After I’d given my statement, I went into one of several massage parlours that operated in the hotel lobby and treated myself to a rejuvenating back, neck and shoulder rub. Throughout the treatment, I thought of Anna. It had only been a few weeks since we’d split and there’d been no contact at her insistence. I yearned to hear from her, and actually got out my mobile with the intention of sending her a WhatsApp, but thought better. She was unlikely to reply and a snub was the last thing I wanted. After the massage, I went to a nearby travel agent and booked a flight to Koh Samui, scheduled to leave in three hours. I also reserved a bungalow in a beach-side resort called Tiki-Tiki. It had been recommended by Miriam. She’d stayed there once and enjoyed it so much she’d posted a favourable review on TripAdvisor. The plan was to meet her there when she arrived from Vietnam later in the week.
On my way back, I felt hungry and stopped in at an openfronted cafe that had an A-board on the pavement outside advertising English, American and Continental breakfasts. The place was deserted except for an elderly white couple sitting side-by-side at a small table, poring over a map. When I walked in they shot me a glance then quickly looked away and began to fidget self-consciously. The day before, fresh off the plane, I’d have bristled, but at that moment I felt sorry for them. They seemed so uncomfortable.
At the counter, I ordered a couple of croissants and an Americano from a cheerless old Thai man, then went and sat at a table near the entrance. I had to put on my sunglasses to combat the glare reflecting off the tinted windows of the skyscraper building opposite. For the next few minutes, waiting for my breakfast to arrive, I watched the traffic go by, both vehicular and pedestrian, trying in vain to ignore the smell of petrol and exhaust fumes. At one point a tuk-tuk raced by, the engine droning like a swarm of bees. A scrap of paper went flying into the air then came fluttering down again, blown this way and that by competing currents. Just as it was about to settle, it got caught on another current and went soaring upwards again. After a few seconds it blew down a side-street and out of view and I found myself hoping that it was still airborne, flitting about the city like a butterfly.
KJ ORR
BACKBONE
My father long ago said – about something I had found tough, really tough, almost too tough, for me, almost too much – that the thing was to find your way to letting it shift from being a big thing to being a small thing.
This I thought sage. This I thought helpful. This I remembered.
Easier to remember, perhaps, than to actuate.
My partner and I would always joke about my having had back surgery. My partner at the time. The joke was about the fact – true or imagined – that I was the kind of person who would walk into a room always in the company of my surgery. With, as it were, my surgery on my arm: May I have the pleasure of making you acquainted with my back surgery?
Or – we’d be out on the street, in the city, and someone would, say, jostle just that bit too hard on their way past, and my partner – whose comic timing I have to say was better than mine – would wait just a beat and then call out, Hey, don’t you know she’s just had back surgery? And then my partner would turn to me po-faced and say, I don’t think they appreciate that it was major back surgery.
Anyway, that was the joke. It served purposes.
So. This is the way a friend of mine used to start his stories. So.
So – I needed some backbone. I signed a form. I had the strangest feeling that the anaesthetist was laughing at me as I went under. Five. Four. Three.
Anaesthetic is the strangest thing. The strangest thing. Complete surrender. How can such complete surrender be acceptable? That degree of trust.
I woke up. And I’ll be honest. I woke up happy. I knew there was something solid in me now, something fixed.
Though I could not imagine what had gone on inside my body. If I’d been asked to describe what it looked like in there now, I couldn’t have said.
A visitor. My mother. She stood at my bedside and she smiled and she wept. I found this lovely and I found it also unnerving. And then I was alone, because she left.
I lay there. I lay there a while – I had to lie there a few days in fact, for the backbone to take.
Here are some of the things I began to notice as I lay there (I gave them numbers as I lay there to create some kind of order in my mind):
1. I could wiggle my toes. I was grateful. I’d been worried beforehand that this facility might be gone. (Though my toes – afterwards – hard to explain – but they felt disconnected.)
2. Flat on my back I did not know how to move. There were people who came and went. They adjusted things attached to me – wires and tubes. But this critical matter of how to move was not something anyone seemed compelled to address. I myself, in the state I was in, shelved the issue for later.
3. I had not been told I would no longer know the difference between what I saw, eyes shut and eyes open. This confused me. It all looked the same. I’d open my eyes and see the beds lined up opposite, the rows of bedside lights on the wall behind – and then I’d close my eyes and see the exact same thing. It was alarming. I found it distressing. Even to think of it now. The implications were – hard to grasp. How was I to proceed with any confidence when I no longer knew if I was awake or asleep?
Something else.
A woman arrived. One of the beds on the opposite wall. She was beforehand – her procedure. She was beforehand. I was afterwards. It was night. The lights were dim. She blessed the nurse who accompanied her in. She wished her a good life. She seemed to go through some kind of ritual placement of objects. This seemed important, though I struggled to grasp what she was doing or why. I myself had done nothing like it. I had arrived and unzipped my boots and slipped off my clothes. I hadn’t blinked. I’d signed my form. I hadn’t blessed anyone. And then the anaesthetic. Six. Five. Four.
She had arrived with bags. A lot of them. These bags were plastic. Blue. She clutched them in her fists like a wild array of blue balloons. I was flat on my back, but with my head slightly raised I saw. And I heard the rustling as she took things out of them.
She had arrived with her husband – I assumed him to be. He stood and watched close by. I remember his head was – tilted to one side.
She was rustling all the time. It made me smile.
He watched and I watched as she set things out. Cloth – a length of cloth – on top of the side table. Small items – great care – on top of this. On the the… shelf, table, table-top over the bed – that swivelled over the bed – perhaps it was a basin. I don’t know. Perhaps there was a towel. The last thing she did though – she rolled out a rug. A small rug. Great care. And then she turned to the man, to her husband, asked for help. I think perhaps what she wanted was alignment – the the the the the side table, the edge of the rug, the bed…
He raised both hands. He said something to her. Perhaps he said… you know, I can’t be sure. His voice was gentle, hard to hear. I can’t be sure what it was he said.
When he’d gone – the man – and then when she’d gone – the woman – when she’d gone for the procedure, her procedure, a man in green appeared – snorted – a sound like laughter – said, You’re kidding me – cleared her things away. It took no time at all.
Having seen the effort she had gone to, I found this troubling. I felt – great concern. I had… how can I describe it? I was becoming increasingly anxious that the woman might not return.