Beauty

Beauty

She first saw Mikey as he was sleeping in his bed, a triad of pillows
under the meteorite of his skull. She approached and his eyes opened,
scanning the room but finding nothing. They shone cold and sunless,
empty.

She glanced around. Every ward was the same-a long stretch of beds,
identical in all but color and the wild variety of occupants. Perhaps
she was tired-her dreams had been of the usual horrors, voracious
zombies, red-eyed and dull-witted, chasing her through the night. She
was exhausted and judged her effectiveness at point zero.
Then, arriving at work-bleary eyed-and miserable, she was greeted by a
patient, his face hung slack mouthed and raw and prompted a flashback
to her nightmares. She felt ashamed.

A man appeared at her side. "Lara," he said "we'll get Mikey up first,
he takes longer."
Like partners in a well-practiced dance, they raised him from the bed.
Lara felt the familiar rhythm running like a cord. Removing the
pillows, gently supporting the head-one crooked arm, a hand to the
shoulder.

The moves of the man followed through. A walk around the bed, then a
well-timed lift; legs swung to the floor. Mikey was sitting, his head
supported.
"There you are mate," said Paul, as he moved the wheelchair
perpendicular to the bed.
"almost ready for that shite they call breakfast."

In the day room, Paul was feeding Nick. Each time the spoon entered his
mouth Nick seemed to smile and half the food fell out. Paul scraped the
pureed mess from the man's chin and returned it.
"It's like painting the fucking Forth Bridge here-never finished," he
laughed. "wonder how he stays alive?"
Lara picked up a bowl.
"Just start changing"," he said. "we're behind. It's not you-it's him."
He shot a glance towards a figure on the other side of the room. "If
he'd stop fucking around we'd be finished by now."

It was Karl was by the opposite window, feeding Mikey. She noticed how
he absentmindedly shoved the spoon into the man's mouth, roughly
scraping it against his upper teeth. Mikey wagged his head to the side
as the spoon approached, but Karl was too quick despite the fact his
interest was elsewhere.
He was also watching a woman cleaning the tables. She was bending over,
her green backside vibrating as she scrubbed. He was transfixed by the
image before him, and Lara may as well have been standing on the
moon.

In the next room, the T.V. was on full blast, but the screen was
obscured by scratched Perspex. Despite being above wheelchair height, a
smattering of brown goop coated the plastic. Lara walked around the
back of Lou's chair, feeling sick.
She despised herself for still being with Karl. Six months now, since
she had been sucked into the vortex of his world. Looking to him for
approval, but feeling her feet slipping from solid ground as he drew
her closer and closer. At the centre of him, his essence. Sometimes
even his words felt poisonous.

The smell of faeces hit her, and she noticed with revulsion the brown
saliva dribbling down Lou's chin.
"You don't watch T.V. anyway, do you?" Ridiculous words she thought,
when he expelled the shitty spit onto the floor as she pushed him
through the ward.

His head moved rapidly as they passed Mikey. Karl had gone, and the
large red monster of a chair was shoved awkwardly against a table, the
footrest making it impossible for him to sit with other people.
"Mikey-your Mum's coming soon." His mouth opened with a low pitched
"Ugh" and Lara noticed his tiny teeth, some missing, in his otherwise
ordinary mouth. He groaned again, and looked her in the eye.
Louis gobbed spit towards him. It landed on the side of his face. He
raised his thin fingers towards his head, but gave up halfway. His hand
dropped to his side, as Lara went to fetch a cloth.

Karl was at her side that evening, at the end of a long shift. She felt
too tired to talk. Picking up a towel, he roughly dried the last man
out of the water. Steam rose, as Lara, leaning over, ran the next
bath.
"Come for a drink tonight" she heard Karl say through the roar of the
running water.
"What?" she asked, even though she had heard the words.
He repeated himself.
"I don't know" Lara replied.
"I'm still harmless," he said, smiling and pushing a man out of the
bathroom before dragging someone else in. His harmlessness had been his
selling point but her comment escaped into the steam.
There were another ten residents to bathe, the majority in wheelchairs
sat like stationery skittles. Between them a few mobile men ran a
repeatedly agitated course.

She washed the chest of the man in the bath, starring at the soap
bubble caught in the black hair. Detached and clinical, she felt in
unfamiliar territory and trapped by inexperience. Her hand running over
the wet legs, she wondered how many men she had touched. It was not
conducive to a healthy sexual relationship, with far too many
disturbing associations.

But she liked men. Their difference, their confident display of
competence, and the way they looked. Sometimes she wondered if she felt
envious. The man in the bath lifted his arm co-operatively at her
prompt, as Karl interrupted her thoughts.
"How about tonight?"
"Okay" she replied. He steadied the man leaving the bath, as she gazed
at the abstract pattern of feet on the talcumed floor. Karl glanced at
her and smiled.

