Eight narrow NHS beds, the footprint of each traced by a ceiling-suspended railing from which hangs a pleated curtain, offering what privacy there is. Six women in various states of undress, ignoring each other as studiously as if we are all in a London tube carriage, rather than commuting to surgery. A sign on the wall opposite exhorts visitors to keep the windows closed, in order to prevent the ingress of squirrels. The ward is hushed – a chittering squirrel or two would add some welcome texture to the linoleum floor and plastic chairs.
I am terrified.
The anesthetist and his assistant joke, as they check that I match the person described on the forms I hold. We’ve all lived in West Hampstead at some point, and the anesthetist used to bartend at the Black Lion pub, just up from the station. Learned his trade there, he laughs. The surgeon arrives, no longer be-suited but in dark green scrubs, a cap over his bald, smiling head. The cannula goes into my hand, and four hours of my life are lost.
Vanishing one evening
without a trace.
Without forgotten clues
on the threshold of my room
and no arrow
to show me the way.
Wherever I could have gone
Would be of no relevance:
Laid at the bottom of the sea
Buried in the darkness of the woods
In China devoid of memory
Looking for a pitiful story
Or in the desert with a shroud of sand.
Everything is fine
As long as nobody ever knows.
Sublime fantasy
Vanishing without a certificate of death
So that one day they will understand
What is baffling me now.
I cannot sleep. The bandage wrapped tightly round my head presses into the wound like a wooden mallet, and the long period of abstinence from food or drink has created a throbbing headache that echoes in my skull. I cannot sleep, but the darkness makes it easy to travel. In Kalamata, two decades ago, I take the role of stagehand, pushing a wounded friend through the chaos of a grimy Greek emergency room, his blood is already dry on the half-ton marble block that has crushed one hand. He knows his lines: his screams compel silent attention. Here in this quiet room, the Turkish mother presses a bell to call for water.
I have always felt most comfortable as a stranger in a familiar place. I've grown used to the sense of belonging, but not of inescapable detachment woven into a deep familiarity. I spent more time in Mississippi last year than I have since I left at twenty-one. Is it familiarity that made me feel as if the place was sucking me in, like a boot in oozing mud, or would it happen to anyone?
Mississippi is a difficult place to return to, and an easy place not to leave. For the stranger, it is exotic as any South Asian culture or East African village. For the prodigal child, it's the schoolroom you longed to escape, the scrappy pine hills you watched recede in the rearview mirror, the attitudes you knew too well to be able to debate, the family you looked on condescendingly from the heights of well-travelled adulthood, the place you couldn’t admit you loved. And hated. It's all the things you’ve grown out of and learned better than, and all the things you miss with an ache so intense it threatens to drive you back.
In London, people wear black. In Jackson, Mississippi, women wear pink and yellow, and men wear long shorts and t-shirts that advertise Bubba Gump's Famous Shrimp. In London, people drive Mercedes and Fiats and Smart cars. In Jackson, they drive SUVs and pick-ups and Fords. In London, you learn urban sight: the art of registering the presence of others, in order to avoid collisions, while seldom noticing individual faces. In Mississippi, courtesy demands that you meet the eyes of the stranger on the street, share a few words with the person next in line. In London, the police are unarmed, mostly. In Mississippi, null signs stenciled on the doors of office buildings, libraries and hospitals indicate those atypical places where weapons, along with smoking, are not permitted.
It’s 5am in the hospital on Grey’s Inn Road, and a nurse has brought coffee; the caffeine relieves my headache. I note that, in British hospitals as in American ones, night staff are noticeably more brusque than daytime nurses; the three of us apologize for putting her to the trouble. With the light, the Turkish mother’s children return, and the fourth bed is occupied by a new arrival who’ll be on today’s roster of surgery. As the morning’s medical staff and visitors come and go, the shadowy night ward in which we three shared our histories and whispered our fears morphs into a bustling transit lounge, with belongings packed, second checks that nothing is forgotten, email addresses scribbled and hugs bestowed.
Performance over, we leave the stage.
Imagine a woman 9 months and 4 days pregnant standing at a starting line of a half marathon
Imagine a woman 9 months and 4 days pregnant standing at a starting line of a half marathon
War victims in Afghanistan
The Camille Claudel Project
Illness is not romantic. Therefore this eulogy for Lawrence Saez is not lyrical.
Illness is not romantic. Therefore this eulogy for Lawrence Saez is not lyrical.