Routine Procedure
A jolt disturbs me.
I open my eyes a crack to a world that’s flashing by like a video on fast forward. I’m in a corridor. Light green walls roll past as I notice a smell, a mix of sweat, blood and antiseptic. My head throbs like a washing machine on spin. Up ahead, a sign above a set of double doors read accident and emergency.
Hospital!
I love hospitals.
I used to sit in The Royal and watch, taking in the sights, sounds and smells. Wandering the corridors seeking interesting departments, I’d walk into a ward and park my arse, observing all those private dramas. It’s amazing how long you can sit listening before a nurse walks up and asks you what you’re doing. I’d just make up an excuse about being in the wrong department. I got away with it for quite a while.
I don’t know why I did this; it was a long time ago.
The double doors are behind me now, and I come to a halt. A small woman wearing a green coat rushes over, followed by two white-coated nurses. Her green eyes flash enquiringly at someone out of sight.
“He’s only just regained consciousness and has lost a lot of blood.”
The doctor nods and looks down at me, “can you tell me your name?” She leans forward, her ear close to my mouth. Dark blotches creep across the side of her head as she pulls away from me.
“Oxygen,” she snaps.
I feel a mask being pushed against my face as small motes of silver light sparkle in the darkness. I try to remember, how did I get here?
She watches me standing up in the bath soaping myself, scratching at the dead skin on my back. I don’t know what to think, why she watches me as I wash, so I ask her.
“You always wash the same way, like a rape victim. I’ve never seen anyone wash like that before. It’s like you’ve got to get every bit of you clean like you’re washing a part of yourself away with every bath.”
She laughs and shrugs.
“Or maybe I just like to see you soapy and naked” she looks at me, a smile slashed across her face.
I smile and lower myself into the scolding hot water, immersing myself until only my nose pokes out. I lie there letting the heat filter through my muscles, easing them until my head feels faint and I crash back out like a surfacing submarine. The buzzing pressure in my head eases as I open my eyes and the black spots fade from my vision. I jump as her face looms out of the blotches and then relax as her hand slips from the side of the tub down into the hot water, her eyes never leaving mine. I pull her in fully clothed as she yelps in mock fear, her hand trapped between her leg and mine.
“You can be spontaneous” she looks down at me and I realise how much I love her as our mouths meet, fumbling with slick seal-skin clothes. We merge into each other in that greasy water, a sea of receding soap suds clinging and clutching.
Afterwards, we flop happily out of the bath and I run another. I watch lines of shampoo run down her back in rivulets as I pour handfuls of warm water over her head, her neck arched upwards in silent supplication.
I cut up my toast, sliding an errant bean back onto the brown rectangle before piercing it with the fork. She watches me as I eat; I stop chewing and stare back at her exaggeratedly, swallowing “what are you staring at? It’s really disconcerting.”
“Just the way you do things.” She shakes her head and laughs. “Everything has to be in the right order. First, you eat the beans on toast, making sure to get all the beans on the first half of the bread.” I stare at my breakfast being dissected as she continues.
“You eat the eggs next and then the sausages using the last half of toast to mop up the spilt egg yolk and bean sauce.”
I look at my fried egg suspiciously. “You need help.”
“I just find it interesting. You always eat breakfast the same way.” She grins at me as I frown at my breakfast. “Don’t you ever feel like eating the egg first?”
“I just save the best till last, that’s all.”
“Oh, so there’s a logic to it, is there?”
I clean up the last traces of sauce from the plate and jump up from the table, leaping at her. She giggles and darts up the stairs as I chase her.
Sandra loves me to chase her. I’m sure she winds me up on purpose and she’s always one step ahead. I reach the top of the stairs and see the bedroom door swinging. I stalk down the hallway, sure that she’s watching me through the crack between the door’s frame, I leap around the corner and grab thin air. Turning just in time as she dashes from the corner by the side of the wardrobe., I tackle her, bearing her down onto the bed.
“Got you now,” my hands pin her roughly to the bed.
Her dull pink-red lips crease upwards as I tease her.
