Read by Silas Hawkins
I'm getting old.
First time it really hit me, I was chasing down a long ball in the regular Friday night seven-a-side with a load of the lads from work. I had myself a ten-yard start on the bearded one from IT – no youngster himself – and he still got there in plenty of time to have a good think about how to pick out the runner in the box, and that was one-nil.
There was nothing at all I could do about it, and it hurt. I mean I knew I'd lost a yard or two, but ten? When did that happen? If there's one thing I don't want to be, it's a liability.
I remember the sound first. I had time to fire off a thought about the KLANGG, a kind of broken plumbing sound, before I realised it was my teeth against the goalpost, then a flare of pain like light bulbs popping on the backs of my eyes, and wanting to chuck up, and then there was a whole lot of blood. I'd put my front teeth through the skin under my front lip, it turned out, and followed through with my temple, and that, I can tell you, smarts.
Danny got us in a taxi and gave me his old Ajax shirt to bleed into, and the A&E at St Mary's sewed me up and plugged the hole with gauze. Kept me in, too, as they'd decided that it counted as a severe blow to the head, so I got a scan and then had to lie down for a while.
*
That's all kind of preamble, which makes this bit amble, I suppose. You'll have to picture me, groggy, half-sitting up in bed and starting to notice the numbness going away, which meant starting to feel like I'd volunteered as a live model at the Centre for the Re-enactment of Medieval Dentistry. As soon as Danny had sloped off to catch penultimate orders, I started to feel sorry for myself, trying not to munch on the gauze with my newly Neanderthal mouth, trying to get the right angle to make my head stop swimming.
You know what those wards are like. Low ceilings, fluorescent light every way you look, swooshing curtains, multiple TV channels on the go and a smell of yesterday's vegetable kievs. Six beds and five other people you don't want to get intimate with, all looking at you like you're the one leaving the trail of MRSA on every surface you touch. I worked the buttons on the bed to get myself sat up straight so I could guess what all the others had. The lad in the corner with the silent parents I had down for some kind of seizure. A hip replacement for the old boy with the Malteser habit, obviously. The two either side of me both looked grey and worn out, so I had them down as recovering from surgery, probably an ulcer, maybe a ruptured appendix.
And then the ugly one in the corner with the skinny girlfriend with the straight-across fringe. I didn't get as far as an uneducated guess because there was something familiar about him – the body language as he pointed and jabbed at the girl when she was slow to change the TV channel. His scowl. His laugh, too, I thought. I knew that laugh. The same every time, like canned laughter. When the girlfriend squeezed his hand and left, I got a good look at him – red eyes in reddening skin, heavy frown-lines going on. Thinking hard, I worked through the files for faces and laughs and scowls and potato-shaped heads. I couldn't place him, though. Where was he from?
It was a long night. The duty nurse kept shuffling by to tend to the old boy, who was having a rough time of it. Between his whimpering, my head, and her heavy movements as she played with the night-light and doled out sips of water, it was hard to get to sleep. When I was awake, I thought about the potato-head man, trying out random combinations of names to jog my memory: Warren Breen, Nathaniel Herlihy; Phil De Souza. When I got to Werner von Speetz, I knew it hadn't worked. Sleep. Awake. Sleep. Awake. Repeat until late morning.
Danny came in for early visiting about 11, which was good of him. I was still waiting for the all clear from the scan, so had bad butterflies every time the door buzzed to open, thinking the doctors would be in to tell me I was dying. "You didn't have to visit," I said, muffled enough through the gauze not to sound too shaky. "I was on my way to town," he said, which we both knew was a lie. I appreciated the friendly face, and his bringing me tea to drink through a straw. I slurped at that; spilled some, but not too much. When that was done, I beckoned him over to whisper in his ear. "Look," I said. "The one in the corner bed. I know him from somewhere. He's not from work, is he?"
"Don't think so," said Danny. "Another job, maybe? Football?
School?".
