Tony Black - Long Time Dead

I looked at my hands – pale and white, save the yellowed tips and black arcs beneath the nails. I was a wreck. I started to shake. Watched the thin sticks of bone covered in pasty white flesh twitch as if electricity was being passed through them. This was me, Gus Dury. This was what was left of me, anyway. I was down on my luck, always had been, but the way my defeat had manifested itself on my flesh was something I couldn’t take in.

‘What did you expect, fuckhead?’ I mumbled.

I was in my bad thirties; racing towards the big four-oh. The days of tanking the sauce like a nineteen-year-old were well and truly behind me. My body was waving the white flag. I’d seen the signs for a while:

The skin like a chamois.

The mustard-coloured eyes.

The undernourished frame.

The vomiting.

The last one had been a new addition. For the longest time, I’d skipped the traditional drinker’s purge. I’d managed to keep it all in. Keep the count high, and the contents on board. But somewhere along the line the rules of the game had changed. The tank still held the same amount of grog, more sometimes, but it was as though the cap leaked. Sometimes the contents made their way to the surface.

Embarrassingly, I remembered a rare guilt-ridden trip to Alcoholics Anonymous. I’d listened to a corpulent, bearded middle manager who’d clearly been to the brink and back explain how the sauce had caused his ‘interior plumbing to become exterior’. He was ruddy-cheeked as he painted this picture of the dire consequences of his drinking and how it manifested itself in him having to strap a polythene bag to his ankle to catch his own piss. A chill had passed down my spinal chord; I’d put a gun to my own head before I hit that low.

‘By fuck I would…’ I’d mouthed the words before I realised I had company.

‘Mr Dury… I’m Dr Scott.’

Couldn’t say I was glad to see him, but was delighted it wasn’t the no-nonsense west-coaster I’d legged it from at my last visit.

Said, ‘Pleased to meet you… I think .’

Frowns, over Penfold glasses.

The doc edged over to the bed, clocked the monitor. There was a brutishness about him; hands that would have looked more at home on a boilermaker. He wasn’t here to fuck around, that was a given.

He paced to the end of the bed, picked up the clipboard. He took a propelling pencil from his coat pocket, pumped it, then made some marks on the paper. His face never once changed. Held steel. He was a type I’d met before. Couldn’t say I was overly enamoured with any of his lot, though they did offer a kind of reassurance: it was an image that focused on the utilitarian, the type you want to get a job done, done well even, but not the type you want to pass the time of day with. His was a fast-vanishing breed; as a race we are becoming more vacuous and lightweight every day. Things like focus and seriousness have little or no value. These days people wanted the wrapping to be bright, look the part. They want visibility, not credibility.

Dr Scott spoke: ‘I suppose you’ll know why you’re here.’

Fuck me, was this another lecture?

Was I even biting? No way, said, ‘Well, it’s a lovely view…’

Not a flicker on him. ‘Alcoholism’s a progressive disease.’ He returned his pencil to his pocket then the clipboard to the end of the bed. ‘You’ll have been aware of that, surely.’ His look said, You’re not an idiot, why are you acting like one?

I raised myself in the bed. The act was a trial: felt my chest constrict; some burn in there made me wince. The doc watched without as much as a crease appearing on his brow. I tried to use my faltering voice once more: ‘Cut to the chase, eh…’

He stared at me for a moment, seemed to be sussing whether I was ready for the news. ‘You have extremely dilated submucosal veins in your lower oesophagus.’

I rolled eyes. ‘In English… please.’

Dr Scott took off his glasses, removed a white handkerchief from his trouser pocket and started to clean the lenses as he spoke. ‘The veins in the narrow part of the tube from the oesophagus to the stomach are damaged. That’s what’s been causing you to vomit, Mr Dury.’

‘And the blood…?’

He returned his glasses to his nose, pressed the frame, ‘All part of the progression. I don’t want to underestimate the seriousness of this situation for you.’

I gritted my teeth. I was ready for the worst, said, ‘Gimme it straight.’

‘Are you a betting man, Mr Dury?’

Wasn’t, but saw where this was going, said, ‘Time to time.’

‘Let me put it this way: your alcoholism is so advanced that you are on the final furlong.’

I felt surprisingly nonplussed, it didn’t faze me. ‘Heading for the home straight!’

The doc’s face held steady, not a move, then, ‘If you have another bleed like that it could be your last.’

‘You think?’

Now emotion, deep frowns and slit eyes as he tucked his handkerchief away and raised a finger to me. ‘I’ve seen a lot of people in your boat, son, and listen to me, if you don’t get off the bottle you’ll be lucky to see the year out… if not the month.’

The word ‘son’ stung. Always did. I knew the concern of his warning was genuine. I knew he was right; also knew soon as I got out of this place where I was headed.

‘Thank you for your… assessment, Doctor.’

The impassive look returned. It screamed, You can lead a horse to water…

He went for the door, took the handle and said, ‘You’ll need some rest. I’m putting you on lansoprazole – don’t forget to take it. I’ll write out a scrip for the pharmacy, you’ll need a few other things too… a beta blocker, propranolol, to keep your heartrate down. There’s one thing you know you can never take again, but I’m sure you’ve heard that before, so I won’t waste my breath here.’ He didn’t even look at me, not so much as a backward glance, as he opened the door and strode out.

I closed my eyes, dug my head back in the pillow.

Knew the forecast down pat. By this stage, there was no need to hear the words. But I also knew that as the warnings had got louder, my ability to hear them had diminished. Felt very little of the fear that I knew a man in my situation should be experiencing. My thoughts were elsewhere. They were where they always were – in the gutter.

I felt the most almighty pull to a whisky bottle.

I wanted to blot it all out. To block out the world. If it, or me, vanished for good… I seriously couldn’t give a fuck. If I could get Hod straightened out – off the hook with Shaky – and get Gillian some peace of mind, I’d be happy. There was nothing else to hope for on the horizon. The thought goaded me like the point of a sharp knife.

SPENT A COUPLE OF DAYS in dry dock. Only contact with the outside world was to call Hod, tell him to keep an even lower profile than I’d suggested earlier. Had a bad feeling about Shaky’s sudden interest in us; figured there was more to it but couldn’t get that side of the Rubik’s cube to match up. Brain was still firing on half power, maybe I needed more rest… Yeah, like fuck: I needed a drink.

Took myself to the shower room. The place was kitted out like a caravan park, lots of black grout in the tiles and blacker mould on the bench boards. No wonder our hospitals were in such dire nick; kip of this joint, I could be adding some superbug infection to the list of troubles I had waiting to fell me.

Turned on the taps, caught sight of myself in the mirror. There were so many creases in my forehead, I made Gordon Ramsay look like an Armani model. Christ, what had happened here? I had a bad case of redeye too. Where the whites should have been were yellowed; throw in the red and I was in the ballpark of the Stoke City away jersey. I tapped at my pale cheeks, tried to slap some colour in there – wasn’t happening. I had the pallor of a corpse. Looked like Peter Cushing in the first Star Wars movie… tried to inflate my cheeks with air to see if I could fill out the hollows but the effort only made me feel light-headed.