Day 26

This morning, the routine is different

Chris Baker has planned this day to the last detail.  This morning, he woke as usual before the alarm and flicked on the TV.  The top story is still the missing boy.  He watches the morning newsreader as she updates the nation on progress with the police hunt to the backdrop of the same footage they showed the other day, orange-suited SES volunteers at the entry to a drain.

“At this time, police are still treating the boy’s disappearance as a missing persons case.  There’s nothing yet to indicate foul play…”

Chris lies in bed a little past the time he usually gets up and then picks up the mobile phone he left at his bedside last night, next to his alarm clock.  He sends his boss an SMS: ‘sick won’t be in 2day will let u kno abt 2morro’.  He hopes she doesn’t call, spends the next twenty minutes lying tense in his bed willing his mobile not to ring.

Then he gets up.

This morning, the routine is different.  No breakfast, shower first.  Then a shave with a new blade, no after shave to finish.  Chris dresses in jeans, a t-shirt and his weekend shoes.  His bag is packed already and sitting inside the built-in ’robe in his bedroom.  He opens the door and takes it out, checks one last time that he’s got everything he needs.

It’s 8.30 a.m.  Chris goes to the lounge room, leaving his bag by the front door on the way through, sits down in front of the widescreen TV that dominates the far wall and turns it on.

The news is still on.  One of the five-minute updates that cycles endlessly through the first three hours of every weekday morning.  There’s nothing new to report on the missing boy.  Fifty more people have been killed overnight in Baghdad.  There are unconfirmed reports that a firefight between the Taliban and coalition forces in Afghanistan may have involved Australian SAS troops.  Stay tuned for more soon.

Chris watches the whole world’s misery parade before him as he sits with his feet up on the table, legs bent at the knees, holding the remote in his right hand.  He doesn’t register a single byte of information, just sits concentrating on keeping his breathing regular and even.

When the time comes to leave, Chris checks the contents of his bag one more time, takes out the vital scrap of paper with the address and phone number on it, but leaves his wallet and mobile on the hall stand under the mirror opposite his front door.  He pulls his door to with the usual sharp crack and arms the alarm before opening his car and putting his bag on the back seat.

All is calm and quiet as he pulls out of his driveway and heads through the suburban streets towards the highway.  Except inside the car.  As he drives, Chris can feel his panic rising, his heart is thumping inside his chest, the occasional irregular beat making his breath ragged.  He knows the cardiologist told him these ‘ectopics’ were perfectly normal, but at times like this, they really scare the shit out of him.  He knows that if anyone saw him now in his car, he’d stick out like anything.

But there’s no one on the street.  The sky is wide and clear and blue.  The sun is quietly melting the bitumen.

Chris pulls onto the highway, relieved to be part of the anonymity of the mid-morning traffic.  Next to him on the passenger seat is a map book, the page he’s heading for marked with a folded piece of paper from his wallet.

Got to stop

Tiffany is late for the Six News morning meeting.  She takes her seat at the table that dominates the central area of the news room.  Glassed-in goldfish tanks line the walls of the open space.  Some wag in building management decided to call them offices.  The biggest one, in the corner, with city skyline views  belongs to Bob Mullen, the news director.  He’s occupied this prime space since before Tiffany started with Six as a reporter.  Now Tiffany’s graduated to news reader she’s in the corner office diagonally opposite Bob’s.  Same size, but her view overlooks the station’s car park.  Even here the quality of the real estate separates the haves from the have nots.

As she sits, Tiffany takes a look at Bob.  Ostensibly, his attention is fully fixed on one of the junior reporters, who’s pitching a story about guns found at the bottom of dried out suburban lakes.  Tiffany can tell by how much he’s not looking in her direction just how much he’s pissed off with her for being late.  Every now and then, Bob’s eyes flick in her direction as the reporter puts forward his angle on global warming helping police clear up old cases as all manner of contraband comes to light in the city’s receding wetlands.

“So, pissed off, but not completely over me just yet,” Tiffany thinks to herself.

