If it is your life by James Kelman Read Free Book Online Page A

thing lurking in the dark, enabled to perform its malevolence. I looked for the nurses, their voices no longer audible.
    They had gone.
    My pillows were stuffed together! They propped me up! They had been plumped! My pillows. Someone had done the plumping chore. While I was not looking. Was that possible!
    So there we are. One is reduced
    What time now?
    But who had plumped up the damn pillows? God damn.
    The smell of food.
    I was to receive food and the sense of it was to the fore. What might it be? No matter, I would savour it. I always did. My wife derided me for that. My sons didnt. It was a gender issue. And I hailed from a large family. Members of large families savour food. They fight for food. They die, die for food
    however
    No however, howevers. The food would come to me and the auxiliary staff person would not see me while serving.
    A tired woman. I could draw her, her face. She concentrated on the work. I would have communicated with this woman. I would encourage her smile. I would remark in an amusing manner as to the nature of the world, a Stoical perspective assumed, and she would respond to that.
    Nor need communication imply a new relationship. Tomorrow she could resume her normal working practices in silence, her blinkers donned, oblivious to one’s maleness; not any maleness, simply that of the patient, one’s humanity.
    I would so advise her. Do not nullify our existence. Nor is there a need to worry; and certainly not about me. Who has the energy for such nonsense? let alone hospitalized parties the likes of myself. Even prior to the present situation, and location, I was not the man to overstep the mark, certainly not.
    I would prefer being elsewhere. No harm in such a confession.
    The list of dietary details. Nought special for me. I ate anything, red butchermeat a delight. Even salad. Ho hum. I studied the leaves and other food. Oh well. But when I lifted my fork I found that I could not eat. I pushed a forkful of cold meat and lettuce to my mouth, into my mouth, but could not nibble.
    There was no space in my stomach. Where could I put the food? If I swallowed what would happen? Would the meat and lettuce settle in my throat. Perhaps if I masticated thoroughly the food might squeeze its way down. But my goodness it surely was a nonsense. Was I expected to cope. How could I.
    A fellow patient could no longer swallow. The food settled between his cheeks and gums and was a concern for the medical staff should a particle have entered the lungs, pneumonia? something like that. I watched for signs myself. But I was nowhere near that stage.
    My stomach should have had space aplenty for food. In recent days I had eaten less than normal. So why should it now be full? I reached for the notepad. Any phenomena, any at all.
    Nurse Liddell materialized. I prepared to smile but she did not glance in my direction. She returned to the bed nearest the window, old Mister Somebody – McGuire.
    The nurses called me him, but they called Mister McGuire old Mister McGuire.
    Old Mister McGuire. How could one but pity the man. He was always asleep. Or unconscious. The staff spoke about old Mister McGuire within earshot of other patients.
    Beyond earshot what did they call me? Him. But apart from him. The good-looking older guy!
    Has the good-looking older guy been given his bedbath this morning?
    Bedbath. A fantasy for many. Joe Smith always referred to bedbaths in his wee chats. But he was wrong: such events take place free of erections. The nurses, in full professionalism, merely brush the insistent manifestation to one side, get thee beside thee, and dight one’s thighs in a formal manner.
    Poor Joe. Unless he had gone home. People did go home, and as full human beings, resuming their personhood. Each time a bed became empty I presumed the death of the patient. It was nonsense!
    Joe would be missed. But even he failed to engage old Mister McGuire in conversation. Nobody managed that. Not even his middle-aged daughters