Doug Johnstone - Hit and run

He smelled burning. Maybe his brain frying in the pain. He heard voices. Talking about him, but he couldn’t make out what they were saying. He heard a click then a few moments later received an overwhelming wash of relief, a familiar dampening down, a monumental suppression of the agony, like a glacier pushing down on the land beneath it. Morphine. Sweet fucking beautiful morphine.

More voices, drifting away as he receded into the glorious relief of a dreamless sleep.

Eventually he bobbed back up. He sensed that time had passed. The pain was still there, but like an echo of before, a repressed memory.

Voices again. Two men. He recognised one of them.

He took a slow, careful breath, as if using his lungs for the first time. He opened his eyes.

Charlie and an older man at the end of his bed. He was in hospital. White doctor coats and antiseptic. Their lips were moving but the sound was out of sync, like a badly tracked movie clip. He closed his eyes, felt the intense weight of his eyelids, then opened them again.

The older man looked at him, said something to Charlie, then walked away. Charlie turned to him and smiled. It was a genuine smile, but it also hid something.

‘Hey, Bro.’

Billy tried to speak, but no sound came out. Charlie poured a cup of water and raised it to Billy’s mouth.

‘Here, small sips.’

Billy wet his lips and tongue, felt the cool liquid slip down his throat. He pushed away the cup.

‘What happened?’

‘Take it easy, all in good time. You in much pain?’

Billy felt the ghost of his earlier distress. He wasn’t in pain, but he nodded anyway.

Charlie pushed a button connected to a drip in Billy’s arm, and more morphine flooded his body, a thick, fuzzy glow of detachment.

Charlie sat on the bed, gearing himself up for something.

‘What is it?’ Billy said.

‘I won’t lie to you, Bro, it was fucking scary, but you should be OK.’

Charlie looked down for a second then back up.

‘According to the MRI scan you had a cerebral aneurysm.’

‘What?’

‘It’s basically when some of the blood vessels in your brain burst.’

‘How?’

‘Causes vary, it can be because of high blood pressure or atherosclerosis…’

‘Wait…’

‘That’s high cholesterol in the blood.’

Billy’s head pulsed away. He felt his throat constrict.

Charlie looked nervous. ‘Aneurysms can also be caused by head trauma.’

Billy stared at him for a long time. ‘The accident?’

Charlie looked around him. ‘Keep it down. Yeah, maybe the accident. Could be that some of the cerebral artery walls were weakened in the knock you got. Just waiting to blow whenever you got the blood pumping.’

He looked closely at Billy.

‘Speaking of which, do you remember where you were when you passed out?’

Billy closed his eyes. A mess of blurry visions swam in his mind. His face melting in a mirror. A line of white powder on ceramic, snorted up through a steel straw. Adele slapping herself until she was crying, her skin raw, hair tangled over her face.

‘Yeah.’

Charlie edged closer. ‘What the hell were you thinking?’

Billy shook his head.

‘Fucking the widow in a pub toilet?’

‘How…’

‘She did good, the widow. Got help straight away. Your pants were still at your ankles when the paramedics showed up. I’ve managed to keep that from Zoe. What the fuck is going on, Billy?’

Billy struggled to breathe.

‘I know about the coke. Blood tests came back. I’ve managed to keep that quiet as well. I’m pulling in shitloads of favours to cover for you, I hope you realise that. You know the coke probably set off the aneurysm, that and the sex. Holy shit.’

Billy’s lungs were full of wet concrete. Swathes of morphine still coursed through his veins, soaking into his bones, but he could already feel the smothering effects wearing off, the spectre of pain lurking in the back of his mind, ready to pounce.

‘Jeanie?’ he said.

‘What?’

‘I had Jeanie with me. In the pub. She was tied to a table.’

‘While you were in the bogs snorting and screwing? Nice.’

‘Where is she?’

Charlie shook his head and sighed. ‘I’ll find out. She’s probably still at the pub. Either that, or your friendly widow took her home. She turned down the offer to ride in the ambulance with you, by the way. Probably for the best, in the circumstances, don’t you think? What are you going to tell Zoe? She’ll be in to visit soon.’

Billy pushed the heel of a hand into his eye socket, just to feel something.

‘I don’t know.’

‘She needs looking after, you know. You’re not the only one suffering in this whole mess. She doesn’t need you cheating on her with the widow of the man…’ He trailed off. ‘This is so fucked up.’

Billy lifted a hand to the bump on his temple, and was surprised to touch bandages. Several layers of thick, rough cotton, by the feel of it, wrapped round the top half of his head. He ran a hand over his crown and down towards the back of his neck. Charlie reached out quickly and pulled his hand away.

‘Careful.’

Billy felt a shiver go through him. ‘What?’

‘You’re lucky to be alive.’

‘What happened?’

‘You had to undergo surgery, it was a life-threatening situation. I signed the release forms.’

‘What kind of surgery?’

‘The brain surgery kind.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘A cerebral aneurysm causes intracranial pressure. That’s pressure in the brain, in the cerebral arteries, in the cerebrospinal fluid. Your brain swelled up. Basically, your skull was like a pressure cooker. That pressure had to be released.’

‘How?’

‘There are different ways, but you weren’t responding. It was a last resort. They had to take drastic action.’

‘Like?’

‘That guy I was talking to before, he’s a brain surgeon. He performed an emergency decompressive craniotomy.’

‘Fucking hell, Charlie, in English.’

‘It’s a procedure where part of the skull is removed. It gives the swelling brain room to expand without getting damaged.’

Billy stared. ‘You mean I’ve got a fucking hole in my head.’

Charlie nodded.

‘Jesus Christ.’

‘It’s not as bad as it sounds. I mean, it’s far from ideal…’

‘You think?’

‘Obviously there’s a risk of infection — meningitis, brain abscess

…’

‘Whoah.’

Charlie put a hand on Billy’s leg. ‘Those are worst-case scenarios. Most likely they’ll be able to perform a cranioplasty once they’re happy that the swelling has gone down enough. They’ll put a plastic plate across the opening, it’s standard.’

‘I have a hole in my head.’

‘I know.’ Charlie tried to sound reassuring. ‘But chill your boots. The last thing you need is to get worked up about it.’

‘That’s easy for you to say.’

He felt an overwhelming nausea sweep through him, his tongue sweating, his gut roiling. Charlie spotted the look on his face, lifted a container out from beneath the bed and put it under his chin.

‘That’ll be the anaesthetic, takes a while to wear off.’

Billy felt vomit and bile thrust up his throat and out, splattering into the container, thick mucus dribbling down his chin. He retched two more times then took the glass of water from his brother and sipped, swilling then spitting.

‘Done?’ Charlie said.

Billy nodded weakly. He felt light-headed and dizzy, eased himself back into his pillows.

Charlie got up, holding the container. ‘I’ll get rid of this. You need some rest anyway. Try to get some sleep, I’ll be back in a bit.’