The Glasgow Coma Scale Read Online Free PDF Page B

bring herself to refuse him outright.
    They’d all gone, one after the other: the income from his job, then his severance, then the pittance he could make selling off his possessions. The paintings were long gone; no way, in his anxious state, he could produce anything new. He told her, as he smoked his cigarette down, as Lynne blocked her nose against the smell and looked with yearning at the shut window, that after a while he’d been able to step outside the process of losing everything – developed the traumatized organism’s coping mechanism, dissociation – and see it as resembling the way a space shuttle increases velocity by jettisoning the stages that have helped it get airborne to start with – only it was aimed downwards, this rocket, piling ever faster, ever deeper into the lightless earth.
    ‘Of course you tried to find other work.’
    An icy pause. ‘Ah don’t know if ye’ve noticed, Lynne, but this isnae a brilliant time tae be buildin a new career. What hing-mies, transferable skills, huv ah got anyway?’ Uncertain, she made no reply. ‘Precisely.’ He stubbed out his cigarette on his plate, then seemed to realize what he’d done. He looked apologetically at the scrunched dowt, the ash amid the food scrapings.
    She went to top up his glass, though he’d barely touched his wine, and his hand shot out to cover it. ‘No thanks, doll. White gies me horrific hangovers.’
    Oh, right, she thought, feeling stupid. Right. What had her research taught her about the homeless and their dependencies? She withdrew the bottle and replaced the cap without serving herself. She had, now, a sense of what Angus had been describing: a great black chasm yawning beneath the feet, into which only the thinnest, most fragile crust prevented anyone, at any time, plunging. ‘So what do you do next, when all that’s happened?’
    ‘Sleep in parks.’ He lounged back in his chair, pretending to be at ease, a raconteur. He turned the cigarette packet in his hand like a toy. ‘On the flatted-out cardboard box ye’ve took fae roond the back ay the supermarket. Ye head doon Kelvingrove Park, clamber over the railings, locate a tree naebody else has claimed, and bed doon. Take yir chances among the freaks.
    ‘There’s three types ay folk frequent parks after hours. Ye’ve the wans wantin a fight, the wans wantin a shag, and the rough sleepers. The shirtlifters ah dinnae mind, they’re jist after company, a wee bit human contact, ye cannae begrudge them that, though you do feel like reminding them it’s the twenty-first century, they dinnae need tae make it sae hard on thirsels. Well, mibbe that’s aw part ay the fun. Anyway, it’s no them ye need tae be watching out fer.’
    On his third night out, he told her as he lit another cigarette, he’d risked shutting his eyes. Despite what he’d said, it wasn’t the best idea to actually try and sleep in the park, but he’d been so exhausted that, after a few false starts jerking awake whenever his chin drooped, he’d finally fallen into a restive sleep under his tree.
    Goblin voices woke him – a stifled chuckling – and when he opened his eyes he found himself facing something pale, vast, alien. Whatever it was, it was too close to him, and he struck at it, his fist meeting clammy, yielding flesh: this minging bastard, goaded on by his pals, crouching over him, trousers down, trying to shit on the homeless guy, while all around, hands clamped over mouths and noses, the others were bursting out with stray noises of fascination or disgust – ‘Haw, naw way man, check it’ – which were, Angus concluded, in some ways facets of the same thing, didn’t she think?
    ‘Hey, hey – don’t
cry
, Lynne, Jesus.’
    ‘I’m sorry. It’s just . . .’ She fell silent, the corners of her mouth tugging down in misery. She wasn’t stupid. She understood his subtext: this is what you’d be abandoning me to if you change your mind – the mawkit sewer that courses,