No, Bill says. I stirred it up a bit.
         There is a moment where he expects the nurse to leave and he is thinking of some way to say thank you for this thing she just done for him, for being a light on a dark corridor in a way that is only barely a metaphor, when she says, Actually, it might not be the whole story.
         Really?
         There was something else I heard.I heard it wasn’t the boyfriend at all, but some crazy patient. He reckoned he was in love with her or something, wouldn’t leave her alone. It was okay while he was stuck in here but then he got better. She reported it and all, but the police said they couldn’t do anything until he did something.
         Is that true?
         The pretty nurse shrugs. It’s what I heard.
         Something occurs to him as the nurse stands to go, parting the curtains as if they are water, and for a minute he thinks he may have only imagined her and the body on the living room floor. But then she is in front of him again, waiting for him to speak. I’m not some crazy patient, you know, he says finally, in case she is beginning to worry.
         I know, she says, looping the cables of the emergency call button across the foot of his bed so he can reach it without leaning out. I know. I mean, I’m pretty sure I could take you out if I had to. No offence.


         Bill is nearly asleep when she comes back to check his sats, the sedative coursing through his system like a canoe flying over rapids. The feeling is like being drunk but stronger, wilder, as if it isn’t just the room that’s spinning but the whole world, and then he feels ridiculous because that’s exactly what is happening, it’s just that up until now it’s been hard to believe. She tells him she’s putting him on the oxygen for a while and with the first sharp new breath he suddenly feels many things in one, the billow of the pump, the cold, mineral smell of her skin as she cups the mask across his nose, the swing of the Earth. He sees the dent in her lip where health and safety regulations have demanded she remove a piercing. He sees that her eyes are not the same colour and that sometime in her youth she has had chickenpox and could not resist the urge to scratch.

10

  

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