That night, Lara dreamed. She was having sex with Karl. Blond hair over
his face, pale green eyes closed, he moaned as she moved above him.
Suddenly a shift. Underneath her lay another man, but not quite a man.
Someone helpless, his body shrunken, she could see the tiny penis, the
frail legs. The palest blue eyes staring out of the enlarged head. She
awoke with a start and jumped out of bed.
"Oh shit." The image still clear in her mind "I'm sick." She decided.
Her heart was still beating in her throat as she lay back on the bed.
As she closed her eyes the lines of hairy naked men milled in the
darkness.

The next Saturday was the first sunny day for 2 weeks, the beginning of
spring. Sitting by Mikey's bed, upturned book on her lap, Lara was
watching him and thinking. Karl had told her beforehand that Mikey was
sick, in his usual style.
"He stopped breathing, went purple. Really dark purple, head like a
beetroot, look like he'd explode. Then he shit and pissed over my new
shoes, the fucker"
She'd berated him for his lack of sympathy, wishing he was different,
but her efforts were pointless.
"You're stupid, and get too emotionally involved."
"You don't care at all then?"
"I don't treat them badly, don't hit them. Anyway, you know what they
say-no sense, no feeling." He had turned to face the window, and she
wondered when his beautiful face had become so very ugly.

From the ward she could see Karl's house sitting just outside the
hospital grounds in a confusion of grass and car wrecks. A breeze moved
through the nearby trees, and she knew she would lose him. That was why
she was clinging like a limpet onto his hard shell.

A bar of sunlight fell across Mikey's face and he awoke. A choking
noise bubbled up from his throat.
"Okay Mikey, I'll turn you." Lara struggled, shifting the pillows and
handling his wasted limbs. He coughed again, his face screwing up
painfully; his skin was wrinkled and dry, stretching like paper over
the bones of his face. Below his lip, a crop of acne burned against the
pale skin.
Lara tried to recall his age. What did the file say? 19? 20? Younger
than her, but not by much. In his other life he would be complaining
about his skin and looking forward to Saturday night. He had been
denied a whole big slice of life, the part that tasted the best.

His eyes flickered open briefly, and then shut again. She could hear as
the breath rasped into his lungs, as if even the air objected to
entering his body. Inhaling deeply, as if to rid herself of unhealthy
ideas, Lara ingested the common stink of the ward, nicknamed "The
Chocolate Factory." The familiar odour of stale urine and disinfectant,
boiled cabbage and faeces made her sick to her stomach.

As Mikey's breathing slowed, her thoughts returned to Karl. She was
picking at the thought of him like a scab, analysing his reactions to
her. She had known he was a bastard from the beginning. His
heartlessness was as obvious as Mikey's hydrocephalus-yet she had
denied it.

She gazed at the house again; it appeared strange, as if viewed from
the wrong end of a telescope. Distorted and far away, part of another
world she couldn't reach. She could see Karl moving in the garden and
felt a voyeuristic pleasure, then the familiar pain. There was no joy
in watching him now, but she couldn't stop.

A car drew up, and he strolled over towards it. A woman with long black
hair passed through the garden gate and touched his cat with an easy
gesture of familiarity. She stood for a long time, her head almost
against Karl's. Lara felt her whole body reduce; shrink, as if she
should take up less space. What was she doing still with him?

She was tired spending each working day travelling between his cold
house and the overheated ward, crunching the frozen grass beneath her
feet, and wishing she could keep walking, and then run, faster and
faster. Flapping her arms-she'd fly away. Just fly around the world,
like a bird and see everything-there was so much to see.

Karl would be standing on the ground, ant-sized, waving his tiny arms,
his voice in the distance squeaking "Don't go!" Then really like a
bird-she'd shit on his head. The biggest shit in the world, total
output of the years of miserable waste from the Chocolate Factory, just
for him. In the meantime she would keep treading the path until she
could make a change.

"You're just a fucking bitch." Screamed Karl, throwing a bowl across
the room towards her. It shattered on the kitchen floor, red sauce
splattering the walls. Lara stared, shell-shocked into immobility. He
moved closer, his head jerking and mouth distorted. The two halves of
his face were fighting a war.
"You spent the whole day with that cripple, when you were off duty,
just to piss me off."
Lara stood rigid by the kitchen table, just seeing his hair against the
woman's, the blond and the black together.

"You made yourself look like a prat. And me too. You'll be bringing
them home next." He strode towards her, and she flinched, waiting for
the blow, but it never came. He just barged past, his foot slipping in
the red sauce. Lara felt an involuntary laugh surfacing and had to
force down the corners of her mouth. But he had already passed, banging
the door behind him. The vibration shook a cup from the table edge; she
saw it drop in slow motion. It landed whole, and lay on the red tiles
gently rocking.
Then she heard the car screeching from the drive, and was overwhelmed
by a terrible sense of frustration. She wanted to be in her car, just
driving and driving.

