by James Bowen
I had no idea what was happening. But I did know that I had to get myself to a hospital – and fast. I threw on a pair of jeans and a jumper and ran out of the flat, heading towards Tottenham High Road where I figured I had a chance of catching a bus.
When I got to UCH, they admitted me immediately. I was told that the anti-coagulant had thinned my blood to such an extent that it had started bleeding from the pores of the weakened skin where I used to inject myself.
I was kept in for two days while they sorted out my medication. They eventually settled on another drug, which wouldn’t have the same effect. That was the good news. The bad news was that I’d have to inject it into my stomach myself for a period of up to six months.
Having to inject myself was awful, for all sorts of reasons. To begin with it was painful, injecting directly into my stomach muscles. I could feel the contents of the syringe entering the tissue. Secondly, it was another reminder of my past. I hated the prospect of having a syringe and a needle as part of my daily life once more.
Worst of all, however, it didn’t work.
Even after I’d been injecting myself with the new drug for a couple of weeks, my leg was no better. I couldn’t walk more than two paces, even with the crutches. I was now beginning to despair. Once again, I began to imagine losing my leg altogether. I went back to UCH and explained the situation to one of the doctors I’d seen previously.
‘We’d better have you back in for a week. I’ll check to see what the bed situation is right now,’ he said, picking up the phone.
I wasn’t best pleased about it. It meant I’d not be able to work and I’d already lost two days in hospital. But I knew that I simply couldn’t carry on in this condition. I was told that they had a bed the following day. So I went home that night and explained the situation to Belle. She agreed to look after Bob, which was a huge comfort for me. I knew he was happy there. The following morning I got up and packed a small bag of stuff to take to hospital.
I’m not the greatest hospital patient. The clue is in the word patient. That’s not something I’ve ever been accused of being. I get easily distracted.
During the first few days, I didn’t sleep very well at all, even when they gave me medication to help me nod off. Inevitably, I started taking stock of my life and lay there worrying about everything – my leg, my long term health, my pitch at Angel and, as always, the lack of money. I also lay there and fretted about Bob.
The idea that we should go our separate ways had refused to go away. We’d been together for more than two and a half years now and he had been the most loyal friend imaginable. But all friendships go through phases, and some come to an end. I could see that I’d not been the most brilliant company in recent weeks. Should I ask Belle if she wanted to keep him? Maybe I should ask the nice bloke next door with whom he’d already struck up a bond, it seemed? I would, of course, be devastated to lose him. He was my best friend, my rock. I didn’t have anyone else in my life. Deep down I needed him to keep me on the straight and narrow, to maintain my sanity sometimes. But at the same time, I had to make the right choice. I really didn’t know what to do. But then it struck me. It wasn’t my decision.
As the old saying went, cats choose you, not the other way around. That’s what had happened with Bob and me years earlier. For whatever reason, he’d seen something in me that made him want to stick around. I’d always believed in karma, the notion that you get back in life what you put out into the world. Maybe I’d been gifted his company in reward for something good I’d done earlier in life? Not that I could remember doing that much good. Now I had to wait to see if he’d choose me again. If he wanted to remain with me, then it would be his decision. And his alone.
I’d find out his answer soon enough, I felt sure.
When the results of the latest round of tests came in, I was told that the dosage of the drug that had originally been prescribed wasn’t strong enough. They were going to increase it, but they also wanted to keep me in longer to make sure it actually had an impact.
‘It will only be a couple more days, just to see it works and doesn’t have any side effects,’ the doctor told me.
Belle popped in to see me, dropping off a couple of books and some comics. She told me Bob was fine.
‘I think he’s found someone else to feed him as well as that old guy,’ she said, laughing. ‘He really is living up to the name Six Dinner Bob.’
After a couple of days it was obvious that the new dosage was finally sorting out my DVT. When I looked at my leg the swelling was beginning to go down and the colour returning to normality. The nurses and doctors could see this as well, so they wasted no time in getting me off my back.
‘It’s not good for you lying there all day, Mr Bowen,’ one of them kept saying to me.
So they insisted that I got out and walked up and down the corridor at least a couple of times a day. It was actually a joy to be able to pace around without wincing with pain. When I put weight on my leg, I didn’t get those same excruciating shooting sensations. It still hurt, but it wasn’t anywhere near as bad as previously.
True to their word, about a week after I’d been admitted, the doctors told me that I could go home. I texted Belle with the good news. She texted me back to say she’d try to come to the hospital to meet me later that afternoon.
The hospital paperwork took longer than I’d hoped so it was approaching evening by the time I slipped out of my pyjamas, got dressed, gathered together my belongings and limped my way to the exit on Euston Road. I still had the crutches but didn’t really need them. I could now put pressure on my leg without any real pain.
Belle had texted me again to say that she would meet me outside.
‘Can’t come into hospital. Will explain when I see you,’ she’d written.
