CHAPTER NINETEEN

 

 

Stiles

 

MY AIR HOSE. That was where it started. I was exploring a wreck off the north-west Scottish coast, and I snagged it on a sharp edge of some kind. I didn't see what.

The hose snapped.

Bubbles everywhere. Silt billowing in the water as I scrabbled for a way out of the wreck. Banging into walls, practically blinded.

My life didn't flash before my eyes. Instead I thought about the life I wasn't going to live. I was thirty-one, with a PhD, and I spent my time, one way or the other, immersed in the sea. Pun intended. But I had a shopping list of other plans: marriage, kids, a house -

All going now in this storm of bubbles and silt. This stupid death. Stupid accident. Stupid. A pratfall, almost.

Not like this. Not like this.

Trying to grab the air-hose, feeling it flail away, pushed out by the jet of air. Bruising and slashing my arms and legs on the rusted, barnacled hull...

And then I was in open water.

It's blurred here, but I remember:

Holding breath. Lungs bursting. The air-hose, couldn't find the air-hose, hands scrabbling at the water for the FUCKING AIR-HOSE -

Blue water

Rocks and sand, the sandy bottoms of the ocean

Up above

above, light,

coming down through the water

Long away above.

No time,

no time

striking up for it.

too deep, too deep - must decompress, acclimatise

But no time.

Swimming up towards the light.

And -

 

 

LOOK AT A bottle of Pepsi, Coke, Irn Bru if you like. Whatever you prefer. An unopened bottle. It's not fizzy, is it? Not until you break the seal and release the pressure. At high pressures, gas dissolves in liquid. When you dive, when you go deep and stay there, the nitrogen in the air you breathe dissolves in your blood.

Clear so far?

When you surface, you release that pressure. Remember the bottle of Pepsi? Imagine that happening in your blood, lungs, brain, eyes.

Divers working at depth are supposed to resurface slowly. That way the nitrogen is released gradually and without causing any harm. If you surface too fast, the bubbles of nitrogen form inside your body. They can form in the brain, in the jelly of the eye. Most commonly, they form in your bone joints.

Doctors call this condition decompression sickness or barotrauma, sometimes caisson sickness. Divers call it the bends.

But if you're forced to surface at speed, most ships equipped for diving carry a hyperbaric chamber. This is a sealed structure where gas can be pumped in or released to increase or reduce the pressure. Turn the pressure up, the nitrogen dissolves again. Then release it - slowly this time - and it's released gradually, like it should've been in the first place.

Do this, and all should be fine.

But this wasn't a diving ship, just a fishing boat I'd chartered for the day. I was on holiday. I hadn't dived in weeks, and I'd been impatient to get out there. I'd dived before, dozens of times.

Overconfidence. I forgot one tiny, massive detail. The sea is an alien world; we only exist in it on sufferance. One slip can be fatal. And almost was.

Sometimes, even now, I wish it had been.

 

 

THE PAIN BEGAN as I ascended, and the gas bubbles expanded in my joints. Imagine your wrist trying to push your hand off; imagine your elbow trying to push your forearm down and away. The skin and muscle stops that happening. But the pain...

Lying on the deck of the ship. The agony was beyond anything I'd ever known. The boat turning coastwards - the reek of petrol fumes, the deck vibrating. My nose and mouth full of blood. Frothing. A taste of bitter iron.

 

 

"HOW ARE YOU feeling?"

The doctor went by the rather wonderful name of Naomi Scrimgeour. The first sounded very pretty and very gentle - which she was - while the second brought to mind a Viking raider come to remove vital organs with an axe. Are you on the NHS, sir, or would you like an anaesthetic? Old joke. Less funny than ever now.

"Fucking awful," I said. She looked down. I felt like a prize arsehole. "Sorry."

But, in truth, the pain was constant. Which she should have known. She was the doctor, after all.

There'd been damage to the nervous system. A common side-effect. Intermittent numbness, shooting pains, weakness down the left side of my body.

"What's the prognosis?" I finally asked.

They'd moved me into a private room, thankfully. The hospital was near the coast. I was never sure where. Outside, I could hear the cry of gulls.

