Painkiller (17 page)

‘Anyone at home?’

There’s a fruity disembodied voice. I think it’s talking to me.

‘Are you decent?’

‘I’m not sure. I’d say “no”, but then I’m not used to wearing a shower curtain with my bottom hanging out.’

There’s a chuckle, the curtain is pulled back, and a man introduces himself as Dr Martin. ‘Like the boot,’ he says, pre-empting any feeble gag on my part. ‘Just want to check a few things. You’ve not had this treatment before, have you?’

‘No.’

‘Well, with any luck you’ll be in and out in no time. You’ve got someone to take you home?’

‘Yes. My husband…’

I had a long debate with myself whether to say ‘husband’ or ‘son’.
He looks so young.
In the end, I had no choice. Their records show I don’t have children.
Say ‘husband’, I think. It might raise eyebrows, but not suspicions. I hope.

‘He’s not in the building at the moment. He’s just parking the car. It’s very busy at the moment. Everyone’s trying to get into central London.’

Too much information, Monica.
 

The doctor is barely listening. ‘Good good good. We’re doing eight people today, and you’re the first. So I won’t hang about. I’ll be bright and awake for you, at least. Have you read the guidelines we sent you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Just to warn you, we’ll all be looking pretty scary in theatre; masks, goggles, the works. That’s not because we’re trying to scare you, or we’re scared of you, it’s just that capsaicin is really potent stuff; that’s why if you look at the guidelines, we ask you, please please please, don’t try to apply any creams or lotions to the area; contamination is a big problem. And if it gets in anyone’s eyes it can be very nasty. It just needs to transfer from your fingernails, to my hand, and we’ll have to close down the theatre. Do you understand?’

‘Definitely.’

‘Now, can you lie on the bed?’

I lie on the bed and expose my buttocks to the world. At this point Call-Me-Sue pops in and says: ‘I just got your husband a cup of tea… My, he’s a bit of a hunk, isn’t he? Lovely twinkly eyes he’s got. You are a lucky girl.’

‘Don’t let him hear you say that. He can’t drive me home if his head won’t fit in the car.’

Dr Martin and Call-Me-Sue laugh as one, and not for the first time I wryly observe the unspoken doctor–patient contract: they want you to be in good humour, and you oblige by
being
in good humour, and they show you they’re inordinately happy to witness you being in good humour, and so, no matter how you feel, you end up working as a stand-up comedian for a willing audience of doctors, surgeons and consultants.

I’m conscious that my bottom is being prodded. The doctor has a fat marker in his hand and he asks me to draw the area where the pain originates with my finger.

‘That’s difficult,’ I say. ‘It goes everywhere. I can draw where the injury happened, if you like.’

‘Sounds like a plan, Monica.’

I do so, and he uncaps the marker pen. ‘This is to help me find the best area,’ he explains, drawing over where my finger went, making a big square shape near my right buttock.

‘You’re not going to eat me?’

Dr Martin and Call-Me-Sue have both probably heard that said many times before, but their laughter sounds genuine. ‘Just call me Dr Shylock. This is a guide for me, so we know where to put the patch.’

I look at Call-Me-Sue. ‘Can you give my husband a message?’

‘Of course I can. You try and stop me talking to him,’ and Call-Me-Sue makes a little ‘reow’ noise of pure lust.

‘If I don’t survive this, I’ll leave you him in my will.’

She’s not sure she should laugh at this, and she just smiles. ‘What shall I tell him, luv?’

‘Just tell him I really appreciate him doing this, and I know it was inconvenient, with his… work… and everything, but I’m really glad he’s here.’

‘I’m sure it’s his pleasure.’

‘I’m sure it is. I just want him to know, that’s all.’

‘Of course.’ She pops out and is back relatively quickly. ‘He’s just nipped out for a paper,’ she says. ‘I’m sure he’ll be back in a minute.’

I imagine my incredibly young ‘husband’, in the waiting area, poking through copies of
Vanity Fair
and
The Lady
for something to read.

‘Am I to get an anaesthetic?’

‘No…’

‘What?’ I’m instantly alarmed. ‘The letter said there was to be a local anaesthetic.’

‘Ah, the letter is a little out of date, Monica. We found that when applying local anaesthetic it made the patch a bit slippery and difficult to secure. It didn’t make much difference anyway. Don’t worry, my dear, you’re in very good hands.’

She’s not budging, so I just have to accept her reassurances. When they wheel me into the operating room, my hands are so tightly bunched into fists I know there’ll be nail-marks in my palms.

They prefer me conscious. People with masks cluster round me, blotting out the lights. I notice that Dr Martin has hairy cheeks. Great grey tufts are sprouting in clumps, like he’s growing cress from his own tears.

The capsaicin is square and white, like a big tea bag. Dr Martin handles it with great care. Dr Kumar told me that the stuff was hellishly expensive, and they are treating it like spun gold, making sure that nothing is wasted. They cut out a circle, put it on my buttock, and for a while I’m thinking this isn’t so bad. It’s just a warm feeling.

