would you say?
Think calm. Get yourself into a good state of mind, and it’ll come. Easy.
Easy. Ease.
Diaphragm
‘WHO CAN SPELL “diaphragm” for me?’
Mr Miller stands at the front of the class in his weird blue blazer with its six gold buttons, and those ever-present musty trousers.
‘What sort of blazer’s that?’ mutters Mal to me and Kelvin. ‘It’s like it’s from the nineteenth century or something. Who does he think he is? King Dickface the Turd?’
Kelvin and I crease up laughing. Dickface the Turd.
‘Kelvin!’ says Miller. ‘Well done, you’ve just volunteered to spell it out on the board. Come up here.’
Kelvin reluctantly leaves his lab stool with a wooden creak and shuffles up to the front.
I look at Mal and do an eye-roll. ‘Miller likes to pick on Kelvin. You probably want to get used to this.’
‘OK,’ says Miller, handing him the chalk. ‘Off you go. Oh, and I forgot to mention. Anyone who gets it wrong gets a detention.’
A prickle of suppressed outrage crosses the class.
‘Kelvin?’
Already resigned to his fate, Kelvin fumbles the chalk, drops it, picks it up, and then tries to hold it like a pencil.
‘D–’
Miller places the eraser on the board next to Kelvin’s tremulous and malformed letter ‘D’. Kelvin looks up at him, questioningly. ‘Carry on,’ says Miller. ‘It’s going very well so far.’
Chuckles from around the room.
I.
‘Excellent!’ cries Miller, sarcastically.
A. Kelvin pauses, and Miller’s head shifts fractionally, sensing the kill.
R.
‘Nope!’ Miller whips the board rubber across Kelvin’s efforts, knocking his hand away, and flicking the chalk across the room into a table of girls.
‘Detention for Kelvin, and the chalk’s landed with you. Up you come.’ He points a knobbly finger at one of the girls. She gathers up the chalk and tries to brush its mark off her jumper, before replacing Kelvin beside Miller.
Kelvin dumps himself back on his stool beside me.
D, she writes.
‘Good–’
Y.
Miller pauses awhile before mugging around to the rest of the class. Then he wipes her away, and picks the chalk up himself.
‘D, I, A, PEEEEEE, H, R, A, GEEEEE, M. Anyone who gets that wrong after I’ve spelled it out so plainly will deserve the detention they get, OK?’
Spirits broken, we mumble our assent.
‘Right, now, as you’ll hopefully remember from last year, the diaphragm is a membrane, just here in your chest, and when you breathe you are using your muscles to pull on that diaphragm, and in pulling it draws the air in through your nose and throat, and into your lungs, which enables you to breathe.’ Miller scrawls breathe tetchily out on to the blackboard and underlines the final ‘e’ about eight times. ‘Now – that is exactly what you can’t do–’ he picks up the large book that has been sitting on the bench in front of him all this while ‘–can’t do–’ he struggles to find the page, and an adventurous few begin to giggle ‘–if your lungs look like this.’
He cracks the book open at a double page that is completely taken up with a photo of a pair of lungs, branched through with black, like burnt cheese on toast.
One of the girls pipes up: ‘Ah, sir, that’s nasty.’
‘And that,’ concludes Miller with a self-satisfied flourish, ‘is exactly what is currently growing inside one of you.’
A sudden hush. He paces the room, bearing the chalk eraser before him, in his usual manner of dramatic pause, loving it. Loving it.
But what can he mean? What can he mean?
‘The only question is, which one of you currently has this growing inside them?’
From the left three-quarter pocket of his big blue blazer, he teases out a pack of cigarettes, and wields it between thumb and index finger in front of the class.
‘Which one of you is missing a nearly full packet of these from this morning’s session?’
We sit aghast. I look at Mal.
A pack of twenty Embassy No. 1.
He sits there impassive, watching with absolute innocence as his cigarettes are dropped with a light pat back on the desk, and Miller takes up his favoured place, leaning against the slender edge of the blackboard.
‘Well, there they are,’ he says. ‘Whoever wants to come up and collect them may do so now.’ His eyes seem to settle on Mal, before the bell for the next lesson rings off down the corridor, but nobody moves.
An impossible, unnatural silence descends as the game of chicken settles in. Outside, the corridors begin to fill and churn with kids making their way slowly to their next lessons, with maximum noise.
‘I know,’ says Miller, ‘you think I’m going to let you go.’
Shimmering silhouettes of students’ heads begin to imprint themselves on the frosted wireglass of the classroom door.
‘I know you think I’m going to have to let in the next class. But I don’t have to do anything.’
>
Mal looks at me, and I look at him, and an idea begins to form.
Miller makes his way slowly over to the door, and opens it. His presence immediately hushes all activity out in the corridor. He slowly fixes the door shut and returns his attention to us.
‘I have let classes stand out there for the full fifty minutes before today, and I’d be willing to do it again now. So.’ He sits down, and once more picks up the packet of fags. ‘So.’
Miller loves to have his enemies, and he’ll be even more triumphant to get the new kid. I’m sure he’s been zeroing in on Mal ever since Mal started sitting near me. And he seems all right, Mal. He’s got a lot about him. Miller’s just a twisted, bitter old has-been. Everyone hates him, and he knows it.
I don’t look at Mal. I raise my hand and it takes Miller a while to see it. Some of the girls see it, but they’re too scared to draw Miller’s attention to it.
‘Sir,’ I say.
Miller swivels his eyes first, and then turns his head to face me.
‘Yes.’
I want to say this without fear.
‘They’re mine.’
The class finally drains out and down the corridor, and Mal takes hold of my heavy schoolbag and shifts it to the next class ahead of me.
Noted.
Miller is already carefully manoeuvring himself between the desks and discarded chairs in my direction. I know what his response is going to be. Not anger, but sympathy. Annoyance, yes, a longer detention, no doubt, but sympathy because of my home situation, and him not wanting to step over the line.
The classroom door clicks shut behind him, and he softly begins to speak.
‘I must say, I’m disappointed–’
‘What did Miller actually say, then?’ asks Mal, sticking two Rizla papers together meticulously, the zips on the sleeves of his leather jacket jangling as an accompaniment. He lays the papers on his bag while he roots around in his coat pocket for his pouch and tin.
I’m sitting on the floor at the end of his bed, sucking on the thankyou beer he bought me. I’m a bit pissed.
‘Well I thought he was going to start going on about my dad, and about cancer and all of that stuff. But he didn’t really go there. He started talking about how he’d fallen in with a group of friends who’d got him to smoke a cigarette once, but that he hadn’t liked it, and it had made him sick, and he didn’t know why people ever did it.’