She’s late because she was up until the early hours of this morning.  She contracts her pelvic floor muscles and feels the soreness between her legs; makes a mental note not to be doing so much coke any more while she’s fucking.  The anaesthetic effect may prolong the pleasure but it’s playing havoc with her body.  It’s so easy to be sensible the morning after, but today she’s also a bit worried about the line she needed to get herself going and that, now she’s sitting down under the glaring fluorescents, her head’s already returned to the confused fog that greeted her when she finally opened her eyes at 10.12 this morning.  Got to stop.  Soon.

Bob tells the reporter to do some more research and bring the story back to the news meeting early next week.  When he does that, it’s like dad saying, “We’ll see.”  The story’s dead, time to move on.  Next up is a brawl at one of the city’s most popular beaches.  Tiffany’s only half listening until she hears the reporter say, “…black males, mostly between 20 and 25…”

“What did you say?”  Tiffany interrupts.

“They were mostly between 20 and 25.”

“Yes, but what else?”

Bob’s attention is now fully fixed on Tiffany, but she goes on.

“Where were these people from?”

“They were black.  Refugees.  From Africa, Somalia, I think,” is the reporter’s reply.

Since Bob is now glaring at her, Tiffany decides to address her reply directly to him.  She slowly turns her head 30 degrees so she’s looking directly at him.  It looks deliberate, and it’s only partly because any sudden movement still gives Tiffany vertigo.  She drinks some water from the glass in front of her to clear the cotton from her mouth.  Again, the motion is deliberate and Tiffany hopes like hell that no one can see the tiny tremor in her right hand.  The air in the room is still.  No one is breathing.

“Bob, since when did we start racially profiling people?”

“What do you mean, Tiffany?”  That’s what Bob always does when he’s under the pump, answers a question with a question to give himself time to think.

“You know exactly what I mean, Bob.”

“That’s what was in the release from police media,” the reporter breaks in, “They’re the ones who said these guys were black Africans.”

“So, we have to go and repeat it?  Next, we’ll be running out the statistics on how refugees commit more crime than white Australians.”

“Technically, these people aren’t Australians, Tiff.”

“Don’t fucking ‘Tiff’ me, Bob!”

Those around the table who didn’t suck in a quick breath while the reporter was trying to get in between Tiffany and Bob are now getting short of oxygen.

“Don’t you try to shut me up like that.  It might work on your other girls, but it won’t fucking work on me!”  Tiffany’s far more angry than she meant to be.  She’s wondering where it came from.  Wondering what it’s got to do with the knot that’s growing inside her.  She gets up from the table and begins to walk towards the door, meeting no one’s eyes as she walks.  Just as she thinks she’s going to make it through the door, she hears Bob’s voice, delayed until the last calculated moment.

“This isn’t over, Tiff-an-ee,“ his sarcasm stretching out the last two syllables of her name.

“I want you in my office when this meeting’s finished.”

Tiffany, says nothing, just keeps walking.  She knows if she turns around they’ll all see her, her body shaking like an epileptic having a micro-fit.

She’s never seen one up this close before

A woman sits on a lounge in the family room and chats with another woman who’s over in the kitchen, standing behind the breakfast bar.  The sitting woman has her legs crossed one knee over the other and is leaning slightly forward, hands and arms encased in black satin gloves, clasping and unclasping her thigh just above the knee.  She is sweating slightly and wishes it would stop.  The talk is polite and non-committal, “Did you find your way here OK?” and, “Isn’t it hot!”

The woman in the kitchen’s husband comes out of another room in the house and says hello to both his wife and the guest.  He stands before the woman on the lounge, wearing shorts and a t-shirt.  He looks at her and stands close to her knees and hands.  She looks at him, in the eye and then down the length of his body.  It’s obvious that he is not wearing underwear; a small stain is beginning to soak through his shorts.

The woman on the lounge looks back up at him, sees the man’s wife studying them both from over the breakfast bar.

“Is that for me?”

He says nothing.  She thinks she sees him nod.  She looks over to the wife, who also says nothing, just continues to watch them both while busying her hands behind the bar.  Is she washing up?