The change began on Saturday. There was always something about Saturday
for Lara. A day of potential, not hemmed in by expectations like the
rest of the week.
She was taking Mikey out for the day-alone. Paul was giving his opinion
about the whole enterprise.
"Go home girl-you're sick. It's your day off for God's sake."
"I want to do something."
"You do something all the time. Your job. We've got enough bleeding
hearts with the volunteers. Someone's got to do the real work. That's
us, and that's enough."
Still he helped her load Mikey into the car; who was as awkward as a
half-filled sack of potatoes. Mikey's limbs splayed as if trying to
find a crevice amongst an uneven bed of rocks, but he was grinning
wildly as his head dropped back onto the headrest.

The road seemed to stretch forever into a never-ending distance.
Cresting a rise, Lara felt as if they were flying past the green hills,
with the road so far beneath them and the sky above so close. Mikey
seemed to sense a difference, as his feet jerked while his fingers
stroked the seat belt.
"We're flying Mikey. Flying away from everyone." Other cars passed in a
rush of air.

We could go on, she thought. I could keep on driving and no-one would
miss either of us. She knew she could manage Mikey for a few days at
least. They passed a motel and a feeling grew in her. Like the
experience of watching Karl, but better.
She thought about him, just how he would feel sitting at home, probably
drunk, whining away to one of his loser friends. Mikey wasn't such bad
company after all.

She looked across at him. His eyes were moving so fast, they seemed to
be rolling like marbles, left, right, up and down. It was a strange
game, and she wondered what he could see and what he made of the world.
But still, he appeared happy enough.
They were passing through a village where the stone houses clustered
together like tired old men between the scrubby fields.
"Look Mikey, a horse." He grunted, his gaze still wildly
unfocused.
Was this doing any good? She thought back to Karl, and his reverse side
which she rarely saw now. They should be drinking, dancing, making
love.
"Shit, shit shit" she shouted, as she gripped the steering wheel like a
lifesaver and braked to a halt by the side of the road.

A family passed by on the same side, the parents trailing two sulky
teenagers. Pale and unhealthy, the kid's jeans hung at half-mast as
their shoes scuffed the pavement.
"Look" the boy pointed "gross?a monster."
The parents just looked back, with expressionless features fixed on
their wooden faces, making no attempt at chastisement. Lara saw them as
surreal parodies of real people, wearing wooden heads on living
breathing bodies. Strange echoes of watching "The Return of the Body
Snatchers."

She felt like Donald Sutherland confronted by the man-faced dog.
Shocked. Were these people the same as her? She also felt angry and
useless; no-one could put the words back into their mouths, or spin the
world and reverse time. There was no escaping the truth and she felt it
pouring over her like a bucket of sick.

So she made a fuss of Mikey, then ran into the corner shop for a cake
which she fed to him. She prattled on about the colour of the cars.
Mikey just grunted. The chocolate was smeared around his mouth and
dribbling down his chin. Looking over the road, Lara noticed the
grazing sheep and how the birds pecked the winter soil. Did these
people matter anyway?
Mikey moaned. A sparrow had landed on the bonnet, with bread hanging
from its beak, it watched Mickey. His hand stretched out as he lifted
his head. Just for a moment, he and the bird were eye to eye. Lara sat
silent, not saying anything or filling the unbearable space with words.
She offered no cakes, drinks, or platitudes. She just held onto the
moment, feeling it stretch out before her like a calm sea. She looked
to where Mikey lay, saw his head had dropping back and his face looking
tired with effort.
"Let's go home, Michael."

She was standing by the Japanese almond outside the hospital chapel
just staring at the fallen blossom, when she heard Paul's voice.
"You all right?"
"Yes, I'm fine thanks. I'll go in soon." He squinted against the
sunlight and she noticed he was wearing his own suit, instead of the
hospital issue gray.
"You don't have to, dead people aren't pretty you know."
"He wasn't pretty anyway, was he?" Paul smiled in reply, but it didn't
reach his eyes.
"No, he wasn't, poor bastard. Perhaps it's just as well he died, he had
a shitty life."
"I don't know."

She glanced at the tree again as she entered the chapel, thinking how
beautiful the hospital grounds really were. There were hundreds of
trees, the flower beds were always planted out and the colours were
always changing. Yet inside the wards, the residents sat on plastic
moulded chairs, and the staff put plastic flowers in vases.

Mikey lay in the case, not seeming any uglier or more beautiful than
when he was alive. She put the palm of her hand against the glass, it
just felt cool against her hot skin.

Outside, the wind had picked up, and she watched the drifts of blossoms
blow across the smooth lawns as she walked to her car. Her possessions
were piled up almost to the roof. She took a last look at Karl's house,
remembering his shocked expression when she told him she was leaving,
but she herself felt nothing but anticipation and a sense of power
within her own body she had never recognised before. Suddenly,
everything was clear and felt right, even Mikey's death.

That moment of rightful completeness stayed with her, stretching like
elastic as she passed slowly down the narrow roads. Then she thought
about the past, juggling the good times to small satisfaction. Her head
cleared. She put her foot to the floor, and just drove.