Iain Banks - The Bridge

'Hold this,' he tells me, and I have to put my hand to the man's neck while the doctor goes away for a while. My fellow stretcher-bearer runs off. I am left holding the faint pulse of the man on the dinner-table, his blood flowing over my hands when I relax or try to get a better purchase on the ragged patch of skin torn from his neck. I grip, I press, I do what I am told, and I look at the face of the man, pale with blood loss, unconscious but still suffering, free from whatever mask he ever chose to meet the world with, reduced to something pathetic and animal in his agony. 'OK, thanks.' The doctor comes back with a nurse; they have bandages, a drip, bottles and needles. They take over.

I walk away, through the whimpering wounded. I find myself in a passenger carriage, deserted and unlit. I feel faint and sit down for a moment, then when I get up can only stagger as far as the toilet at the end of the carriage. I sit down there, head pounding, lights in my eyes. I wash my hands while I wait for my heart to catch up with the demands my body is making on it. By the time I feel ready to stand again, the train is moving.

I go back to the dining-car as the train slows; nurses and auxiliaries from the hospital crowd in, taking the stretchers. I am told to get out of the way by three nurses and two auxiliaries clustering round a stretcher being taken towards the nearest door; an injured woman giving birth. I have to head back for the toilet.

And I sit there, thinking.

No one comes to disturb me. The whole train becomes very quiet. It shakes and jerks a couple of times, and I hear shouts outside the translucent window, but the interior is silent. I walk down to the dining-car; it is a different one, fresh and clean and smelling of polish. The lights go out. The white tables look ghostly in the light shed by the bridge outside, still wrapped in fog.

Should I get off now? The good doctor would want me to, Brooke would; so - I hope - would Abberlaine Arrol.

But for what? All I do is play games; games with the doctor, with Brooke, with the bridge, with Abberlaine. All very well, and with her quite sublime, save for that echoing horror ...

Do I go then? I could. Why not?

Here I am in a thing become place, the link become location, the means become end and route become destination ... and in this long, articulated symbol, phallic and poised between the limbs of our great iron icon. How tempting just to stay and so to go, to voyage out bravely leaving the woman at home. Place and thing and thing and place. Is it really so simple? Is a woman a place and a man just a thing?

Good heavens young-fellow-me-lad, of course not! Ho ho ho what a preposterous idea! It's all much more civilised than that ... Still, just because it seems so offensive to my taste, I suspect there might be something in it. So what do I represent then, sitting here, inside the train, within the symbol? Good question, I tell myself. Good question. Then the train moves again.

I sit at a table, watching the stream of carriages alongside; slowly we gain speed, leave the other train behind in its siding. We slow again, and I watch as we pass the place where the wreck took place. Jumbled freight cars litter the side of the track, twisted rails rear from the scored deck like so much bent wire, and smoking debris gutters in the drifting fog under bright arc lights. The emergency train lies a little way up the track, lights bright. The carriage shakes gently around me as the train gathers speed.

Lights flare through the fog; we flash through the main station of the section, past other trains, past local trams, through the lights of the streets and thoroughfares and their surrounding buildings. We are still gathering speed. Quickly the lights start to thin as we approach the section's far end. I watch the lights for a moment longer, then go to the end of the carriage, where the door is. I open the window and look out into the fog, tearing past the window with a roar itself patterned by the unseen structure of the bridge, echoing the train's headlong progress according to the density of girder work and added-on buildings around the track. The last few building lights fall astern; I work my hospital identity tag loose, pulling it slowly and painfully from my wrist, licking it when it sticks, finally hauling it off regardless, cutting myself.

Across the linking span. Still well within the range my identity bracelet allows me, of course. A little circlet of plastic with my name on it. My wrist feels odd without it, after all this time. Naked.

I throw it out of the window, into the fog; it is lost the instant it leaves my hand.

I close the window and go back to the carriage to rest, and see how far I'll get.

... is the microphone on?

Ah! There you are! Yes, well then... nothing to worry about, not really confused here at all, no way, honestly. Everything totally fine and wonderful, completely under control. Absolutely wunnerful, total command; all aspects. Knew the thing was on all the time. Just quoting the immortal - what's that? OK, OK - sorry, the mortal Jimi Hendrix there, honest. Now then, where was I? Oh yes.

Well, the patient's condition is stable; he's dead. Can't get much more fucking stable than that, can you? Yeah, all right, decomposition and so on; I was only kidding anyway; just my little joke. Christ some people have no sense of humour; calm down at the back there.

Mobile again, chaps. From where to where? Damn good question.

Glad you asked me that. Anybody know the answer? No?

Shhhit. Oh well.

Where are they taking me? What did I do to deserve all this? Who asked me , you bastards? Anybody ask me? Eh? Anybody think to say 'Mind if we move you, what's-your-name?' Hmm ? No. Maybe I was happy where I was, ever think of that?

Well you can move my bowels and turn me over like an omelette and reach inside me and muck about and repair bits and pump God knows what into me and press bits and tweak bits and all the rest of it, but you can't catch me, you can't find me, you can't get through to me. I'm up here; in charge, in command, invulnerable.

And what a filthy trick, what a typically dirty piece of underhand undercover underclothed misunderstanding by the evil queen herself. How could she stoop so low? (Well, yer just bends over like this -) Rousing the goddamn barbarians against me; ha! Was that the best she could think of?

Probably. Never did have much imagination. Well, except in bed (or wherever) I guess. No, that's not true. I am being petulant; fair's fair (often with a slight, just a tinge, just a wee hint of red, usually, I've found ... but never mind that).

What a caddess, though, raising a rebellion like that. No chance, of course but there

you go. Now what? Good grief can't a fellow have a little talk with himself without

being - again !

What the fucking hell's going on here? What do you think I am you clumsy bastards? This part of the

- will you stop that! No more bumping! It hurts! This part of the treatment, is it? If I really wanted to I'd get up and give you cads a jolly good biffing, let me tell you! Butt ! Get that stitched, Jimmy.

Thank God, stopped at last, just a little lateral motion here, nothing to worry about; could be in a boat or something maybe. Hard to tell.

No, not a boat, the rocking's damped; something with suspension, shock-absorbers. Squeaking? Do I hear voices? (All the time, doc. They told me to do it. Not my fault. Perfect alibi, impregnable defence.)

Raped! What a bloody nerve! I'll sue (so, get that stitched Jemima; sue? I'll stitch her up. No, sorry, that's not funny, but I mean! What a dia-fucking-bollockal liberty, eh?)

Never meant a thing to me. Or her, probably. She was a woman of letters, you know. Oh yes. I told her once and she laughed and we worked it all out. Not just letters either; signs, I'll show you.