‘OK, so you just need to keep that patch on for another fifty minutes…’

They roll me into the waiting room. I can see other patients reading magazines and books. It’s not bothering them much.

They’ve been exaggerating, the poor wimps. They obviously aren’t used to the levels of pain endured by yours truly.
 

The heat is starting to grow. It feels like a hot water bottle.

A HOT water bottle.

And then the warm becomes hot and the hot becomes a searing nightmare.

There is pain, more pain on top of pain; my buttock feels as if it’s being held over a Bunsen burner.

I would try to count to thirty to take my mind off the pain, but the pain has sent me mad, and I have no concept of numbers, or even time.

Fifty minutes pass. Then they take off the patch but, if anything, the pain
intensifies.

There is nothing in my head except the pain… and something even worse.

I try and call for the doctor, for Call-Me-Sue, but they’re already focusing on the next patient.

But I’m not focusing on anything, I’m just thinking

Is this what it’s like to have a baby?
 

and I’m thinking it all the time, even as my soul curls up and cowers whimpering in the furthest corner of my psyche, even as I start to pass out, my mind keeps hold of that thought and clutches it even as the dark waters of oblivion close over my head.

Is this what it’s like to have a baby?
 

I drift in and out of consciousness, and there’s lots of shouting. And I feel weight on my chest.

‘Monica!’

Someone’s shouting in my face.

‘Hello, Monica,’ yells Call-Me-Sue. ‘How are you feeling?’

‘Christ.’ It’s all I manage to say.

‘Good to see you back with us.’

‘Good to be here. Bloody hell…’

‘It’ll probably smart a bit for a few days.’

‘Few… days,’ I murmur, through clenched teeth.

Christ, this is unbearable
.

‘We were very worried about you,’ she says. ‘You passed out, and we couldn’t revive you. We thought we weren’t going to get you back.’

‘No… kidding…’ I gasp.

My mind is crazed with the pain, gibbering and twitching inside my head.
Invisible flames are licking around my body
.

I’ve sinned, and this must be my punishment.
 

I’ve borne false witness against my husband, and this is what I’ve reaped. Not only have I enraged his God, I’ve helped Him by doing his work for Him; I’ve walked into the NHS and kindly obliged Him by allowing myself to get dipped into the fires of hell.
 

‘I’m… sorry, s-sorry… Dominic… Please… Please forgive me…’

Call-Me-Sue has probably heard a lot of crazy nonsense from patients who’ve had this treatment. She ignores my whimperings. ‘Just keep pressing ice packs on the area, Monica, and the feeling will go away. Really. I promise you that. I’ll just let your husband know you’re out of theatre.’

‘OK,’ I croak. All of a sudden I’m praying and hoping that my ‘husband’ is still waiting, that his promise to be there for me wasn’t just empty words.

‘Dr Martin would like to keep you in for a few days for observation, if that’s all right, Monica. We’re just going to wheel you into the other part of the hospital.’

My fuddled brain picks out her words, comprehends them, and I buck in alarm. ‘N-no. I have to leave. I have to leave. I have to leave now!’

‘Monica, you had a really bad reaction to the capsaicin. Your body went into shock. Your heart stopped for a while. We have to see —’

‘No. I… I have to leave… Now! Now!’

She reluctantly disappears to fetch my ‘husband’, and slowly and painfully I lever myself upright, grope for my clothes, and clumsily get dressed. I find if I take the cold patch off my buttock for a second, the heat becomes instantly unbearable, like a case of sunburn from the pits of hell.

‘Your husband is all ready and waiting for you.’

‘Good,’ I say. ‘I’m glad he hasn’t left me.’

This she detects as a joke. ‘No, I haven’t run off with him yet, more’s the pity.’

And soon she is wheeling me to the reception, imploring me to stay, but I won’t have it. My right hand is pressed against my buttock, where the pack is doing no good at all.

Jesus.
 

What have I done to myself? Out of the frying pan and literally – into the fire.
 

What’s Dominic going to say? He can’t see me like this.
 

And we turn the corner, and there he is. My ‘husband’ puts down his newspaper and leaps up in concern.

‘Are you all right, darling?’ Niall asks.

Dominic’s bleeding had stopped. It had bled like a stuck pig for most of the first day, but by cramming toilet paper to his ear and strapping it in place with one of Mrs Henderson’s tea towels, he was able to slowly staunch the flow.

He stayed in his room for three days, watching daytime shows, looking like an exiled Arab sheik. The ear still looked terrible, crusty and red. The bottom half was flapping.

Perhaps he could think up some excuse.
Something happened in Swindon, Monica. An accident. One of those things. Actually, it was a team-building exercise that went wrong. I got a paintball behind the ear. Would you believe it?

Dominic had driven to the hospital that morning; not because of his ear, but because in his pocket – next to the gun – was a piece of paper, telling him that Monica’s appointment for the capsaicin treatment was today.

He was waiting for her.

He had to know if she’d decided to go through with it. In his heart he knew she hadn’t cancelled that appointment, but he had to know for sure.

