by Claire North
I tried to speak.
Nothing came out. Just back-of-the-throat noises, like an engine trying to start, no oil in the system, a pipe broken somewhere, nasty stain on the tarmac, someone will have to clean that.
“Stay down,” she said, “stay hidden. This will be over soon.”
Her right hand, red with my blood, brushed the side of my face. Maternal. Caring, perhaps. A kind of love.
But she had business to be doing, and I screamed for Gauguin (no sound came) and I screamed for Luca (who didn’t hear) and I screamed stop it, stop it, for God’s sake stop it and nothing stopped and I made no sound.
She turned her back on me. Walked to a little mixing desk, knobs and faders, buttons and dials, a microphone plugged in for announcements and emergencies. Turned it on. Pulled down the sound of music, though the buzz of conversation in the ballroom below didn’t falter. Cleared her throat.
And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail,
And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal.
And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword,
Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord.
So saying, she put the microphone down, and I found that I was shaking to hear her speak, and the silence was busy in the hall below as the killing began.
Chapter 92
For a moment, I’d hoped I was wrong, and that Byron would not come to Venice.
Fat chance of that.
How do you stop a madman in the street?
How do you contain a lone wolf?
Byron speaks, and the world goes mad, and she presses her shawl into my wound and whispers, “I’ll find you,” and is gone.
Bleeding out.
(Dying.)
Facts and figures, to pass the time.
In the USA nearly one in five boys and one in eleven high-school girls were reported to have received an attention deficit disorder diagnosis: 6.5 million children
of those, 3.5 million on medication
(Someone screaming below, shush now)
Said the Scientologists of psychiatrists: “[they commit] extortion, mayhem and murder.”
Quoth the Anderson Report, conducted by the state of Victoria into the Church of Scientology: “Scientology is evil, its techniques evil, its practice a serious threat to the community, medically, morally and socially.”
(Blood heading towards the edge of the balcony – funny that, implies a slope, flowing not pooling; subsidence?)
Oxygen use in the body: liver 20.4 per cent, brain 18.4 per cent, heart 11.6 per cent.
Liver functions: breakdown of insulin, breakdown of toxins, conversion of ammonia to urea, production of coagulation factors, protein metabolism, lipid metabolism, amino acid synthesis, platelet regulation, production of growth factors, storage of vitamins, production of albumin, production of… production of…
(something smashing, the music has stopped and so has the conversation but funny, would have expected more really)
Diabetes: suspected long before its formal identification and discovery by the usual suspects of historical medicine, from Galen through to Avicenna. 1910 Sir Edward Albert Sharpey-Schafer isolates insulin
(crawling. Very slow, pushing a fingertip at a time towards the balcony ignore the pain ignore the knife, don’t touch the knife the knife is what’s keeping you alive, keeping the blood from spilling everywhere crawling)
Elliott Joslin publishes the first texts on treatment
however not before some interesting experiments on dogs
remove the pancreas observe the effects
which dogs live
which dogs die
how
why
(crawling, a smear of blood behind me, my clothes glued to my back, silent below now, too silent, even the sobbing has stopped)
Frederick Banting, Charles Best, J. J. R. Macleod, James Collip, purification of insulin for use in humans, only two of them got the Nobel Prize though must have caused a stir back at the office
(crawling, try to lift my left arm but no, blood-thrumming, eye-bursting, body-popping agony, to lift my left arm is to move muscles around the knife, to move muscles around the knife is to die, I know that now, I will die here in this place with a knife in my chest and here comes the pain, it comes it comes)
Three main causes of death from injury: shock, pain, blood loss
(Concentrate!)
Shock: low blood perfusion to tissues. Clammy skin, high heart rate, pale skin, confusion, loss of consciousness, for best diagnosis measure heart rate divided by systolic… systolic blood pressure for an answer of
treatments raise legs
(I can’t)
essential that what blood is flowing goes to the major organs, cardiac arrest, respiratory arrest
(my right hand can reach the curtain, twitch it aside)
Shock: cold shock response e.g. from falling through ice. Vasoconstriction owing to extreme cold. Heart has to work harder to pump blood – heart fails.
(I reach, but can’t seem to move it enough to see the world beyond. Pull harder scream no sound pull harder scream in my eyes my eyes are screaming I am my eyes screaming my hand screaming my voice screaming my)
the curtain falls.
Tangled for a moment in its embrace. The curtain falls and I look, turning my head slowly to the side, peeking down between the balustrades of the balcony.
I am pain, and that is fine.
Shock: acute stress reaction – numbing, amnesia, dissociative awareness, depersonalisation, muteness.
I am witness to these events.
I am my eyes, screaming.
I witness:
A woman, dressed in gold, crouched over the body of her dancing partner, twisting the shattered stem of her champagne glass deeper, deeper into his throat. He’s dead already, but she’s fascinated by the play of glass and blood, the brightness of the ruby drops on her skin. They complement her dress; perhaps someone can do a design based on this moment?
