Absolute Zero Cool

by Declan Burke

  Despite its best efforts, the Spartan Empire lasted only two hundred years (560 to 371 BCE). Its practical pursuit of physical integrity was insufficient to sustain its philosophy, which in turn was not fluid enough to adapt. The Spartans rejected notions of progress and change. The Spartans thought that A Good Idea is a good idea forever.

  History teaches that this is untrue. History records that the Spartans were ruthless and cruel, and that the Spartans died out. Ergo, history suggests that compassion is the way to go.

  A question from the back of the class: were the Spartans too ruthless or were the Spartans not ruthless enough?

  On the way back to the ward, the six-year-old asks me if they found a hole in her heart.

  ‘No,’ I say. This may or may not be a lie. The results of the ultrasound will not be available for some hours. ‘They didn’t find anything that shouldn’t be there. Your heart is perfect.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Absolutely. The only thing they discovered was that there’s more love in there than you actually think you have. They think most of it is for your parents.’

  ‘But why did they think I had a hole?’

  ‘The machine must have been faulty,’ I say. ‘The first machine that took the ultrasound must have had a hole in its heart.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Anyway, it wouldn’t be a disaster if you did have a hole in your heart. Look at me.’

  She cannot do this, as I am behind her, pushing her wheelchair. ‘Why?’ she says. ‘Do you have a hole in your heart?’

  ‘Sure. My heart is practically all hole.’

  This is a truth no machine could prove, but the six-year-old seems happy.

  My line for today comes courtesy of William of Ockham: Plurality should not be posited without necessity.

  •

  ‘We’re back to the Nazis again,’ Billy says. ‘Eugenics and killing off simpletons – it’s just not kosher, man.’

  ‘What can I tell you? Karlsson was a big fan of the Spartans.’

  ‘Yeah, well, maybe that was A Good Idea for the first draft,’ he says. He uses his forefingers to make invisible inverted commas in the air when he says A Good Idea. ‘But it’s outlived its usefulness.’

  ‘Y’know, I think that was Karlsson’s whole point.’

  ‘So why bother making it?’

  ‘You’re the boss,’ I say.

  •

  Always assume everyone is an idiot. This saves time.

  My supervisor calls me to his office. He sits on the windowsill, one foot touching the floor, the other resting on the low radiator beneath the window. This is the window that looks out on the car park surrounded by manicured shrubs.

  He waves me to the chair in front of his desk. I sit, straight-backed. He is wearing orthopaedic shoes, black with thick rubber soles, and socks with an Argyll pattern, pale blue bisected with yellow diagonals. His posture is one of exaggerated relaxation. His sitting on the windowsill is designed to create an informal atmosphere. We are no longer supervisor-supervisee. We are mano-a-mano.

  ‘Karlsson, I’ve been thinking about that last written warning. Maybe I was a bit hasty.’

  I close my eyes. I riffle through the file stamped ‘Appropriate Responses’. I select ‘Humbled but Grateful’.

  ‘Not at all,’ I say. ‘You were only doing your job. I needed to pull my socks up.’

  He is pleasantly surprised. He straightens, places both feet on the floor and leans forward with his hands on his thighs. He rubs his palms on his trousers. Dark patches appear on the coarse grey material.

  ‘Maybe so,’ he says, ‘but I think I can meet you halfway on this one. Your performance since then suggests you’ve learned your lesson.’

  He is in tolerant mode. Magnanimous. He has suggested compromise as an adult response to a childish situation. ‘I think I can have that written warning rescinded,’ he says. ‘If your work continues to demonstrate diligence, I may even be in a position to propose a commendation.’

  He smiles. He stands up and extends his hand across the desk. ‘Karlsson, I hope we can come to some kind of an understanding.’

  I shrug. ‘Everyone deserves a second chance,’ I say.

  We shake. His grip is limp and damp.

  ‘Y’know, Mike,’ I say, ‘about that commendation. If you could swing it, I’d much rather a recommendation for a raise. It’s been nearly a year now since the last time, and Cassie and me are thinking of, y’know . . .’

