Patient: The True Story of a Rare Illness by Watt Ben

Author:Watt, Ben [Watt, Ben]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Published: 2014-10-15T04:00:00+00:00

It’s five past six. The curtains have been pulled round my bed. A staff nurse and a student nurse have pulled my sheets back. My abscess has been draining into its plastic bag for several days - red, deep-red, mucous.

‘Close your eyes. Relax,’ they say.

I have been dreading this moment. The drain is to be pulled half out. Through the skin and flesh. I can feel them fiddling with the stitch that holds it in place. I can hear scissors.

‘Breathe in after three. One, two, three . . . ’

I breathe in. The plastic pipe is withdrawn. How far? An inch? A foot? And in that moment I am reeling with anxiety. I stop my mouth with the back of my own hand. I feel my teeth pressing through the skin. In my mind I see the pipe pulling free of the wound, like a shoe pulls away from fresh bubble gum. I feel the pipe moving through my flesh like a pencil through tight polystyrene. I hear the blood flooding to the site. I smell putrefaction. Illness.

A million brilliant midsummer afternoons rush through me - days on bikes, horse-racing, driving fast, pebble beaches, earthworks, hill forts, swathes of corn, disused railway lines, cold gin, open windows, sunlight turning rivers into tinsel, lollies, poppies, dog-rose. I’m scrambling up a hillside in shadow and the air is cool and my feet slip and the earth is loose and the dust is under my nails and in my hair and mouth and I grasp at small rocks and thistles that have no roots and the grit fills my shoes, my scuffed shoes, and I have no puff and the wound in my side is open and hot and I know I should have stayed on the track and I want to go home and I am going to fall and the ridge is still above me and the sun is on the ridge and a plateau of grass and wild flowers is behind it and over it the brilliant midsummer afternoon recedes.

The staff nurse coughs. He pulls off his latex gloves. The watch on his shirt is upside down. Time stood on its head. Is it twenty past six or ten o’clock? The nurse says I can take my hand out of my mouth now. I have left little red toothmarks on the surface. I suck in saliva. The sterilized stainless-steel trolley is wheeled away silently, and the curtain is pulled back. I look under the bedclothes. The drain looks the same as before.

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