"Fuck," I said. "It's Shane McKenna". I shivered a completely involuntary shiver. Shane McKenna - the official nutter at school; the boy who set fire to my chemistry homework and extorted my lunch money in design and technology by threatening to slice into my eyelid with a craft knife. "Shane McKenna," I said, "Made the first couple of years of secondary school the worst years of my life". I told Danny about the time Shane McKenna made me pay for the honour of shining his shoes, the dog-shit smeared on my locker door every day of O-Level mocks, my bag of library books ending up on the roof of the gym block, and him telling the first girl I fell for that I'd come out in PE.
"Well," said Danny. "Now's your chance to say something to him. What's he going to do?". I nodded.
When Danny had left, I watched Shane McKenna. It took my mind off things. When the doctors arrived, I was half distracted by Shame McKenna demanding service gracelessly from the nurses the moment his girl had left the room. Shane McKenna behaviour, I thought, as the young Irish nurse cleared up his mess. Shane McKenna didn't thank her. Shane McKenna didn't thank anyone. He scowled and he complained and he made snide comments in his Shane McKenna voice. That voice was just the same - took me straight back to the shame of the toilet block behind the huts.
I sized him up, propped up in his bed, projecting Shame McKennaness. It looked like I was bigger than him now, though thinking about it, I always had been. Just needed to be brave. I'd say something. I wouldn't. I would, later. What better place to risk injury than in a hospital? When the same nurse came over to explain how I could sign myself out, I gestured over at the Shane McKenna corner. "Him over there, eh? No manners, eh?" I said. "What's he got?"
"None of your business" she said. I still thanked her, twice, and she smiled as she pulled the curtain round the bed so I could change back into what was left of my football kit. I didn't look too dignified. The shirt looked like a butcher's apron.
When I had my bag packed, I took a deep breath, and walked over to Shame McKenna.
"Look," I said. "I want you to hear this. Don't pretend you don't remember me, Shane McKenna. I want you to remember everything you did to me in school, everything you said and all the pain you caused me. And I want you to remember that despite all that, I wished you well when you were sick. I hope you get better soon, and I can say that because I'm not a vindictive fuck like you. I can forgive and I can move on. That's why I'm better than you."
Shane McKenna looked at me.
"That's not my name," he said.
I hit him with a devastating comeback.
"Oh," I said.
I grabbed his wrist and got a look at his wristband. Not Shane McKenna. Not Shane McKenna pulled away. "Leave me alone you nutter!" he said, hitting the call button.
When the Irish nurse came striding over, I explained. I tried to explain, at least, and she agreed not call security, if I left now and promised to leave the patients alone.
*
At work on Monday, Danny asked me how it went.
"It wasn't him," I said.
"Ah," he said. "Well, probably for the best."
He'd made me coffee, the sun was streaming across the big atrium and my stitches weren't hurting. My head still hurt, and I'd had a look or two from passers-by, but it was good to be back somewhere I knew I was useful, watching the world go by.
I knew, too, that I'd meant what I'd said to the man who wasn't Shane McKenna. Ten years ago, I'd have been too scared to talk to him, and five years ago I would have hit and run - given him a broadside of anger and got out of there. So there was a kind of dignity in there, somewhere, under all the indignity. And that, I told Danny, is what getting older's all about.
(c) Tom Ryan, 2015
Tom Ryan grew up in southwest London and now lives lives just across town with his wife and dog. He writes in spare moments between working as an editor. His stories have appeared in Firewords Quarterly, Fractured West, 4’33, and elsewhere. More at: http://wakemewhenitsover.wordpress.com
Silas Hawkins (right) is continuing the family voiceover tradition (he is the son of Peter 'Dalek' Hawkins and Rosemary 'Emergency Ward 10' Miller). Favourite voice credits: Summerton Mill, Latin Music USA and podcasts for The Register. For countless voice clips see links on website www.silashawkins.com.
Agents: [email protected], [email protected]
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