He remembered that he wasn’t dead and woke with a cough. A splatter of spittle across the sheets and the pulsing beep of the respirator. The dead air escaping his lungs squeezed through his swollen throat and passed his dry lips as a wheeze. He stared at the ceiling, felt the phlegm drying on his chin, felt it cling to the whisping grey hair across his jaw.
He sighed, let the breath rub his throat dry, let his lips curl into a grin as the flesh burned. From starched pillows he settled into his morning. He looked for distraction. He looked for the nurse. Big eyes and big tits and short blonde hair and pouting red lips and far too tight uniform. The spittle dried a crusty scar on his chin and he closed his eyes and watched the nurse bursting out of her clinging uniform. Watched her bend over in a tiny skirt. Traced sweaty fingers across the curve of her ass, up the silken length of her thigh.
The regular pulses of the machines remained calm. A sedate and monotonous tone. No excitement there, no eager rhythm. No leering pulses. He stared down the length of the stiff white sheet which was stretched tight across his withered body. He stared at his crotch. No excitement there either.
On the little table beside the bed sat a half eaten bag of grapes. A half empty plastic cup still steamed. Shit, he thought, visitors. As if on cue a woman, tall and red haired, tapped her way toward his bed on fragile looking heels. The suit was immaculate as ever but her eyes were tired, heavy bags her make up could barely conceal.
‘Oh, it’s you again,’ he muttered once she was close enough to hear. He made no effort to hide his frown.
‘Nice to see you too, Dad,’ she leaned in close, ‘Did you sleep well?’ he could smell the cigarette smoke clinging to her hair and he inhaled deeply.
‘Must be Sunday then is it?’ he dropped back into the cool sheets and turned away slightly so he faced the sweating window far off on the opposite wall, ‘Your day to come in and ruin my week.’
‘Don’t do this Dad, please’ She laid a hand on his arm, ‘I don’t want… I…I can’t…’ he rolled over to face her, his cheeks sunken, his eyes wide
‘What? You can’t what, Becky? Spit it out.’ Her eyes were wet, her tears welling up black with mascara.
‘I don’t want it to end like this; I can’t bear to remember you like this…’
‘Yeah? Well tough shit Becky, this is how I am and I’m not going to act saintly just to make things easier on you,’ He rolled back toward the window, ‘I’m dying; I don’t have to be happy about it.’
He could guess the response. Felt his jaw tighten in advance, the phlegm pulling at his week old beard.
‘Aren’t you… don’t… I mean, aren’t you looking forward to seeing Mam again?’
Thick snot coloured spit tore at dirty white stubble. He felt his teeth cracking.
‘I haven’t thought about that frigid old bitch in years.’
There was a pause and a sob and he wasn’t in the least surprised to hear the brisk ratta tat of her disappearing heels. He rolled onto his back and closed his eyes. Let his eyes settle on the cracked ceiling. Through the static he heard the nurse’s radio rumble out a list of US states infected by a mystery disease and somewhere along the corridor a door slammed and Becky’s heels were gone.
*****
He woke to a monochrome world, his weak grey eyes unable to focus in the half-light. It was dawn or dusk, it didn’t feel like he’d slept much but then it never did. Everything was in greys, everything a shadow, only the regular bleep bleep of his life support had any sort of real substance, any sort of defined edge. For a few moments while his eyes flicked back and forth across the ceiling, darted over looming shadows of hospital electronics, he wondered if this was it now, if it had spread to his eyes, or his brain and this was it: the end of the end at last.
He heard the machines pick up the pace, match his faltering heart desperate beat for faltering bleep. He reached out for the cup of water he kept next to the bed but his fumbling hands couldn’t find it, couldn’t hold it, his failing eyes could make a out a blur, a vague cup essence but his trembling fingers couldn’t make it real. The machines beeped steadily and the pain in his chest lessened with each exhalation, grew sharp again with every forced breath. He needed the toilet for the first time in days but something deep in his gut screamed at the prospect, a tight ball of pain somewhere at the back of his colon, somewhere at the base of his already rotting cock. He closed his eyes again and trusted to the catheter, believed in the respirator, put his faith in the morphine and pressed the button to summon the nurse.
*****
The lights were flickering and he could hear the rain drumming hard against the dirt smeared windows along the wall opposite his bed. The bed neighbouring him was empty now and he shivered, a dead mans blanket over his own. Next to him his daughter coughed, a tissue held tight to her mouth.
