Douglas Kennedy - A Special Relationship

'You mean, like a gallstone?'

That night, Jack managed to cease his tragic aria just around the time that Tony walked in - smelling of six gin-and-tonics too many, and suddenly interested in having sex with me for the first time in...

Well, it had been so long since we'd had sex that I had actually forgotten just how badly Tony performed when drunk.

By which I mean, foreplay involved slobbering on my neck, popping the buttons on my jeans, shoving his hand into my pants, and fingering me as if he was stubbing out a cigarette in an ashtray (which, as it turned out, just happened to contain my clitoris). Then, after this impressive display of anti-erotic crotch grab, he pulled down his suit pants and briefs, and shoved himself into me, coming in less than a minute... after which he rolled off me and mumbled some vaguely incoherent apology about having a 'hair trigger' when drunk (so that's what they call it). Then he disappeared into the bathroom... at which point the thought struck me: this was not the romantic sexual reunion I had been hoping for.

I was well out of the bedroom by the time Tony emerged from the toilet, phoning up our local home delivery pizza joint, as our cupboards were particularly bare right now. When he staggered downstairs, he uncorked a bottle of red wine, poured out two glasses and downed his in two long draughts. Then he burped and said, 'So how was your day?'

'Wonderful', I said. 'I've ordered you a pepperoni with extra cheese. Does that work?'

'What more could a man ask for?'

'Any reason why you're so drunk?'

'Sometimes you just have to...'

'Get drunk?'

'You read my mind'.

'That's because I know you so well, dear'.

'Oh, do you now?' he said, suddenly a little too loud.

'I was being ironic'.

'No, you weren't. You were being critical'.

'Let's stop this right now'.

'But it's fun. And long overdue'.

'You mean, like the shitty sex we've - sorry, you've - just had?'

And I left the room.

No, I didn't throw myself on the bed, crying irrationally. Nor did I lock myself in the loo. Nor did I pick up the phone and moan down the line to Sandy. Instead, I retreated to the nursery and positioned myself in the wicker chair, and stared ahead, and found myself very quickly returning to the despondency zone I had entered two nights earlier. Only this time my brain wasn't flooded with forlorn thoughts about the hopelessness of everything. This time, there was simply a large silent void - a sense of free-floating vacuity, in which nothing mattered, nothing counted. The world had been rendered flat. I was about to totter off the edge. And I didn't give a fuck.

Nor did I move when I heard the front doorbell ring. Nor did I respond when, around five minutes later, I heard a knock on the door, followed by Tony's slurred voice, informing me that my pizza was downstairs.

Time suddenly had no meaning for me. I was simply cognizant of sitting in a chair, staring ahead. Yes, I knew that there was a child asleep on the other side of the room.Yes, I knew that said child happened to be my son. But beyond that...

Nothing.

Some time later, I stood up and walked into the bathroom. After peeing, I went downstairs. I sat on the sofa. I turned on the television. The screen flickered into life. I stared at it, noting that it was BBC News 24.1 also noted that the time was 0108 and that there was a pizza box on the coffee table by the sofa. But beyond that...

I curled up on the sofa. I looked ahead. I was aware of the moving images. I could also smell the pizza. I needed to eat. Because I hadn't eaten anything since...

Yesterday? The day before?

Didn't matter.

Then Jack started crying. Suddenly I was all action. Manic action. Cursing myself for my listlessness, my little catatonic escapade. Go, go, go - I told myself. Get on with it. You now know the drill by heart:

Into the nursery. Remove his dirty diaper. Clean his dirty bottom. Dress him in a clean diaper. Pick him up. Sit down in the wicker chair. Lift up teeshirt. Offer nipple. And then...

After the feed, he passed right out. I staggered to my bedroom and found the bed empty (Tony - surprise, surprise - having taken his pizza and his impending hangover up to his office). I curled up on top of the duvet, and...

Nothing.

An hour, two hours, three...

My bladder called again - the one thing that would get me out of the near-foetal position into which I had entwined myself. In the bathroom, as I sat on the toilet, I saw the bottle of sleeping pills on the shelf above the sink. The key to the real emptiness I craved.

When I reached the sink, I resisted the temptation to start ingesting the bottle, five pills at a time, ten big gulps, ensuring permanent oblivion. It's not that the idea of everlasting sleep didn't appeal to me - it's just that I was too damn tired to do anything about it. So I popped three pills (one above the recommended dose... but I wanted the extra knock-out assistance), and got back into bed, and...

The baby alarm went off. This time, however, I didn't rise-and-shine. No, this time my head felt as if it had been filled with a sticky, glutinous substance which made all my actions seem molasses-slow and fuzzy. But, yet again, I followed the drill:

Into the nursery. Remove his dirty diaper. Clean his dirty bottom. Dress him in a clean diaper. Pick him up. Sit down in the wicker chair. Lift up teeshirt. Offer nipple. And then...

Back to bed. Back to sleep. Instantaneous sleep. Which seemed to stretch on indefinitely. Until...

Tony was shaking me with considerable, anxious force, telling me to get up.

But I didn't want to get up. Because getting up would mean facing into the day/night/whatever it was. Getting up would mean regarding the disaster that was my life. Getting up would...

'It's Jack', Tony said, sounding scared. 'He seems to be unconscious'.

'What?'

'He won't wake up. And his eyes' -

I was on my feet, even though everything was still a chemically induced blur. Though I must have made the journey from my bedroom to the nursery twenty times a day, now it suddenly seemed like a labyrinth, strewn with heavy objects that I kept bumping into. When I reached Jack's crib, it took several moments for my eyes to snap into focus. But when they did, I felt as if someone had just kicked me in the stomach. Because Jack appeared to be catatonic.

As I picked him up, he went all floppy - his limbs splaying like a rag doll, his head lolling, his eyes unfocused, blank. I pulled him towards me and shouted his name. No response. I fought off the urge to shake him. I brought my face to his and could feel his faint breath, which was a relief. Then I turned to Tony and told him to call an ambulance.

They arrived within five minutes. The paramedics took over. We rode in the back of the ambulance with Jack. We roared through the streets, heading further south. Jack had been attached to a heart monitor, and my eyes roamed between his tiny body (strapped down to a gurney) and the steady beat being registered on the monitor. The paramedic in charge kept throwing questions at us: any convulsions or seizures or episodes of breathlessness or previous catatonic incidents?

Nothing, nothing, nothing.

And then we were at a hospital called St Martin's. There were two doctors waiting for us in the ambulance bay. The paramedic spoke with them. Jack was wheeled directly into a consulting room, filled with medical hardware. A woman doctor in her mid-twenties was in charge. Calm, efficient, immediately registering our fear. As she checked all vital signs, she too ran through the same checklist that the previous paramedic had used, and then asked if he was on any specific medication.

At which point, I felt something close to horror. Because I knew what the next question would be.