A to Z of You and Me (3 page)

“Mmm.” I sniff. “She crocheted it specially for me.”

“No—she did all this? It's lovely.”

“I've been thinking about her a lot lately. Been talking to her. In my mind.”

“Special one, was she? It's a shame, isn't it? Sometimes.”

“Anyway, you'd better go,” I say.

“No, no. There's no hurry.”

“No, I'm fine. And husbands don't just look after themselves, do they?”

“No, you're right there. Well, if you're sure you're OK? I'm happy to stay.”

“No, no. Thanks.”

She rises from her perch on the side of the bed and places my hand down on the sheets.

“I'll be back tonight, all right? Press the button if you want Jackie. Don't be shy, now.”

She gives me a regretful little smile and leaves me. I'm wrapped up to my neck in crochet, up to my neck in you.

I would give everything I have ever had and everything I will ever have just to put my arms around you, have you put your arms around me.

Our bodies simply fit, yours and mine.

That's what I'm going to think of now. That will see me off to sleep. Those arms of yours, wrapped tight, tight around me.

Back

I'm lying facedown, with my head sideways on your pillow. My senses are wide, wide open. I have never, ever experienced anything like this while sober. My hearing is absolutely clear, and the scents I am breathing in are blossoming and blooming in my brain. The clean, fresh smell of your hair from the pillow, the smell of the resin of the wood of your bedstead.

This is the first time I've had my shirt off with you, and the feel of the sheets on my skin is just so vital.

And now I am tracking your lips in my mind as they prickle down from the base of my neck, down past my shoulders, down, down my spine. And your fingertips too trace back and forth, outward and back in, in the line of my ribs, delicate, delicate, your hair now hanging down, brushing softly from side to side on my skin, a tingling trace in its wake.

You find your way down to the lowest of my ribs, and I suddenly flinch and tense, almost fling you from me.

“
No
,” I say. “That bit's too ticklish.”

You lie up against me and murmur in my ear—“That's what I was looking for”—before heading back down, and kissing there again,
right there
. And now my whole back is unable to take any more, and I cry out and turn over, and I can see you there, laughing wickedly.

“I love that bit,” you say. “It's torture.”

• • •

Awake now.

I'm awake.

What?

I can see the gray-green plane of the lawn beyond the magnolia tree through the window. Did that light just come on? Or was it always on, and it was only me who flicked on?

I'm confused.

What woke me then? I'm sure there was—

(((Uuuuuh)))

Oh, oh no.

It's her next door again. The groaning woman and her groans. It's at a frequency where I can sort of hear it in the wall. Thin wall, then; hollow partition.

(((Uuuuuh)))

I put my hand on my brow, and for a moment that's all there is of me. A hand on a brow, swashing and scrunching and scratching, and knuckling the eyeballs now. Itch, itch,
itch
to get this sound out of my head.

((Uuuuuh))

But it won't go, of course. There's no stopping it. I can't believe she always starts up right when I'm trying to get to sleep. Just…just as I've dropped off into peaceful slumber, it's—

(Uuuuuh)

It's ruined. And it'll get worse. It always gets worse. If it was the sort of groan that stayed the same volume, I could put it out of my mind, but it changes. It grows louder and louder. Keeps you listening. It's like purgatory.

The light outside flicks off again.

(Uuuuuh)

Blood

Think blood. What can I say about blood? A complete history from start to finish.

Uuuuuh.

In the beginning, I was a few cells of blood and—whatever it is babies are made of before they're properly human. The abortable mush. How is it that embryos or fetuses can develop intricate veins and capillaries and auricles and ventricles and all that stuff? Amazing, really.

Uuuuuh.

So, birth, lots of blood there, but not mine, so much. The divvying up between me and my mum. Everything that was on the outside of me was hers, everything on the inside mine. And what shall we do with this bit? Cut it off, sling it away, snip snip, medical waste. We'll not talk of it again.

They fry it and eat it sometimes, don't they? Cannibals.

Uuuuuh.

Uneventful childhood, my blood would see the light of day through knee scrapes and head bangs, testing the coagulation—no hemophilia—then pretty much just ripped cuticles, before the great event of—what, about 1982?—when my sister tied my wrist to the back of her bike with her old jump rope and towed me off down the street on my ride-on truck. I distinctly remember how I imagined the wind would riffle my hair as Laura pedaled and the streets and houses would sail by at sixty miles per hour. This was going to be great. Three thrilling meters in, I was yanked from my plastic seat, and I traveled the following five meters on my face, before Laura stopped and turned to see why pedaling had become so laborious.

