A to Z of You and Me by James Hannah Read Free Book Online

envelops me completely as we push on through, lingers around my nostrils and lips, cradling my head, my neck, riffling my hair. We emerge into the open, and the brightness makes me squint. Magical nature. Makes me feel so dead and dusty and plastic. I’m an indoor animal. I don’t belong out in the wilds like this. Uncontrolled, unregulated nature, coming to get me and whisk me away.
    We roll down a paved slope, the chair now gently percussive over the regular gaps between the slabs. Soothing pulse. I close my eyes to the brightness. Sun warm on my eyelids. Natural warmth.
    The tires of the wheelchair crackling consistently through microscopic grit. I register every grain, fresh and high-definition. My hearing has been calibrated for too long by the beeps of machinery, acoustics of plaster and glass, jangling fridge, throb of corrupt blood in my ears. The wind opens up the distance, wakens the trees; the leaves wash briefly and recede. It’s beautiful. It’s overwhelming. I want to inhale it all, breathe it, take it all in. But I can’t. I can’t draw deep. I manage only a pant.
    We turn a tight little bend on the slope and pass through an archway into the hospice garden. And it’s beautiful too. Grand lawn with paths ribboning its low banks and gentle inclines. High wall all around. Old-looking wall, soft blushing pink bricks, crumbly pointing. Tailored, tamed nature.
    The sun chooses this moment to radiate through to me, through me. It feels like…it feels like life . I can sense my corrupt blood bubbling and basking beneath the surface. All these things remind me of you: you and me in our favorite place up at the top of the valley, gazing down.
    â€œBeautiful,” I say out loud to myself. Out loud to you. “Beautiful.”
    â€œYeah,” says Kelv, the only ears to hear.
    Rolling peacefully forward, we pass the flower beds, all these carefully chosen specimens. Amazing, amazing, that these delicate petals have unfurled from the earth, vivid sunlit colors, calling out to nature, calling the humans to come, come and cultivate.
    â€œLook at that,” I say. “Still got their verbena. They’re lucky.”
    â€œYeah?”
    â€œThey were all wiped out the last couple of years. Hard frost. Must be the wall keeping them sheltered.”
    â€œRight.”
    â€œAnd alliums,” I tut fondly.
    Of course it’s you I imagine I’m talking to, not Kelvin. It’s you I can sense pointing at the seed heads, looking over at me, your eyes delighted at the collection of bobbing heads. You speak a sentence to me, all blurred enthusiastic tones, and I can hear you say—
    Huuuge!
    â€”and you grin and turn away.
    â€œThere are roses, and there are nonroses,” says Kelvin. “I only see nonroses.”
    â€œThe big globey flower heads, there. They’re alliums. And look, there’s scabious. Bees land on it, get the nectar, and it sends them to sleep. All zoned out.”
    â€œOh yeah, look. Stoned.”
    â€œYeah.”
    I’ve bleeped ten thousand little packets of allium bulbs through the checkout at the garden center in the late summer sales. Plant early autumn . I wonder how many of the ones I’ve sold are reaching out to this warm sun, dappled across the region’s back gardens? I wonder if I sold these ones here? That could be my life’s achievement. Maybe I’d settle for that.
    We resume our journey and round a corner of gentle, wispy grasses that bow and flutter in the soft breeze. Poppies. The sun urges warmth onto my knees as it burns through the thin cloud.
    Given time, you and I would have had a garden. We would have had a little plot, and we would have taken such good care of it. We’d have had a clump of scabious to please the bees, and wispy grasses lining a pond.
    Given time.
    I remember all the times you tried to get me to apply for the garden design course. All those reminders to get my résumé