  I tail off and allow the words to fall to the floor, there to prostrate themselves in my stead. He waves his hand, palm up, like a fat pink windscreen wiper. ‘Leave it with me,’ he says. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

  ‘I’d appreciate that, Mike. Really, I would.’

  ‘Say no more.’

  ‘No more.’

  He blinks, then gets it and grins. I make for the door. When I look back he seems to have lost about fifty pounds in weight, most of it around the shoulders. He is still smiling. He waves again.

  In his relief he has forgotten I know that all HSE salaries are capped, determined in negotiation between government and unions. In his joy he has forgotten that his position is that of a circus ringmaster: all top hat, tails, glitter and sawdust. I imagine chimps unlocking cages. I see tigers prowling the bleachers. I hear the trumpeting of maddened elephants. I hear the twang of guy-ropes snapping and see the great canvas cathedral totter and begin to topple.

  I wave back, sheepishly, and close his door behind me.

  My line for today is, He was reminded of flies wrenching their legs off in the struggle to free themselves from fly-paper. (Franz Kafka, The Trial)

  The perfect murder requires one essential element: a victim no one cares about. A homeless wino, say.

  You buy a cup of take-out coffee. You walk the streets until you encounter a social reject huddled in an alleyway swaddled in old newspapers. You approach this non-contributor and offer him the coffee. When he bends his head to take a drink, you strike the base of his skull with a lump hammer.

  On the way home, you drop the hammer in a wheelie bin awaiting pick-up. Et voila, etc.

  •

  ‘Woah,’ Billy says. ‘A lump hammer?’

  ‘Apparently so.’

  ‘So no Angel of Mercy,’ he says. ‘That makes it Hyde and Hyde.’

  ‘I don’t think we’re saying you actually lump-hammered the wino,’ I say. ‘I think it’s just that you’re positing a theory.’

  ‘I don’t like it,’ he says. ‘Again, you go down that route, you’re into Highsmith territory. And no offence, but . . .’

  ‘None taken. I vote we scrap it.’

  ‘You’re the boss,’ he says, toasting me with his coffee mug.

  •

  Sermo Vulgus: A Novel (Excerpt)

  Cassie, vague stories percolate down through the millennia. The names of Cheops, Minos, Hammurabi. In 4,000 years’ time, history may or may not vaguely remember Jesus, Darwin and Hitler.

  There are mountain ranges newer than evil, Cassie. All we have going for us is that we can cry and laugh about it all over again; but only when we can only laugh can we say we have truly evolved.

  Cassie, the shark has been around for 400 million years. The shark has survived four mass extinctions that claimed at least 80 percent of the planet’s life forms. The shark is virtually impervious to infections, cancers and circulatory diseases. They heal rapidly from debilitating injuries and hunt even as they heal. There are continents newer than sharks. Some sharks practice a form of intrauterine cannibalism.

  Top that, Spartans.

  Cassie, my love, Hitler and Stalin will come again. Hitler will preach Darwin and the Fourth Reich will outlive the sharks.

  Cassie, we’re gonna need a bigger boat.

  •

  ‘Remind me,’ he says. ‘Did we say we were dumping the Cassie novel or not?’

  ‘I think you said you didn’t like it as a novel, but you wanted to use the material another way.’


  ‘Hmmmm,’ he says. He gnaws a chunk from his brioche. ‘Is it working for you? As novel extracts, I mean.’

  ‘I don’t know. Sometimes, yeah. Although generally speaking, that kind of interruption does my head in. John Gardner – you know him? He had Ray Carver for one of his pupils, so he obviously knew his shit.’

  ‘Carver, yeah. He’s a good one.’

  ‘Gardner reckoned the novel should be a vivid, continuous dream. So maybe we should think about pulling the Cassie novel entirely.’

  ‘Seems a waste,’ he says.

  ‘Only if we dump it. But we could always recycle.’

  ‘Fitting it in somewhere else?’

  ‘No. As a whole new novel. The follow-up.’

  One eyebrow arches. ‘You think?’

  ‘Why not? If this one’s a hit, they’ll be asking for anything else we’ve got.’

