'Killer Genes' by Sarah Shaw
The magic teacher passed a white pigeon over for me to hold. It flapped its wings and struggled. Its red claws scratched my wrists.
‘Close your hand over its wings so it won’t fly away.’ He stroked its breast with a finger to calm it down before he carried on with whatever he was doing. He was a old git with a purple nose what never come on the landings, not like some of the teachers, because he was a bottler.
‘That’s two smokes you owe me, you cant.’ I knew enough to get what I could out of every situation. I smiled so as he’d think I was his mate.
The bird’s heart beat fast under my fingers, faster than what my heart pumps when I run. Its feathers was pure soft. It was a life held in my hands and I was going to snap it like that. To show I could. Say it was a accident. It squirted a warm squirt onto my skin.
‘Fock it, it’s shit on me.’
But exactly when I went to squeeze down on its neck and crush its skull to one side, a bolt jumped in my arm like a electric shock. Pain split me down the middle, knocked me to the floor and bent me up. The bird fluttered out of my hands and up to the ceiling. For a minute I heard my nana say, ‘Yeah though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.’
Then the shadow stretched in front of me, as long as the shadow when you’re playing footie after school in the winter as a kid, and the shadow of death was my own shadow. I followed it down a corridor what was all white and bright: no peeling paint, no stink of stale piss, no men in blue-and-white striped shirts. The light shone all around me and even inside of me. The only dark place was the shadow in front of me. Moving along was more like going in one of them shuttles at Stansted Airport rather than the Tube because of the quiet and bright of it.
A voice come inside me and started to ask about what I done in my life. It called me Bobby. Maybe it was my nana’s voice. For certain a woman’s voice it was warm and kind, not like a magistrate or a judge. I can’t remember the words but it asked me about who I’d loved and what I’d learned. Even though I didn’t want to answer, it was up inside my head so that I couldn’t hide. Not like being in court. The voice was telling me: You are dying now and you have got to answer. They could see the stuff what I never got charged with, what I was most ashamed of. I got mandatory life for something I done in self-defence. The worst thing I ever done was this girl, my probation officer, what I was living with against all the rules. She was a dog. She had dry, frizzy yellow hair, a round face and a round body. The fact she adored me only made me despise her. What I done involved lighted cigarettes but I can’t describe it because it went way beyond human. She never even told nobody. But the voice made me tell. I couldn’t say I forgot or I was off of my head smoking rock. When I looked at my life, even the few people what I loved, I made them miserable. I hadn’t learned nothing what mattered.
‘If you die now, you will have to begin again,’ said the voice what was my nana’s and at the same time not. ‘Or you can go back and start over where you left off. It’s up to you.’
That’s all I remember. I don’t remember making no choice.
I was lying down with the noise of a four-cylinder turbocharged petrol engine. There was a blue light flashing and a weight on my chest. At first I thought I was in a police van except there wasn’t no cage. I seen I had a plastic mask over my nose and mouth and a cuff with heavy closet chain locked me to one of the screws what we called Mr T. He was sat on a bench next to a man in white.
‘Don’t leave us, Childs, you scrote. I thought you was a goner, you cant,’ he said when he seen me looking.
Next thing I was still laid down but no movement. The worms crawl in and the worms crawl out and your brain comes trickling down your snout was going through my head. I was flattened like if I’d been dropped. The room smelled of fruit vodka and mould, not sweaty bollocks, smokes and rats what’ve been dead for weeks like on the landings. My chest hurt. My throat hurt. My dick hurt. Something felt tight round my cheeks and I seen fuzzy white smoke at the bottom and sides when I looked. Darth Vader was doing that heavy breathing behind me. I tried to lift my head to look round but I couldn’t move.
A woman in white walked up beside me and pressed a button on a wire so the top half of my bed tilted up. It had to be a outside hospital. When I sat up, I could make out I wasn’t cuffed and not a screw in sight. They must of reckoned I wasn’t a escape risk.
‘How are you feeling, Robert?’ the nurse asked.
I tried to move my tongue. My mouth was too dry. ‘Bobby. Call me Bobby,’ I croaked.
