John Harvey - Cutting Edge

A doctor, stethoscope around his neck, came into the corridor and walked towards them. He had a squash ball in his hand and he was squeezing it rhythmically, pressing it hard into his palm.

“Well, there was something,” Carew said. “They seemed to think I’d murdered someone. A woman.”

Scarcely missing a beat, the doctor turned through one of the doors and disappeared from sight.

Sarah Leonard was staring at him, unable to work him out. “And now they’ve changed their mind,” she said.

Carew smiled. “The wrong Ian. You see, they found her diary, the woman’s, and there was a name there, Ian. They thought it was me.”

“Why would they do that?”

“I don’t know. But it was a mistake. The real Ian turned up, the one from the diary and, well, here I am.”

“What for?”

“Um?”

“What for? Why are you here? I don’t understand.”

The smile shifted from the mouth to the eyes. “I thought, you know, we had some unfinished business.”

Sarah waited.

“When we were talking, before, if I remember rightly, we’d just got to the point.”

“Of what?”

“Finalizing the arrangements. Where we were going to go, where we were going to meet. Italian or Chinese. You know the kind of thing.”

“I may do. But what makes you think I’d ever agree to going out with you? Especially now.”

“Exactly my point.”

“What?”

“Especially now. It’s not every day the police decide you didn’t murder somebody after all. We have to go and celebrate.”

Sarah shook her head. An elderly woman was maneuvering the length of the corridor on a Zimmer frame, pausing every fifteen feet or so to draw breath.

“We’ve got to,” Carew said.

“You’re the one. It’s nothing to do with me. You celebrate.” She began to walk towards him, veering left to go past. As she drew level he caught hold of her hand.

“It’s no fun on your own.”

“Tough!”

“I mean it.”

“So do I.”

One of the side doors opened and she pulled herself clear. A porter backed out a trolley bearing a sheet and blankets, nothing else. He was chewing gum and whistling “When You’re Smiling”; recognizing Sarah, he winked and grinned and switched the gum from one side of his mouth to the other, all without quite losing the tune.

“Just one drink,” Carew pleaded. “Half an hour. On your way home.”

“No.”

“But …”

“No. How’s it spelt?”

Carew hung his lower lip, made a good pass at crossing his legs standing up, and stared at her as if she’d asked him to explain the theory of relativity. “Er,” he stuttered. “Um … er, um … the first letter, miss, it’s not an M?”

“No.” Willing herself not to find his little-boy act funny, just absurd. Pathetic.

“N? It’s an N, isn’t it? N for no.”

Unable to stop herself smiling, Sarah nodded. “Yes.”

“Yes?” Carew was suddenly no longer the timid boy, moving confidently towards her. “You did say yes.” He’d been saving his best smile for last, the one that never let him down. “Half an hour,” he said. “An hour at most.”

“I was lying there,” Ridgemount said, “I was lying there with my eyes taped over shut and I couldn’t move. They had this tube, see, this tube clamped over my mouth. Taking the air down to my lungs. And they’ve been saying, before, you know, they give me this shot, put me under, she was saying, this girl, not much more than a girl, just a few seconds and you won’t feel a thing. Not till you’re back in recovery and it’s all over.

“Well, I went spark out all right. Next thing I know, I seem to come to and there I am thinking it’s just like sleeping, nights you go to bed and you’re so tired you can’t as much as remember your head hitting the pillow but the next second you’re waking up and it’s eight hours or more later. So I’m there thinking, okay what did she say this place was, recovery? All right, I’m in recovery, except my mouth is still covered and my eyes are still taped over and I reason I’m still in the operating room, must be going to wheel me out any minute.

“They don’t wheel me out. Nobody’s about to wheel me out.”

“Even though I’ve got this tape across my eyes, somehow I can see these bright lights right there above me and it’s like, you know when you’ve been looking up at the sun and you close your eyes and for a while you can see this hot blur, like it’s printed on the inside of your eye, that’s what it’s like. Not only that, I can hear voices. Not too clear what they’re saying, not clear at all, so I try and say something, speak to them, what’s going on? Only there’s no way I can say anything, not a word. I try to move, can’t move a muscle. Just stretched out there and I realize, shit, they haven’t done this operation, taken out this damn gallbladder, haven’t even started yet. My head’s panicking and my body can’t move and I can’t shout or scream and all I can see is the blur of those lights and I’m thinking, no, it can’t be going to happen, no, it can’t be going to happen, no, it can’t and then it does.

“It’s like wire being pulled clear through me. Thin wire. Only it’s hot. It’s a piece of red-hot wire and I swear I can hear the flesh tear when he pulls it through. And all I can do is pray for it to stop. Pray to die. ’Cause I know it won’t stop ever. Won’t stop till it’s done.”

Carew was drinking his second single malt, savoring it, the look he gave the stupid little cow behind the bar when she asked him if he wanted ice in it should have made her pee her pants. Where was the point in drinking the good stuff like this, only to water it down with frozen algae out of the Severn-Trent?

“D’you ever come in here?” He looked round at the wide room, stuffed red chairs and shiny black-top tables, like something off a P amp; O cruise ship.

Sarah Leonard shook her head. It was only after he made a fuss about ordering bitter lemon-what kind of a celebratory drink was that? — that she’d relented and had a dry white wine and now she was regretting it.

“We should have gone somewhere a bit livelier. More style.” He leaned forward across the table exactly as she knew he would. “We still could.”

“Oh, no.”

“Come on. Let’s go dancing, for heaven’s sake. When was the last time you went dancing? Venus. New York, New York. God, we could even go to the Irish.” He reached for her hand and she pulled it away. “How about it?”

The wine tasted sour and old, as if the box it had been squeezed out of had been moldering in a cellar somewhere for years.

“Why don’t you ever give up?”

“It’s not in my nature,” Carew smiled, “to accept defeat.” Sarah put down her glass and stood up.

“Where are you going?”

She pointed towards the door alongside the bar. “Ladies.” Carew nodded.

“Sarah,” he called when she was halfway across the room. Swiveling her body, she stopped to look back at him. “Don’t go slipping out the back way now, will you?” And he laughed.

“You could tell from their faces, the way they were all over me, fussing with this, fussing with that, you could tell they knew something had gone wrong. But they never said, never said a thing to me and I couldn’t … at first, when they pulled the tube away from my mouth, all the time I’d been wanting to shout out and scream and cry and when I could do it I couldn’t get a sound to come out.

“Later, yes. Then I would scream and call them barbarians and butchers and they would come running and slide this needle into my arm. Keep me quiet. Take away the pain. That’s what they say, make you feel comfortable, take away the pain. It’s too late, I say, it’s too late for that. And they slide the needle home.”