military check-point. I’d lost so much blood that they thought I hadn’t even seen the thing. I knew better. Even though I couldn’t remember any of it, I knew that with death on my tail, I wouldn’t have wanted to wait until the barrier lifted. Taking my foot off the pedal would have been tantamount to allowing Tommy in through the back door.
Yet again, I found myself in hospital, only this time it was a proper hospital; one run with military precision by the Americans. It had to be the Americans. Even accounting for my grogginess during my first meeting with the doctor - hell, even before then - I’d known. For this was a place which stunk of money, sparkled with efficiency and oozed confidence. Instead of the commandeered farm buildings of the British hospital, the Americans had built their own space and it was all gunmetal grey walls and proper sterility. Full of hushed voices reverberating along corridors and blazing lights on every ceiling, night and day. Like a proper hospital should be, if they ever expect any of the patients to survive.
Despite the fact that I was rigged up to all kinds of bleeping electronic equipment and had tubes sticking out of every available vein, I should have felt a strange kind of reassurance. And the fact that it looked like an episode of ER, rather than the goddamn Texas Chainsaw Massacre slaughterhouse I’d escaped from, should have had me thinking: ‘Nothing but the best for a Kingsman.’ But it didn’t.
I cracked open my eyes, feeling the build-up of the mucus that mothers like to tell their children is called ‘sleep’ weighing heavily on the lids. I took another look around the small room which they had installed me in. There was no corrugated iron to be seen; no other patients either. Just me, the big comfortable bed and the machines that were arranged around me ready to take care of my every bodily need. But what about my mental needs?
Almost without knowing I was doing it, I took furtive glances for shadows lurking in the corners of the room, but it was too light for that. I should have felt reassured… But I didn’t. I felt my heart marching along far too quickly. It would stumble and fall like poor Selly if it continued like that.
I felt heaviness around my head like water. Pressing, pressing. Like there were hands there, forceful as a vice but soft too, so the fingers didn’t even make an impression on my head. And now, as I looked back at the machinery, I realised that it actually looked like praying relatives collected around a death-bed. Waiting. Just waiting.
I looked for comfort somewhere, anywhere in the room and settled on the fact that although it was cold and impersonal, at least it felt secure; cell-like. And from the look of the weighty door, it did look as though they had me imprisoned, but then I wasn’t worried about getting out, I was more worried about something getting in. In a space so sophisticated, some people better off than me could have readily believed that monsters didn’t exist, but I knew better. I knew about Tommy Peaker and what he’d done to me. And almost as soon as I even thought his name, I was wracked with more excruciating pain from my foot, and from my shoulder and from my chest and I’d find it difficult not to scream.
Okay, I suppose I did scream. And then, shortly afterwards, I saw a face squashed up against the small grilled-window on the door, fogging up the glass with her breath. But presently, the figure slipped away back into the corridor instead of coming in again and administering me with the cure-all, forget-all drug which I so needed. They probably had me smacked up to the eyeballs on methadone or something, but in a country like Afghanistan, they could have got hold of some proper H for me. Hell, in Mayo province alone, they had more opium fields than in the whole of the world’s second biggest heroin-producing country . Hell, they could have reached out into the hospital garden, if there was such a
Yet again, I found myself in hospital, only this time it was a proper hospital; one run with military precision by the Americans. It had to be the Americans. Even accounting for my grogginess during my first meeting with the doctor - hell, even before then - I’d known. For this was a place which stunk of money, sparkled with efficiency and oozed confidence. Instead of the commandeered farm buildings of the British hospital, the Americans had built their own space and it was all gunmetal grey walls and proper sterility. Full of hushed voices reverberating along corridors and blazing lights on every ceiling, night and day. Like a proper hospital should be, if they ever expect any of the patients to survive.
Despite the fact that I was rigged up to all kinds of bleeping electronic equipment and had tubes sticking out of every available vein, I should have felt a strange kind of reassurance. And the fact that it looked like an episode of ER, rather than the goddamn Texas Chainsaw Massacre slaughterhouse I’d escaped from, should have had me thinking: ‘Nothing but the best for a Kingsman.’ But it didn’t.
I cracked open my eyes, feeling the build-up of the mucus that mothers like to tell their children is called ‘sleep’ weighing heavily on the lids. I took another look around the small room which they had installed me in. There was no corrugated iron to be seen; no other patients either. Just me, the big comfortable bed and the machines that were arranged around me ready to take care of my every bodily need. But what about my mental needs?
Almost without knowing I was doing it, I took furtive glances for shadows lurking in the corners of the room, but it was too light for that. I should have felt reassured… But I didn’t. I felt my heart marching along far too quickly. It would stumble and fall like poor Selly if it continued like that.
I felt heaviness around my head like water. Pressing, pressing. Like there were hands there, forceful as a vice but soft too, so the fingers didn’t even make an impression on my head. And now, as I looked back at the machinery, I realised that it actually looked like praying relatives collected around a death-bed. Waiting. Just waiting.
I looked for comfort somewhere, anywhere in the room and settled on the fact that although it was cold and impersonal, at least it felt secure; cell-like. And from the look of the weighty door, it did look as though they had me imprisoned, but then I wasn’t worried about getting out, I was more worried about something getting in. In a space so sophisticated, some people better off than me could have readily believed that monsters didn’t exist, but I knew better. I knew about Tommy Peaker and what he’d done to me. And almost as soon as I even thought his name, I was wracked with more excruciating pain from my foot, and from my shoulder and from my chest and I’d find it difficult not to scream.
Okay, I suppose I did scream. And then, shortly afterwards, I saw a face squashed up against the small grilled-window on the door, fogging up the glass with her breath. But presently, the figure slipped away back into the corridor instead of coming in again and administering me with the cure-all, forget-all drug which I so needed. They probably had me smacked up to the eyeballs on methadone or something, but in a country like Afghanistan, they could have got hold of some proper H for me. Hell, in Mayo province alone, they had more opium fields than in the whole of the world’s second biggest heroin-producing country . Hell, they could have reached out into the hospital garden, if there was such a
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