Aida

He walked down the hill and heard the yelling, well before he got there. Could hear it from half-way down the street - a guttural sound that was more like a rabid dog gone berserk than anything else. At his approach, the yelling stopped, was coming from a man with a mohawk. ‘Evening.’ Said the man, and silently nodded at his passing. He nodded back and stepped onto the veranda of the big old house where he lived, opened the huge door with his fob and let himself in.

Paint-cracked walls. A buzzing ceiling light that was flickering on and off. A figure, seated in the hallway, looking like a statue, looked up and raised its head, then dropped it back down again.

He walked through to the centre of the house through a passageway that opened up to a large room that was packed full of figures, some idling on couches, some, seated on the floor, some watching a television that hung on the wall. None seemed to notice him walk in, and then, he picked one out: a woman, wearing a work uniform, seated by herself, in the corner of the room, smiled at his approach.

He jostled his way through the crowd, amongst men and women standing around, all of them drinking ale and smoking cigarettes, the stench of marijuana wafting its way around, got caught in his lungs, made him cough. The woman waited patiently for him to sit down next to her and when he did, they embraced and he kissed her neck.

‘You’re in late.’ Said the woman.

‘Had a head-trauma.’

‘Right.’

‘What’s the haps?’

‘There’s some ice going around.’

‘What have you got?’

‘Just Valium, from work.’

‘That’s perfect.’

She reached into her pocket and opened her hand and put two blue pills into his, which he gratefully took and swallowed, then looked around, happy to feel the effects kick in, to watch the world melt away, the beckoning of sleep, placed on his doorstep, and hen, a moment later, she looked up at him.

‘We could go upstairs, if you want.’

‘If you want.’

He stood and took her hand, then led her through the crowded room.

‘One day, we should really make plans to leave this place,’ he said, but the words disappeared into the ether, lost amongst the myriad of conversations, and in the next instant, he forgot saying them, for she was leading him up a set of carpeted stairs, and into a tiny room where they lived, and they undressed silently and lay down together on the single bed and he fell instantly asleep, blissfully happy to have her in his arms.

In what seemed like the next instant, his phone rang, waking him, and he looked around for it, but couldn’t find it, then finally found it in his jeans. A metallic voice simply said the word ‘spinal injury’, then hung up, and with that, he knew he had to get back to the hospital within the hour.

He got up out of the bed and looked at his wife, lying there, looking like an angel, and realised, in that moment, that he was one of the lucky ones, in life, that things could be a hell of a lot worse.

He went and took his shower, watched the brown dirty water become clear, heard yelling from the neighbours, then got dressed and looked at himself in the mirror.

Blood-shot eyes, sallow, pasty skin. He took one last look at his wife, lying in the bed, then made his way out of the building, walked down a flight of stairs and came to a landing, walked the carpet and opened the big old door, and thought, again, about the possibility of leaving the place, but with the cost of private rental, knew that it was impossible, sighed and made his way out into the cold morning air.

Morning fog slowly lifting, the sun starting to come out. As usual, on his way, he was already looking forward to coming home, and nestling into his wife’s neck, but it was money, and it was his career, and he had to keep it, for he knew about the alternative, saw it every day: the ragged, the destitute, the homeless and their battle-scars.

He finally made it to the big old building where he worked, found a park and got out, made his way to the hospital with the usual bag of butterflies in his stomach before a shift, approached the reception and signed in, made his way to the theatre, opened a set of doors, and braced himself.

An old man lying on a hospital bed, surrounded by nurses, gasping for breath. At his approach, they all looked at him, and for one horrible moment, he felt like a fraud, but the feeling wasn’t new. He shrugged it off and stepped forward and looked at it, his latest case. One of the nurses approached him, spoke through a mask:

‘He’s been in a car accident. Initial x-ray suggests a break in the spinal cord.’

He looked at the old man, lying on the table, and wondered, what the point of the exercise was; knew that no matter how well he fixed him up, his life, whatever was left of it, would be one filled with pain; and how easy it would be to send him on his way; that it might have been the humane thing to do.

And so it went, like this, case after case, decisions made in order to keep those destined for death, alive, a few more days, or perhaps years. He worked late into the night, until he couldn’t take it any longer, then signed out and made his way to the car-park, happy to make his way home, to call it quits for another day.

By the time he made it home, it was the early hours of the morning. He got out of the car, and saw people, wandering around in the front garden, as per usual, walked down the hallway and came to the lounge. The usual pack of idlers. He walked around the room but couldn’t locate her.

‘Has anyone seen, Aida?’

But they only looked at him, all with the same blank expression. Eyes that looked dead, soulless.

‘Aida, have you seen, Aida?’

He made his way to the stairs and started them, came to the room, opened the door, fearing the worst, found it.

Aida, looking up at the ceiling, eyes staring upward and relaxed, mouth in a silent smile, as though she had found the perfect fix, for everything, which, in fact, she had.

He walked over to her and hugged her lifeless body to himself, shocked at how cold her skin was, looked around at the otherwise empty room that they had shared for all these years. A framed photograph of the two of them, standing on the night-stand, the room, full of dirty clothes.