The Plate
—I love you but I think I’m dying.
This was what he said as he came in the back door.
Then he turned around and walked back out. Maeve thought he was
leaving her. He’d said he was the night before. Until she saw the
way he was walking. And she knew it: he was dying. He walked
like he’d been stabbed, away from the door, out into the garden. It
was after nine but still bright enough, early September. His back
to her, crouched, he moved quickly, sideways, clutching something –
his stomach. The back door was a slider, all glass. She watched him
move down the garden. She waited for him to fall. She waited for
the blood.
But he didn’t fall.
—Are you alright?
She stayed at the door.
—Jim?
He’d gone to the end of the garden. The sun was
down, behind the high back wall. He was dark, crouched, still
moving. She saw now; he was coming back.
—Are you okay?
She moved towards him.
—No, he said.
—Who stabbed you?
—What?
He looked down at his hands, at the way he was
holding himself.
There was no blood. She could see that. And that
made it worse, more serious – internal.
—I wasn’t stabbed, he said.
—What’s wrong?
—I’m dying, he said.—I don’t know.
He couldn’t stand straight; he didn’t try. The pain
was unbelievable. Literally that – unbelievable. He had to move,
keep moving; that was all he knew.
—Will I phone for a doctor?
She heard herself and knew how stupid it
sounded.
—Or an ambulance? Jim?
He was walking away again, back down the garden.
Crouching. He didn’t answer.
He hadn’t felt good all day. But that was all.
There’d been the hangover but that was gone by late morning, before
twelve. Then he’d realised there was something more, something
wrong, nudging at him, in his groin. He wasn’t sure exactly what
the groin was, where it started and ended. Somewhere in
below his stomach, there was something poking at him, or stuck.
Nothing too bad, nothing to make him think that he wasn’t well or
that he’d soon be dead.
Maeve didn’t bother with the phone. She could hear
herself trying to explain it to their GP, a waste of time. She
grabbed the car keys and went back out to Jim. She locked the back
door.
—Jim.
It was darker now. She couldn’t see if he’d heard
her.
—Jim.
—What?
It didn’t sound like him.
—Come on, she said.
—What?
—We’ll go to the hospital.
—Which one?
—You’re dying, for God’s sake. Does it
matter?
—Yes, it does, he said.
He knew, as he spoke. He probably wasn’t dying. He
felt robbed.
The nurse took a look at him, bent over, holding
onto the side of the trolley, and she told him.
—That’s a kidney stone.
—Is it serious?
—You’ll be grand.
He knew what it was now, and the pain stayed bad
but bearable.
—There’ll be a doctor around in a minute, she
said.
He got up on the trolley and tried to lie back. He
held onto the bars and thought his heat would melt them. The place
was packed and dreadful but the nurse came back with a doctor who,
without the white lab coat, would have looked like a kid who filled
bags in a supermarket. He pressed Jim’s stomach and told him
nothing, but gave him a jab, some sort of painkiller.
Ten minutes later, the pain was there but lurking
behind a soft wall. Jim could breathe and try to get comfortable.
But he was in hell and he’d never recover. The nurse or the doctor,
probably the doctor, had left the curtain open. Jim watched a
junkie die. A girl, on a trolley. Her pals, two skinny girls in
tracksuits, screamed and forgot about her, and screamed
again.
—Tracey!
A security guard pushed them out. He seemed to know
them. They came back in, up the wheelchair ramp, and screamed again
and lit their smokes and got thrown out. Jim watched the ambulance
men give up, and put the blanket over the dead girl’s face, and
they wheeled her away somewhere. Her friends came in, sat in two
orange bucket seats and fell asleep. While the girl died and
disappeared, a woman near him moaned, men puked, a guy who seemed
to have lost a hand, or at least the fingers – the bandage was huge
and blood-soaked – tried to eat a bag of crisps. Jim closed his
eyes but it didn’t work. The noise alone was worse; he had to
watch. He’d never sleep. He wanted to be rescued.
The night before, the Thursday, they’d had a
fight. Another one. A fight they drank into. It was fuelled by the
red wine they knocked back before they ate and as they ate. The
third glass brought Jim up to date; he caught up with the state
he’d been in the night before. The edges he’d carried all day were
gone and he was back where he’d left off, where he’d lost interest
or consciousness – he couldn’t remember. One minute they were
chatting away carefully – his day, her day – and then, like that,
he knew it was all shite. They sat with the plates on their laps –
they didn’t have a table. He listened to something about her
mother’s aunt, a fall in the shower; some old woman he’d met once,
two years before at the wedding. He listened for a while – because
that was what he did, that was what you did. The aunt’s
broken leg equalled two of his funny incidents at work.