“What are you going to do about it?”
I kiss her hard and relax my grip. She twists sideways, nearly falling out of bed as I grab her bodily once again.
“You taste of breakfast, go clean your teeth.”
“Shit yeah, I’m going to be late for work,” I glance at my watch as I pull away. She grabs my arm in protest, “I was only kidding. Come back to bed.” I walk out of the bedroom, shaking my head at her pout. “Can’t be late. I’ll get the sack.”
Click.
“Hello.”
“Hi, Mr Jones,” I chime as I look at the seemingly endless list of names and numbers.
“Yes.”
“I’m pleased to inform you that your new S.E.64 mobile phone is ready. We just need a minute of your time to collect your details. Do you already own a mobile phone?”
“Yes, but I…”
“According to our records, you are on a pay-as-you-go plan with Vitaphone. I would just like to draw your attention to the savings you could make with our premium or standard packages.”
I stare at the words on the screen robotically. My eyes scan the procedural script as my mouth rattles off the spiel at break-neck speed. Suddenly I’m interrupted by an angry voice shouting at me over the phone.
“Listen! Are you listening, you fucking worm? I don’t want your phone. You can shove it up your arse and what’s more, I want you to take my number off your company lists.”
“I’m sorry we could not help you today.”
Procedure 23, section B, how to deal with an upset or abusive customer.
“This is the fourth time this month you fucks have called me. If you don’t take me off your lists this time, I’m going to complain to trading standards.”
“If you feel you’ve been unfairly treated, I can put you through to our complaints department,”
procedure 28, section A, directing complaints.
“Ok, put me through then… and I’ll take your name as well.”
I hit a button on the keyboard and the line goes dead. Sometimes I hate this job and other times, like now, it brings me a sickly glow of satisfaction. I feel like a consumer terrorist. The ‘complaints department’ will be selling that poor bastard our premium package at a ‘seriously cut rate’ as a ‘sincere apology’ for one of our operative’s aggressive sales tactics. He’s being assured that they know who this individual is and that they will be dealt with in a serious manner.
I know he will have railed and screamed at them and then his greedy little heart will have been drawn in by the figures. It was like breaking in a horse. Those bastards in complaints make twice as much commission as us guys on the floor.
Day fizzles out like a dying sparkler. The night sky unrolls, speckled with stars, which I arrange into patterns as I walk up the street. Tall Georgian townhouses lean over me disapprovingly. A tiger flashes in the night sky, seeming to pounce out of the celestial tapestry above with shining intent.
This cocaine is working overtime.
It sparks a memory of a recurring dream I had as a child of being eaten alive by a tiger.
I could feel my bones crunch and my limbs being torn apart. As I was being devoured, there was a switch, a strange sensation, a duality of thought. I felt my body change, like a spring of death uncoiled.
The pads of my feet tingled in the spreading pool of warmth. I could taste and smell a coppery tinge as my teeth chewed briefly on a slip of muscled meat, could feel my powerful neck bracing against a weight as I dragged away something that hung limply to the side of my head. A misty image would form out of the darkness, of my face half-eaten, bobbing lifelessly in front of my eyes.
A dark streak flashes past, jolting me from my thoughts, disappearing beneath a parked car. Two yellow eyes stare up at me in indignation as a hiss escapes the cat’s mouth. My heart slows and I laugh nervously at the stars, and the city sounds humming in the background. The red, yellow flash of lights from pubs, clubs, and traffic sting the corners of my eyes as I pass a side street.
I always walk this way home. Dark doorways distil the cries of taxi hailers, drunken madmen and brassy young women determined to prove themselves louder and tougher than anybody else.
In the distance, I know they’ll be spilling out from Hardman Street, from bar to bar, smearing colours on the night’s quickly forgotten canvas. The one-legged homeless man will watch them like a hawk, eyes peeled for that rarest of drunks, the happy talker who will tell him he’s a top geezer before dumping a handful of change in his hand. Walking that way back makes me feel like an alien somehow. So I prefer to stick to the backstreets.
