What would happen when I tried to cross the room? I remembered the collapse inside my chest that I had felt out in the yard. How was it now and what would it do when I got out of the bed? If I couldn’t move now if I rolled out of bed and the pain was anything like it had been when I had fallen if my chest kept shifting inside me I didn’t know what I would do. Something bad had happened to me some accident but I had survived it. I had survived these days in bed I had drunk and my body had slept. I felt better but I was still broken. I felt like I was floating above everything like I was floating above the ground like a spirit like mist over fields in the morning. Sometimes I had felt like I was floating above the pain. But now I had to move.
I rolled over onto my left side. I felt something shift inside me but I kept going. I swung my legs slowly down onto the floor still in the sleeping bag. I pushed myself up slowly with my arms. The pain in my head became worse I could feel the throbbing now I could hear it. Something was hammering on the inside of my skull. Pain shot down the left side of my chest and down my left leg. I pushed myself slowly up with my hands and I slid the sleeping bag down under my legs and onto the floor.
It was time to try and stand up. Things had been slipping around inside me again as I sat up but they seemed to have settled now that I was sitting still. The shifting had not been as big nor as painful nor as fearful as it had been out in the yard. Perhaps I would come through. I swung my legs around gently to the head of the bed and I sat on the pillow so that I could balance myself against the wall as I stood. And then gently and slowly I tried to stand.
My left leg would not support me. The knee bent at the wrong angle again it bent outwards and my foot shook if I put any weight on it. But my right leg worked. I pulled myself up against the wall slowly standing on my right leg and putting as little pressure on my left as possible. The pain in the left side of my chest grew in intensity. But now I was leaning against the wall. I was standing.
I turned around so that my back was to the wall and I leaned on it. I had one hand supporting me on the head of the bed and the other still on the wall. I took breaths. Breathing hurt but I began to breathe deeper to see what my chest would do. I couldn’t manage really deep breaths. If I tried there would be a great shrieking pain in the left side of my chest. But I could breathe. The pain in my head was worse now and the pains in my chest and my left knee and all down my left leg were real and terrible. But I found I could bear them.
Gently and nervously I moved my right hand away from the bed and over to the left side of my chest and I began to press. Everything was bruised. The five long scratches down my chest were beginning to scab over. They were deeper than they had looked. I worked my way systematically from the bottom of my ribcage upwards pressing gently on everything. About halfway up there was a sharp give in two of my ribs. I nearly fell over when I touched them. They must have broken. They felt wrong but I supposed they couldn’t have punctured anything important or I wouldn’t have survived. I could still breathe and I had not bled to death in the night. How did ribs work? I didn’t know anything about medicine. Did they just heal? I knew that bones would heal themselves in time. Maybe if I didn’t touch them they would recover.
I looked down at my knee. That looked worse. It had swollen into a great yellow and black ball and it felt like it was burning from within. It was splayed outwards at an angle it should not have been able to bend at and I couldn’t put any weight on it. How would I walk? Was it broken?
I didn’t know anything outside the miracle of my life. It mattered only that I was here. Here I was. Here I was alive and standing and breathing. Now I needed to eat and I needed to drink and I probably needed to do something about my knee as well. That was going to mean walking. That was going to mean walking from the bed over to the table and the chair and the cupboard in which I felt there would be food. By the cupboard on the floor was what looked like a jerry can of water. I could see that the can was about half full. The true power of my thirst hit me as I looked at it. I could not remember ever being this thirsty.
I pushed myself away from the wall as if I were pushing a boat out into a lake. I swayed for a moment and stumbled I went down hard onto my left leg and a great sheet of pain shot up through the left side of my body. I screamed and flailed my arms in the air to keep my balance and I rocked back onto my right side but I stayed upright. I steadied myself and then I began to walk. I had to put some weight on my left leg as I moved and every time I did I would screw up my face involuntarily and try to keep from crying out though there was no-one to hear me. I could have screamed to hell and no-one would have heard me but I would not let myself. I kept walking stumbling towards the wall. It seemed to take much longer than it must have taken but I got there. I collapsed in the chair and rested the weight of my upper body on the table.
From the chair I could just reach out and open the cupboard. In the cupboard I found a cracked china bowl of soft potatoes some dried beans in a plastic bag a loaf of bread a pile of teabags a packet of painkillers and two big bars of chocolate. When I saw the chocolate my heart leaped. Sugar and water I wanted sugar and water so much. I took out the bars of chocolate and the pills. I dragged the jerry can of water over to the table and opened it and poured water into an old blue mug on the tabletop. I drank and drank four or five or six mugfuls. I took four painkillers and then I unwrapped one of the bars of chocolate. I ate it deliberately slowly. I felt the sugar slide across my tongue and down my throat and set my body running. Then I drank two more mugs of water and sat in the chair at the table and breathed steadily and gently.
After a while the pain in my head began to subside and the throbbing died down a bit. The pains in my knee and my chest didn’t change but they were less of a problem if I sat still. I decided that my chest would heal itself if I just left it alone. I didn’t know if that was true but I had nothing else to tell myself. There was nobody here to help me and I could not go looking for help. Where would I go? I didn’t know anything about that. Nothing was clear. I was here and this was my problem and that was all.
But I knew I would have to do something about my leg if I was going to be able to walk properly. A splint was the only thing I could think of. I sat at the table and looked through the window at the sky in the yard. It was pure white. The air was hot and muggy as if a storm was coming. Everything was still and quiet. I sat and thought about splints. What was a splint exactly and how did it work? As far as I knew I needed a stick. I supposed I needed a stick as long as my leg and something to strap it to my leg with. Some rope. That sounded right. There was clearly nothing like that in this room. If I wanted a stick and some rope I would have to go outside.
When I found the strength and inclination I hauled myself to my feet again and I got myself to the door the same way I had got myself to the table. I was mastering this slow and strange way of walking already. A body will adapt to anything. I got myself to the door and I swung it open and hobbled out into the yard outside. There was an impression of whiteness and stillness. It was hot out here as well. Hot and muggy and still and the sky was a uniform white across the farmyard and over the top of the silent ash trees and up to the moor. A ripped tarpaulin a steel ladder and several plastic bags lay in the centre of the yard. I turned myself around and looked up at the roof of the house I had been sleeping in. A sheet of corrugated iron was hanging off. There was a big gap in the roof.