Dispossession Read Online Free PDF

someone who ranked also as special, a lover or a good close friend.

Two: Sights for Sore Eyes
    So did I sleep that night?
    Bet your sweet life I slept. No point enduring hospital food
and hospital hours, no point taking up a hospital bed at all unless you take
also every possible advantage of the facilities. I whimpered and fussed, I said
every part of me hurt, I told them I was scared of the dark—and no lie that, I
was terrified of its implications: the long sightless hours where your thoughts
blunder heedlessly in circles, lost among landscapes extrapolated from known
anxieties into horrorshows of anticipation—and at last they gave me a jab, if
only to shut me up. One needle into the left buttock with what seemed to me
unnecessary vigour, the payback for my being awkward, and I slept like a
chemically-saturated log until a male nurse came to wake me at some godforsaken
hour of the morning.
    An insipid cup of tea clattered onto the locker; he gave me
a practised smile to go with it, the promise of breakfast in an hour and in the
meantime how about a blanket bath?
    “Any chance of a real one instead?” I asked plaintively.
    “Not a hope in hell,” and oh, he was cheerful about it. “You
don’t shift from that bed till Mr Coffey says you can. Besides, I’m not
replacing all your dressings for you. Settle for a bed-bath, eh? You’ll be
getting nice clean sheets in a bit, shame to lie on them all mucky...”
    Truly, I did feel dirty: or stale and greasy, rather, with
gunk clagging in the corners of my eyes. What I wanted was a long soak in
scalding water, to wash me all the way through to my bones; but we clearly
weren’t operating to my agenda here and I didn’t want to make enemies to no
good purpose. So, “Okay,” I said. “Better than nothing. But just give me a bowl
of water and some soap and let me get on with it, yeah?”
    “I wasn’t suggesting anything else. Any patient with one
good hand gets to wash their own goolies. Even when they go private.”
    A grin, more genuine this time, to acknowledge that this
relationship was already headed the way he wanted it to go, two young blokes
joshing together on an equal footing; and then he left me. Left me wondering
and uncertain, and wanting to ask a question that was going to sound stupid,
whichever way the answer went.
    But hell, stupid I could manage, I could live with. God
knew, I must have sounded stupid enough yesterday. “Who are you?” “I’m your wife, darling, I’m the woman
you’re in love with. ” Words to that effect, at least; and I’d sooner
remember the effect than the words themselves. Sooner still be sitting in a
barrel going over Niagara, I thought that would probably be a more comfortable
experience, but one thing at a time, Jonty...
    The good news, I supposed, was that I could remember all the
words from yesterday, and their several effects. It wasn’t seemingly an ongoing
thing, this memory loss, I wasn’t going to wake up every morning with no
recollection of the day before. I could start building a life again, on this
bank of the river. Though I thought I’d be spending much time, too much time,
maybe all my time for the foreseeable future gazing at the further bank, and
trying to build bridges.
    Any information could serve as a rope, or a plank, or a
concrete pile; so when the nurse came back—to fill a bowl at the basin in the
corner, to lay out bowl and towel, soap and flannel on the locker where I could
reach them, to add shaving gear and a small mirror because Sue hadn’t made good
her threat to shave me last night, I’d been too upset, but the scabs on my face
were twelve hours less fresh now and the hospital didn’t like stubble any more
than she did—I asked him straight out, “Is this a private room?”
    “Yes, of course,” he said, startled, smiling. “Didn’t you
know?”
    No, I didn’t know. I’d had to work it out. Good practice, I
suspected, for a whole lot more upcoming that I’d be expected to