She still wasn't meeting my eyes; her face was flushed. She shuffled the papers in front of her. "Um - well -"

Bad news she wasn't sure how to break. I'd pretty much guessed it already.

"Doctor. I'm sorry. But please tell me." My voice was a gravelly croak. I wondered if that was permanent too. "I respect honesty and directness. I try to deal with others on that basis, and I like the same in return."

If I'd felt like an arsehole before, I felt a prize ponce after delivering that one, but she looked up and smiled. Not an entirely comfortable smile, but a smile nonetheless. "Alright, Dr Stiles -"

"Ben."

"Ben." I'd tried to get her to call me by my first name on the half-dozen times we'd previously spoken. Success at last.

Dr Naomi Scrimgeour's glasses were small and neat. So was she, generally. Five or six years younger than me. Minus the glasses, her eyes were blue and tilted up at the corners. Short brown hair with subtle blonde highlights. A face made up of small, neat angles. Tiny bones. A rosebud mouth. Peaches and cream skin. A pimple just above her left eyebrow, a tiny mole above her right cheekbone; tiny flaws that made the rest more real.

Her voice was soft, gentle and low, but the content, as she'd promised, was blunt and to the point. "You've some nerve damage which will impair your dexterity, and will cause random shooting pains. The gas bubbles are trapped in your joints, and there's nothing we can do about them. The pain from them will be constant."

"Permanent?"

She looked back down at the papers in her lap and gave them a meaningless shuffle. "Permanent. There's medication to help you manage the pain. We'll probably prescribe DHC - dihydrocodeine - but there are other options available, up to and including morphine."

"Life expectancy?"

"Reduced."

"By how much?"

"Dr Stiles -"

"Ben."

"It's hard to be exact."

"You must have some idea."

She touched her hair. "A lot depends on how closely you follow the prescribed regime."

"If I do?"

"You'll live longer than you would otherwise."

"How much longer?"

She looked up at me, took a deep breath. Never easy, a job like this. "With luck and good pain management, you could reasonably expect to reach your fifties. Possibly even your sixties."

"My sixties."

"Or longer. It's hard to be exact."

"Appreciated."

"You asked me to be honest."

"I know. And I'm glad you were." I made myself smile, to sweeten the pill. "Just wish the news were better."

"If it's any consolation, so do I."

She was the kind of lady I would have asked out in a moment - attractive, intelligent, not too much confidence. Which hardly paints me in a good light, but I'm afraid it's true. Sara, my last girlfriend, told me that despite the whole 'New Man' act, what I still wanted was a traditional WIFE - Wash, Iron, Fuck, Etcetera. That was why I never lasted with women - I was after someone I could talk with as an intellectual equal, but who'd still be happy to spend her life either in the kitchen or popping out babies. I'd begun thinking I needed to change my ways, if I was to settle down and start a family as I wanted to. But there was still time, another six months, just to sow some wild oats -

But tomorrow, as my old mother used to say, is too late.

"Of course," she said, "they're making new advances in medical technology all the time."

"When they tell you that," I said, "you know you're fucked."

"All I'm saying is, you don't know what might be around the corner in terms of new treatments."

"I know. Just trying to cope with it. Humour, you know?"

She puckered her mouth and pretended to glower. "Is that what you call it?"

She sounded like my dad talking about my taste in 'music' - always in inverted commas as far as he was concerned - so I chuckled. Then silence. She looked down at her notes again.

I glanced at the bedside mirror, as I kept doing out of morbid fascination. I'd been considered good-looking, before. There'd been no serious relationship since Sara left, but no lack of one-night stands or month-long flings.

But the face looking back at me now was lined and creased like an old handkerchief. Gaunt, as well. I'd lost nearly two stone. Sunken, bloodshot eyes. And my hair, once a proud glossy black, was a greasy, tangled mess, at least half of it gone grey or white.

The girls would not come running anymore.

And never mind the pain.

There was something else. I knew the answer, but needed to hear it. "Dr Scrimgeour?"

She smiled at me. "I think you can call me Naomi now, if you want to."

"Thanks. Will I... I mean, is there any prospect... any chance... could, maybe, in the future..." She nodded, eyebrows raised, egging me on. That small, sweet, bright smile in place. Her lips, so red. I was staving off the inevitable here. Just do it, Stiles. "Will I ever be able to dive again?"