It was well past ten o’clock now, and he’d seen no sign of her, coming in or out. Incredibly, it looked like she wasn’t coming. She’d actually listened to him, taken his advice and given the treatment a miss.

He was starting to relax.

He would throw the gun away in the nearest litter bin. Forget about it.
 

He was sitting there, preparing an amusing story about a savage Chihuahua who jumped up off a woman’s lap and grabbed his ear, when he saw his wife. She was leaving the hospital, not arriving. Surprise hit him in the stomach and caused a knot to form in his gut. She must have arrived early. He must have missed her arrival.

A man was holding her, a man he didn’t recognise.
She would have found someone else
. He knew that.
If he wouldn’t help she would have found someone else.

She was hanging on to the man for dear life, her knuckles were white on his arm, and the other one clutched a…
what? A patch? A bandage?
On her hip. An ice pack. The world stopped and numbness enveloped Dominic; he couldn’t feel his arms, his legs, everything was made of rubber.

He suddenly felt squeezed, as if he was being stuffed inside his own ear. The dull ache on the side of his head was the only sensation that he was aware of. The high-pitched whining sound in his head returned, liquefying his brain.

The man and his wife had been detained by a jolly nurse. His wife (even though she was sweating and shaking and her eyes were rolling back in her head) was being forced to fill in a form.

The man looked on, concerned, questioning why she needed to do it at this moment. Couldn’t they see she was in difficulty? The man was doing what Dominic would have done. Trying to be the Man in the situation. Trying to look authoritative and caring.

Dominic got up and staggered to the exit.

Now he was sitting in his car, staring at the windscreen. He was wondering what to do next.
Run away, and pretend he didn’t see
. That was it. Hide in the bed and breakfast for another week, and stroll into the house and pretend he didn’t know. And hope for the best.

But he had the gun. In case his worst fears came to pass, he had to hide the gun first, and he had to hide it within easy reach. In the house.

He turned the ignition and roared off towards home.

‘Take the second turning on the right.’
 

‘Niall, could you turn off the satnav, please?’

‘Sorry.’

‘Take the left hand lane for three hundred yards.’
 

‘I can’t cope with the noise. Not at the moment.’

‘No worries. I’ll turn it down.’

He turns it down.

‘Take the roundabout and take the third exit on the left.’
 

‘I’m sorry, it’s the voice. I can’t cope with it. I’m sorry.’

‘OK, sorry.’

He pulls into a siding and prods the dashboard. The woman’s voice disappears and he drives on, glancing at the screen, making sure he doesn’t miss an exit.

‘I’m so grateful for this.’

‘It’s no problem really. It’s not a problem.’

‘But I am really grateful.’

The journey home is quite different. I need to talk to take my mind off the pain. I’m sprawled in the back seat, clutching my side. We stopped at a garage to buy ice, and when they didn’t have any, Niall bought all the bottled water in the refrigerator. I’m pressing all of them, one by one, against me, and the cool feeling on my buttock, even though very short-lived, is delicious.

‘I hated bothering you.’

‘It’s no bother.’

‘But I am bothering you. You had to cancel appointments.’

‘They can wait. You can’t.’

Niall accelerates and negotiates his car carefully around a particularly huge lorry. The noise from the lorry’s engine is terrifying. From my odd angle lying and staring up, I can see the lorry driver, chewing on something, glancing down at me with detached fascination through his cab window as he glides slowly behind us, like a turtle in an aquarium bumping at the glass to look at the visitors.

I’m reminded of the time I was ill as a child and my father swathed me in blankets and lay me in the back of his car. I remember feeling cut off, as the suspension jogged my head, and all I could do was focus on the seams on the car’s roof, the little square light and the plastic handle.

It’s been a strange day. From the moment the sun came through the crack in the curtains and hit my already-open eyes, it felt like an unnatural sort of day. I remembered walking down to the bottom of my road, taking a couple of left and right turns, and along to the phone box for my prearranged rendezvous with Niall. It felt like that school trip to the Lake District I was forced to go on when I was nine. The bus picked me up from the bus stop I usually waited at for going to school, but this time it took me another way, down another road, away from the familiar and deep into unknown territory.

‘Are you still all right?’ says Niall. After uttering his fiftieth ‘Are you all right?’ he has acknowledged he is sounding repetitive and has added a ‘still’.

‘Fine. I’m… fine. The sooner I’m in bed the better.’

An unfortunate turn of phrase from me, considering I’m in the back of a strange man’s car, but the situation feels too crazy for either of us to dwell on it. ‘We’re just coming up to Kensington Church Street,’ he says. ‘Not far to go now.’ He allows a quick split-second glance back to me. ‘Quite a treatment.’

‘Yes.’

‘I’ve heard of this stuff before, of course, you have to know in my line of work, but not on this level. They’ve actually been using this stuff for muscle and joint pain since the nineties.’

‘I know.’

‘They’ve had amazing results in helping osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis. Eighty per cent found some pain relief.’

‘Fascinating.’

‘Here’s hoping.’

‘Yes. Here’s hoping.’