  ‘You think it’ll be a hit?’

  ‘Probably not, but who knows? Anyway, there’s no harm in having something ready to go.’

  ‘True for you,’ he says.

  •

  Today is another Red Letter day. Today I am given A Special Mission. Today I am requested to remove all flowers from wards, private rooms and corridors, and anywhere else where said blooms might prove fatal to patients.

  ‘How come?’ I say. ‘What’s wrong with flowers?’

  ‘They take up too much space,’ the matron says. ‘And they’re always being knocked over. The nurses spend too much time cleaning up broken vases, time that could be spent in more valuable nurse-patient frontline interaction.’

  This is logical. This represents the intelligent deployment of limited resources. This is being cruel to be kind.

  This is a Big Fat Lie.

  ‘But they’re mine,’ the first woman says.

  ‘My husband bought me those,’ the second woman says.

  ‘Things are grim enough in here at it is,’ the third woman says, ‘without you taking away the little colour we have.’

  ‘Sorry,’ I say, ‘but orders are orders.’

  ‘What’s wrong with the flowers?’ the second woman wants to know.

  I tell them that the flowers keep falling over and that a nurse’s time is too valuable these days to be wasted cleaning up the mess.

  ‘None of our flowers have ever fallen over,’ the first woman says.

  ‘What’s the real reason?’ the third woman says.

  ‘Do you really want to know?’ I say.

  ‘I think we have a right to know. They’re our flowers.’

  So I tell them that there is increasing evidence that some strains of bacteria can grow in stagnant water, that spilt water increases the risk of spreading infection in busy wards, and that the hospital is doing its best to minimise said risk.

  ‘Rubbish,’ the first woman says.

  ‘More EU shite,’ the third woman says.

  ‘It’s your own fault,’ I say.

  ‘Our fault?’ the second woman says. She is outraged, or as outraged as any heavily pregnant woman can allow herself to become. ‘How dare you?’

  ‘Why would it be our fault?’ the first woman says quietly.

  ‘Given your age,’ I say, ‘and taking into account the average human being’s medical experience, you’ve probably consumed, at minimum, three different types of antibiotic to date. Most people take an antibiotic at least once every four years.’

  ‘What has that to do with the flowers?’ the third woman says.

  ‘Back in the day,’ I say, ‘before they discovered antibiotics, hospitals had to be scrupulously clean. In theory, anyway. If you got an infection back then it was lights out. Nothing to be done. Then they invented penicillin. Which was great, but now everyone’s pretty much immune to antibiotics because they’re taken for everything. Colds, flu, cold sores – they’re going down like Smarties. Who got the orchids?’

  ‘Me,’ the second woman says. She is sullen but subdued.

  ‘Orchids are good as hospital flowers,’ I say. ‘They’re tough, resistant to disease.’

  ‘Why would that matter?’ the first woman says. ‘Surely they’re already dead before they come into the hospital.’

  ‘Fair point. Anyway, your problem is the hospital itself. I mean the building, not the way it’s run.’

  ‘The building?’

  ‘It’s a little known fact that hospitals suffer from Sick Building Syndrome. It’s a thing that happens in an environment where air quality is diminished due to the growth of bacteria and fungi microbes. They form in an invisible mould, especially in buildings that are well insulated and don’t have what they call a lot of air exchange. The problem gets worse when you have air conditioning and central heating, which are an integral part of hospitals, because these spread the microbes all over the place and you get cross-infections and suchlike.’

  ‘How come no one ever told us that?’ the third woman says. The second woman is now pale, her unsightly ruddy complexion a thing of the past. I expect no thanks for this.

  ‘Because going public with it would mean replacing all the hospitals every ten years or so. The country would go bankrupt just building new hospitals. Or it would,’ I say, ‘if it wasn’t already bankrupt. Anyone said anything to you about superbugs?’

  All three nod. There is much thinning of lips. Microbes have become the teensy-weensy elephants in the corner.

