Читать книгу The World I Fell Out Of онлайн

64 страница из 98

I remember catching a glimpse through the internal ward glass of one occupant: a morbidly obese man, not old by any means, who lay like a mountain upon what seemed an impossibly small bed, the tubes through the front of his throat, his face turned impassively towards the outside window. He did not live long enough to go home: one morning the staff came and drew all the internal curtains in the wards, shut the doors and hushed our buzzers, because his body was being removed and we were not to see. His accident had probably been caused by a fall – the most common cause of calamity. But oh what variety was contained within that tiny little word ‘fall’: it included everything from failed suicide to a trip over the coffee table in the living room after, or even before, a glass of wine, or sometimes six. All of human life was there in the lurid, eye-popping diversity of falling. There was Del, a part-time brickie and a full-time wild man, who had swallow-dived from the seventh floor on holiday in the Costas, convinced by drugs and alcohol he could fly. Despite his injuries, I think he still thought he could. He also thought he was irresistible to women and was famous for making lecherous comments to staff and female patients. Some weeks later, when I was upright in the gym on a static wooden standing frame, braced upright between foam knee braces and leather straps behind my bottom, I became aware of Del in his wheelchair at my right hip, leering.