We’d agreed to meet by the infamous new modern art sculpture outside the main entrance. I’d heard people at the hospital talking about the work of art, a giant, six ton polished pebble. It had cost the hospital tens of thousands of pounds apparently and was meant to make patients and visitors ‘feel better’ as they arrived and departed. It didn’t inspire me particularly, but I certainly felt the benefit of it when my body hit the cold evening air outside. I leaned on it for a moment or two as I tried to catch my breath after walking what seemed like miles along the corridors without the aid of crutches.
I was a couple of minutes early so there was no sign of Belle. That was no surprise at this time of the evening; I could see that the rush hour traffic was already building up. I was resigned to waiting a while, but then, to my relief, I saw her emerging from the bus stop across the road. She was carrying a large, holdall style bag which, I assumed, had some clean clothes and my jacket in it. At first I didn’t spot it, but as she got closer I saw a flash of ginger fur poking out of the unzipped top of the bag.
As she reached the bottom of the steps, I saw his head poking out.
‘Bob,’ I said, excited.
The moment he registered my voice he began scrambling out of the bag. In an instant he had his front paws on Belle’s arm and the back ones on the top of the bag, ready to spring forward.
We were still a few feet apart when Bob launched himself off the bag towards me. It was the most athletic leap I’d ever seen him make, and that was saying a lot.
‘Whoaah there, fella,’ I said, lurching forward to catch him then holding him close to my chest. He pinned himself to me like a limpet clinging on to a rock that was being pounded by waves. He then nuzzled his head in my neck and started rubbing me with his cheeks.
‘Hope you don’t mind, but that’s why I couldn’t come in. I had to bring him,’ Belle said beaming. ‘He saw me packing a few things for you and started going crazy. I think he knew I was coming to get you.’
Whatever doubts I’d had about our future together were swept away in that instant. On the way home, Bob was all over me – literally. Rather than sitting alongside me he sat on my lap, crawled on my shoulders and sat up with his paws
on my chest, purring away contentedly.
It was as if he never wanted to let me go again. I felt exactly the same way.
They say that there are none so blind as those who will not see. In the days and weeks that followed, I realised that I had been unwilling, or maybe unable, to see what was glaringly obvious. Far from wanting to leave me, Bob had been desperate to help ease my pain and get me on the road to recovery. He’d given me space to recover. But he’d also been nursing me without my knowledge.
Belle told me that whenever I was asleep in my room, Bob would check up on me. He would lie on my chest and even run checks every now and again.
‘He’d give you a little tap on the forehead and wait for you to react. I think he just wanted to make sure you were still with us,’ she smiled.
At other times, she told me, he would wrap himself around my leg.
‘It was as if he was trying to apply a tourniquet or something. It was like he wanted to take away the pain,’ she said. ‘You would never lie still long enough for him to stay there for long. But he knew where the pain was and was definitely trying to do something about it.’
I hadn’t seen any of this. What was worse, whenever Bob had tried to help or comfort me when I was awake, I’d driven him away. I’d been selfish. Bob loved – and needed – me as much I loved and needed him. I wouldn’t forget that.
Lying in bed for days on end had focussed my mind on something else as well. A few weeks after I was back on my feet, I took the most important step I’d made in years. Perhaps in my entire life.
When I’d actually heard the words at a regular appointment with my drug counsellor at the specialist dependency unit in Camden, they’d not sunk in at first.
‘I think you’ve reached the finishing line, James,’ he’d said.
‘Sorry what do you mean?’
I’m going to write you your final prescription. A few more days of taking your medication and I think you’ll be ready to call yourself clean.’
I’d been attending the clinic for several years now. I’d arrived there a mess, addicted to heroin and on a fast track to an early grave. Thanks to a brilliant collection of counsellors and nurses, I’d been hauling myself back from the brink ever since.
After coming off first heroin and then methadone, my new medication, subutex, had slowly but surely been helping me to wean myself off opiates completely. I’d been taking it for around six months now.
They called it a miracle drug and, as far as I was concerned, at least, that’s exactly what it was. It had allowed me to reduce my craving for drugs gently and without any hiccups. I’d been reducing my dosage of subutex steadily, first from 8 milligrams to 6 then to 4 and then 2. From there I’d started taking even smaller doses, measured in 0.4 grams. It had been a pretty seamless process, much easier than I’d anticipated.
So I wasn’t quite sure why I left the unit that morning feeling so apprehensive about the fact that I was about to stop taking subutex altogether.
I should have been delighted. It was time for that soft aeroplane landing that one of my counsellors had talked about. But I was curiously on edge, and remained that way for the next two days.
That first night, for instance, I started sweating and having minor palpitations. They weren’t serious. They were certainly nothing compared to what I’d been through when I’d come off methadone. That had been hellish. It was almost as if I was waiting for something awful to happen, for me to have some dramatic reaction. But nothing happened. I just felt, well, absolutely fine.
Bob was attuned to my mood and sensed that I needed a little more TLC. He wasn’t overt; he didn’t need to perform any of his late night diagnoses or tap me on the head to check I was still breathing. He just positioned himself a few inches closer on the sofa and gave me an extra rub of his head on my neck every now and again.
I carried on with my life as normal over the next couple of days. Bob and I had headed back to the flat in Tottenham where we’d adjusted to life there again. It was such a relief to be able to walk properly and to ride my bike around with Bob on board.
