Falling lasts a lifetime.
Two
Ludo
I bang my head against the bed rail just to hear something other than my own tripping brain. It’s late, close to midnight, and the strangling silence of the sleeping hospital ward makes me want to throw things around and scream. Anything to disrupt the oppressive quiet.
Restless, I sit up. Lie down. Sit up again. Unwelcome energy buzzes in my veins, and a tremor shakes the hand that isn’t encased in plaster. The effects of the general anaesthetic have long faded, and even the discomfort of having fresh metal pins inserted into my forever-damaged wrist isn’t enough to quell the anxiety flaring in my gut.
I need to get out of here.
But escape isn’t an option. The nursing team have been forewarned that I pose a flight risk and check my every move. I can barely use the bathroom without an escort, and the unwanted attention is almost as bad as the phantom ants crawling over my skin.
I lie down again, chest rising and falling too fast, and focus on the throbbing beneath the cast, the tugging sting of the stitches holding my skin together. It works for a while. Then I picture ants for real, imagine creepy bugs invading the space between my flesh and the plaster, and new agitation surges. Fresh sweat sticks my thin T-shirt to my back and the reverb in my brain hurts my ears.I need...something.
There’s a handful of mobile screens on the ward. At home, my predilection for paranoia means I rarely watch TV, but trapped in hell, I’m desperate for distraction.Maybe I can watch the weather on mute.
I find a free trolley and wheel it closer to my bed, straining the only limb I possess that isn’t a victim to the noise in my head. A nurse catches me, but it’s the one who likes me—as much as she likes anyone. She helps position the TV and retrieves the remote.
“Quiet now,” she says. “They’re bringing someone down from intensive care, so you need to stay put, okay? No more wanderings tonight.”
I’ve spent my entire adult life being spoken to like a child. I nod and lie down, curling up under the thin, grey blanket and scratchy sheet, fixing my gaze on the TV screen. The Weather Channel comes up trumps, and I lose myself in the moving screen of sleet and snow expected over the next few days. It excites me. I like the cold—the wind in my face, ice against my bare feet. It’s so much more bearable than suffocating heat.
I close my eyes, willing sleep to carry me through until my morning lithium dose. The hospital fucked it up yesterday and today, feeding me half the dosage of my usual pill.“Don’t worry. You won’t feel any different.”But they were wrong. Obviously. I feel different every day.
By the nurse station, the double doors swing open. Metal wheels scrape the rubber floor, and a bed carrying an unconscious man is pushed onto the ward.
I squint in the dim light. I drowsed through the handful of new faces that arrived immediately after my surgery, too out of it to take much notice, but as the bed passes, I’ve never felt more awake in my life.Jesus.Even bruised and bloodied, the man isgorgeous.And clearly under seventy; a rarity on this random overspill ward.
Orderlies push the bed to the high-dependency bays opposite mine. A flurry of nurses work to hook the man up to machines while the ward sister and another man talk gravely at the foot of the bed. I’m enthralled but, as ever, so unsubtle it’s painful. My friendly nurse meets my gaze, shakes her head, and draws the curtain around my bed, corralling the TV and me into our quiet corner.
But she leaves a gap, and as hard as I try, I can’t look away.
The man has ink-dark hair, and what skin isn’t hidden by wound dressings, blankets, and equipment is alabaster pale. The kind of skin that’s so smooth to the touch you can never stop.I wonder—
Oh God.I swallow and shrink against my bed.You absolute sicko. Look at the state of him.
It’s hard not to. With his leg plastered from foot to thigh and a crude tube contraption protruding from his ribcage, the man is a mess. A beautiful mess, but a mess nonetheless.
Word repetition, even unspoken, grates my nerves. I focus on the unconscious man and instantly regret it. The tube in his chest looks excruciating, and whatever misfortune has befallen him has happened recently enough for dried blood to still be smeared over his glorious skin.
I want to wipe it off.
But then, I also want the ground to swallow me whole, and I can’t gauge which voice is loudest.
The second man to enter the ward is still deep in conversation with the ward sister. He’s slimmer and older, but shares enough of the unconscious dude’s dark good looks to be a relative. He scrubs a hand down his weary face. “Will he be okay?”
The sister nods and turns to leave. “We hope so.”
What sort of answer is that?I frown and wonder why it matters to me, but the reedy man doesn’t seem convinced either. He stops my nurse and repeats the question. I brace myself. I’ve only been on the ward a few days, but I know this nurse well enough to anticipate her brutal candour.
“Your cousin fell twenty feet, hitting a van, and then landed on concrete,” she says. “He had a chest tube inserted in the field while he was trapped, and his leg is broken in three places. I imagine he won’t beokayfor quite some time.”
She speaks with compassion, but her words hit the man as though she’s slapped him. He takes a deep, shuddering breath and sinks onto a nearby chair while I bite my lip, abruptly and acutely aware that perhaps listening in is the ultimate disrespect to these strangers in the night. I glance around for something else to occupy my racing mind, but the TV no longer holds up.
A frantic desire to be somewhere else hits me, fast becoming all-consuming. My mind jumps, my heart pounds, and I’m crawling out of my own skin. If I could peel myself like an old satsuma and throw it away, I would. There aren’t many parts of myself I wouldn’t give up for the peace of mind I so often lack.
I press the call button. A new face appears. I grab my notes from the side of the bed and hold them out.
