It took five firemen or pompiers to lift me out of bed, carry me down three narrow flights of stairs and down a rocky path, then to shove me into the back of their van. When I cried out in pain the sweating firemen joked that I was a muezzin calling the faithful to prayer. Henceforward they humorously addressed me as sheikh. It had to be pompiers because my legs don’t work. The educated guess is that a tumor is pressing against my spine, gradually paralyzing me from the toes up. The old legs feel amputated: just colorless slabs of cold meat.
‘Can I perhaps have a glass of water?’ She slammed down an inch in a glass like an 1860s Kansas City bartender
In the back of the van, I made small talk with the young fireman whose job was to prevent my sliding off the stretcher on the hairpin bends. Did he relish the excitement of fighting those terrifyingly huge curtains of forest fire? Why yes, of course! As a matter of fact, he said, the pleasure of pointing a massive fire hose was the reason he had joined the service in the first place. I am no longer able to pass urine, I told him, let alone put out a forest fire.
Worried by my distended stomach, Catriona had rung Madame Biscarat, the village GP, who came and prodded it with her cherry-red fingertips, declaring that it was imperative a catheter was inserted into my bladder immediately. Unfortunately the community home nurse was unavailable so she called the fire brigade.
We arrived at the hospital in the late afternoon. The surprise of having a catheter inserted up my pipe and into my bladder was ameliorated by the two young female nurses’ helpless laughter. We all laughed in fact. The warm urine drained nicely away into a bag hooked over the bed’s chassis. Job done. Catheter for the rest of my life.
However and unfortunately, an unserious porter (whom I mistook for the chief medical officer) told me I must stay the night. Fortunately I had arrived wearing dove-gray piping-edged pajamas and West Ham slippers. “You have a toothbrush?” “Yes. And toothpaste.” “Nickel chrome. Allow me to take you to your accommodation.” “Nickel chrome” is a youthful French expression signifying approbation.
The single room was new and hygienically clean. The bed’s mattress angle could be altered by pressing a button. The porter turned out to be a brute, handling me roughly from the stretcher to the bed. I cried out and he despised me for it. I hadn’t had a drink of water for more than six hours, I told him. Could I have one now? “See the nurse,” he said. Then he left. The night nurse, a plump blonde, came in. “I didn’t bring any painkillers with me for tonight,” I said. “Can you give me any?” “See the doctor,” she said. “Can I perhaps then have a glass of water?” She slammed down an inch in a glass like an 1860s Kansas City bartender.
No painkillers was a worry. Every evening at eight I currently swallow 160mg of long-acting morphine. A hefty dose, I believe. I also take 400mg of a painkiller called Gabapentin. Also a gram of acetaminophen. Also up to 30mg of quick-acting morphine should I feel the need for it. Even with that little lot I’m still awake at four in the morning elbowing poor Catriona for extras.
Long story short, the bastards hung up a drip bag that might or might not have delivered some sort of painkiller into the back of my hand during the night. The next morning, when I complained to the day nurse that whatever it was it wasn’t nearly enough for unbridled cancer, she went up on the tips of her toes to read the packaging. With a rare command of our English slang she characterized it as “cat’s piss.”
Without opiates it was a long night and I was climbing the walls. The long agony was a notable event in the final passion of Clarke, J. There came no benison of cold tap water either. When I rang the bell a nurse’s head appeared and said it would be right back. And that was the last I saw of it, her, or anyone else until the morning, when, thank the Lord, they gave me strong painkillers and a glass of water and said I could go home.
Two ambulance men made less fuss about getting me back up the garden path then up the stairs to the bedroom than five macho pompiers had made about getting me down. “Ees our shob,” they said at the glimpse of two discreet fifty euro notes. And so that’s me now back at base, no legs, no feeling below my sternum, catheterized, dying, watching the light play on the hills in the distance. A nurse comes and goes daily. Dying I am, but clean and smelling of soap. Cleaner in fact than before. Radio 3. Drowsing over The Portable Gibbon. Pink roses. Union Jack mug of tea.
Where did it all go? And so suddenly?
This article was originally published in The Spectator’s UK magazine. Subscribe to the World edition here.