—You’re not listening.
—I am.
—You’re not.
—I am. Your auntie broke her leg. Go on.
—No.
—Go on. She slid on the soap.
—You’re a callous bastard.
—I didn’t put the soap there.
—Everything’s a laugh, she said.
She put her plate on the floor so she could get to
her glass.
He said nothing.
—Everything has to be a laugh.
—She slid on the soap, he said.—Go on. I’m all
ears. Was it Palmolive or Lifebuoy?
She stared at him.
—You’re such a prick, she said.
—Will she be okay? he asked.
The question surprised her – he could tell. She
bent down for her plate. He was winning.
—You don’t care, she said.
—I do.
—You don’t.
—I can’t fuckin’ win, can I?
She sighed. She put a fork-load into her mouth. He
watched her eating. Chicken curry.
She sighed again.
—Okay, she said.—You win.
—Win what?
—Whatever you want.
—This is ridiculous.
—Everything’s ridiculous, she said.
—You said it.
—Yeah.
It was the same row, and the same conclusion. He
cornered her. She cried; sometimes he cried. He believed everything
he said, although he’d no idea now what they’d been arguing about,
or if it had been a proper argument; it was gone. But this was it,
every night – most nights.
But the plate was new. It landed at his feet, and
then he saw her throw it, after it hit the floor – her movement
made sense, and her face. She held the plate like a Frisbee, then
sent it his way and regretted it. Her other hand tried to catch it.
It landed flat and it didn’t break.
He leaned out of his chair and banged his heel down
on it.
—There, he said.—That’s how you break a
plate.
But it wasn’t broken. And he didn’t try again. The
back of his shoe and his trouser cuff were covered in the
curry.
She laughed.
Friday night, in the back garden, he was walking
again. He had to keep moving, outrun the pain.
—It depends which of the hospitals is on call, he
said, as he went back down the garden.—If it’s Beaumont, okay. But
Blanchardstown. Too far. I’ll never make it.
This was in 1990, at the tail end of the last
recession. There wasn’t enough money to keep all the hospitals
open.
—I’ll check, she said.
She went back in and got the phone book out from
under all the other crap. She found the number for Beaumont, the
nearest hospital to them. She could even hear a siren outside as
she dialled, an ambulance on its way there, or coming from there.
Someone else dying.
He heard it too. Was it coming for him?
He could think. He wasn’t dying. There was
something seriously wrong but it wasn’t getting worse. As long as
he kept moving.
She was back out. He watched her lock the back
door.
—The Mater, she said.
—On call?
—Yeah.
—Where’s the ambulance gone?
—What ambulance?
—I heard one.
She was holding his arm, moving him off the
grass.
—That was for someone else, she said.—I’m driving
you in. It’ll be quicker.
She’d had nothing to drink. Nothing all day.
—I don’t know, he said.
They were off the grass, at the side of the house.
Behind the car.
—What?
—If I can sit in the car, he said.
—We have to get you there, she said.
She’d unlocked the passenger door, still holding
his arm.
She helped him in; he felt her fingers on his
neck.
—Thanks.
—It’s okay, you’re fine.
He couldn’t sit properly. He couldn’t sit back, or
put on his belt. She got the car started, reversed slowly out, then
straightened the car and headed for the main road.
—How’s it going?
—Okay.
—Won’t be long.
There was no traffic; they met nothing on the
roundabout.
—I don’t know if I can do this, he said.—Sorry. His
hand was on the handle of the door.
—Don’t!
—What?
—Open the door!
—I wasn’t going to.
She drove off the roundabout and looked in the
rear-view mirror.
—Oh Christ!
—What?
—The baby!
—Oh Jesus, oh sweet Jesus.
—The baby.
—It’ll be grand. Turn back.
He couldn’t believe it. They’d forgotten the baby.
It was horrible. But the shock wasn’t that they’d forgotten. The
real shock was that they’d never thought.
The baby. It – she didn’t even have a name.
That wasn’t true, of course. The baby did have a name. Holly was
the baby’s name and pretending she didn’t have a name was just some
sort of weird sentimentality. As the car went over a pothole and
the jolt shifted whatever was inside killing him – the blade out
and straight back in – he knew it was just self-pity. He loved the
baby. They loved the baby. He was dying, and they’d
forgotten to bring her with them. That was all.
—She’ll be grand, he said.—We only left her a few
minutes.
—Yeah, she said.
They were back on the roundabout, and off the
roundabout, a minute from home; the road was clear. And he knew
something, in the minute it took to get to the house: they were
happy.