I was in a pack of fifty in a drawer. A man opened it and lifted me and six others out onto the table. He turned on the machine, which flashed, whirred and clunked. He sat and looked at a screen and pressed the trackpad. Then he slid us into the guides of the tray.
Rollers caught the first of us and pulled it down into the machine and the cartridge jerked across its surface. This happened four times and then I was at the top. The rollers dragged me in and I was under the printer head as it swept across me.
It propelled tiny jets of ink onto my surface, forced out of the cartridge by superheated explosions. It fired millions of these from its microscopic nozzles in spurts of primary colour that grouped to form an image on me. At first it was hard to know as I lurched down and each new strip appeared on me, but then I was ejected into the out-tray.
The ink dried quickly on my glossy surface. I was a photo now. The man sitting at the desk and switching off the printer was in me, dancing in a dark room with lights that had flared around the lens of the camera that had taken me. In me he looked younger. There was another man with him. They both were dancing and smiling at each other.
He pushed me together with the other photos, looked at his watch and walked out of the building to a car. He laid me on the passenger seat with his phone and started the ignition.
He drove quickly. He was worried about how he’d react when he saw his friend. He’d been dreading it. He had heard from his friend’s brother that it was bad, that Tom had now lost the other one as well. He wondered if Tom would still be like he was before, when they were best mates. He looked down at me and remembered the night I was taken. He smiled. God, he’d been a dick that night. They both had—she wasn’t worth it—and they’d hugged and made up in the morning.
He thought of training; perhaps he should’ve printed one of them together during training. It didn’t matter. He hoped I’d cheer him up.
It was bright, so he put on sunglasses and turned up the radio.
He was apprehensive as he walked into the hospital, holding me in his hand. He asked for directions at a desk and went down more corridors. He hated the smell of hospitals.
A woman called out to him and he hugged her. She explained that visiting hours hadn’t started yet, so they went to a chrome canteen and queued for a coffee. When she opened a red handbag he insisted on paying. He didn’t like coffee but drank one with her anyway.
She told him how it was all going. She looked tired, he thought. He showed her me across the metal table and she smiled, and said what a good picture I was, but didn’t look properly. He told her again that he would do anything they needed. He’d been wonderful for Tom, she said, he was really looking forward to the visit. But she had to go now: half the extended family was coming today and she needed to control them. Tom found visitors quite trying.
He wondered if Tom would find his visit trying.
And then he was in the ward. A nurse smiled and led him past bays that were already filling with visitors. He saw the wounded. He knew they were soldiers, like him; he could tell by the way they looked and joked. He thought about the place that had damaged them; he would have to go back there soon.
The nurse pointed to the corner where Tom was sitting in a bed by a window. He looked over and smiled and then grinned.
Tom grinned back.
It was the other man printed on me but he was so thin and fragile that it didn’t look like he’d be able to dance now.
He wanted to give him a hug but he was scared of damaging him; his skinny arms and neck made his head seem skull-like. So he sat down next to him. “Hello, mate,” he said.
“Hello, mucker. It’s good to see you,” Tom said. He squeezed a rubber ball in one hand. The other hand was under the blanket. He had the bed sheet up to his waist. His top half was bare and he was sweating.
“Hot in here, then, or are you just trying to trap one of the nurses with your hunky body?”
Tom smiled and glanced over at the nurses’ station. “Haven’t fallen in love with any of them yet. I get a bit of a fever with the anti-fungal drug they have me on,” he said, pointing at a yellow bag that hung from a hook. “It makes me feel pretty awful actually.”
“Yeah, your mum said. I just had a coffee with her.”
“How did you think she was?”
“Seemed fine, mate. But what do you expect? You’ve really given her a bit of a nightmare, haven’t you?” He smiled. He didn’t want to turn away from his friend’s face but he could sense the gap where his legs should have been.
“Do you want to see?” Tom said. He’d noticed his discomfort.
“No, don’t worry.”
