Read Online Dream of the Blue Room by Michelle Richmond - Free Book Online Page A

meanwhile, is listening, looking around, taking in everything. He thrives on pandemonium. For Dave, the noisier it is, the clearer his focus. I can tell by the way he sets his chopsticks neatly on each side of his plate, like a fork and spoon, and rearranges the napkin on his lap, that he’s about to launch into a line of questioning.
    “Graham,” he says. “I understand you have Lou Gehrig’s disease.” I give Dave a little kick under the table, but he persists. “Are you in pain?”
    Far from being offended, Graham seems utterly at ease with the question. “Yes. I’m in quite a lot of pain, in fact. Not at this moment, but there’s rarely a week when I’m not knocked flat by it at some point. It’s not the muscle atrophy, but rather the side effects—the aches and swelling.”
    “God,” Stacy says. “That sounds awful.” She struggles with a piece of calamari, which slides through her chopsticks and lands in her lap.
    “How do you deal with it?” Dave asks.
    “At first I didn’t. I cried like a baby, spent a lot of time in bed with the remote control and Baywatch . I had to keep the TV on, because when it was quiet my mind went berserk. I’d just sit there envisioning myself in the end, wheelchair-bound, taking liquids through a feeding tube. After a couple of months, I did a reality check. I decided the best thing I can do is live a little more each day. That’s why I’m here—to spend my last days in the place I love.”
    “I read this book,” Stacy says, “about a guy with Lou Gehrig’s disease.” Having given up on the chopsticks, she picks up a piece of calamari with her fingers and pops it in her mouth. “It was really inspirational.”
    “I probably read it too,” Graham says. “For a while, I read everything that was published on the subject. I could recite the statistics in my sleep. Twenty percent survive five years. Ten percent make it ten years.” He catches my eye. “But I’m not planning to stick around until this disease turns me into an invalid.”
    “A few years back I was called out on an attempted suicide,” Dave says. “Forty-nine-year-old woman. She’d tried to hang herself from the light fixture in her dining room, but the rope broke and her daughter found her on the floor an hour later. Turns out she had ALS. Just didn’t want to live like that.”
    Stacy clears her throat. Graham glances around the table and says, “Cheer up, mates,” but there’s nothing cheerful in his voice. After that, no one says anything for a minute. Graham lifts his bowl and drinks off the last of his soup. The waitress is immediately by his side, ladling more into his bowl.
    “I’ll tell you what this disease has done for me. It has taught me to recalibrate pain. When I was nineteen, I spent six months in a body cast following a motorcycle accident. Now, those six months seem like a picnic. I’ve reached a new threshold, a new standard by which to judge all other pain. Let me demonstrate.” He says something to the waitress, who brings him a matchbook. Graham strikes the match against the side of the box, then holds it just below his open palm. The tip of the flame touches his skin, but he doesn’t flinch. He holds it there until the flame reaches the end of the match; I lean forward and blow it out.
    “Bravo,” Dave says.
    Graham holds his palm out for us to see. A small dot in the center of his broad hand is singed black. The entire waitstaff has gathered around to look. A pretty girl with a thin white scar stretching from her left eye to her cheek points at Graham and shouts words I can’t understand. The old woman says something that makes the staff and patrons laugh, then shoos everyone away from our table.
    “You get my point.” Graham shifts in his seat; his leg brushes mine. “That stunt I just pulled was uncomfortable, of course, but how bad can it be when you know it’s going to end in a few seconds? Chronic pain is an altogether different beast. There’s no