Orange streetlights spin, soft and heavy as something goes off in my skull like a firework; I stagger as a gush of heat spreads down the side of my head.
“Check his pockets then, dickhead,” a voice croaks in the blackness.
“He hasn’t gone down yet.”
“Well, hit him again.”
Something heavy hits me in the back, launching me forward, and the blackness clears for a moment as adrenaline takes over. I brace myself against the impact and then turn.
A man wearing a faded tracksuit top swings an unusually large hand at me and I back-pedal just in time. Behind him, another man hops from foot to foot, his eyes darting up and down the street. I punch forward in panic, feeling the crunch of bone as I connect. The fight or flight instinct fades as dizziness mounts. I barely feel the impact this time. All I feel are warm tears of blood dripping from the end of my nose as the pavement rises to swallow me.
I feel hands, intrusive fumbling in my pockets, running up and down my front, searching. My head rests on a pillow made of everything, the calm waters of the Mersey lapping at my ears, the soft moan of the wind a fading heartbeat.
Wet warmth is all I notice at first. Maybe I’m being carried out to sea, but the Mersey isn’t warm, what’s going on?
I concentrate on my body. It feels like a hard piece of shale being washed back and forth. The warmth drips slowly down my chest, then a soft squelch. It rubs around my hips and then over my penis, setting off alarm bells in my head. I feel helpless, like a baby.
I open the heavy shutters of my eyes and clench my legs together, trapping whatever was there between my thighs. An off-pink ceiling spins around a face wrinkled with age. Eyes flash at me in surprise.
The woman has dyed blonde hair, split with a black streak. Although she looks nothing like her, she sparks a memory of Sandra and reality comes flooding back. She pulls her hands back from washing me. Two, then three drops of water splash off my chest as she looks away.
Without a word, she walks out, curtains rustling in her wake.
Behind the curtain, a phone rings.
“Yes, ward B, 1.”
A silence.
“Could you page Doctor Johnson for me? Tell him patient one five nine has just woken up. Yes, a comatose state. We need an initial assessment.”
Time passes; I can feel painful stuffiness in my nose and a dead plastic smell. Next to me a white cabinet with a black ECG machine beeps. Bright light makes my head buzz. It feels like that shiver of pleasure just after a sneeze.
The curtain trembles and then opens.
Sandra walks in. Her hair glows an intangible chestnut brown in the cold light, like looking into the polished depths of mahogany. She staggers forward, dropping into the chair beside me, staring at something on the windowsill. I blink at her, trying to catch her attention.
Along the windowsill a wasp crawls, its antennas waving back and forth listlessly. It keels over, legs thrashing against its striped abdomen.
“Well, I’m here to tell you about my amazingly interesting day.” Her voice sounds distant, as if I’m listening to her underwater.
“Some guy wouldn’t let up about his fucking flights being cancelled.”
Her eyelids flicker, catching her tears.
“And all I can think is how much I want to be away from there, asleep,” she sighs as the wasp struggles on, dragging death behind it, “Just like you.”
My voice croaks out of my throat in a dry rasp. She falls silent and finally looks at me. I smile, chapped lips cracking with a satisfying burn as her eyes widen with tears. She lurches forward, collapsing gently into me, scratching the back of my hands in tender desperation.
“You twitched so many times, but you were never there. Are you really there?” she repeats this mantra over and over.
She pushes my head to the side with her shoulder as she grips me, causing a dull pain in my chest. I ignore it, as I bathe in her warmth.
“Every time they told me to be patient, I felt like punching someone.”
Six spindly black legs kick futilely at the air. Two wide black compound eyes mirror the dead neon strip lights.
“They kept telling me they had to follow procedure,” she’s crying into my collar now, spilling clean salty tears down my chest.
A wickedly curved barb of black and yellow twitches in time to the beep from the ECG and then finally comes to rest, still, against the red crust of worn brick.
I feel at that moment just like I did after they knocked me unconscious. The abandon of feeling, everything merging into one, not being able to control anything, no sense, no patterns and no procedure.
I smile.
The End.
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