Читать книгу The World I Fell Out Of онлайн

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The movie Trainspotting was really accurate, you know. The stuff about coming off morphine, when your body is a seething rats’ nest and nothing will calm it. Although I didn’t realise what was happening at the time, because I didn’t even know I had been on morphine. All I knew was that it felt worse than anything I’d ever experienced. Even though my body was paralysed and insensate, I felt that it was jangling all over, itching, shivering – compelling me to cry out for relief, for death, for anything to make it stop. Inside my brain, restless leg syndrome multiplied a million times, ants crawled inside my skin, devouring me from within. One vivid day I became convinced my bedding was soaked. The mattress and bottom sheet were sloshing in icy water: I was certain I was freezing alive, shivering, nagging for more blankets.

‘I can’t give you any more blankets,’ said the nurse. ‘You’re not cold.’

‘Please, I’m freezing,’ I wheedled. ‘Please. Be kind.’

‘Kind?’ she said. ‘Heart like a swinging brick, me.’