“It’s no problem. Here, look.” He leant forward with a grunt and drew the sheet back. “This one was the traumatic amputation during the incident.” The left leg stopped below the knee. It was covered in plastic and swollen under the dressing. A tube snaked out from under the plastic. “The pipe there pulls all the gunk out of the wound. It’s meant to promote healing and prevent infection.” Tom nodded at a machine hanging by the bed next to a bag of urine. “That thing sucks it out. See the canister of blood and pus?”
“Nice, mate.”
“Yup. And this one they had to amputate a couple of weeks ago. It was badly infected. That’s why I’m still on this anti-fungal treatment.” He placed his good hand on a mass of white bandages that ended above the knee.
“We heard all about it, mate. You were the talk of the town.” He stared at it and the pipes that led up from his groin. There was a whiff of antiseptic.
They chatted. He could tell his friend was weak and supported by medication. His mum had hinted as much. She’d said he could be confused but was fighting hard and sometimes seemed surprisingly lucid.
But he was still Tom and asked questions about outside. He wanted to know all about his pre-deployment training and his girlfriend, and what everyone had been up to. So he told him about a party and said they’d all asked after him. They talked for an hour and when Tom started to look tired he said he’d better be off. He didn’t want to incur the wrath of his mum.
“Please stay, mate,” Tom said. “It’s good to see you.”
“Just a bit then. Hey, I brought you these.” He held me up and handed him the pile I was in. I was in Tom’s hand and he shuffled through us slowly, resting each on his stomach. He picked me up and paused.
“Thanks, mate,” Tom said but his voice caught.
“What’s up, mucker? Are you okay?”
“Nothing. Could you pull the curtain, please,” Tom said quietly and twisted away. I bent under his thumb as he held me.
“Sorry, mate. I thought…” He stood and pulled the curtain whooshing around on its rail. It blocked out the laughing and chatting of the other visitors.
“It’s not your fault,” Tom said. He tried to look away, embarrassed, and his eyes filled and glistened.
“I’m really sorry, mate.” He sat back down next to the bed and clasped his hands in front of him. “I thought they might make you remember better times.”
“They do, mate. They do. Thank you.” He had turned his head away and glanced down at me as a tear trickled across the bridge of his nose and dripped onto the sheets. “It’s just hard,” he said. “And I’m stuck in here with all these people helping me that I never wanted to meet. I didn’t want their help. I’m stuck in this fucking bed.” His voice nearly broke and he shook silently.
“Sorry, buddy. I should’ve thought it through.”
“It’s fine, mucker. I suppose I hadn’t been forced to think about it yet, that’s all. This is all so unreal, mate. It’s not me, this broken body, it’s just not me. Not yet.” Tom turned back to his friend. There were wet tracks down his face. He smiled. “I’m the bloke in this photo—dancing. I’m a runner, a soldier…” and his voice faded and the smile crumpled into a sob. “Not this cripple,” he managed to say and gestured down the bed.
“Mate, you’re no cripple.” He rested his hand on his friend’s bandaged arm.
“No? You want to see me try and take a piss? That pipe does it for me now.” Tom smiled and sniffed.
“They can do amazing things these days, Tom. And if anyone can get over this, it’s you. You’re the toughest bloke I know.”
“I don’t feel particularly tough at the moment.” He put me back with the others on a bedside table and wiped his eyes. He laughed. “Look at the state of me: not particularly brave.”
“A cry will do you good,” he said.
“I can’t show any weakness in here. I need to set an example, but it’s such hard work.” He wiped his eyes again.
“I know, mate, you always were a stubborn bastard.”
He stayed for a bit longer. Before leaving, he promised his friend they’d be out dancing together before he knew it. Tom didn’t believe him, but laughed. “That’s something that would sell tickets,” he said.
I stayed on the cupboard beside his bed for a while. A glass of water was put on me and left a ring. Tom never looked at me again, he just lay in the bed and measured time by the daily ward round, the yellow drugs dripping into him and the visiting hours after lunch.
They took Tom away in a wheelchair. His brother packed up all the things that had accumulated around his bed. He picked me up and looked at them dancing together in me then dropped me in a cardboard box with hundreds of letters and cards.