She rubs him through his shorts with her right hand, keeping the other on her knee.  She can feel the gentle throb of blood pumping into his member with each heartbeat, can feel her own heart running faster with anticipation and anxiety.

What to do?

She rubs him gently and then begins to pull back the elastic waistband of his shorts, tugging down, tentatively at first and then with greater force and determination as she realises it will take some effort to pull the waistband over his bulging cock.  She achieves her goal and feels as well as sees his cock spring from beneath the shorts.  It slaps his stomach gently and stands proudly in front of him.  She feels or imagines a slight moist spray across her heavily made up face.  She’s never seen one up this close before.

What to do?

She holds the base of his cock, her black-satined hand around his girth, and leans forward for what feels like for ever.  Her tongue reaches out and tastes the tiniest amount of salt.  Her lips follow and make a circle around his glans.  She swallows as she takes more of him into her, closes her eyes and then opens them again to look up as she hears him moan.  She sees that his eyes are closed and, in the trajectory of her eyes looking up, catches an oblique glimpse of the woman still behind the breakfast bar, hands busy, watching.

She surprises herself a little by beginning to suck hungrily on the cock.  She’s never done this before.  She’s often fantasised about it.  Sometimes, she’s even dreamed about this moment, or one like it, but she’s never been here. She can feel herself becoming aroused and she uncrosses her legs, opens them slightly.  He stands there in front of her, passive.  His wife watches, also not moving, but never averting her gaze.

Outside, the silence of the weekday suburb is a weight on the house and all those around it.  At any moment the house could implode.

“Come with me,” the husband tells her, as he pulls his cock, slick with her saliva, from deep inside her mouth.

She follows him to a bedroom where a video camera is already standing on a tripod.

“On the bed. On your knees. Arse in the air.”  His voice is gentle, but no less commanding for its quietness.  She obeys, wondering what will happen next.

She feels him pulling her mini skirt up over her buttocks and then at the snaps of her bodysuit where it joins at her perineum.  Once he has it open, he pulls the gusset of her knickers aside and exposes her flesh.  He runs the palm of his hand gently, cursorily over her buttocks.

So this is what it feels like to be touched by a man.

“Put your arse in the air, head down.”  He tells her.  She obeys, worried momentarily about staining the bedclothes with her foundation where her right cheek rests on them.  She can’t see behind her, but he seems satisfied.  She imagines he’s working the camera and keeps her pose awaiting further instructions.  She feels no more of his touch.

After a while he tells her to get up, fix her make up and then come back into the family room where they first met.  When she’s arranged herself sitting on the edge of the bed, he’s gone and the camera, too.  She can hear murmured voices.  She pulls her knickers back into place, snaps the clasps of her bodysuit back together and sits again to look at herself in the mirror.  Her lipstick is gone.  She wonders whether it has stained his cock.  The rest of her make up is intact.  She brushes on some powder to combat two stray beads of sweat running down her forehead and then reapplies her lipstick, liner first and then filling in with the tube of red, just as she’s learned to do on YouTube.  She takes one last look at herself in the mirror before walking back, hesitantly, to the family room.

When she rounds the last corner of the bedroom corridor, she sees that there is now another man there and the husband and his wife are sitting with him at the dining table directly opposite the breakfast bar and along from the lounge where she had first sat.

She notices as if for the first time that the internal brickwork in the family/dining area is exposed.  A feature wall.  She hadn’t realised how ugly it was.

“Hello!” says the new man. He’s certainly more animated than the husband and wife. “Well, don’t you look gorgeous!”

She thinks she may have blushed if she wasn’t already feeling so overheated.

“Thank you,” is all she manages to say, as she stands before them, uncertain of what to do next.

“You look so hot, darling.”  It is the first time the wife has spoken since their idle chat. “Let’s go through to our bedroom and then we can put on the air con.”

The husband and the other man get up and begin making for the bedroom, while the wife takes her by the crook of the elbow and walks with her.

