James Smythe - The Machine

He marches off towards the door, past the security guard – the boy turns, faces the guard, holds his arms outstretched as he walks past, all pomp that he’s seen in some television show about worse places than this – and then out of the shop. The assistant comes round to the front. He falls to his knees in the weariest, most protracted way, which says, I’ve done this too many times.

This place, he says. He doesn’t know Beth, or who she is. He’s assuming she’ll agree. She squats down and helps him with the leaflets. She scoops them up and puts them on the side.

I’ve seen him around, she says.

Yeah, he tries it every few weeks.

What’s he trying to buy?

Diazepam. He says it’s for his dad.

They don’t need a prescription for it?

Not since last year. Just ID. He tilts his head back and breathes in. Right. What can I get you?

Ibuprofen, Beth says. A few packets.

He takes the own-brand down from the shelf and lines them up. Three?

Yeah, that should do.

Anything else?

You say I can buy diazepam now?

He sighs. One pack per customer, and you have to have ID. It gets logged.

Okay, Beth says, pulling the ID card from her purse. It’s just in case.

Yeah, useful to keep them in the cupboard, he says. She isn’t sure if he’s joking or not. She waits as he runs it through, then pays for it with cash – she’s got a lot in her wallet, to pay for takeaways or whatever when she’s knee-deep in rebuilding Vic – and the assistant acts like she’s not there, suddenly. She’s not sure that she cares.

Back along the path, and she reads the instructions as she walks. Where most medicines are vague and loose, this is insistent. NO MORE THAN FOUR PER DAY. The instructions carry provisos and warnings that the makers of the product are not responsible, etc., etc. TAKE WITH WATER AND FOOD. Beth wonders how good Vic is at eating. She wonders if he’ll recognize his surroundings, and if that will have an effect. Maybe he’ll reject all this: the flat, Beth, the food and the Machine. Maybe he’ll rally against it. She stands at the top of the steps. She didn’t need the pills, not really. She looks at the door, her front door, and she puts her hands on the wall of the stairwell.

Come on, she says. The woman with all the children is looking at her from her window. Beth wonders if she saw Vic. She’s perpetually spying on everything. What would she think he was? She’d make assumptions. Have they ever even said a word to each other? Beth can’t remember. She stands and stares at the building: anything to keep her from having to go back into the flat straight away. When she’s in there she has to start, and once she’s started she can’t leave until this is done. However long it takes, marathon or sprint, she tells herself.

Come on. She walks to her front door – the curtains of the neighbour twitch back to their resting place – and she stands there, as if she’s forgotten her keys. She listens for any sound he might be making inside. There’s nothing. She puts her hands on the lock, turns the key, opens the door and goes in – just as warm as outside, even with the fans. She shuts the door. She locks it behind her. She might as well.

She sleeps the last night she’ll sleep before she starts working on him properly: the last night when the flat is quiet, when she’s not worried about the implications, or whether he’ll make noise or choke on his tongue. She’s read, on her forums, that this can be harrowing. She’s read reports from husbands, mainly, desperate to get their wives back. How demeaning this is to everybody, how degrading.

The things I’ve seen, one person wrote. I never thought I’d see them like this.

But it was worth it? another nameless forum-user asked.

Oh g yes. Absolutely. Smiley face.

Beth lies in bed and stares upwards. She can see the flaws in the ceiling, where the upstairs neighbours walk heavily. They have an achingly heavy old pram and they keep their baby in it all the time, pushing her around the flat. The creak of their wheels as they do it is maddening, but it keeps the baby quiet. She barely cries. Beth assumes it’s a she. The paint in the ceiling easily cracks, and Beth’s sure it’s got worse. She would repaint it, if it weren’t for Vic, and for the fact that she’ll soon be leaving the flat. When they’re gone she’ll sell the place. Then there’ll be no rush, and it won’t matter how long it actually takes.

She sits on the lip of the bed. It’s just past five, and it’s starting to get light outside. Beth remembers when you used to have to change the clocks, and when some mornings it would be dark. Dressing for school in the pitch black, and walking to the bus as the sky turned pink. Now it goes from blue to yellow in gradient shades. Her bedroom door is already open, so that she can hear Vic if he stirs, and to allow a breeze – the thought makes her laugh – to pass through the flat. She pulls on clothes. She stretches in the doorway. No point in dragging this out.

She makes herself a cup of coffee in the percolator, one of the stronger blends, and the noise wakes Vic’s body up. Its eyes peel apart.

We’re going to get on with this, Beth says. She doesn’t care if the body understands: people talk to pets and babies to stop themselves going mad. To reassure themselves that, in some little way or other, a level of understanding will be reached one day. Whether that’s returning a thrown ball, or a complex understanding of language. Something.

She has a terrifying thought as she pulls tracksuit bottoms from the pile to dress him in: what if she misses a step? What if there’s something intrinsic missing from the Machine? Say, language, or the ability to move. Those parts of the brain. What if she makes Vic again and he’s left without anything, trapped inside that shell. She stands and worries about it. The urge to prevaricate passes.

She pulls Vic’s hospital-issue trousers to his ankles. The smell hits her. She didn’t take him to the loo, her first rule. The one she wasn’t going to break. He’s been sitting here… The nappy he’s wearing is soiled yellow and brown, and his thighs – thick, dark hair, coiled up like springs – are slathered. She starts to cry, and she catches herself, raises her hand to her mouth. She goes to the kitchen for the wipes and the nappies, and then decides against them. It’s too big a job. Instead she stands at his head and puts both her arms under his, trying to heave him to his feet. He’s remarkably compliant today, his muscles helping her slightly on the way. He steps, it seems, or maybe just supports his weight a little, and together they stagger towards the bathroom. Beth doesn’t have the strength to help him in, so she coaxes him to sit on the edge of the bath, and then swings his legs over. From there she pushes him to kneeling. She gets a plastic bag and pulls the nappy away, and all the shit tumbles out and into the pink bathtub. She folds the nappy – the mess all over her hands, and the smell rank and stale in the small windowless room – and puts it in the bag, which then sits in the corner of the room. Beth pulls the showerhead down, covering it in the shit from her hands, and puts the taps on, and then she sprays the showerhead at the end of the bath where Vic isn’t, washing her own hands off, and the taps, and then cupping the water around the showerhead to clean it down. She imagines herself under it, trying to get herself clean.

She doesn’t know what temperature to use, so she finds a level where it’s hot but not scalding. She sprays it onto the nape of Vic’s back and his body doesn’t flinch. She doesn’t know if it even can. If there’s any sort of self-preservation instinct. She read once that we are human because we can’t drown ourselves in shallow bodies of water: because something kicks in. If our faces meet water, adrenaline courses through our bodies, making our bodies thrash out, trying to wake us up if we’re asleep or passed out. Beth pulls the showerhead around Vic’s body and sprays it once, just quickly, onto his face. There’s no movement there, and he doesn’t flinch. She brings it back to the face, and holds it there. She can’t even see him breathing through it. She imagines the water eking its way into his mouth and nose, flooding his lungs. And he wouldn’t even try to stop it.