Her smile faded. Again, she struggled to meet my eyes. If I hadn't known her answer already, that would've told me. "As a result of the accident, your blood's ability to dissolve nitrogen has been massively reduced. If you dive again, surfacing would kill you. So the answer is no, you won't. I'm sorry."

I felt my hands come up to cover my face. She spoke, but I didn't hear it. She must have realised that, because after a while, her hand touched my shoulder and squeezed lightly. Then she left.

 

 

A PIECE OF rusty iron. A moment's panic. And everything changes. Go into the water with one life, come out with another.

"I've loved the sea since I was a kid. Whenever we went to the beach, my parents could never get me out of the water. I might still be able to swim, at least. If I'm careful. There's that at least."

"Well, that's good anyway."

Dr Whittaker shifted in his chair, an ageing teddy-bear in smart casuals. His office was like him - likeably cluttered, lived-in.

A clock ticked quietly on the wall. I lay back on the couch. Faint sounds of birdsong and distant traffic came from outside. It was early October, but the light filtering through the windows was still warm.

"Have you given any more thought to your future?"

What future? But that would be Negative. That would be A Bad Sign. He'd want more sessions. Fuck that. All I wanted now was just to get away. No more sympathy. No more understanding. Just leave me alone, everybody.

"Not as yet. It's hard to say."

"Well, no reason you can't continue your work as a lecturer, once you feel able. You said they were holding your post for you?"

My day job - lecturer in Marine Biology at Manchester University - was purely academic; I'd dived chiefly when I wanted to, in my own time. No. No reason I couldn't go back. Except the way the students would look at me, especially the pretty ones I would have flirted with before the summer break... a thousand years ago.

"Yes. Leave of absence. Get myself back in order."

"How long?"

"The next academic year, at least."

"Generous of them."

"Yes." I was reasonably popular, not bad going with half-a-dozen exes on the staff. But I was always good at staying friends. As a lover, I'd never been cruel. Just wanted more than they could give. Or they'd wanted more from me. Depends on who you asked.

"So, a year to recuperate and..." Whittaker spread his hands. "Chart some sort of course. Any ideas as yet?"

"Not for the long-term, not yet. But for now I've taken a lease on a place in Wales. Away from it all. The city's too..."

"Whereabouts in Wales?"

"Barmouth. Gwynedd coast. Nice place."

"The coast."

"Yes."

"Do you feel that's wise?"

"Yes. I do." I heard my voice rise. But I was tired of having my thoughts and motives picked over. Another reason I had to get away.

"Well, if you're sure..."

"I am."

"I'll give you my number, of course. Any time, night or day, if you have a problem."

"Thanks, doctor."

And I meant it, even though I had no intention of calling him.

"Ben?" I stopped at the door. "Is there anything else you want to discuss, before you go?"

I pretended to think it over, then shook my head. "No. Really. Thanks."

A lie, of course.

There were the dreams I kept having. I kept waking from them, sure I could still hear the sound of breaking waves. In the hospital I'd put them down to the sea's proximity, but they'd continued in Manchester.

So had the echo of voices, calling my name.

I told you my memories of the accident are blurred. In particular, what happened right after my hose broke. Bubbles and silt, blind panic, trying not to breathe in...

There were images in the dreams. Of the accident, except that I could see more clearly in the whirling dark. And there were faces in it, coming out of the darkness, out of the water itself.

Faces with eyes that glowed green.

 

 

I MOVED OUT of my flat in Didsbury village that weekend. Went round the place packing stuff. What to keep, what to throw away.

I took my old diving equipment. Wetsuit, aqualung, flippers and mask. I should have junked it. But somehow I couldn't. It was too final a goodbye.

One of my exes - a sweet, kind-hearted lady called Janet who I really should've appreciated more - drove me down one evening, saw me safely into my new home, pecked me on the cheek and drove home, gracefully turning down my offer of dinner.

Probably just as well.

I stood outside my front door gazing out towards the harbour. It was dark by now, but I could hear the break and hush of the waves. I stood there listening to them for a while, savouring the wind's salt tang, then went inside.