‘They’re going to try and get you off the ventilator this morning, Bobby. Do you remember what’s happened to you?’
‘Cup of tea?’
When she come back with tea in a plastic cup with a spout like what some bint you live with gives her toddler, she told me I’d had a coronary thrombosis, which is basically a heart attack, and they done a coronary artery bypass graft.
‘The surgeon cut through the centre of your ribcage to reach your heart. She grafted a blood vessel from your leg to replace the one in your heart. You’ve got wires closing your sternum, and soluble stitches joining your chest back together. Those tubes there are to drain fluid from the wound.’
I reached for the cup.
She passed me the tea. It was hot and sweet and had that taste of plastic what’s been through a dishwasher. It tasted better than anything, ever, like it was some liquor of life or something.
While she explained all the other tubes and bandages, I shut my eyes and let my head drop back against the pillow. It was too much to take in. I couldn’t understand half of what she said. All I understood for certain was my death was inside me, spreading and growing. It wasn’t like what I thought before, like if I stood up for myself nobody would fock me over. My death was my own shadow. I couldn’t run away from it. I didn’t know if what I remembered was right: the magic class, the pigeon, the white corridor. It didn’t seem likely they’d run a course in magic, it was the kind of thing what would lead to headlines: TAXPAYER PRISON PARTY TRICKS OUTRAGE. But it was true that I had nearly died because there I was with tubes poking out all over and monitors beeping. It was true my dad passed from a heart attack when he was only thirty. I thought that would never happen to me because of all the sit-ups and press-ups I done in my cell. Because I could bench-press a hundred kilos in the dojo. The only thing I ever been sure about was I had to look after Number One. Now when they put me back inside I would be weak. If I got on some cant’s wick he would chib me easy. I needed to ask to go into seg.
The nurse leaned over to stick a thermometer under my arm. She smelled of perfume and sweat. She was short and fat with frizzy fair hair. She wasn’t young, neither, and she wore glasses.
‘Keep still,’ she said and laughed as though she said a joke.
When her wrinkly eyes looked into mine I cared what she thought about me, like as if she was special. I could feel my heart beating and the breath pushing my lungs in and out. We was all breathing the same air. I was alive and I had to live. Not just survive. Or mess about. Or do my best to stay on top. I didn’t know what life was.
‘Am I gonna make it?’ I asked.
She stayed looking in my eyes from behind the lenses what made hers look even smaller than they was. ‘I’m afraid I can’t tell you that. I don’t know.’ She sounded sad. ‘Stay positive. It helps.’
I didn’t get off of the ventilator that day or the next. But in a way that was a good thing because I wasn’t cuffed to no screw. I laid and watched the sun come out behind clouds and crawl across the window. It give me time to think and to talk to the nurses. Most of them was women but they wasn’t afraid of me. That nurse from when I woke up got to be my favourite. She was always gentle. They called her Jan.
‘What’s the difference between a computer and a woman?’ she asked when she come to change my catheter bag.
‘Dunno.’
‘A computer doesn’t laugh at a three-and-a-half inch floppy.’
If some bint had said that joke to me last week, I would of got her back. Instead I laughed enough to hurt my chest.
‘You need to get off this bed and walk around. Prevent blood clots.’
‘But if they move me out of here, I’ll miss yer. How come you’re a nurse, Jan? Are you married?’
She didn’t say nothing. Just went off to the sluice room with the full bag.
When she come back I tried to say what was on my mind. ‘I feel like I’ve got a new life. Like I’ve been give another chance. Do you think we’re put here for a reason?’
She was wiping my legs with a cloth like a dishcloth. ‘What d’you mean?’
‘Like, suppose when you die you got to face up to what you done? I never done nothing good. The only person what loved me was my grandma and I thought she was thick to care about people what never cared about her.’ Nana Bessie looked after all the kids in the family. She was the one what called me Bobbie. You’re a good boy, she used to say. Everybody is good at something. You need to find out what you like doing best and make a living doing it. ‘It never got her nowhere.’ Laid in my hospital bed, I wanted Nana Bessie so she could tell me how to do better. Missing her swelled up into a big lump in my throat. Even when I tried to swallow it down, it wouldn’t go. Then water started to run out my eyes and the lump squeezed noises out of my throat and nose. What a wuss. I hadn’t never cried, even after my nana died, even after they sent me to a different home from the others. Even when I was banged up in a cell on my own.
