I’ve lost count of how many strokes Willy has had in the last few months. It seems like every couple of weeks we have to call him an ambulance. The first time I was concerned; now I’m barely phased. The detachment is a coping mechanism, not indifference. A dulling of the senses is a hard learnt survival skill for any trauma you know is to come.
I wonder where this part of me originates and identify any number of factors going back as far as I want to remember, which is as far back as I can remember. But it was during the ten years I spent nursing that I learnt I could make a living out of it. Every time someone died in front of me it was a deeply profound and upsetting experience. But not in the moment. You don’t have the opportunity for feelings or reflection at the time. You have to put your natural response aside for later. Or block it out completely. Either way the emotional toll will eventually be taken.
So I watch Willy being wheeled out the door on a stretcher after having his nth stroke in as many months and all I can think is how relaxed about the whole thing he is. How nonachalant. Because he knows he could have a stroke at any time and the truth is, he doesn’t care. In the same way he doesn’t care about who has to call the ambulance, or the paramedics who attend him, or any of the other people involved. He honestly couldn’t give a shit. Which I find both admirable and appaling in equal measure. Willy’s apparent detachment from another close call with death is neither a coping mechanism nor indifference, it’s a front row seat to the spectacle with a fag in one hand and a pie in the other.
So I watch him being wheeled out the door on a stretcher, fucking loving it, knowing he’ll be back in a couple of days, and I think…you wanker.
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