“We don’t usually use our bedroom, but you seem so hot.  Maybe the air con will cool you down a bit.”  The wife looks at her kindly.

You’re wrong, you know, but you’re right

Tiffany’s been to the toilet and seen to herself.  She’s feeling much looser.  She’s ready for Bob.

When she gets to his office door, Tiffany doesn’t pause or knock, she just walks in and sits down in one of the chairs at the round table that occupies the space between the door and Bob’s desk.

“So, you wanted to see me?”

Bob doesn’t look up at her for a while.  He’s deep in thought, reading through some papers in front of him.

Bob invented every office charade you could ever think of.

After a good while, Bob looks up.  “Shut the door, Tiff.”

“No, I’d rather keep it open, thanks.”  Tiffany knows a few games of her own.

“Have it your way.”  Bob stays behind his desk.  “You know, I value what you’ve got to say, Tiff, but sometimes, you know, it’s just the way you put it across.  Why does everything have to end up in a confrontation?”

Tiffany takes a while to think before replying.  She thought she’d come here to keep up the fight, but the coke’s taken the edge off her fury.  “Yes, I know, Bob, but some things need to be said.  And we can’t just let the Clark Kents out there recite everything the cops put in their media releases.  These are people we’re talking about.  They get a bad enough time without us making them an even bigger target.”

“Look, I know what you’re saying, Tiff.  It is OK, if I call you that, still?”  Bob makes a point of checking but doesn’t wait for Tiffany to respond.  “But we’ve got to report what happens.  The vision tells the same story anyway and, besides, people make up their own minds about these sort of things.  All we’re doing is telling it like it is and reflecting the mood of people.”

Tiffany’s starting to get stirred up again, she can feel her cheeks warming, and this time her anger’s not chemically induced.

“Fuck, Bob, you should listen to yourself sometimes.  You know you’re just about the most powerful man in this city.  What you put on the news every night tells people what sort of mood they’re in.  Don’t give me this bullshit about people making up their own minds.”

“What are we supposed to do, Tiffany?” Bob’s reverted to her full name, he understands they’re not having a friendly chat any more.  “The pictures speak for themselves.  The police are using that description, anyway.  It’s been all over the radio this morning, and the paper.  Do we just let it go and say nothing?”

“Fuck!”  Tiffany spits out the word.  Bob understands it’s not directed at him.  Well, not him alone, anyway.  It’s directed at the entire world.  “Fuck!  Fuck!  OK, you’re right.  You’re wrong, you know, but you’re right.  Jesus, I hate this fucking world sometimes.

“Just read what’s on the teleprompt, Tiff.  The state of the world’s not your fault.”  Bob’s coming out from behind his desk as he speaks, sits down in the chair next to Tiffany.  “It’s not that bad.  Really, it’s not.  This isn’t worth going to the wall over.”

Tiffany looks up at Bob.  There’s a tear welling at the corner of her left eye.  She exhales loudly, mouth and nose together, and tiny rivulets of clear snot dribble from her nose.

Willing each breath to be his last

In the bedroom, the husband is setting the video camera on its tripod at one side of the bed.  The other man is fishing around in a bag.  The wife lays herself across the bed to watch what will happen next, head propped up on an elbow, stockinged and stilletoed feet hanging lazily over the edge.

“Come here,” says the other man. “Let’s see what we’ve got.”

He beckons her to stand in front of him and she walks the two steps from just inside the doorway.  The air conditioner hums and she is grateful for the cold air as she can feel the man’s hand under her skirt unsnap her bodysuit and then, fingers first, make its way inside her knicker elastic.  His hand covers her genitals, while the other pulls the front of her skirt up over her waist.

“Oh, my!  What a weapon!”  He steps to one side to let the husband and wife look at her erection.  Then he begins to unbuckle his belt, opens his jeans and expertly takes out his own cock.  It is smaller than hers, but no less hard. No macho size games here.

