The glass is plastic, anyway.
Helen strokes my hand and holds me. That makes me angrier still. I try to hit her but I’m as weak as a kitten. She just catches my hand and holds it in both of hers.
Some people think having a stroke makes you stupid. It can, in certain ways. Sometimes bits and pieces that you take for granted, like knowing the right word, or picking up your socks, or even knowing how to put them on, bits and pieces like that can get lost. But you know you’re the same person. You know that stuff’s there, but in a cupboard up high and you’re suddenly short and can’t find a chair.
That’s what’s frustrating. Even now.
Back then, early days? I was fucking livid. I wanted to crush the doctor’s throat. I wanted the plastic cup to be glass, because I wanted to take those shards and shove them into my wife’s black eyes, again, again, until there was nothing but pulp. Until she was blind like me and there was no more pity in those deep pools that I’d once felt lost in for a different reason to the one I felt now.
If the glass had been glass...if I’d had the strength…
Would she have stayed? Maybe. But I think not. I think not.
I think it’s far more likely that I would have wasted away somewhere where old people went to die. Somewhere people forgot you because you were hard to look at. In the space of a second my life changed from being one to being two and standing a chance.
Helen saved me with a tennis ball, but Seetha saved me, too.
Fucking bitch. If I hadn’t already been married, I would have asked her to marry me. She might have said yes.
Like, yes, after you’ve shown me you can walk the line. Always, walk the line.
*
23.
‘Walk the line,’ she says.
I’m sitting in a wheelchair, so I’m looking up at her, but only just. She couldn’t have been more than five feet tall.
Seetha. She swallows up the room. Five-foot nothing and she’s filling the room.
It takes me a while to tear my eyes from her, but it’s about winning small battles. I just shrug, ignore her. I look around.
Helen tells me I’ve got a facility for emotion, for drama, but not for description. She says for the language to come back, I’ve got to use it.
Every day. Got to stretch.
People know what a hospital ward looks like. Why waste time? That’s the way I see it. But not everyone gets to see a rehab room, where the torture goes on. They save your life. Couldn’t they just leave it there? Is there any need to humiliate you, while you can’t even shuffle, let alone walk the fucking line?
The line’s right there. Middle of the room. It dominates the room. The floor is covered with mats, wall to wall. The line looks grey, but I can’t see yellow anymore, so I know it’s yellow, because the line wouldn’t be grey. I know this because the doctors tell me there will be grey areas, but Seetha says there are no grey areas, and Seetha is the Queen of my world in the first few weeks. That first day? She’s regal, alright. She knows it.
The walls here have wooden bars. Either side of the line are parallel bars, like at the Olympics, but not as high. Makes me laugh, the first time I see it, but then I don’t have the words to tell Seetha what’s funny. She smiles like she knows.
Bright inflatable balls. Elastic bands. Walkers. Benches. There’s no need for Iron Maidens, thumbscrews, brands, racks. Not if you’re in the right place, in the right frame of mind. I’m blind in one eye, my right side’s fucked, even down to my eyelid and lip. They droop. I’m in the right place alright.
With all that going on with my body, with my frame of mind? That grey line was just as effective as torture.
‘Walk the line,’ she says.
Fuck her. This is my new regime, but I’m not playing. I want my bed and they won’t even let me rest.
I had speech therapy already this morning. My speech is slurred, like I’ve been on an all day bender.
The speech therapy must have worked, because Seetha seems to understand when I tell her to fuck off.
I look away. Sullen. Petulant. A bit lopsided, maybe, but I manage it.
She just laughs.
‘Good,’ she says. ‘I like you already. You know, when I get a hard-arse, they always cry first.’
Five feet tall. Must weigh less than half of me. I could have thrown her through the wall left handed, but how could I do that?
She knows. She’s taking the piss.
Fuck her, I think. She’s trying to get a rise. Well, fuck her.
‘Come on. I’m right here. You don’t like it? Big guy like you? You could do something about it? Right?’
‘I’m a fucking cripple!’ I say, but I shout it, too.
She’s been working with stroke victims for 15 years. She’s heard it all before.
‘You’re a pansy, is what you are. What are you? 17, 18 stone? You going to let me wind you up? A little girl? You just going to sit there? Take it? Bend over? Come on. Big girl’s blouse. Sissy. Poof.’
‘Fuck off.’
She’s got nice teeth. I want to smash them. I want to punch through those teeth and drive my fist straight on through and use her head like a finger puppet, make her say she’s sorry.
Before I know what I’m doing I’ve pushed myself up. I think I’m going to get her, but I’m not. I’m not even close. I’m falling. She’s there, quicker than gravity, lowering me into my chair.
She steps back, out of range again. Now she’s smiling, like I’m a child that’s just discovered B follows A.
‘First lesson: Anger is useful. Use it. Don’t waste it.’
She rubs my arm. Friendly.
‘That’s enough for today. Get some rest. You’ll be tired. Tomorrow, we’ll walk the line.’
She was right. I was tired.
*
24.
A porter wheels me back to my room. It’s around five o’clock. They took my watch from me. It’s in the cabinet by the side of the bed.
Getting into bed isn’t easy, but there’s no pain. Just embarrassment.
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 h
ear 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 jiggling 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.
RAIN/Damned to Cold Fire (Two Supernatural Horror Novels): A RED LINE Horror Double: Supernatural Page 30