War Stories

I was covered in blood, surrounded by sick and dying people. It
looked like the aftermath of a major disaster, but this was just
Paddington Hospital on a Saturday night.
Earlier I'd made a mistake - been in the wrong pub at the wrong time. I
didn't remember much about what happened, just going down under a pile
of fists and feet. I tried to curl up on the floor - someone kicked me
in the back and I unfolded again like some weird flower.
The D.J switched on a strobe light and turned the next few seconds into
black and white snap-shots of frenzied faces, loud shirts and most of
all, feet.
I watched a shoe grow huge as it as it crashed into my face, then
somebody jumped on my head and I blacked out. I came 'round while one
of the barmen was dragging me through the hatch into the back room. I
lay on the floor while he dialled 999.
Another guy came in. "Christ! What a bunch of animals," he said, giving
me a bar towel to soak up the blood. "Take it easy, the ambulance'll be
here soon."
The cops showed up not long after, but not the ambulance. They hung
around for a while then put me in a squad car.
Mark, the guy who gave me the beer towel, rode with me to the hospital
and said he'd stick around for a while.
He took me into A&;E with a PC, who told me he'd be back next day to
take a statement. As the cop walked away I remember Mark staring at him
with a strange look on his face. I didn't think much of it at the time;
I had other things on my mind.
I'd reached that stage where adrenaline wears off and pain kicks in. My
head was starting to ache and I had a bad dose of the shakes.
I was feeling sorry for myself, and angry. I thought about the men who
worked me over. There'd been at least six of them, but that probably
worked in my favour since they kept getting in each other's way.
Despite that one of the fuckers still managed to dig several holes in
my head with a broken bottle. Sitting there in casualty I had to keep
wiping blood out of my eyes with a wad of gauze as it dripped from the
cuts in my scalp.
I looked a mess, but I'd gotten off pretty lightly. And I owed that to
Mark. The barman said he'd pulled the blokes off and took a few punches
himself.
Mark got me a cup of coffee, which I tried to aim at my mouth. I
watched a constant stream of people being wheeled or stretchered in and
realised I was going to be stuck there for hours.
"You don't have to hang around," I said, "I'll be all right."
"That's okay, I don't mind."
He got his cigarettes out, and since this was 1982 we were able to
smoke them there in the department. He told me, "I jumped in 'cause I
knew you didn't deserve it - you couldn't have, there were just too
many of them. They probably picked you out earlier and looked for any
reason to start."
We chatted about this and that, and Mark mentioned he used to be a
policeman. I thought, "Oh-oh," but I found myself liking him anyway. I
mean, what the fuck, he'd saved my life hadn't he?
Just to pass the time, I suppose, he told me a few stories about life
on the beat. A lot of it was hilarious, and it stopped me thinking
about what'd happened. Maybe he felt sorry for me, after all I was only
a kid and I must've looked pretty pathetic sitting there, shaking like
an alky. Gradually I relaxed, his voice becoming background noise while
I looked at what was going on around me.
You ever been in an A&;E department in the early hours? If there's a
hell it's got to be pretty similar. A slice of late twentieth century
life - pretty au pairs who scalded themselves making supper, elderly
women that fell over in their rooms and lay on the floor for days
because nobody cared. And then there's the drunks, drug addicts and
people in mental agony looking for an answer, any answer.
Sometime or other while I wasn't paying attention, Mark stopped being
hilarious. I heard him say something about a car crash and tuned back
in.
"When we got there the first thing I saw was this guy staggering
towards us. The other car blew up before we reached him. There was a
woman trapped inside, I could see her banging on the windows but she
couldn't get out."
"What did you do?"
"Nothing. If I'd opened the door the fire would've blasted right out
and killed me as well. She kept banging on the glass while she
melted."
A tiny old lady walked painfully up to us. She was wearing an off-white
mac and a shapeless felt hat.
"Excuse me young man," she said to Mark, "could you find the doctor
for me? I've been sitting here all day, it's disgraceful. I had an
operation on my cataracts six weeks ago and I still can't see anything.
Can you take me to my seat now?"
As Mark walked back with the old lady I heard her say, "Did you see
where I put my bag? Oh I don't know where it is now. Did you see where
I put it?"
She was starting to get on my nerves but I guess Mark had more
compassion than me. He found her bag underneath her chair. He sat
beside me again and we watched her stand up and do the same routine
with a young black guy and his mates.
A little to their left a man started shouting for a doctor, everyone
seemed to, sooner or later. He was a homeless guy with a nosebleed. His
blood was dripping on the floor and people were smearing it across the
tiles as they walked past.
Mark leaned back on his chair and lit another cigarette. "I think the
worst thing I ever saw . . . this guy went off his rocker right, killed
his parents with a shotgun. He took dad out in the kitchen, blew him
right up the wall."
Mark looked like he was in awe. He laughed abruptly. "That was the
strangest thing. Blood splattered all the way to the ceiling. Then he
went upstairs and killed his mum. We found her lying in bed with the
covers pulled over her, must've been trying to protect herself with
them or something. Didn't work. Blast took her head clean off. Yeah,
that stayed with me for a while all right, 'cause guess who had to
clean it up? Yeah. I collected up all the little bits of their heads.