“Suck me,” is all he says, and she knows what to do.  While the husband and wife watch, she on the bed, he behind the camera, she kneels before the man and tastes for the second time that morning the tang of precum, this time stronger, thicker, less watery.  Feels again the hardness of a cock in her mouth.  With her left hand, she feels through the satin of her glove the hardness of her own cock as she pulls her balls free from her knickers.  Then she lets herself go, using both hands to grab at his cock, his testicles his arse. While all the time sucking, her lips and tongue running up and down the length of his cock.

The husband and wife watch, each from their positions.  Neither join in, but both are full participants in that head job.

When the other man has had enough, he withdraws, pushing her head back with one of his hands.  He motions for her to get on the bed and she complies, head down and arse in the air.  He goes back to rummaging in his bag.  Her knickers are down around her ankles when she feels the coldness near her anus.  She has experienced the wetness of the lube before, but never on another’s finger.  She tenses for a moment, as the finger is rubbed around her opening and then begins the pressure that will see it push inside her.  She allows the finger in, feels the momentary pain and fullness, then feels the finger withdrawn.  In a moment, it is back, more lube, and deeper inside her, only to be gone again.  Next she feels a larger pressure.  The stretching sensation feels like it will pull her skin apart, she is full inside, fuller than she has ever been.  She feels him twist an object around inside her and whimpers with the pain of it.  She feels like she needs to shit.

“Stop it,” says the wife.  “Can’t you see you’re hurting her?”

The wife moves close.  “Are you OK?” she asks.

“Uh huh.”  She’s not going to stop now.  Not now she’s come this far.

“Just go easy on her.  She’s never done this before,” the wife tells the other man.

The wife pulls off her own skirt revealing her black suspenders and knickers.  She removes her knickers, too, and positions herself on the bed legs apart.  She moves forward, looks the wife in the eye to check first, and then begins to lick the inside of her thighs.  Her mouth is dry, but the moisture soon comes back and, just as she begins to lick gently at the wife’s labia, searching with her tongue for the clitoris, she feels the man’s fingers again pushing inside her.  This time, she’s more relaxed as she delights in the familiarity of licking pussy among all the newness.  She feels more pressure behind her as he slips in another finger, but is lost to the wife’s cunt when he finally pushes himself against her opening.

The man slides inside her, taking her virginity, rests for a moment then pulls back.  She keeps to her task between the wife’s legs, swirling her tongue over and around her clitoris and then sucking it between her lips, gently nibbling on its hardness, while the man fucks her from behind.

Afterwards, they all four of them sit on the bed, the husband and wife together, she sitting next to the other man, and watch themselves on the video, in the small screen of the camera.

She sees herself between the wife and the man.  Head down and arse in the air like she was told.  The man is between her legs, kneeling, rocking back and forth.  She can see her body moving in time with his.  Her face is obscured by hair.  If you hadn’t been there, watching the video you’d have trouble making out what’s really going on.  She knows, and, as she watches herself, she masturbates, feeling the smoothness of the black satin on both her fingertips and her cock.  The husband watches her and the video at the same time, his attention is divided.  The wife and the other man keep their eyes on the video.  They keep on watching as she exhales, spraying semen all over the front of her bodysuit.

Her orgasm coincides with the climax of the video.  The tape rolls to white noise and then to an outdoor scene, some family barbecue.  There are children on the screen.  The husband quickly stops the tape.  She asks if it’s OK to have a shower.

She turns off the shower and begins to towel herself dry.  As she dries her face, she checks the white towel.  It’s important that she leaves no trace of makeup.  She dresses, the only remaining part of the self she was ten minutes ago a g-string.  She can feel it under her jeans, between the crack of her arse, rubbing against her as she walks down the corridor.  She rounds that last corner again and enters the family/dining area.  Again the husband and wife and the other man are sitting at the table.  He is sitting across from the couple and beckons her over.

She sits at the table and eats lunch with them, self conscious.  She knows they can see her balding head, the paunch beginning to grow at the belt of her jeans.  Nobody is looking anyone in the eye.  She eats for a while and then says she has to get going.  The wife sees her out, says, “Give us a call,” before quickly closing the door.

