Ostrich: A Novel by Matt Greene Read Free Book Online Page B

looking right at me. Stubble hangs like fog over his mouth, and his eyes are set back in his head like two marbles in a pocket. I see him before he sees me.
    Dad?
    He continues to stare as though he hasn’t heard me. (I wonder if this is what an absence seizure looks like, but it can’t be, because they’re not genetic.) I count eleven Mississippis before he notices me.
    “He’s awake. Lou, Lou, he’s awake. Son, can you hear me?”
    Yes
.
    “Son? Can he hear us?
Excuse me, nurse!
Can he hear us?”
    I can hear you
.
    “Nurse!”
    Am I okay?
    Mum and Dad detach. A string of snot links them still, from Mum’s nostril to Dad’s shoulder. (It’s like he’s her ventilator.)
    Mum?
    “He can hear you. Talk to him. He might not have the strength to talk back.”
    Mum turns to face me, and the mucus tube snaps free from her nose. She looks blurry, like someone has turned down the contrast on her face. I can’t tell the difference between her skin and her lips.
    Am I okay?
    “Okay, son, do you want the good news or the bad news?”
    Am I okay?
    “Good news is girls love scars.”
    Am I okay?
    “Bad news, me and your mum have been talking and we’ve decided you’ve been getting a little too clever for your own good, so while they were at it we got them to go ahead and take a little bit off the top. Nothing too drastic, just a trim, just enough to give me a chance at Boggle.”
    He trails off.
    “Dot dot dot,” says the heart rate monitor.
    “But you might want to familiarize yourself with that noise right there, cos chances are you’ll be hearing it a lot in a few years when Tesco’s put you on the tills.”
    The nurse laughs, which only encourages him. (Mum hasn’t moved a muscle since he started talking. (She is starting to scare me.))
    “What is that, anyway?”
    “It’s monitoring his heartbeat, which is perfectly normal. It’s called a cardiogram.”
    “I thought that was a type of stripper. You know, the type that comes dressed in knitwear.”
    “You’re okay,” says Mum.
    And then I fall asleep again. I don’t know how much later I wake up, but when I do, it’s like a Spot the Difference puzzle. (I can spot only the following differences:
    1)  Two silver trails (like a snail’s) run in parallel lines down the shoulder of Dad’s jumper.
    2)  Mum’s nostrils are crusty.
    3)  The nurse is black.
    Otherwise everything is identical. (Neither Mum nor Dad have moved.))
    I don’t know why exactly, but I shut my eyes again before Mum or Dad notice I’m awake. After a while I hear a sound like a fart being squeezed between clenched cheeks. However, no one laughs (and I can’t smell anything), and I realize it’s a chair scraping against the lino floor. Then Dad’s voice:
    “Well, I don’t know about you, but I need a coffee like he needs a hole in the head. Nurse?”
    “Mi kyan help yuh wid someting?”
    “The cafeteria?”
    “Goo a dar an galang de kyarridar.”
    “Do you want anything, Mum?”
    No response.
    I listen for Dad’s footsteps to drown in the ventilator tides and imagine he’s striding out to sea King Canute style. For a while it’s silent (relatively, at least), and then it’s Mum’s turn to talk. However, when she tries to, her voice stalls like Dad’s car after he hasn’t used it for a while. She coughs and tries again, and this time it takes.
    “I was born in this hospital,” she says. And then, after quite a bit more time, “You don’t remember your grandmother, do you?”
    The question doesn’t sound rhetorical, but it must be, because I’m doing an excellent impression of sleeping. Either way, though, I decide to think about the answer to check for memory loss. (Another analogy a doctor used once to help me understand my brain was that a seizure was like blowing a fuse. (He told me to imagine I’d had a power cut and I was sitting in the dark, and after fumbling around for a bit I manage to reset the fuse. The lights and the TV come back on, and my