A Clean Break

So we’re all at the party and everyone’s having a right laugh. Gus has drank all of the beer, which is no surprise. So Tahir breaks out the whisky. I don’t even drink whisky. So of course, like a normal person, I decide to have a little bit of whisky.

It’s about now that I start to wonder what I’m doing in the ambulance. They’re taking me somewhere, right? Are we going back to Stirling? We must be - surely. That’s what I told them. We can’t still be in Edinburgh. That would be ridiculous.

There’s all these posters on the walls saying stuff about your health and how you should look out for it. Diagrams and cross-sections of bodies. Parties are bad for you. It’s strangely upsetting. The main one I notice seems all alive, like some three-dimensional hologram. A baby in the womb. I think it was kind of cartoony - like, this baby’s happy about the fact it hasn’t been born yet. In my confused state, I’m saying all these things to whoever’s wheeling me along the corridor: stuff about how sad it is for the baby that it has to be born at all. I’m just talking at this stage. My mind feels divorced from my body. Like someone else is talking through me, trying to rationalize what’s going on. I’m probably in shock. Is that what happens when you’re in shock? I thought maybe you went all quiet. Well, anyway. I was doing the opposite.

The weird thing about hospitals, I find, is how dark they are. I think it’s to do with the strip-lighting? They’ve got, like, millions of lights but there’s these strange shadows everywhere. In all the corners. Maybe that’s just at night though.

So they keep telling me to relax: everything’s fine. They sound like police. I just keep apologizing. I’m sorry for wasting everyone’s time, they must have tons more important stuff to do tonight, sorry for being an idiot. I was just leaving the party - and next thing you know, I’m at the bottom of the stairwell! So I must’ve fallen and tried to get back up again - and the leg wasn’t working so I fell down again! I must’ve been trying to find my way out of the stairwell and someone found me. So I’m saying sorry for all that. Sorry for the baby. I must’ve sounded like a complete fucking lunatic.

A nurse is x-raying my ankle. Actually, she does both ‘cos I don’t think I’ve managed to make it clear which one of them I think I’ve broken. They do that weird thing where they half step out of the room holding onto the button, so they don’t get killed by radiation. The baby.

So, yeah, it was a crazy night all right. Luckily it was a clean break. They put the plaster on: a little work of art. But you know all about that.

After all the drinking. After the crash. The baby.