She knows she’ll never see them again.

As she walks into the light, to her car, she feels that a million eyes are watching her, know who she is and what she’s just done.  Across the cul-de-sac and in the homes either side of the one she’s just been in, she knows that people are watching, judging.  The air is so taut, she knows she must snap at any moment under the pressure and the heat.  She keeps walking to her car, gets in and begins to slow her breathing as she drives off, left then right, trying to remember the route that brought her here from the highway.

As she reaches the highway, Christina becomes Chris again, all except for one detail that he can’t seem to give up.  The g-string rides up his arse and doesn’t hold his cock in place properly, but he loves the feel of it and, especially today, it reminds him of his other self.

Chris nears the intersection, almost home.

He’s planned this day, planned it almost all his life.  But it only really started to happen, to move from his fantasies to reality last year.  The last two months have been a fever of planning, dreaming, thinking of nothing else.  He’s been distracted, but he doesn’t think anyone’s noticed.  Certainly no one at work has said anything.

Now, it’s over.  He’ll have to live on memories for a while.  Who knows when he’ll get the guts to do that again?

He’s replaying the video in his mind as he rounds the corner, making his way across the oncoming traffic.  Christina is small and indistinct between the man and the woman.  There’s not enough detail on the screen to really see what’s happening, but Chris knows and just thinking about it makes him hard again.

The image is replaced with an oncoming car, some indistinct make and colour.  The quality of the video is grainy, the picture is fuzzy and distant.  He doesn’t remember this from earlier in the day.

The sound’s been turned up to an ear-destroying level.  He wishes the husband would turn it down, but he’s too timid to ask.  There’s a screeching and wrenching-grinding sound of metal tearing into metal.  He feels the sharp pain in his side, which reminds him of the first time he was penetrated with the dildo, just before the other guy fucked him.  The sharp stab and the surprise of it were a bit like this.  But this is different somehow.

His cock is still hard inside his jeans when the video rewinds and Chris sees that he’s been in a crash.  He’s just around the corner from home.

“Fuck! How could this happen now?”  Chris’s internal voice hasn’t deserted him.

He looks up and sees the car from the video impaled in the side of his own vehicle.  Everything is destroyed.  His car, his dreaming, his life.  He knows this without a doubt.  He knows it even before he looks down and sees the growing bloom of blood begin to soak through his shirt in a massive purple stain.

He wonders if he might die.  Thinks, perhaps, it would be for the best.

The ambos dress the gash in his side at the scene of the crash.  The glass of his car’s side window has opened him up neatly.

Pedestrian spectators slink out of nowhere to watch and drivers slow their cars to the obligatory crawl on both sides of the highway.  To gawp.

“Fuckers,” Chris thinks.  “Fucking fuckers!  Bastard fucking fuckers!”

“Just a nick, mate,” the red-headed one tells him as he laughs and jokes with his offsider, while packing the wound with gauze before taping the dressing to the skin of Chris’s stomach and back.

“My side and my stomach hurt like anything,” Chris says politely, once the ambo’s stopped the bleeding.  He comes from the last generation that wore Sunday best for a visit to the doctor’s.

The redhead touches Chris’s abdomen with his fingers and Chris recoils instantly.  The scream streams in like a dopplered siren.  He doesn’t realise it’s his own voice until the sound reaches maximum intensity and Chris realises that the noise is coming from his own mouth.

“Better get you something for that,” says the ambo as he rips the plastic off a small package and sticks the contents into Chris’s mouth.  “Here, hold it between your teeth and breathe through it, it’ll help with the pain.”

“Let’s go,” the ambo says to his mate, suddenly all crisp and businesslike.

The other ambo climbs in the front and they leave the scene in a wail of sirens.  Chris can’t see it from where he’s lying on the gurney, but the first of the highway patrol cars pulls up just as the ambulance leaves the scene.

Chris Baker rides in the ambulance fully conscious. The plastic device in his mouth delivers pain relief as he breathes in and out, willing each breath to be his last.

