andrewpom

First couple of days, I couldn't sit upright. Like a body in a coffin, all I could see was up. White, square panels were my image of sky, the black cracks were bolts of lightning, the grey speckles were rain drops tumbling. It is unnatural, I think, to be still, to look only at white for days on end— helpless like a baby, I felt babyish, and so I acted babyish. When I was younger I would play naughts and crosses with anyone prepare to lose. The ceiling squares were our grid, and my father, who, to be frank, was not good at comfort, let me win, like he would all those years ago.

Coming to the end of my time inside, daily I was picked up and slumped, like a cat into a bath, into a wheelchair, wheeled around, taken for a walk, like a pet. My favourite route was through the play room, which looked like how I imagined human zoos would be like if aliens kept us as pets— all human culture mashed into one room in a robotic attempt to appear homely. One of the artificial creations designed to comfort me was a hologram of a young boy, whose “Sibling” was having a [insert treatment] and was in for a few days/weeks/months/years. The boy, not programmed to show fear or distress, played Crash Bandicoot with me,

In a way in was charming ignorance that made my main concern: “Would I dream?” Mind, ignorance is only ignorance if unfounded. When I felt my eyes open as watery darkness turned to white clouds, as consciousness came up for air—seagulls swooped across the milky sky—the lifeguard who pulled me up held my hand as I floated dipping gently under the waves, shivering. He shoved a straw into my mouth, said, “Drink.” Sternly he said to a passing seagull, “Could just be cold, could be nerve damage, could be anything.” How can I know how much reality this dream harboured?

A voice inside my head told me, “Andrew, you should be comfortable, why are you being so intolerant?” Maybe that voice was right— maybe the unease swelling in me was too. Damien was a trainee nurse—young lad— who said camply, “I'll need you to strip for me,” and he rubbed my bare legs with his sponge. There was a plaster sealing my back wound, about a foot long, made of squishy stuff— it needed replacing. So Damien did. It was skin-tight, and after a week-or-so the rubber melted into my tender skin. Damien, as I later discovered, forgot the cotton filter—so when the rubber was ripped of

She didn't train for this, did she. Adult man, in a children's ward—girl's ward, at that— I lay, like an overturned turtle, old, legs squirming. Her black eyes squirmed at the sight of me, dead nurse eyes. Made me conscious of my two-ness: simultaneously a man, stony figure of strength and utility, and patient, meat slumped on a chopping board. So when I gulped my medicine, an impressive spoonful, vomited it out because of the taste— and the nurse glared at me like I had failed as a man and patient, as if no difference— I no longer felt two-ness, but nothing-ness, as if my young eyes had died inside hers.

I got up at 6am like they told me, and stripped naked, showered like they told me. Lonely blue darkness, they wheeled me in— harsh white sterile light. A blue latex figure, my alien abductor, loomed over me. As it lowered the mask over my mouth it asked, clumsily, “So, what music do you like?” I said Radiohead. It shivered its feathers, “No!—Oasis.” Bonk, squeak, sound of air sucking, sucked, vanished, replaced by gas—blurring. Coldly alone on this sorcerous ship, drifting through space as if it were a river, when dad burst in at light-speed—and drifting I felt happiness, happiness filled with b

Few weeks before I was due to go in, we were sitting around as a family, which was unlike us, because my brother was always away—we got a phone call. My father took it. He always whispered on the phone. Few weeks before, the doctor— can't remember his face, though I should (he died a few months later. Cancer)— the doctor told me the operation would be quick, slice open my back and slit the lipid snake constricting my spine. Then it'd be two weeks in bed, two months hobbling on crutches. Doctor phoned, few weeks before: “—two months waiting, emergency change of plan—”

I could smell something, something strong. Stale sweat—slapped me conscious, immovable like a newborn. I had not been conscious for two hours. Someone had to remind me I existed—someone was my looming father. In my dead state I barely knew him. He sat twitching, brow wet like a guilty thief.          Faces dripped into my mind like glucose. Who was Tom? I couldn't see him, but I felt him, felt his voice prick my ear, “You didn't tell me?”— and this pierced me like a needle. Perhaps I cried. Sweaty father handed me the phone, hid me behind curtains. “He's just takin' a piss,” he lied to the nurse. My

What was her name? I was dragged to my feet, saw her crying, cradled in her mother. Rarely I saw her—didn't think to ask. Besides, she was behind the wall. Boys, girls—separate. My mother spied for me, said she was brave. But when I saw her exposed, naked, that time they made me hobble naked down the hallway— I caught a glimpse of her, and she did not look brave, she looked weak. Unless bravery first needs weakness? I suppose it does take a brave man to expose a dying girl's throbbing brain, do something unspeakable, inconceivably weak, then sow her back together again, bald- headed like an egg, cracked, irreparable.

Awake. A boy lay next to me—blinded by a blood-stained cloth wrapped around his gouged-out eyes, much to the dismay of he who, scared and confused, refused to chew the vile jelly shoved into his screaming mouth by his father, who, scared and confused, tried to thank the nurse as she delivered another bowl. It was 10pm. The TV screamed a news report of a father who, scared and confused, enlightened by blind rage, decided to kill his two young boys “...before turning the gun on himself.” I could only imagine... My eyes refused to close and sleep.