Free Judith by Nicholas Mosley

go and sit with Oliver. I thought – But if these people have envy, is it not satisfied by the chance of death?
    Have you ever been in the intensive-care unit of a hospital? Figures in white coats stand facing switches and dials. Theswitches and dials are on the faces on machines that are connected by wires and tubes to bodies. It is as if the bodies are feeding the machines; and the people in white coats are there to see that the supply of food does not run out.
    Oliver was on a bed like a trolley. There was a large tube going down his throat, a smaller one in at the side of his neck, and one coming out from the sheets at the bottom of the bed. There were two pads on his chest from which wires went to a machine with a screen on it like a clock; the numbers became sometimes greater and sometimes less; this was to do with his heartbeat. There was another machine which drew zig-zag lines on a roll of paper and it was as if these were to do with the weather in other bits of Oliver. The pipe down his throat was like some terrible sexual violation.
    I sat beside Oliver and I sometimes held my hand on his arm and I watched the numbers on the screen above his head grow greater and sometimes less. I thought – If you can measure a person’s life, can you not also alter it? This was, I think, what I had been trying to say to the Professor. I wanted to alter Oliver’s life because I felt that he had asked me to; he must have been someone who had come near enough to rock bottom.
    I stayed with Oliver through most of that day; I had nowhere else, after all, to go. I thought – People’s lives might bounce up from just such moments, mightn’t they? when nothing much else seems to be happening.
    One of the nurses told me that I need not wait: that Oliver would not regain consciousness, if he did, until late that evening. I thought – But is it also myself who might change? now that there is nothing much, or everything, happening?
    I went down to the canteen where people sat as if in limbo, waiting for their tickets to heaven or to hell.
    Late that evening Oliver’s hands began to move; they fluttered; they seemed to be trying to pull out the terrible pipe down his throat. It was like someone trying to pull himself up by his gut-strings. I could not bear this; Oliver’s fingers scrabbled like fish-bait in the tin. I asked a nurse if she couldtake the pipe out; she said the right time for the pipe to come out was when he was strong enough to pull it out himself. I thought – But who ever gets out of the tin on their own? I sometimes held Oliver’s hand to stop him scratching: he had beautiful fine-boned hands with long fingers. After a time I could no longer bear it and I helped him to pull the pipe out from his throat; it came out with a dreadful noise like a horse’s penis.
    I asked Oliver if he could hear what I was saying, and if he could, would he press my hand. He pressed. I asked him if he knew who I was, and did he want me to stay with him, I mean did he want me to come back and be with him in the morning. There was a pause while he seemed to be trying to open his eyes; they were like dried-out seaweed waiting for water; then he squeezed my hand over and over. So I said I would stay with him until he fell asleep, and I would come back. I thought – You feel you know just where you are, do you, when someone has been on the point of dying?
    I went back to Oliver’s flat. I wanted to see if there was anything more I should clean up. Also, I had not had a home of my own for some time.
    I put the chain on the door behind me. I thought – This is some cave: I am hiding from pursuers: I am one of those primitive humans who have just learned the secret of fire.
    There did not seem to have been anyone living in the flat; nothing was unpacked; there were none of Oliver’s paintings; there was no sign of anything belonging to a woman.
    I thought – It is as if he had