John McGahern - The Barracks

This nurse at her bedside felt no disgust or shame, she tried to tell herself; she had long become practised and indifferent, it was just another job in her day she could do well, as it had been the same once for Elizabeth in her days on the wards in London.

So why should she be shamed because it was her own body this time — was she shamed when this same body was excreted by her mother or when it had strutted in the rouge of its youth? No, if she wasn’t shamed then, neither could she be now, she had to accept all or nothing, she couldn’t go away with the pretty bits and turn up her nose at the rest, and why should any one be shamed by anything if they weren’t shamed by everything! They helped her into an open-back gown. She put on white theatre socks and cap and was covered with a theatre pack, dressed as if for some old rite, horribly unreal, and then she was given atropine. The drug went quickly to her head: she began to laugh and talk; everything was bathed in a light of loveliness and wonder as the porter, with the nurse at her side, wheeled her out of the ward and down the corridors towards the theatre.

Hours later a nurse was urging her back to consciousness.

“Wake up! You must wake up. It’s time you were awake! Wake up, Mrs Reegan! Wake up!”

She moaned, some unconscious protest stuttered on her lips, she tried to sink back.

The nurse increased her exertions, “Wake up! You must wake up out of that, Mrs Reegan! Wake up out of that,” and slapping at her face.

She had to wake. Pain tore away the drugs and sleep. She moaned and cried as it engulfed her whole consciousness.

They had laid her on her side, her arm was in a sling and rested on a pillow, the bandages about her were saturated with blood.

“I can’t stand it. Something … Give me something,” she tried to moan.

The nurses left to bring back the ward sister. Together they examined the bandages and the tube that had been inserted at the completion of the operation.

“No. I don’t think there’s need to report,” she heard the sister say and passed into a delirious state of semi-consciousness as they repacked the saturated dressing and replaced the breast bandage firmly again. They propped her up and put a pillow at the bottom of the bed so that she could push against it with her feet. She moaned for relief and was given morphia but it didn’t make much difference for long. She moaned and cried. How on earth was she to stand this mangled body. The idea of pain had always terrified her, and now she felt nothing else.

She must escape. If she could get an overdose of drugs that’d sink her into a night of unfeeling, she didn’t fear or care about death. “Oh, please God, send something,” she prayed. “Send anything, anything that’ll change this. Get me out of this hell.”

Or if some one would only blow her brains out, she thought violently; or that the pain would get bad enough to break her.

Nobody would do anything. She could be sure of that. Another four hours would have to go by before they’d even give her more morphia. She’d just have to lie and suffer and wait.

But, Jesus Christ, she couldn’t just lie there suffering and doing nothing, she’d have to try and do something, this wouldn’t go on for ever, she knew from her nursing days that’d be a lot less in twenty-four hours, and in forty-eight it’d be almost gone, twenty-four hours wasn’t long, it was only a day, and a day was very little in a lifetime.

The main thing was to try and distract or occupy her mind with something, if she could only do that she’d hardly feel much at all. She’d read or heard somewhere that to try and say thirteen times tables was a good trick to take your mind off your pain. They’d taught you far as twelve at school, these’d come easy, but you have to concentrate like hell to make up thirteen times, and it’d take your mind off whatever was happening to you. She ground her teeth. She could feel her heart beating against the bandages. Slow, slow, slow; each pulse rising to explode behind her forehead; going on till it would stop. She’d have to try and say thirteen times tables. Her body was on fire. She couldn’t stand this as she was. She’d have to try and pass the time somehow.

“Thirteen ones are thirteen,” she could have screamed as she counted out in her mind, and it was no use, she’d be better to fall back and just suffer; but that’s only the first time, she persuaded herself; go on, you must go on. What are thirteen twos? Double the three and the one — go on: it’s twenty-six, isn’t it?

“Thirteen ones are thirteen.

“Thirteen twos are twenty-six.

“Thirteen threes are ….”

Go on, what are thirteen threes? I was never much good at figures, because you’re no good at figures is all the more reason for you to go on with them, you’re unlikely to ever get to the end of the table, in fact they’ll occupy you for the rest of your life if you want, and isn’t that the most anyone could possibly hope for, it’d be awful to come to a successful end of something and be still suffering. So go on, Elizabeth; go on! Thirteen threes are what?

No, I’ll not go on, I can’t, she faltered. She was reduced to a few stone of agonized flesh and she’d be better just to lie there and be that and be no more. These tables were all a game and they hadn’t managed to pass very much unfelt time for her. How much time had gone? Nine or was it seven or was it ten, it was definitely no more than ten heart-beats? A heart-beat was a second. Ten seconds had gone, six times that in a minute, 360 in an hour and an awful lot more in a day and still an awful lot more in a lifetime. She ground her teeth again and wept. She couldn’t stand it, they must have mangled her whole body. She’d have to play some sort of games or pray or something, her state was too terrible to be just it. Oh, but if she could just get her hands now on an overdose of drugs or a loaded gun it’d solve everything, it’d solve everything as far as she was concerned, but she’d get her hands on neither weapon nor drug tonight.

“O God, if you relieve me of this pain I’ll serve you with the rest of my life,” she turned desperately to the last of all resorts.

She had never served God much, she had served herself all her life, but weren’t the people who were serving God serving their lives too, there was a notion that nobody went to heaven or hell except they wanted to, she’d read it in a newspaper. Did it matter much? Did anything matter much? The one thing that mattered was for her to get shut of this body of hers by any way at all.

She’d been brought up in the fear of God but what remained most powerful in the memory was the church services, always beautiful, especially in Holy Week; witnessed so often in the same unchanging pattern that they didn’t come in broken recollections but flowed before the mind with the calm and grace and reassurance of all ritual, a nameless priest in black and white moving between the Stations of the Cross with a breviary, the altar boys in scarlet and white and the lights of the candles they carried glowing on the young faces, a small crowd beneath the gallery in one of those eternal March twilights. That was her religion. Certain phrases: thirty pieces of silver, the lakeshore of Galilee evoked events in the life of Christ. The soul went before the Judgement Seat as dramatically after death as it did in the awful scarlet and gold and black of the pictures on the walls in every house, as concretely as the remains went across the bridge to the graveyard in a motor hearse. Though it had never much to do with their lives, except the observances they had to keep: if they kept these their afterlife was as surely provided for as toil and marriage and care and a little luck would provide for the one here on earth. Everything was laid out and certain, no one needed to ask questions, and there was nothing to offer to anyone who stumbled outside its magic circle.