by James Smythe
The diazepam has done its job, and he’s pliable. She slips the Crown onto his head and he hardly murmurs, and then she presses play on the first file she’s got lined up for the day. The Machine’s noise, she wonders where it’s gone. She can still hear it, but it’s like it’s hardly there, or it’s part of the background. She remembers being a child, when they – her whole family – moved to a house in west London that was next to the underground. The first few nights the trains kept her awake: bedtime meant the sound of the brakes and the engines as they came in and out of the station at the foot of her garden; and then there was the sound of the planes from overhead, the flight path directly intersecting with where she lived, coming and going at all times. They made more noise on the way up, she thought, as she watched the lights through the darkness. But she got used to it. Three nights of watching the planes, and waiting for the last train to pass through, and that was it. No more. As a child she told her parents that she had done it herself.
I wished that they would stop, she told them. So I wouldn’t be able to hear them any more.
Now, the Machine is there, but somehow it’s lower, inside her. Like the noise is synchronous with herself: with her headache, which throbs incessantly as she stands near the Machine, and the rumble in her gut, which she takes to be hunger but which edges towards nausea. But then she looks at Vic as the playback occurs and he seems more whole. He’s getting there, she tells herself; a construction site, with signs up and barricades, but he’s getting there.
He rolls slightly, from side to side, as if he’s lying on waves. Somehow suddenly tidal. He makes a noise, like before, but much quieter. A digital murmur, nothing more, really. The Crown blinks. Over the now-quiet speakers, Beth can make out words.
I always wanted to be a soldier, he says. I always wanted …
As the voice on the recording drops, she stops listening. Instead, she watches him: the muscles on his arms. Where they had dropped and sagged as he stayed in the clinic, and the flesh had taken back his army physique to nature’s settling point, all of a sudden it looks as if it’s becoming stronger. She touches his bicep and it’s firm. She squeezes it and it’s not what it once was – she pictures him as he was, taut, pinched flesh, a body destined to cause envy in his friends and hers, built from training rather than pride or conceit – but somehow it’s getting back to how he was. She tells herself to read about muscle memory: about whether this is something others have experienced, as a by-product. His body resetting itself to the way that it once was. She peels up the t-shirt he’s wearing, and there: the fainting trace lines of his stomach muscles. The iliac crest she used to stroke.
So they told me that if it was what I wanted …
She stands and looks at herself in the mirror on the dresser: at how she’s faded away over the past five years. Living by herself, and the toll. And the time. She’s sure that, as she looks at Vic, he hasn’t aged. What she thought was salt-and-pepper hair starting to creep in looks different in this light. She thinks about giving him a haircut, back to how it used to be, so short that it was barely there at all.
Like this never happened, she says.
She wonders what he’ll see when he’s awake and himself again: when he looks into the mirror; what he’ll expect. Will he want himself as he was, or will he know? She’s not getting rid of the last five years, because the lies are something that she needs to extinguish completely. So will he want them? Will he want to see himself and know what he’s been through? Will he want to see the time he’s lost in his eyes and on his face, and running through every vein in his body? And when he looks at Beth, what will he see? The woman who destroyed him, or the one who recreated him, returned him to what he was?
She opens the door to the bedroom as soon as the playback ends, before the next one starts. Laura’s still there: the shadow of her head, leaning back against the window. Beth goes to the fridge for water, and she drinks it herself though it is meant for Vic. With the window shut, the heat in the flat is nearly intolerable. She takes another bottle into the room and shuts the door behind her, and presses play.
30
Another day. She gives him the diazepam in his drink, without food inside him. It sets in faster and heavier without the food, and she’s wasting time. DO NOT OPERATE HEAVY MACHINERY. He drinks it without saying a word, the whole drink down in one, and then lies back.
Thank you, he says. I was so thirsty.
She sees herself as if in a film: where the actor has been told to stumble backwards, shocked. Display an extreme reaction to this. Emotionally push yourself. Imagine that it’s real.