Killer guilt

Detective Senior Sergeant Lambert is drinking another cup of coffee.  He remembers a time, not so very long ago, when you could smoke inside the office.  He quit a generation ago, but he still craves a cigarette with his coffee in the morning.  He’s sitting at his desk, looking at his computer monitor, paperwork unfinished on the screen.

“Dunno why they call it paperwork any more,” Lambert speaks just loud enough so he can hear himself.  He’s thinking about the boy.  There’s been no sightings, nothing positive, anyway.  There’s a whole squad of coppers out there looking for him, volunteers, SES, the works, but they’ve turned up nothing.

Lambert thinks about his own kids, wonders what he’d do if either of them went missing.  He’s not sure he could manage the stoic, mostly-silence Peter Johnson’s parents have displayed so far.

“More like I’d fucking kill someone.”  Again, Lambert’s voice is audible.

He thinks about the Johnsons, they’ve been divorced for seven years now according to the information they’ve provided him.  There’s always a possibility one or both of the parents are involved, especially when a marriage has broken down.  The Family Court and the country’s divorce laws have been the catalyst for many an abduction and the occasional disappearance.  At first Lambert thought Paul Johnson, the father, might have known more than he was letting on, thought he was being a bit less forthcoming that he might have been.  The bloke kept going on about how it was his fault, how he’d encouraged the boy to be too independent, how he should have been a better father, should have stayed with the boy’s Mum; this would never have happened if they’d stayed together.

Lambert shakes his head sitting at his desk thinking about it.  Killer guilt.  Seems Paul Johnson had managed to escape his marriage, but after seven years, he still couldn’t escape the guilt.

Lambert wonders how guilty he’d feel if he ever managed to leave his wife and kids.  Knows he’ll never find out.

He’s got to see what he’s wearing

“Chris? Chris, can you hear me?”  A woman is looking over him.  He must have zoned out for a few minutes, because he doesn’t remember getting here.  He’s on a hospital bed, flat on his back, curtains pulled around him.  Standing over him is a young woman, late twenties, jeans and a short-sleeved top.  In the background is another woman, similar age, in a nurse’s uniform.  He knows he’s in hospital, but for a second he can’t remember why.

“Chris? I’m Dr Koek. Can you hear me?”

“Yes,” Chris replies, mangling the simple word with his swollen tongue and lips.  Suddenly he’s very thirsty.

“Water?”

“I’m sorry, Chris.  Your spleen’s been damaged in the crash.  We have to take it out.  You can have a drink once you’re out of surgery.  Can you remember the last time you ate?

Lunch seems for ever away.

“About four hours?  I don’t know.  What time is it now?”  Chris is trying to piece the chronology of his day together and failing.

Dr Koek doesn’t seem to be worried about his answer anyway.

“They’re going to come and get you for surgery in a few minutes.  First, we need to get a few details.  Nurse Adams here just needs to get a bit of information from you.”

The nurse steps forward and raises her clipboard and pen.  “Hi.  The paramedics said you’re called Chris.  Is that right?

“They don’t know my name?” Chris thinks.  Then he remembers, he didn’t bring his wallet with him. No ID.

“Um, yup, Chris. Chris Baker.”

The nurse writes on the clipboard.  Chris lies still flat on his back.  He wants to raise the blanket that covers his body.  He’s got to see what he’s wearing.  Everything else is secondary.  The crash.  The pain.  The blank moments that moved him from the ambulance to here without him knowing.  The surgery.

“Address?”

Chris gives his details, his mind frantic.  He tries to wriggle his bum a bit, see if he can feel what he’s wearing under the blanket, but he has to give up the instant he tenses his abs.  The pain has an intensity he could never have imagined before today.  It’s like something’s ripping him open from the inside.  He’s sure there must be some glass lodged inside his stomach.

The last thing Chris does before the orderlies come for him is sign a consent form.  He still desperately needs to know what he’s wearing.  He’s tempted to ask the orderly at his head, pushing the gurney along the corridor toward the operating theatre, but he doesn’t want to draw any undue attention to himself.