mind the alliteration. It’s the desperation, she says, of the white-bread, Anglo-Protestant Wendy working so hard to apologise for the unequivocally Jewish Weinstein. She could have changed her surname to O’Dell when you got married but she’s a feminist and refused to sell either the sisterhood or Judaism short. You weren’t going to argue because she’s cleverer than you and whenever you argue you lose.
Something pops into your head. The driver. Is the driver of the blue car okay?
‘Where’s the driver?’ you ask Doctor Elizabeth Marks.
‘I’m here,’ answers a small female voice as a pair of tired brown pumps enters the peripheral vision of your right eye.
You recall the old blue sedan, hear the trace of an accent, mid-European, and construct a picture of your assailant working herself to exhaustion in a tedious, underpaid job she’s nonetheless grateful to have and now terrified she’ll lose if she arrives late.
‘Are you okay?’ you ask and then assure her you’re going to be okay too.
How do you know this? How do you fucking know this?
You hear sirens approaching. They appear to be coming from all directions and that’s because they are. The police arrive to redirect traffic just as two ambulances pull up. You don’t see any of this—it’s purely soundscape with a running commentary by Doctor Elizabeth Marks.
An Ambo leans down to talk to you and it’s the first face you’ve seen in what seems like ages. Pale brown hair is plastered to his forehead with a combination of sweat and grease. Deep lines that once were dimples are etched either side of his mouth. He asks you questions with stale-smoke breath.
What is your name? What day is it? Do you know what happened?
He tells you he’s going to turn you over onto a board and secure you. A brace will be on your neck and it may feel very uncomfortable and he’s sorry.
You hear the count…
on three…
one,
two,
three…
and you’re flipping over. Knees, thighs, torsos appear. Then faces, all looking down at you. You can see the sky. A woman pushes towards you, someone tries to hold her back but she says, ‘I’m his wife.’
And there she is, looming over you. This face you know better than your own. You read every twitch and flicker, the slight clouding of her bright blue eyes. She is shocked, shocked to see you prone; then frightened, fighting the faint quiver in her bottom lip. Her thick brown-black hair hangs in a curtain, dangling down at you. She sweeps it behind her ears and makes a huge effort to look calm, to be calm, and now she looks blurry because there’s water in your eyes and it stings and you realise that once again you’re crying salty tears.
They lift you up and a woman from the house across the road tries to rescue her blanket, which is covering you. The blanket sticks to the stretcher and she tugs at it (but not hard, for fear of disturbing you) and says in a self-conscious way, ‘Doesn’t matter,’ and you know she’s feeling foolish for fussing when there are bigger things at stake. Wendy releases the blanket from the stretcher and returns it to her and you hear her thanking the woman as they carry you away. And you carry the kindness of these strangers with you and are moved by them.
You are in an ambulance. The brace on your neck is crushing and claustrophobic but you dare not complain. Your view is restricted to the roof of the vehicle as you race along, siren wailing. You know the route to the hospital and you try to imagine exactly where you are, a Global Tracking Patient.
Wendy follows in her car. You suddenly regret this because you want her with you in case you die. You can’t see the Ambo unless he peers directly overhead which only happens once as he checks your vital signs and asks more questions.
What is your name? What day is it? How fast was she going?
How fast was she going? You have no idea so you say, ‘No idea,’ and he suggests, ‘About forty?’ and you think, ‘Forty! Whose side are you on?’ You can hear, close to your ear, a pen scratching on paper and you realise he’s logging all this information and you want to say, ‘A lot fucking faster than forty!’ But then a huge, horrifying wave of pain emanates from your left thigh.
The Ambo reads your situation and says you can have some morphine when you get to the hospital. This is the first time you are conscious of any pain and instantly you are overwhelmed by it. Unbearable waves ebb and flow over your body.
The ambulance stops and things slam and slide open.
You glide fast down a long corridor.
The ceiling panels are discoloured with age and intermittently stained by leakage. Every now and then a panel is missing and you catch glimpses of piping and ancient bits of insulation. It occurs to you that this is how you are going to see the world—through a small window directly above you—for quite a long time.
Countless prostrate patients must have experienced this before you and you make a mental note to share your small epiphany with your architect friend, Felipe: hospitals should be designed around their ceilings because this is what sick people see of them. This suddenly feels like a really important idea. You haven’t felt such conviction since you had a brilliant flash (when stoned at university) about all mankind saving the Earth from a collision with a giant meteor by travelling to one country so the displaced human mass would make the planet wobble on its axis, which would alter its orbit just enough for the meteor to whizz past into intergalactic oblivion. You can see now that your ceilings epiphany will change the way future hospitals are built and will one day be regarded as another beat in the long, slow pulse of your unfolding genius.
A wave of pain turns into nausea and you think you’re going to vomit and you’re frightened you will choke on it because you can’t move your head.
A bank of fluorescents travels towards you and stops overhead, glaring like a science-fiction sun. You hear Wendy’s voice amid the hospital clatter but it’s a female police officer who peers over you and asks how it’s going.
‘Good,’ you reply (!).
The policewoman tells you she will come later to take a statement and disappears. Wendy takes her place; she’s silhouetted by the alien sun but you can see her eyes are red and puffy. She smiles and says, ‘Hi Bubba,’ and you say, ‘Hi,’ and suddenly an Indian doctor takes Wendy’s place and introduces herself and you try to hold on to her name but it’s complicated and polysyllabic and now it’s gone.
She bundles Wendy off to a waiting room and you can feel a prick in your arm and she explains in her rhythmic Hindi accent that she’s taking blood and putting a shunt in your arm in case you need a drip and/or meds. Then you hear her drop something and say, softly, ‘Oh damn,’ and she fusses for a bit and you feel another prick.
She looks into your face and smiles and offers you morphine. You say, ‘No,’ and explain that you want to be aware, stay in control. It’s only a glimmer, the slightest spasm of her facial muscles, but you can tell she thinks you’re an idiot. She asks you to move the toes on your left foot.
There