'I’ve been reading recently, for the first time in years,' She smiled, her lips suddenly brighter, shiny again against her pale face 'I found my old philosophy notes, you remember? You hated me doing that…'
She laughed through her nose and wrung the tissue between her hands, 'It’s just… I don’t know, everything seems so… so pale.'
She cleared her throat, the crumpled tissue against her lips, 'I mean I knows it’s winter but…' her voice was muffled and she pulled the tissue away, 'I know you hated that philosophy course but there was something in it about perceptions, about what we see being in our head and I was thinking maybe…'
She raised her head and met his eyes, revealed her hollow grey cheeks, her white skin and wet red lips stretched into a miserable smile, '…Maybe there’s something in it, I mean at the time I thought it was all crap but now, with you here and this bug I’ve picked up and the rain and everything else, it just seems to much coincidence, maybe me being sick is because I’m sad about you. And the weather…well,' she raised a fresh tissue to her mouth, wiped away the wet red, '…I mean, it’s February so it’s going to rain but…' she licked thin lips and shook her head.
'There was one man who wondered if this was all a dream. Maybe someone else’s dream, and what would happen if they woke up. What would happen if they died?' She stared at him, met his eyes, 'What will happen to my world, Dad, what will happen when you’re gone?'
*****
Big Tits was hovering by the nurses’ office looking saggy and washed out. The flickering lights rendered her part silhouette part solid, flashing in and out. Real and fake. He lay in bed and wondered if had enough life left in him to make his grey flesh flush pink and firm again but the shrunken body in his bed remained still, wrinkled old cock flaccid.
The ward was dying just as he was, buckets under leaks, tape over cracks and always that seeping diarrhoea brown that signalled the damp was winning. Occasionally the static cleared enough for him to make out the news bulletins crackling out from the old radio by his bed but it wasn’t happy listening; disease in London, floods in Wales, back home the bridges over the Tyne crumbled during rush hour. Too many cracks taped up for too long. A slowly reducing pulse.
The rain hit the window pane and the wind picked up, found ways through the decaying walls and he pulled the sheets tight across his chest, by the nurses’ office Big Tits slumped into a warped plastic chair, the flickering lights flashed life then death while she clutched a mug of tepid tea.
*****
His daughter stroked his thin hair, wet with sweat and stuck to his forehead, her other hand wrapped tight around his own. He looked up and met eyes swimming in a shallow pool, no longer green but a dead milky grey. She was almost transparent, even his failing eyes could make out a skull behind her liquid skin. The ceiling sagged with heavy shit coloured stains, the walls were loose to the touch; falling apart piece by piece and Big Tits could barely stand anymore and leant against the window frame staring out past the flapping plastic sheets that had, at some point, replaced the glass.
Beside him Becky whispered, hoarse and weak, ‘You’ll be with mam soon’ And he stared at Big Tit’s ass, his daughters words hanging in the greasy air.
Slowly the picture drifted out of focus, the backside faded into shadow, and he heard the plastic flapping fiercely again and a tear. A cracking, shuddering rip and the wind was in, the plastic gone. A vague shape that was almost Big Tits shuffled back from the window toward the nurses’ office. The wind carried the sounds of the world outside his ward. Of traffic which echoed thinner and thinner. Of sirens that seemed to die one by one and eventually only the wind and the feel of dust on his face.
The machines beeped slower and slower and he felt Becky’s hands grow cold. His dying eyes stared as the bright square which was once a window grew slowly as bricks crumbled in the wind, and then gaped wide and he heard the wall falling, felt the rubble in the wind.
He forced his gaze back to Big Tits, convinced his eyes to focus while all the while he heard the walls crumbling one by one, felt the ceiling come down around him, felt his daughter’s cold hand on his forehead and for a second a new picture formed: Big Tits grinned back at him, uniform bursting, hand on cocked hip and slowly licked her finger. One by one she loosened buttons and the uniform fell to the ground, was swept away on the wind. There nothing else, just her in a wasteland that stretched on forever, the hospital only so much ash, the world only so much dust. The wind stopped. The light dissolved. He felt his daughter’s head drop heavily onto his shoulder, heard Big Tits hit the floor. He conjured one last pulse and grinned at his final, fatal erection.
© Nik Jones 2009