What did you say? she asks. Her voice is so shaky, so barely there. She sounds as if she might be sick, as she listens to her words: the filter of it in her throat, the words catching on rising bile.
Thank you. He turns and looks at her, only not quite at her, his eyes off somewhere else. It’s so hot. He smacks his lips together. Can I have more? Still no real eye contact. Beth steps forward and lifts the bottle to his lips, and he sucks on it, almost, like a baby at a teat, and she tilts it more.
Go on, she says. Her voice: her head. The pain in it, because she’s so tired, and she’s been doing this for so long, and now this, so suddenly? He can’t be back, not yet. What do you remember? she asks him.
I, uh, he says. He searches. His eyes flit around the room. They look for reference points. They look for something to latch onto.
Do you remember my name? she asks.
He looks at her, but not at her eyes. The rest of her face, her body. Up and down.
Beth?
Beth. Do you remember your name?
I’m Victor McAdams, he says.
What else? Where are we? She sits on the edge of the bed. She’s not touching him. She worries that, if she touches him, he might disappear; like he might not be entirely real, not yet.
I don’t know, he says.
How did you get here?
No, he says.
What’s the last thing you remember?
No, he says. No, I can’t get this, I can’t. Oh my God, I don’t, ah, ah. He panics, and he moves more. He tries to push himself up to sitting, but the drugs that he’s been given are settling in, and it’s tough. He’s pushing against them. You have to let me up, he says.
I can’t, Beth tells him, not yet. Lie down. Shush. She rubs at his temples as he gives in, because the drugs are so much stronger than he is, and he lies back. This will hurt, she says. But I’ve never been so convinced that I’m doing the right thing. She pulls the Crown down and puts it on. No lubricant, because he doesn’t seem to need it any more, as if the Crown has grown, somehow, to fit around him more comfortably. He murmurs and rocks again, but she starts the Machine nonetheless. She knows her way around the screens without looking: she can sit with him and stroke his brow, fingers running all the way to the pads of the Crown as she presses play, and then his voice amidst the sound of the engine as it roars at both of them, and amidst the tingle from the pads and the screen. With one hand on his head, and the vibrations there, and the other on the screen, taking in the vibrations from the Machine, she feels like the central part of a circuit, the part that completes it. Vic is incomplete, and she will help.
No, he says now, as the Vic on the recording describes who he used to be.
Are you Vic now? she asks him as he lies there, the sweat dripping from his body. Like a fever.
At the end of the session she walks out of the room and makes breakfast for herself, and downs bottles of water at the sink. She pops ibuprofen from the packet and swallows them, three, then adds a fourth minutes later, even though she knows that they’re not an instant relief, that they take time to work. She stands in front of the fridge and lets the air from inside it steam up around her, and soon the flat is full of something like smoke but it’s only condensation. She loses track of how long she’s been standing there. She drinks another bottle. In the reflection of the oven door she looks at herself: her hair, her face. One of the
first things that she’ll do when she’s fixed Vic and brought him back to her is sort this out. A haircut, a trip to a department store, if there’s one wherever it is that they end up. She makes a note on a Post-it stuck to the fridge to do more house research when Vic’s sleeping tonight, so that she’s prepared. Somehow this is all going faster than she dreamed. She gave herself six weeks, and yet now, after only one – not even one, not really – he’s showing signs.
She peers at the window. Laura’s gone. Beth wonders when she left. If she stayed until the night, or gave up long before. She knows that she’ll be back, because Laura has that sort of insistence. The sort that doesn’t just slip away.
31
She wakes him for lunch, the session complete, and an extra hour and a half of sleep for both of them, to get over it. He opens his eyes at her. She’s put her face close to his, so that he can’t avoid looking. Her eyes at his.
Come on, she says. It’s time for lunch. Are you hungry?