  ‘The one to watch,’ I say, ‘is the MRSA. MRSAs account for over 40 percent of all superbugs in hospitals. The medical name is Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus. It’s highly infectious and almost impossible to diagnose.’ The second woman stares while scratching absent-mindedly at her forearm. ‘It causes fever and inflammation as well as wound and skin infections. It also causes urinary tract infections, pneumonia and bacteraemia. In English, that’s blood poisoning.’

  ‘Jesus fucking Christ,’ the first woman breathes.

  ‘The good news is that you’re pregnant,’ I say. ‘The bacterium lives harmlessly on the skin or in the nose and it’s no threat to a healthy person. And you all look healthy to me. But anyone who has extensive surgery, or whose immune system is weakened, they’re what they call vulnerable. So don’t go hoping to get off light with a C-section.’

  ‘Why don’t they just invent new antibiotics?’ the third woman says.

  ‘They’re trying, sure, but it’s not happening. Just last month, you might have heard about it, there was an outbreak of KPC in Limerick. Don’t ask me the Latin, but it’s bad juju. If I was you, I’d have my baby and make your man get a vasectomy. But that’s just me. Anyone mind if I take away all the flowers?’

  No one minds. I say, ‘The whole superbug thing, I wouldn’t take it personally. It’s just Mother Nature having a word in our ear about over-population. I mean, if you want to hack a species down to size, it makes sense to target the weak and old, don’t you think?’

  But they’re not listening. Maybe it’s Tuesday. Or maybe they’re too busy dialling their mobile phones and instructing their husbands to investigate the possibility of home birth.

  I trawl the hospital with a wheelie bin, reflecting on the number of ways there are to die while in hospital. Apart from superbugs and the natural degeneration of old age, there is the occasional wayward scalpel, the over-enthusiastic application of anaesthetic, the rare but very real danger of an Angel of Death, food poisoning, misdiagnosis, car accidents at the hospital gate.

  Not all of these potential killers can be attributed to the fact that accountants now run hospitals on behalf of politicians. Happily, accountants are in the perfect position to advise that we cannot afford a report investigating the extent to which accountants have become our Angels of Mercy.

  •

  ‘You forgot to put in about the hospital exploding,’ he says.

  I make a note. ‘That reminds me,’ I say. ‘How’re you planning to blow up a whole hospital?’

  He taps his nose. ‘Loose lips sink ships,’ he says.

  ‘Just tell m
e you’re being serious about it,’ I say, ‘that you have an actual plan. Don’t have me rewriting all this just to find out you’re thinking of having a prototype missile wobble off course or some deus ex machina bullshit like that.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ he says. ‘It’s all under control.’

  •

  Consider Cain, people. Cain was playing a game that God invented without passing on the rules. All that mattered back then was apples. Cain made sure he didn’t touch any apples and God hadn’t said anything about not smiting your brother.

  Consider Judas. Judas was obeying orders. Judas was fulfilling the scriptures. Judas was the pawn that sacrificed itself. Who today has the courage of Iscariot, to endure eternal vilification for facilitating his master’s desire for suicidal martyrdom?

  Consider Pilate. Pilate did his best. Pilate appealed to logic and reason but the patience required to deflect the willing martyr is unquantifiable. Pilate was caught in a pincer movement between the immovable object and the irresistible force. The sound of the universe is the sound of Pilate’s sigh.

  Consider Cain, Judas and Pilate and judge not, lest ye be judged. Or judge away to your heart’s content. It’s a pointless exercise in self-aggrandising hubris anyway.

  I, yours truly, Karlsson, align myself with Cain, Judas and Pilate. I embrace the how-it-is. I spit in the face of how-it-should-be. Cain, Judas and Pilate are among the few truly free men of history. It took the combined weight of your retrospective vilification and disgust to set them free.

  Now they stand outside the narrative of history, banished from the party that celebrates not just the rules but the fact that there are rules. But their noses are not pressed up against the drawing-room windows. They are not envious. Cain, Judas and Pilate are down at the bottom of the garden in the shadows beneath a spreading oak, smoking a sneaky joint and entertaining themselves by composing haikus that seek to understand your need to belong.