Then she dropped her bike and ran away.

That's probably the earliest drama for my blood, flooding onto my screaming face as I stumbled up the steps to my mum, the wooden handles of the jump rope jumping and hopping on each step as I climbed. Mum had been sitting on the edge of her bed, putting on her makeup.

She told me I staggered into her room like a murder victim.

I had to have an injection.

Dr. Rhys had half-glasses and was kindly and had lollipops in a tin on his desk.

“You, young man, have a blood type of AB positive, it says here.”

The blood type struck a chord with me, because I was learning my ABCs. And AB seemed good. ABC might have been better, but, well… Maybe I should have that on my gravestone: AB positive. Alongside height and shoe size. For future generations to know, you know?

After I totaled my ride-on truck, the story had to be circulated on the family grapevine. Come Sunday, I was around to my grandma and granddad's to sport my scars. We stopped off there every week after church, even after Dad died. They wanted to see us.

“Stop
picking
.”

Mum relished telling the tale of the ride-on truck to my grandma, carefully crafting every last detail to make Laura seem much naughtier than she actually was. It made me guilty and embarrassed, so I stopped listening. I looked at the TV. It wasn't on, but I looked at it anyway. Laura sat next to me, quietly fuming.

“He was bleeding like a stuck pig. He looked like a murder victim. But he only had one or two cuts—I couldn't believe how much blood… Anyway, Dr. Rhys was telling him he was AB positive, wasn't he, kiddo? Quite rare, he reckoned.”

Granddad leaned over to me and muttered with a mutinous air, “What blood type was Christ?”

I didn't know what he was talking about, so he lifted his wine bottle and sloshed it at me.

“Ten percent by vol?” He wheezed in lieu of a laugh. “A nice bit of Beaujolais?” Wheeze. “That'd get me back to church on a Sunday morning!” Wheeze.

I was fourteen when I started seasoning my blood. 1989. What, twenty-six years ago. Over a quarter of a century.

That's probably the next chapter point after Laura ran for the hills and I lost my no-claims bonus on the ride-on truck. That's such a short time, 1982 to 1989. It's no time at all, is it?

That's actually shocked me a bit.

Vodka and orange in our school flasks. Me and Kelvin. We raided Kelvin's dad's liquor cabinet and filled Kelvin's Transformers flask with vodka and fresh orange. More by luck than judgment, seeing as vodka doesn't smell of anything, and we pretty much got away with it. I was cagier about it than Kelvin, but I sat in a haze through geography, and then in math Kelvin was sent out of the class for being boisterous. I've no idea if the teacher realized. Probably. They say they always do.

Anyway, we did get caught: Kelvin's mum had a big go at him for taking all that fresh orange juice. It was a luxury purchase in the 1980s.

I mean, it's amazing, blood. The quality of your blood makes for the quality of your life.

I seasoned my blood with a few choice herbs and spices. Nothing wrong in that. Everyone's at it, in one way or another. Glug down blessed blood, or sup on fermented liquids, or draw in vapors or smoke—or whatever.

And the blood carries it around your body, flavors your brain.

And your heart.

And your lungs.

And your liver.

And your kidneys.

“So, you have a blood type of AB positive, it says here.”

I nod. Dr. Rhys is still sporting his pretentious half-glasses after all these years, like some Harley Street big shot. What's it been, eleven, twelve years? Almost thirteen, actually, since the ride-on truck. He still has a tin of lollipops on his desk. Will I get one today? I still suck them. We take them into clubs, big baby-dummy-shaped ones, sucking them like children. Sweets and E, back to innocence, back to childhood. Pure pleasure.

“I should update our records here. Do you—um, are you a smoker?”

I nod.

“Roughly how many a day? Ten?”

“Twen—ahem—twenty.” It's hard to talk quietly sometimes. Have to clear my throat.

“Alcohol?”

I nod.

“Units a week?”

I'm not sure what units are. I know pints.

“Pff—” I look at the ceiling. “Maybe about twenty pints?” Twenty seems fair.

Dr. Rhys writes it in and then scrunches up his nose. “Recreational drugs…?” Slight involuntary shake of his head, before peering back at me for an answer.

Here we are. We're here, and we've got to tell the truth. I don't mind telling him the truth.

“Um, grass.”

“Marijuana?”

I nod.

“And speed too.”