I think so. She smoothes his hair where the warmth of the Crown has made tufts, like horns.
Come on, she says. We should eat. I’ve made lunch. She helps him to a sitting position, and his head lolls, and he moans. I know it hurts, she says, but it’ll get better. She moves his feet out of the bed and tells him to stand up, and he shuffles forward. Then he puts his feet onto the floor itself, and tests his toes. I’ll help you, she says. She tries to take his weight, but he shifts so much of it back to himself, more than he has before during this process. He treads gently, toe to heel, like a series of pictures of somebody walking, rather than somebody actually doing it. He stumbles, and the weight on his ankles isn’t there. He shakes. Okay, Beth says.
Toilet, he says. So they go there first, and she helps him sit down. He pisses and shits, and then cries when she has to help him clean himself afterwards. He hardly speaks, not really, he doesn’t say that he’s ashamed that she’s doing this, but she can tell. It’s something ingrained and deep inside him. Shame and self-pity and self-hatred and a humiliating desire to do this himself. He knows that there’s something wrong. She wipes him and he rests his face on her arm, her chest, and shoulder, and he sobs. Beth doesn’t mention it afterwards, taking him to the table and sitting him down. There’s an omelette in front of him, softly fried, more scrambled egg than solid.
Can you manage it? Beth asks. He shakes his head, so she feeds him first. He opens his mouth and she slides the egg into it, onto his tongue. He swallows of his own accord. He cries as she feeds him, and tries to manage words.
My head, he says.
I know, she says. Finish lunch. You still remember who I am?
Beth, he tells her.
Okay, she says. You’ll be okay, I promise. Do you know what we’re doing here?
I don’t know, I don’t know. He still resists eye contact. She puts the egg into his mouth: the diazepam she’s crushed up buried somewhere in the butter and cheese that binds the thing together. He swallows and then refuses the next mouthful – turns his head – so Beth tells him that he has to have a drink to wash it all down. He takes it.
She helps him back to the bed before he starts to get drowsier. His increased responsiveness is certainly making this easier, and with each step he takes it feels like he’s taking more and more of his weight. He lies down of his own accord, and he shuts his eyes and smacks his lips.
Do you know what that noise is? Beth asks him. She’s referring to the Machine.
I don’t know, he says through the fug.
It’s okay. Don’t worry. She takes down the Crown and presses the screen.
32
Laura hammers on the door with the balls of her fists.
This is wrong, she shouts. Beth, you have to listen to me! The neighbours have come out of their flats to watch, because they assume it’s a domestic – and that’s one of the pleasures, for them, of this block’s forecourt, the sheer number of arguments that spill out of the flats and onto the concrete, complete with whatever’s thrown out after the offending party, and usually a crying brood, begging for whichever parent has the greater potential for violence to calm down. They stay standing as Laura continues her tirade. What you’re doing is wrong, Beth. What you’re doing is against everything that we are!
Beth sits on a chair at the dining table as Vic rests. She watches the shadows of Laura’s fists raise and fall on the glass.
Beth, answer the door. Answer the door.
Or what? Beth asks. She doesn’t shout it, but she knows that Laura will hear.
Or I’ll tell people what you’re doing.
It’s not illegal to stay inside your flat. This is a game in which neither of them is going to say it first: Laura in accusing Beth of something that’s barely common knowledge, something that barely exists as a possiblity; and Beth won’t admit any more than she already has. And Vic isn’t here against his will. He was checked out of the clinic, taken by his wife for the summer, a break from the monotony of his care, and he won’t be returned because he’s being changed.
You know what I’m saying, Beth. She hushes her voice to a spat whisper. Let me in and we can talk about this.