A man, his tuxedo turned red, a caviar knife embedded in his leg, but he doesn’t mind, dragging another man by the throat across the room. He gets to the door, and is confused by it, and lets go of the man in his grasp, but the body is dead and he’s still bewildered, so he goes back the way he’s come, stepping over the eyeless waitress who lies by the door, and sees if he can find enlightenment in another place.
Enlightenment: the final spiritual state; an absence of suffering or desire.
A woman, who sits on her haunches next to the man whose head now hangs by a string. There’s blood around her mouth, and blood on her teeth, but she’s satisfied for now, just rocking gently back and forth, I think I saw her in a movie once, I think she played an unhappy wife in a drama about American suburbia
(my blood drips off the edge of the balcony)
(it will not be noticed)
A man whose ear has been ripped from his face but that’s okay, that’s not the problem, bangs his head gently against the wall
rocks on his heels
backwards
forwards
bang
backwards
forwards
bang
A woman more beautiful than moonlight, confused, sees the dead and the dying, sees someone she thinks she knows, impaled on the melting ice sculpture in the centre of the room. He died there after he drowned a man in ice cubes, and look, his victim now lies beneath him, still face-down, gently preserved in champagne. The woman rises. Walks across the room. Pulls the white silk scarf from the throat of the man in the ice, then walks the other way, looking for a way to hang herself with the three or four others who also chose that route.
A girl strangled with pearls.
A man, his gold pen jammed into his spine.
There wasn’t much in the way of screaming. As the 206 began to slaughter each other to the sound of Byron’s voice, they were so busy killing that they didn’t really care about being killed. It was only the imperfect ones, the technician
s and the waiters, the photographers and the press, who screamed as they died.
Rafe Pereyra-Conroy died screaming, I suspect, beaten to death with his own microphone just before he was going to speak. Who would have thought that such a little thing could be used to break so many bones?
His murderer sits behind him now, cross-legged on the floor, chewing her nails.
Filipa’s eyes roam the room, meet mine, but she doesn’t appear to see me. Doesn’t appear to see much at all, any more.
The cameras in the paparazzi’s box keep on rolling. YouTube awaits.
I am witness.
I close my eyes.
Chapter 93
I was cold for a while, now I’m warm.
I have a feeling that this is not a good sign, but fuck, who cares anymore?
Words from… somewhere.
Kafka, Franz, b. 1883, d. 1924, unknown in his lifetime, famous after death. “One of the first signs of understanding is the wish to die.”
Or other side-splitting japes: “My guiding principal is this: guilt is never to be doubted.”
But then again: “Youth is happy because it has the ability to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.”
1924 was a leap year.
Lenin dies.
The Ottoman Empire gives way to the Turkish state.
The Immigration Act in the USA paves the way to racial discrimination against Asian communities, and will later be cited by the Japanese as proof of American colonial imperialism.
Nellie Taylor Rose is elected first female governor in the USA.
Edwin Hubble declares that Andromeda (previously believed to be a nebula) is a galaxy, and that the Milky Way is merely one of millions of billions of galaxies spinning through the universe.
Approximately eighty-six billion neurons in the human brain. Approximately three hundred billion stars in the Milky Way. Approximately two hundred billion galaxies in the universe, assuming infinity to be an unhelpful term. Approximately 7×1027 atoms in the human body.
I am…
here.
Chess: after three moves on a board, there are over nine million different possible positions that can be achieved in the following game. In a forty-move game, there are more possible positions than the number of electrons in the observable universe.
I am
awake.
My eyes.
Slowly.
No more screaming.
The screams went into my mind, but that’s okay, there’s plenty of room, and much weight of knowledge that I may cast down upon them, if they grow too loud. I am knowledge, you see. I find it is less harmful than many of the other things I could be.
My eyes are quiet, and so am I.
I open them, and I see.
Hospital.
Kinda unexpected, really.
All hospitals look the same.
Blue curtains separate the beds. A bedstand next to me, a jug of water and a plastic cup. A drip of something mixed with something running into a cannula in my left hand, the clear tubing threaded through my hospital gown. In the bed opposite mine, an old woman is awake and scowling, rolled onto one side, her feet bulging beneath the tight anti-thrombosis socks that contort her pale, spotted flesh. Hard to imagine her face, with its jowls and furrowed thick black brows, looking anything other than angry, but perhaps I do her a disservice. Perhaps everyone is angry in this place, with the grey winter light coming through the window at the end of the bed. Perhaps the doctors are rude.
A TV on in the booth besides me. Italian reality TV, something about seducing a rich man, a paradise island, a disastrous dinner – whatever. Waiting a while.
Traditionally this moment, this wakening, is when the doctors come and say, “How are you, are you in much pain, can you remember your name?” and I reply no, no I can’t, oh God what year is it who am I who am I who am I…?
Not so much.
A nurse pads by, sees I’m awake, smiles brightly and perhaps assumes that I’ve been awake a while, and someone else has already said hello. I smile back. She’s forgotten me by the time she’s gone, but that’s okay, there are a lot of patients on this ward, it’s easy to forget. A miracle really that I wasn’t left in the ambulance, an extraordinary thing to be here at all.