In the end there was a slight sense of anti-climax. Five or six days after I had been given the final prescription, I pulled the foil container out of its packet and saw that there was just one tablet left.
I squeezed the oval shaped pill out, placed it under my tongue until it had all dissolved then downed a glass of water. I scrunched the foil up into a ball and threw it on the floor for Bob to chase.
‘There you go, mate. That’s the last one of those you’ll get to play with.’
That night, I went to bed expecting to have a rough night. I will never sleep, I told myself. I felt sure that my body was going to be racked by withdrawal pangs. I expected nightmares, visions, restless twisting and turning. But there was none of that. There was nothing. Maybe I’d simply exhausted myself with anxiety, but the moment my head hit the pillow I was out like a light.
When I woke up the next morning, I gathered my senses and thought to myself: Jeez. That’s it. I’m clean. I looked out the window at the London skyline. It wasn’t a glorious blue sky, unfortunately. It wasn’t quite that clichéd. But it certainly was a clear one. And, just as when I’d come off methadone, it seemed somehow brighter and more colourful.
I knew that the days, weeks, months and years stretching ahead of me weren’t going to be easy. There would be times when I would feel stressed, depressed and insecure and at those times I knew that niggling temptation would return and I’d think about taking something to deaden the pain, to kill the senses.
That had been why I’d fallen for heroin in the first place. It had been loneliness and hopelessness that had driven me into its arms. But now I was determined that wasn’t going to happen again. Life wasn’t perfect, far from it. But it was a million times better than it had been when I’d formed my addiction. Back then I couldn’t see beyond the next hit. Now I felt like I could see a way forward. I knew that I could soldier on.
From that day onwards, each time I felt myself weakening I told myself: ‘hold on, no, I’m not sleeping rough, I’m not alone, it’s not hopeless. I don’t need it.’
I carried on seeing a counsellor for a while, but soon I didn’t need that either. A month or so after I’d taken my last tablet of subutex he signed me off.
‘I don’t need to see you again,’ he said as he ushered me out of the door. ‘Stay in touch, but good luck. And well done.’
And I am happy to say I have not seen or heard from him since.
Chapter 9
Bob’s Big Night Out
As we walked south across the Thames at Waterloo Bridge, the lights of the Houses of Parliament and the London Eye were blazing bright in the late November night sky and the pavement was busy with people. Most were heading in the same direction, away from the West End and the City towards the commuter trains of Waterloo station. Some were weary looking office workers, shuffling home from a late night at work, others were in a jollier mood after a night out in the West End.
It was approaching 10.30pm, the end of their day. For me and Bob, on the other hand, it was the beginning of what promised to be a very, very long night.
I’d been persuaded by The Big Issue to take part in a new event that they were staging. I had first read about it in the magazine a few months earlier. It was called the ‘The Big Night Out’ and had been planned to coincide with the 18th birthday of the magazine. With that in mind, some bright spark had decided it would be a good idea to organise an 18 mile walk through the streets of London in the middle of the night.
The idea was that ordinary people could walk through the deserted city between 10pm and 7am with a group of The Big Issue vendors so that they could learn a little about the reality of living rough and sleeping on the streets. The adverts in the magazine called it ‘a fantastic opportunity to join other like-minded people who have a sense of adventure and a desire to help empower homeless and vulnerable people across the UK’. We hadn’t even finished the walk to th
e start of the event, but I was already beginning to wonder whether it was an adventure too far for me and Bob, especially given the problems I’d had with my leg. It was a bitterly cold night – and getting colder by the minute.
I’d made the decision to take part for a couple of reasons. First and foremost, it was a chance to earn a few extra pounds. Every vendor that took part in the walk was eligible for 25 to 30 free copies of The Big Issue. That meant that I could earn about £60 potentially. Beyond that, however, I saw it as an opportunity to talk to people about the magazine and the lives of the people who sold it.
Despite the ups and downs I’d had with the company, I was still a believer in its mission. It was, without question, the salvation for many people who lived on the streets. It had certainly helped give me direction and purpose – not to mention enough money to keep the wolf from the door – along the way.
We were meeting at the IMAX cinema at the Bullring roundabout on the south side of Waterloo Bridge. It was a fitting location. Not so long ago, the roundabout – well, more specifically the labyrinth of concrete, subterranean walkways underneath it – had been home to the shanty town that Londoners knew as Cardboard City. During the 1980s and early 1990s, it had become a home for more than 200 ‘rough sleepers’ as the social workers called us. A lot of those who hung out there were transient junkies and alcoholics but many created homes for themselves from wooden pallets and cardboard boxes. Some even had living rooms and bedrooms with mattresses. It had been a haven, but not necessarily a safe one, for 15 years. I’d stayed there briefly during its final days, at the end of 1997 and early 1998, when everyone was evicted to make way for the IMAX cinema.
My memories of the place were sketchy, but when I walked into the IMAX I saw the organisers of the walk had created a little picture exhibition on the history of Cardboard City. With Bob on my shoulder, I scanned the grainy black and white images for faces that I recognised. As it turned out, I was looking in the wrong place.