Donal Ryan - The Thing About December

JOHNSEY AND MUMBLY DAVE got their eyes back on the same day. Mumbly Dave woke up that morning and said Bejaysus you’re uglier than I thought you’d be, hey I said you’re even uglier than I thought you’d be, hey, hey, youssir, you’re a sight for sore eyes, ha ha ha ha ha, and Johnsey could only lie there and look blindly in the direction of the guffawing donkey and think this is the end of it now, he’ll take one look at her and fall in love with her and he’ll carry her off like Richard Gere in that film where he’s in the navy or something and he has a big fight with a black lad and takes off on a motorbike and into the factory where the good-looking wan is working and he’ll pick her up like that in his arms and carry her off and all the other nurses and doctors and the few patients around the corridor will stop what they’re doing and laugh and clap and cheer and Johnsey will be left here alone with the cranky old ward sister and his langer stuck to the side of his leg and his big baby tears queuing up behind his bandages.

Your swelling is gone right down, that’s the anti-inflammatory, it takes the swelling right down, isn’t it lucky you’re on my ward; I give out all the best drugs, ha ha ha. Then Mumbly Dave, her new pet. Ha ha ha you’re a gas ticket, bejaysus, I’ll tell you one thing, though, the swelling is gone from my face but tis starting somewhere else ever since you walked in, ha ha ha. Then the Lovely Voice: You dirty fecker, ha ha ha, and she mar dhea giving out to him. He had some neck, that Mumbly Dave, he had some front, that fella, with that dirty talk out of him, and she laughing back at him, and wouldn’t you think she’d tell him call a halt to the smut now, but thick ignorant fuckers always get ahead in life, Daddy always said that, and he was right. Then she was saying As for you , your bandages will come off today for good according to your chart, unless Doctor Frostyballs changes his mind, and he realized she was talking to him and he said Oh, oh, right, cripes that’s great, and she was gone in a sweet breeze and there was no big laugh and joke for him the way there had been for Mumbly Dave.

I’ll tell you one thing, youssir, she lives up to her voice, she’s a fine thing, a bit over-endowed in the arse area but sure that’s part of being Irish, ha ha ha! You’ll see for yourself later on, anyway. Isn’t that gas we’re both finished with blindness on the same day? We were brothers in blindness there for a good while. It’s grand, though, having a comrade like yourself. Whisht, here she’s back, here she is, hello my flower, what have you for us? When are you taking off Johnsey-Come-Lately’s bandages? It’s lousy me being the only one having to put up with looking at a horrible mug all day, lucky you’re in and out to relieve the horror for me, ha ha, wait till he has a look at me he’ll want them bandages put back on quick smart, ha ha ha, make sure you’re here when Doctor Frostyballs does the big reveal or he’ll fall away in a faint, ha ha ha, like a baby chick thinks the first thing it sees is his mother, he’ll be going for a suck off Doctor Frostyball’s boob, ha ha ha, hey, youssir, did you hear that, I said …

BEING BLIND wasn’t so bad. When you knew it wasn’t forever, especially. If it was for good, and you weren’t bedbound, it would for sure be a bit awkward. But there was comfort in that darkness; you could let things carry on around you and there was no need to be thinking should I do this or go there or say that. All that business with the land now being part of a very valuable land bank , as the Unthanks said Martin Doherty the auctioneer called it the other day in the bakery, could be safely ignored while a man was blind and bedbound. The only anchor to this comfort he would have left once he had the full use of his eyes back would be the tube up his mickey, which would be surely yanked out once he was capable of jumping out of bed and making a piss by himself. Imagine your life being that much of a ball of shite that getting kicked to bits and going blind was the best thing that had ever happened you.

A different lady took away the cat eater. She called it a cat ate her . Maybe it had a different name because it was finished its job now. They had quare names for lots of yokes in hospitals, anyway. It didn’t hurt coming out but it was sure as hell hurting now. It was after leaving an awful burning behind. She had tut-tutted a few times and held his mickey in her hand for a while longer than seemed strictly necessary. Then she tut-tutted again and asked him had he any pain and he said No, because it wasn’t paining him too bad at that stage and he didn’t want to be giving out about nothing. Then Doctor Frostyballs came in and took away his eye bandages. His head felt wrong without them. The world looked wrong. He had imagined the room as a mini version of the ward they put Daddy in the night of the madman, but it was way newer-looking than that; if you took away the bits of machines beside the beds it could be a hotel room like the one he and Mother and Daddy had stayed in one time they had stayed above in Dublin after the All-Ireland and Daddy had got a bit merry and Mother had gave out but laughed at him too and a rake of people were in the bar of the hotel and they all sang ‘Sliabh na mBan’ and Mother had sat him up on her lap and she sang too and he had tried to sing it but he only knew the one or two lines and she had her arms tight around him and was rocking side to side with the rest and it was the best feeling he ever had before or since.

DOCTOR FROSTYBALLS had brought a girl with him and she stood there smiling and took the bandages in a silver bowl and handed him a small bottle and he dripped a few drops into Johnsey’s eyes and said Yes, it’s good, things will be blurry for a while more, your pupils will be di-lay-ted for one hour then no more problem, you will see things floating in front of your eye, that will be forever, you will get used to them, if you see flashes you come right back to me. Then Doctor Frostyballs and the smiling girl went off about their business and all that was left was a load of blurred shapes and he lay back and tried to sleep and enjoy his last few unseeing moments before the world was back around him, clear as day and waiting for him to do something or say something for himself.

But the throbbing in his mickey kept him awake. He opened his eyes and sat up and made a tent out of the blankets that were over that area so nothing would touch off it. Something wasn’t right with it. He could see grand again now. He chanced a look over at the quare fella and there he was, grinning back to his two ears, nothing like he had imagined: a small, baldy lad with eyes that looked like they had twinkly stars in them and big fat lips and the lips looked like they were bursted in the middle and his whole face was black and blue and yellow like a bad spud you’d dig up and throw away and his arm was in a sling and his leg was up in a bigger sling that hung from what looked like a miniature crane and he nearly said Where’s Dave until the little baldy lad started talking and he knew for sure.

Well hello there, youssir, did you decide to have a look at me at last, aren’t we a fine pair of crocks, well at least we can have a gander around for ourselves now, and a read of the paper and a look at the telly and a few of them nurses would cheer you right up, but a few more would frighten the life out of you, one of them has a tacher , and I’ll tell you one thing …

Then he was asking Johnsey was he all right and the room started to spin around and he got a feeling like the time he snuck two pint bottles of stout and a rusty old opener that no one would miss down to the willow tree one Christmas and drank the two of them off the head by himself and just before the stout and his dinner leapt back up from his stomach in an orange stream, the whole world had started to fly around in circles and all he could do was try to hang on and all he could do before the darkness came back was tell Mumbly Dave who wasn’t a fine cut of a fella at all that his mickey was in an awful way and should he tell someone?