“Ecstasy?”

I nod. I'm quite impressed he knows it.

He makes a few notes. His ancient chair creaks as he adjusts his brogued feet between the wooden legs. I'm grateful for his professional silence.

So anyway, I tell him I'm thirsty all the time, going to the toilet all the time, and then there's the weight loss. I look at him closely. He knows what I'm thinking. He's got the notes. He'll be thinking the same. He'll be thinking about what my dad died of. He'll be thinking about what my dad died of. He'll be thinking,
Mmm, family history of early cancer deaths on the male side… What are the odds of…hmm.

“I'm worried it might be cancer,” I say. “I think that's why—well, it's taken me a while to come and see you.”

“But you don't think about giving up the ciggies?” he says, without looking up from his piece of paper.

He must feel the silence beside him, because he looks up at me over the top of his glasses and pauses significantly.

“Your symptoms could indicate any number of things,” he says, looking back down at the papers. “Best not to speculate. What I'll get you to do is take a short stroll down to the blood-test unit, and we'll take it from there.”

My head's pounding as the bloods nurse leeches out the liquid. I should tell her. But I need to be strong. I should tell her I'm not feeling so good. The ceiling is bearing down on me, and this place is so hot. It'll pass, no doubt. I haven't had any breakfast, and I'm feeling weak and sick, hot hospital, waiting ages for my name to be called.

And those vials, filling the vials full of black. It's so
black
. Less red in those little vials, more inky black. And quite smelly. Smells like—like what? It smells like a
jungle gym
. Unpainted iron
jungle gym.
Is…is the iron on a jungle gym the same as the iron in your blood? I could ask, but I don't want… Stupid.

The floor falls away from me.

“Jean, we've got another one.”

“It's always the men, isn't it?”

The results are right there in front of him. Right there, on paper. But all he's doing is sitting there in his chair, trying to get his mouse pointer to open the right bit on his computer screen. He totally knows my mind is racing away—

Cancer cancer cancer cancer.

—and the bottom's dropping out of my stomach.

He's punishing me. He's making me pay for not looking after myself and for taking drugs, and for leeching the NHS of all its resources, because he likes his job to be nice and easy.

Cancer cancer cancer cancer.

“Well,” he says, exhaling through whistley nostrils, “your tests indicate a very high level of blood glucose—”

And you've got cancer.

“—which indicates to us that it seems your pancreas, which is a rather important organ situated here”—and he circles the air around my belly—“just, uh, just below your stomach cavity, is not functioning properly—”

And you've got cancer.

“Now, when your pancreas produces insulin, that insulin gets pumped into your bloodstream to help you absorb the sugars, you see?”

How long have I got? He's wittering on, and all I want to know is the answer. I should have asked my mum to come with me. I actually want my mum. No joke.

“Now, this is a major change.”

That's it. He stops, and he looks me in the eye, and he says slowly, “This is a major change.”

I nod, comprehendingly. What's a major change?

“People find it takes a good deal of adjusting to. But it's largely a matter of self-discipline. Before you know it, it'll be something you don't even think about. A little jab—
pop
—and you carry on just like everyone else.”

“So I need to inject myself?”

“Yes, yes, but modern kits make it all very straightforward and easy, and a lot of the time people say they can do it without anyone even noticing. Or if it's an awkward situation, you know, you can take yourself off to the loos or wherever and sort yourself out there.”

So I'm injecting myself? I have an image of grimacing and straining to pull the tourniquet tight with my teeth and jabbing a hypodermic into my throbbing vein.

“And then there's no reason why you can't live as long and happy and fulfilled a life as anyone else. There are tens of thousands of people living with type 1 diabetes in the UK, and they all get by just fine. Hundreds of thousands.”

And this is the first time he has said
diabetes
. I'm completely sure of that.

So it's not cancer.

I have not-cancer.

“I was totally shitting it!” I say, the relief flushing through me at the Queen's Head as I reveal the verdict to Mal and Kelvin. “All I could think was cancer, you know? Cancer or AIDS. I'm telling you, though, if they'd told me it was cancer, I'd be straight up to Hephzibah's Rock, and I'd take a running jump, straight into the river. I'm not going through all that pain and agony. I would wait for a perfect sunny day. I would leap into the blue, slow motion at the top of the arc of my leap, my face warmed by the summer sun, drop into the Severn, and get washed out to sea. I wouldn't be scared. It'd be hep-hep-hoo-raaay—
splash
.”