Today, Ira continues his sad account of the “Terrible Tragedy”.

IRA MAINE 
From his private journal.

Shipwrecked,I think.  Dragged from the rocks half dead, but I’m not sure.  From my bed, the room was open fronted, slightly elevated and  looked out on a fine green tropical forest.  Once, when I was conscious I remembered two mature women quietly coaxing me to eat.  They wore crisp, brightly coloured dresses and spoke very quietly to each other.  I supposed it was traditional costume but I couldn’t be sure.  Somehow I was aware that they were both deeply concerned about my condition.  In the same manner I knew, in a passive, switched off way, that I might die.  As yet, there was no sense at all that I had any role to play in the decision.

At some other point, having been lifted, carried and rolled, I remembered claustrophobic panic in an MRI machine.  This was very disturbing and made me chillingly aware, for the first time, that this may not be a real hospital!   As unobtrusively as possible I studied my surroundings.  Above my head, and to the left and right were monitor screens.  I avoided their gaze, acutely aware of being studied.  I was alone in a small room, obviously being prepared for a procedure over which I had no control.  Proper hospitals don’t watch you, don’t hide you away in tiny rooms.  On the wall was a picture of a recumbent dog, it’s coat so long you couldn’t see it’s feet.  It had too much flesh.  Was this a joke?  Then, like a hammer blow, it hit me.  The image on the wall represented, in this world, the perfect life-form.  Or perhaps, and I was more certain of this every minute, a stage on the way to the perfect form.  This animal’s legs were not covered up; it had no legs!  It’s excess of flesh, the inability to walk were wholly, completely and utterly the result of barbaric genetic experimentation!   And horrifyingly, I was to be part of this ghastly work!.

Sweating I lay there, shaking in fear, convinced of at least one thing; I was not going down without a fight.  Quietly, in full defiant view of the cameras, I swung out of bed, gathered my allotted drips, catethers and drain tubes and made for the exit.  I’d bloody show the bastards!.

‘They’ve changed your pain-killer, your morphine’.

The voice floated up like a kite*, cutting it’s way through the clouds in my head.  It was Herself, the Light of my Life.  Somehow I was back in bed, re-plumbed and completely confused.

‘What…?’

‘You had to be restrained!’

There was a lot of laughter.  When I looked, all our friends were there, smiling, then they were gone.  It was enough.  That’s when I decided I had no interest in dying.  I made myself a promise.  When I could remember clearly where I lived, then I’d know I wasn’t destined to be a vegetable.  Remembering nothing  I concentrated hard.  Nothing, for ages.  Then without warning, a crystal clear image, not of my house, not of my driveway, but of the public toilets in Mansfield, 25ks away!   I was so grateful I wept.

Who said the Gods don’t have a sense of humour?.

* For some fabulous Kite Flying check this out