Jan kept on cleaning my legs and feet. ‘It’s better out than in,’ she said. She passed me a tissue.
‘Give us another one for me nose,’ I said when I was finished. I felt all clogged up round the tubes.
She patted me dry. ‘You’ve done nothing bad since you’ve been in here. Take one day at a time is what I say.’
My heart was still beating. I felt it push red blood all round my body. I never managed that on my own. The doctors helped me. They give me another chance.
‘Why did God put men on Earth?’ Jan asked as she rubbed cream into my leg where the plasters had made the skin sore.
‘I’m serious, mate.’
‘Because a vibrator can’t mow the lawn.’
I decided to set myself one goal a day to get better. I don’t only mean get over the heart attack. That and find out how to be a worthwhile person. My job that day was to breathe without the ventilator and I managed it. I was proud of myself and I could tell Jan was proud of me too.
Once I was off of the breathing machine they had to put me back on closet chain, which is enough chain to give you a bit of privacy in the toilet. The first screw what they sent in was Mr T. In a weird way, I felt pleased to see him, like as if there was something special about him an’ all. He didn’t look pleased to see me, though. He didn’t never make no jokes, just sat there looking stunned. Jan made us both a cup of tea. It was my first one without a spout. They had taken the tubes out of my nose and my dick and the monitors off of my chest.
I found myself wondering what was up with Mr T, which wasn’t like me. I worried I had let slip while I was out of it what I done to that girl and now everybody knew and it would get about that I was a nonce. More likely it was nothing to do with me and none of my beeswax what was on his mind.
‘What’s up, guv? You look like you lost your pay packet on the gee-gees and now you’ve got to tell the missus.’
‘Give it a rest, Childs.’ He swigged his tea.
‘No, seriously Mr T, you look worse than what I feel.’
‘I said shut it, you cant.’
Jan come over and started to fix the blood-pressure cuff round my arm what didn’t have the handcuff on it.
‘Talk to me, Mr T. I been lying here crying about my dead grandma and I need something to take my mind off of my troubles.’
He stared at me, surprised that I would say something like that. Then he looked at Jan while he spoke. ‘They put me on bed watch ’cause I wanted to come in the hospital with my missus. There’s supposed to be two of us on this detail so I expect they’re going to send another officer over.’
‘Bobby’s no trouble. He’s a good lad,’ said Jan, as if that would be what was getting Mr T down. When the machine beeped she scribbled on my chart.
‘They give us the results of a blood test they done for screening. They reckon the baby is going to have sickle cell anaemia, which means he’ll get bad pains in his bones, and maybes get ill, and get swollen hands and feet.’ He kept looking at Jan.
She stopped what she was doing, to listen.
‘Sharnice is nearly three months gone, so we got to decide quick if she needs to get an abortion.’ His eyes was stuck to Jan’s face like as if she was a fortune-teller what could tell him the future for real.
‘That is a tough decision to make. Do you know anyone who has sickle cell, or anyone you could talk to about what it means?’ Jan’s face was kind like always.
I couldn’t concentrate on what they said. I wanted to ask a question to this nurse in Intensive Care and the big screw with the scar through his eyebrow. I wanted to ask them: Suppose you got screened and found out you was going to have a kid what would turn out like me? Would you get rid of it? Except I knew what they would answer. I wanted somebody to tell me I could get better.
A pigeon flapped across the window, one of them scrawny grey birds what people call flying rats. I looked at my hands and wished I could hold that white pigeon again. Its feathers was pure soft and its heart beat like it as if was shit-scared. I would like to stroke it with a finger until it calmed down and wasn’t afraid no more. I wanted to ask Mr T if it was true there was a magic teacher with a purple nose what taught at Belhurst. Only I didn’t interrupt him because he needed to talk about what was on his mind.
