Danny wiping at his face with his hand, and Einstein licking the blood from his fingers.
&nbs
p; You got a smoke, Danny said, and Mike rolled one up, and Danny smoked it quick enough that no one could take it off him, coughing up bloody phlegm once he’d done.
He’d left London to get away from this kind of thing, and it had followed him anyway. Weren’t nowhere safe when it came down to it.
He’d walked out early in the morning, walked right up to Brent Cross and then waited all day for a lift up the Great North Road and this was as far as he’d got and he was desperate now. Desperate to get sorted.
You know where I can score? he asked, and Mike made him a deal.
Always waiting for that.
Always working and watching and chasing around for a bag of that. Jesus but. The man-hours that go into living like this. Takes some dedication, takes some fucking, what, commitment.
Getting a bag and then finding somewhere to go to cook it up in a spoon and dig it into your arm or your leg or that mighty old femoral vein down in between your thighs. The water and the brown and the citric, waiting for it all to dissolve, holding up the flame while those tiny bubbles pop and then drawing it up through the filter and the needle into the syringe. And waiting again for the gear to cool down. Sitting with someone you’ve only just met, in a rib-roofed room with a gaping hole where the window should be, the floor littered with broken tiles and bricks, in a building you can’t remember the way out of. Tightening off the strap and waiting for the vein to come up. This bloke you’ve only just met passing you the loaded syringe. Smacking at your mottled skin and waiting for the vein to come up. Pinching and pulling and poking around and waiting for the vein to come up and then easing the needle in, drawing back a tiny bloom of blood before gently pushing the gear back home.
Wait all day for that.
Do anything for that. Fucking, anything.
Steve still waiting for Ant to sort him out like that. Don’t even know what he’s waiting for yet.
Sinking back on to the floor and Mike sitting there saying You like that then pal while he cooks up his own. That good for you, Danny boy? Saying Just so long as you stick to the deal, because if you don’t I will switch on you like you wouldn’t believe, you remember that, I’ve done it before, you know what I’m saying.
Smiling and pulling a blanket up over Danny, right over his head. Turning away, tugging down his trousers and sticking himself in the fem. Feeling better before the needle even went in. Believe that pal, only thing he’s ever found that makes him feel better like that. Nothing else can do the job, and it took him two stays in hospital to figure that one out and that was two too many. All the lies he had to tell to get out at all, all the pills they gave him to keep him well, and none of it did no good. First thing he learnt when he got in there was they didn’t want to hear about the details, they didn’t want to know about all the stuff he was overhearing and all his what they called it his unusual ideas. None of that. They asked him about it but the deal was really they wanted him to just shut up about it. Everyone on the outside and the inside wanted him to just shut up about all of it. That’s how come he was there in the first place, on account of not learning to shut up. One of the first things the other patients told him when he got in there was Stop making a fuss and learn the magic words: I feel much better now, thank you. Which he didn’t though like, not by a long stretch of the very elastic imagination he had, but he got the hang of saying it when they asked and they let him split. Totally terrified when they let him go though. Mental. So many people talking at him he couldn’t hardly hear a thing, couldn’t think straight, thought he was going to walk out in front of a bus as soon as he got out the hospital gates. Thought the like the snatch squads or something would come and get him within a day. But then he hooked up with some of the old crowd from before, and they’d got into the gear while he was inside and they told him it would help calm him down. Best prescription he’d ever had and he’d had a few. Was only when he felt that warm hollowing out inside him that he felt better, only when he felt the silence settling down inside his head that he could honestly say Now then pal I feel much better now, thank you. No one bothering him then. No one trying to tell him things and talking all at once.
I feel much much better now, thank you.
Do anything to hold on to that.
Do anything to get back to that. Keep getting back up to get back to that feeling well again. Feeling well, feeling sorted, feeling like all the, the worries have been taken away. The fears. All the emotions taken care of. That feeling of, what is it, just, like, absence, from the world. Like taking your own life away, just for a while. Like what the French call it la, the little death. And then getting up and doing it again, every time. We get up, and we do it all over again.
What else can we do.
And how long must we wait. How long have we waited already. For something to happen. For someone to come. For some fucking thing to change.
Like Laura’s keyworker giving it all Change is something you need to do for yourself, Laura. You can’t wait until someone else does it for you. All those sessions she had with him, going through assessment forms and working out goals and all that. I want to go to rehab, she said, first time she got an appointment with him, but he kept giving it all No but it’s not as simple as that, Laura. It’s not like you can get in a taxi to rehab and then come back in six months’ time all cleaned up. Going on about how it was a process. Going We should start by looking at harm minimisation, we should talk about your immediate needs, we should think about getting you on to a script.
All that stuff on the assessment forms. On a scale of one to ten I feel one very comfortable or ten very uncomfortable with my level of drug use. On a scale of one to ten I feel one very optimistic or ten very pessimistic about my life in the future. All that. Talking about triggers and associations, talking about risk behaviours, talking about histories and plans for the future and trying to make sure she came along to the next appointment. Saying things like Laura, if I can get you to make yourself a cup of tea when you wake up in the morning then we’re halfway there, if we can find some space in your head for things apart from drugs then we’re making progress. Asking about what her interests had been before she’d had a habit.
Waiting for the appointments sometimes she felt like she was just one of his pet projects, like he was only pleased she was getting anywhere because then he could mark her up on his monitoring forms and make a big song and dance about her to the project funders. But sometimes it seemed like he was actually bothered and that was something new. He kept going on about how he knew where she was coming from, he’d been there himself, and if he could get clean and get out then so could she. Giving it all There’s no such thing as a hopeless case now, Laura, I mean you should have seen me. Laughing but she didn’t get the joke. But anyway she mostly kept going to the appointments. He’d said it would be a long wait for a place in rehab and it was something to do in the meantime.
Told Danny all this one time and here he is telling us now.
Doing our time in these waiting rooms. These rooms all the same as each other. A clock on the wall, hard metal chairs, a stack of old magazines, a box of toys in one corner. And always someone losing it and banging their fists against the toughened glass and shouting at the staff who just sit a bit further back and wait for Security.
Benefits office, housing office, doctor’s surgery, probation. Sit there waiting for your number to come up, and you get used to it after a while. It’s dry and it’s warm and that’s a start. That’s something. As good a place to sit as any other and we’ve got the time to spare. Haven’t we just. All the time in the world. Nothing much better to do. Is that right.
Those signs saying Our staff are entitled to work without fear of violence or abuse.
Those signs saying Anyone spitting at a member of staff will be prosecuted.
The clock ticking round and the hard metal chairs.
The clock ticking round and Robert cold on his steel bed behind that door.
Some baby crying again, and some girl begging