Living Death Read Online Free PDF

a hand lifting him in?’ asked Katie. ‘I’ll have to have a ramp installed, won’t I?’
    ‘No, you’re all right,’ said the male paramedic. He turned the wheelchair around and bumped it up the steps backwards. Barney retreated even further into the hallway, making a low suspicious sound in the back of his throat.
    ‘I don’t have to sign anything, do I?’ asked Katie.
    ‘No, no, you’re grand,’ grinned the male paramedic. ‘He’s not a parcel. All the same, like, we don’t accept returns. If you change your mind about him within twenty-eight days, you still have to keep him.’
    They all laughed, and Barney barked. The paramedic pushed John into the living-room and then said, ‘G’luck, so, John. I expect we’ll be seeing you again before too long.’
    Once she had shown the paramedics out, Katie went back into the living-room. She lifted off John’s rain-cape and then sat on the end of the couch next to him. He reached out his hand and she took hold of it, and squeezed it tight, although she couldn’t help thinking how cold and bony it felt.
    ‘Would you like a coffee?’ she asked him. ‘I just had one but I could make some fresh.’
    ‘No, no thanks,’ he said. ‘I’m okay for the moment.’ He looked around the living-room and then back at Katie. ‘It feels so weird to be here. But good , too. You don’t know how good. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about our days together, and how great they were.’
    ‘Well, yes, we did have some good times all right,’ said Katie. She squeezed his hand again and then let it go. This was no time to bring up all of their blazing arguments, and how much John had resented her strength and her ability to organise his life for him, especially when he had been out of work. Neither was she going to mention the morning he had walked out on her because he had discovered that her impetuous once-only fling with her previous neighbour had left her pregnant.
    ‘Katie, darling, believe me, we can have those good times all over again,’ said John. He grimaced as he shifted himself up straighter in his wheelchair. ‘Once my stumps are healed they’ll be able to take all the measurements for my sockets, and it won’t take more than a couple of weeks before my prosthetic legs will be ready. Then I can start proper gait training, that’s what my therapist told me. That’s what they call teaching you to walk. They should call it “gatch training”, shouldn’t they, in Cork?’
    He paused, and reached out for her hand again. ‘Even so, being able to walk, that’s not an essential when you’re in bed, is it? Look at Oscar Pistorius.’
    ‘Yes, my God,’ said Katie. ‘And look how he turned out!’
    ‘Well, I know, sure, but all I meant was, he was able to make love to his girlfriends even though he didn’t have any legs, like me. It won’t change me, this, Katie. It won’t change who I am, and it won’t change the fact that I love you. I know I haven’t always treated you too well, but it was only because I was so possessive about you. What’s that song? “I’m Just a Jealous Guy”.’
    He paused again, and then he said, much more softly, ‘You’ve shown me that you love me, too, Katie, so much. You saved my life and ever since then you’ve stuck by me. I know how deeply you’re devoted to your job. I understand that now. But now I’ve found out that your devotion to me runs just as deep. I guess you couldn’t always find the words to tell me, that’s all.’
    There was a very long silence between them. Katie gave him small occasional smiles but she couldn’t think how to answer him. ‘Yes, I do love you, but looking at you now, I’m not sure that I find you so physically attractive any more’ ? ‘No, I don’t love you, and perhaps I never did love you – not really, not as deeply as you seem to believe’ ? ‘I care about you, John. I feel responsible and guilty for you losing your legs, but responsibility and guilt –