ISSN 1758-6488
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It Wasn't Stockhausen's Fiction |
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I’m glad I told you about PJ, the pretty nurse is saying. I’d kind of been keeping it a secret, but what was it you said? You can’t take it with you.
I did tell you that, didn’t I?
For an old guy you’re okay.
Yeah.
That bag thing could have happened to anyone. To tell you the truth the surgeons never put the tubes in far enough.
He says, But why a secret?
Oh, she says. Because people are so judgemental. It’s just jealousy, I know that, but it feels so ugly.
Groggily, Bill blinks at her. He flips what she is saying over in his mind, and over again and the thing she is saying feels heavy and smooth at the same time, like a ball bearing he can’t quite get a grip on.
I felt out of my depth at first, she says. I’m not saying I didn’t. But you don’t go anywhere if you’re standing still, that’s what PJ says.
He’s been lying there a while when suddenly Bill sees it coming, the dark side of the moon, and it’s coming so fast he can sense the air backing up, the fear of the astronauts as the lunar orbit pulls Apollo 8 into the shadow and there it is, one enormous mountain that the best minds in astrophysics hadn’t predicted. The Earth retreats at speed, so beautiful and so small. His mind won’t stop. What are you saying? he asks, squinting for her name badge. Ivy. Wait. Ivy. What are you saying? Did someone hurt you? Ivy. He waits for the impact. The mountain keeps coming.
But Ivy is called to attend to a faecal impaction and Bill Hare has been transferred to theatre by the time she returns to the ward.