Dug their brains right out of the fucking walls."
We were silent for a while. I watched a really fat woman playing with a
yo-yo. Her little boy sat beside her looking bored, his arm in a
sling.
A man with a small cut on his arm was getting a hard time off a nurse:
"It costs four hundred pounds to call an ambulance! Why didn't you get
a cab? It's a waste of time and money! And someone who really needs
it's waiting God knows how long for the next one!"
"I don't need this!" he shouted and stormed off to sit at the opposite
end of the room.
A good-looking woman with bleached hair and olive skin sat in a
wheelchair, slowly wheeling herself 'round in circles, calling for a
doctor and laughing to herself. After a while she steered through a set
of double doors and I didn't see her again.
Mark rubbed his hand across his eyes. "There was this time I got called
out. Some old guy, a piss-head had been riding his bicycle back from
the pub, got hit by a car and had his leg ripped off. I figured I
should go find it, 'cause maybe they could sew it back on. So I walked
up the road and there it was, still in the trouser with his sock and
shoe on the foot!" Mark shook his head, "Anyway, I picks it up and
walks back to the ambulance. Ambulance man takes it off me and there's
him and his mate pissing themselves laughing. 'Oh, cheers mate,' he
says and sticks it in the back.
"Did they sew it back on?"
"No, he died in the ambulance."
I don't think Mark realised he was starting to really fuck me up. I
mean, he started out telling me these nice safe stories about inept
shoplifters and amusing drunks, and now he's filling my head with
horror. I felt like saying, "Shut up for God's sake! I'm sitting in
this freak show waiting for someone to sew my scalp back on!" After
that I tried to tune him out as best I could.
Suddenly this huge man ran in shouting: "WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU FUCKING
PEOPLE? WHY WON'T YOU LEAVE ME ALONE?" He was wearing a dirty green
sweatshirt and blue track bottoms. We all tried to ignore him while he
barged into things, and walked in circles 'round the department. He
kept shouting, "I'M ALL RIGHT, I'M ALL RIGHT!" while dragging his
fingers through his long, greasy hair. One of the nurses looked at him
nervously and made a phone call, then he abruptly tore back out the way
he came. For ages we heard him raving outside the hospital, begging us
to leave him alone.
A fat little man in a shabby polo neck was going through the
wastebaskets, cramming his face with scraps of food. A nurse was trying
to find him a bed for the night.
The racket outside got louder and louder, then the huge man was dragged
back through the doors between four big hospital porters. They had his
arms pinned behind his back while he shouted, "I KNOW YOU! I KNOW
YOU!"
The porters cleared several people out of a cubicle so they could keep
him there till a psychiatrist showed up. They seemed to think it was
real funny. Occasionally I could hear the guy shouting, "S.A.S!" or
"BLOWJOB!" through the curtain.
None of us made any comment about it. Mark was staring into space,
lost to the world.
The little boy with the sling on his arm put a MacDonald's coke on the
floor and the fat little man picked it up and started drinking it. The
boy's mum saw what he was doing and went into one: "Is that your coke?
Did you hear me? I said, is that your coke?"
"No," he mumbled.
She snatched it off him.
A wasted-looking woman in her late thirties walked in with a lank,
flabby man I reckoned was her boyfriend. She stood at the desk telling
the receptionist that she'd lost her medication. The receptionist asked
her what she was on and the woman said, "Librium, largactil, temazipam,
diazepam, lorazipam, hemenevrin . . . " the list went on and on. She
said if she didn't get them soon she'd have a fit. I imagined her
taking it all and melting into a puddle on the floor.
Finally my name was called and a nurse came for me. I stood up and Mark
helped the nurse get me to a cubicle. She said she'd be back soon with
a doctor. After a while Mark said, "Take care of yourself," and left.
To be honest, I was relieved.
As I settled onto the bed I wondered why he'd told me all that stuff. I
don't think he meant it to, it was like he couldn't help himself.
I stared out of the cubicle at the others and thought about countless
people all over the world getting run over, shot, stabbed or having
heart attacks - casualties in an unnamed war which everybody loses,
eventually. Sooner or later, everyone finds themselves in a place like
this, at the mercy of tired-looking nurses, and doctors as elusive as
Big Foot. I thought about how we all kid ourselves that we're going to
live forever. "Sitting in places like this, trying to cheat death." I
thought. "What a waste of time."
They kept me in overnight and let me go the next morning. I meant to
find out where Mark lived so I could buy him a drink, but in the weeks
that followed I didn't get around to it, and then I let it slide. You
know how it is.
That night still haunts me, though worse things have happened since. I
think it's down to something Mark said while we were in that horrible
place. I couldn't get it out of my head while I was lying there on my
own, waiting for the doctor to come and sew my head back
together:
"I remember all those faces. Dead, empty faces. When I fall asleep at
night I dream about them. Masks of death. Most of them look sort of
peaceful, like they've drifted off to sleep. Even if you die violently
the pain doesn't last long, and then it's over. All over. No more
struggling. Just imagine . . . all that crap you put up with every day
is finally over. In a way, I'm kind of looking forward to it."