This isn’t your business, Beth says. She drinks water and rubs her head where it’s sore – she’s so tired still, and when she closes her eyes all she can see is the Machine, that wave of ever-deep black metal – and takes more ibuprofen. She counts her pills: half the diazepam gone, half the ibuprofen. She’s been using more of them than she anticipated. She’ll have to do another run: late at night, she thinks, when there won’t be people outside, when she can rely on Vic to stay asleep. He’s excellent at that. Sleeping through the night, never waking, never making a peep. That’s something he was good at before he went to war, being able to drop off anywhere, any time. Cars, trains, the hard benches of an airport: he could sleep on them.
You need help, Laura says.
I can handle him.
Beth, you need friends and you need help to see you through times like this.
I’m sorry, Laura.
I don’t know what you’re doing in there, Beth. I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but it’s not your husband inside there—
Stop it.
—because he was destroyed, and he cannot now be reconstructed, not from nothing. That isn’t your right. She pauses. Genesis 2:7: the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground, and he breathed life into the man’s nostrils; and the man became alive.
You seemed so normal when we first met. Beth says it to hurt her, and there’s silence for a while, as the slump comes: Laura’s clothes dragging themselves down the door.
I’m not leaving, Laura says. I can help save you, don’t you see?
There’s nothing to save, Beth says. She shuts the door to the Machine’s room again and puts the Crown on Vic’s head. She presses play, and Vic’s voice emerges: so instantly reassuring.
I’m having trouble remembering things, he says.
That’s natural, the doctor says. You had a nasty accident.
Yes. That’s what I’m told.
You don’t remember?
No.
The recording is from after it was all settled: after the majority of the work had been done. From here, they told Beth, it was just cleaning up. From this point onwards, anybody could talk him through it.
And then shouting, coming through the flat.
What’s that voice? Beth, who’s in there with you? Laura beats the front door again, and Beth remembers that the playback is still at full volume, so that she could hear it over the Machine. She wonders why Laura hasn’t heard the Machine itself: supposes that she’s assumed it to be a normal household appliance. She wonders if the neighbours have noticed the vibrations coming through their floors or their ceilings. If the shudders carry through the foundations and supports and make their light fixtures rattle and their carpets hum. Beth, I can hear voices, who’s in there?
Beth opens the door. The voices fill out into the rest of the flat.
I remember being somewhere. The desert? Is that where I had the crash?
What crash is that?
The, ah, the car crash. That’s why I’m here. Speaking to you.
Who are those voices, Beth? Laura sounds desperate. And then Beth unlocks the front door and opens it. The sunlight from outside is brighter than she thought: it’s been a few days – how many? – since she left the flat. Laura’s there, fingering her necklace. Oh my Lord, you’re seeing sense. You’re seeing sense. Beth looks around. Fat neighbour is there, pretending to be hanging out washing across the balcony rail (which they’re banned from doing). The kids stare. Across the way, some of the other families stand on their balconies and watch, because Laura’s voice is shrill and loose and echoes across the courtyard. Below them, a group of youths in the courtyard, standing on the benches and the flower-beds, look up at Beth and Laura. The boy is there: the one with the scar and the bike and the naked leaps into water that he can’t judge the depth of; and he spits onto the floor and stares, and doesn’t stop staring at Beth as she scans the complex.
Go away, Laura. I won’t ask you again.
You need me, Beth. You need comfort and advice.
Just go away. She picks up Laura’s bag from the floor, which is open, spilling with her wallet, a bottle of water, a bag of crisps and a book, and Beth knows what the book is without even having to look. She hurls the bag over the railing towards the youths, who laugh and act like it’s a bomb. Apart from the one with the scar, who doesn’t move.
What? Laura asks, and she turns and starts to run to the stairs as the gang look at the bag’s spilled guts.
Beth slams the door shut behind her. She walks into the bedroom and the recording is still playing, but she speaks over it. She talks to Vic about Laura, and how irritating she is. How she won’t leave them alone. How she – Beth – needs to get out of this place, because it’s all becoming too much. She wonders if he’s becoming more receptive. If, somehow, he can hear her through all the other noise.