Wait a while.
Easy to be forgotten to death in the medical system, but it’s okay, there’s paperwork, NHS targets (do they have those in Italy?), no patient to be left in A&E for more than four hours, just keep on rolling rolling rolling
the woman across the aisle from me turns onto her other side. She’d forgotten I was there, and is unimpressed at the sight of me. In her free time, she shouts at children, I decide. They make too much noise. They’re always smiling and happy and running and free and it’s for their own good that their dreams are crushed asap.
A senior doctor arrives, three juniors in his wake.
How are you feeling? he asks, hands in pockets, casual, relaxed, a flicker in the corner of his eye as he tries to work out if he’s ever seen me before. He’s seen tens of thousands of patients in his career, and forgotten most of them, but they all know he remembers them by name and cares deeply for their condition. That’s how good he is. His badge says his name is Dino, but I find that hard to believe.
I’ve been better, I admit. I think I was stabbed.
Ah! The horror at the hotel, yes of course! The senior doctor smiles, the juniors recoil, suddenly a little alarmed at being near me for, sure, I was stabbed but is there not a danger that I might have stabbed someone else too?
Well then yes, let’s have a look… could be worse, could be worse, nice clean dressing, looking good, missed the lung I see that’s good, antibiotics of course we’ll have a nurse come take some readings
(the nurse does not come)
no name, whispers a junior
Dr Dino is relieved – he hasn’t forgotten my name, he never knew it, perhaps he doesn’t have to go on a mind-boosting fish-oil diet after all.
What’s your name?
Faye, I decide. Faye Cavarero. Where is this?
You’re in the Ospedale dell’Angelo, in Mestre. The Paolo was overwhelmed by the scale of the medical emergency, and the paramedics were able to stop the bleeding on the scene, so you were evacuated here. You were a guest? A note of caution in his voice.
No: a photographer.
Instant relief. Oh, a photographer! I imagine the police will want to see your pictures.
I imagine they will.
Do you need counselling? he suggests carefully. There’s a chaplain, someone to talk to, I can have someone sent up.
Sure, why not.
Of course! Minions! (The juniors stand to attention.) Alert psychiatric services!
They depart.
No one comes.
No name on my chart.
No name on the board above my bed.
Doctors do not bother to write these things down, they have people for that. I call a nurse over, more water, please, she takes my stats while she’s there, writes it down, says, there’s no name.
My name is Faye Cavarero.
Ah, like the philosopher, yes!
Yes, just like the philosopher.
It’s a good name, a strong name. You’ll be strong!
When dinner came, I asked for toast, but they forgot my order, so sorry, I go to get it now, forgot again, and I went without.
That settles it: I cannot stay here for ever. I will starve to death if I do.
Nurse! screams the woman in the bed opposite mine. My head hurts! Bitch – give me more painkillers! Bitch, why won’t you do it my head hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts!
Her words deteriorate to a low groaning, an animal sound from deep within, a low mewl that the nurses cannot silence.
Please give her painkillers, sighs the woman in the bed next to hers. Please: just anything to make her stop.
When the lights are turned out, the woman is still moaning, and I am out of water
, and no one comes.
Chapter 94
On the second day, in the dead of night, I put my left foot on the ground.
In the depths of space, nebulas coalesced to stars, hydrogen fusion commencing at the core, light and heat bursting across the universe.
Put my right foot on the ground.
In the darkest places of the oceans, thermal vents cracked, spilling fire into the dark, and species of bacteria, amoeba, protozoa and tiny, wriggling organisms that could barely be called living, save that they respired and moved and reproduced and decayed, flocked to this eruption of heat, and fed on its energy, and evolved into something new.
I stood up.
Almost immediately, I fell, catching myself on the side of the bed, the pain in my side numbed by stitches and drugs, head spinning, knees strong but head weak, stars in my eyes, oceans in my brain.
Sat back down.
Counted to sixty.
Put my left foot on the ground.
Counted to thirty.
Put my right foot on the ground.
Counted for thirty more.
Held onto the metal stand on which had been suspended various sacks of antibiotics and saline drips, blood and all the goodies chemistry could supply. Used it as a crutch.
Took a step.
Counted to twenty.
Took another.
Lessons from being a runner, lessons from life. Divide the problem into parts. Not: today I shall run a marathon. Today I shall run to the end of the park and back. Tomorrow I shall run to the shops. Now I shall say something kind to a person I hate. Tomorrow I will study compassion and learn French.
Today I shall walk to the bathroom, replete with hooks, handles, straps, fold-away chairs and lift-up seats for every conceivable scenario.
Today I shall lock the door.
Take a piss.
Drink water from the tap; blessed water, drink water until I hurt, I AM THE QUEEN OF THE UNIVERSE!
Shuffle through the gloom of the night-shift hospital.
The nurse, catching up on paperwork at the desk, is confused by me, but I’m not her problem, and I seem to be walking slow but well, goes back to her paperwork.