Читать книгу Falling out of Heaven - John Lynch - Страница 8

They were telling me to calm down. I watched as they moved about me. It was my second or third night there, I can’t be sure. I was doing quite well until I dreamt about you. There was sorrow in your eyes and you turned me away. I stood there and pleaded with you but you walked away and kept walking until the horizon claimed you and you were gone forever. I woke up screaming and in a moment I was surrounded by nurses and doctors. I think that I fought them, I can’t be sure. I remember how they smothered me, laying their bodies across mine and I was sure that my heart was going to explode through my chest, spewing blood across the pristine sheets. I wanted to tell them that I wished them no harm, that I was dying from a lack of love that’s all. But they weren’t in any mood to listen.

There must have been four of them, all men and though they were being physical with me, they kept talking, whispering reassurances, saying things like relax, Gabriel, try and relax, we’re here to help you.

Needless to say I didn’t believe them, and somewhere I didn’t trust that I was awake, and then I thought that maybe you had sent them to make sure that I stayed away from you and our child. That made me cry, and for a moment everyone stopped and waited.

‘It’s okay,’ one of the younger nurses said. ‘Everything will be alright. You’ll see.’

Part of me wanted to believe him but all I could see was everything that I had thrown away. I needed the one thing that I knew they wouldn’t give me, the hot fire of whiskey on my throat. It was the only thing that had the power to burn the memory of you from me. It was then that I saw the syringe and I began to fight them again. The young woman doctor had it in her hand as she made her way to me.

‘I need his forearm,’ I heard her say. ‘Quick. Quick.’

Someone else speaks. I hear the words sleep and trust, but my hearing is going, it is mixing with sounds from the past, my first baby words, and my mother’s voice, as soft as surf spilling onto a beach, plates being stacked, the hollow chime of our hallway clock, my sister’s laugh, and then my father’s hard bark like a seal demanding fish.