Rat Medicine & Other Unlikely Curatives. Lauren B. Davis
mucous, peeling skin, egg shells, green paint, cigarette butts and other things he had trouble identifying.
He was extremely tired. His body was lead, although he didn’t feel very much pain, for which he was immensely grateful. He concluded the best thing he could do was sleep. That seemed very sensible.
He untied his ankles and crawled to the couch. He hauled himself up onto the soft cool leather and instantly fell asleep.
Craig, the neighbour who often locked himself out, found Stewart later in the morning. First he was sick to his stomach, and then he called an ambulance, and so Stewart did not die, although he wished for sometime afterwards that he had.
His friends, David and Diane, came by the hospital to visit. They brought a Walkman and Vivaldi tapes.
“We thought this might help,” they said, softly, awed by the presence of so much equipment, so many blinking lights and bleeping monitors. They put the tape in, and lay the earphones gently on the batting of the bandages, trying not to hurt him.
“That’s very kind of you,” he said, although his words were hard to understand given the condition of his mouth.
When his friends left he buzzed for the nurse and asked her to disconnect the music.
Stewart moved away some months later, when he was released from hospital. He didn’t keep in touch, although he was polite when anyone called round to see how he was doing. He said the therapy was helping.
When he was gone, and the twitter of talk died down, the neighbourhood was a quieter place than it had been. More reserved. More self-conscious. The ‘perpetrators’ had never been caught. They were still out there somewhere. People drew their blinds and checked their locks twice before turning in. New people moved in and found this neighbourhood no different than other sections of the city, no warmer, no more welcoming. They wondered why their friends had raved about it. People hesitated before unfamiliar faces. They didn’t strike up conversations over their morning cappuccinos. After all, you never could tell, could you? The world was such a dangerous place these days.
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