There was some sort of commotion in the corridor, then a bed was wheeled into the space beside me. The man on the bed eyed me sideways from his pillow and I eyed him from mine.
"You look a bit rough, mate," he said after a while.
I thought, I could say the same about you, mate; that's a nasty bruise you've got on your face. Instead, I croaked, "Not as rough as I was." Which was true.
"What you in for then?" said the man.
"Triple bypass," I said. "They call it cabbage."
"Cabbage?" he said.
"That's what the doctors call it," I said. "Cabbage surgery."
I felt tired and closed my eyes. I must have drifted off. When I came to I saw that the man was still watching me from his pillow.
"Alright then?" he said.
"Yes thanks," I managed.
"Thing is," he said, lowering his voice so I could only just hear, "Thing is, I come in from next door."
"Next door?"
"The Scrubs," he said, in the same low voice.
This hospital's beside the prison, I thought; of course it is. I was still coming down from my near-death experience. I had tubes coming out all over the place.
"What are you in for then?" I asked, seeing as he'd asked me.
"GBH," he said.
"No, I didn't mean that," I said, a bit confused.
"Eight years," he said.
"You were stitched up?" I suggested.
"You could say that," he said. "Yeah."
"So was I!" I said. "That makes two of us. No I mustn't laugh, ow, I'll come apart."
At this point he started chuckling: hur-hur-hur.
As I lay there trying to hold my insides in and not laugh, there came into my mind the terror I'd felt as a child when my father was reading to me one time, about a boy in a graveyard and a villain saying "I'll have your heart and liver out." Something like that.
"Tell the truth," said the man, "I told 'em I was having a heart attack."
"Oh," I said.
"Yeah," he said. "Look mate, do me a favour."
"What?"
"Tell me what it's like."
"What, a heart attack?" I said.
"Yeah. So I can tell the doctors when they get round to me. Then they'll have to keep me in for tests."
"Oh," I said, and stopped to think about this.
"I needed a break," he said.
Fair enough, I thought; fair enough.
"At first it's like a finger," I said. "Pressing very hard in your chest so you can't breathe. There's a pain in your left shoulder, then it spreads, the pain, up your neck to your jaw."
"Your jaw," he said, stroking his stubble thoughtfully.
"Yes. It's like a vice. You're being squeezed in a vice and it's making you break out in a muck sweat."
I didn't like to remember it.
"That's good," he said. "Like a vice. Thanks."
He rolled his head on the pillow and stared up at the ceiling.
"What's it like then?" I said after a while. "Next door?"
He turned his big expressionless face my way again.
"Boring," he said at last.
"Tell them your old man died of a heart attack," I said. "Because it's often something that's in the family."
"He did an' all."
"Play that up. And, sorry if this sounds a bit personal, but you're quite big too."
"Twenty stone."
"That's good. So if they ask, tell them you like fry-ups and salt with everything."
"Then I won't be telling no lies, will I," he said.
"Right," I said, closing my eyes.
I realised I was exhausted. I still couldn't get used to this being me, this poor old creature on the bed, ribcage held together with wire, left leg heavily bandaged.
The night before the operation, once I'd signed a form saying it was nobody's fault if I died, and once the surgeon had told me my heart was the same size as a clenched fist; yes; how strange. So. Once they'd all gone, I was lying in bed looking at a beautiful tree I could see outside the window where it was waving its branches slowly in the wind, and I thought about my life, all the nice things I'd done.
Then afterwards, when I woke up, I had a big tube in my throat, which was something I'd been frightened of happening. I'd had a real terror of waking up to find myself on a ventilator with a tube down my throat. The nurse brought me a pen and paper and I wrote, "How long tube in?" She told me, ten minutes. But very soon after that she took the tube out and I knew I could stop worrying.
Next, though I don't remember this, I wrote "I'm so happy" and tore the sheet of paper off the pad and gave it to her; and I kept on doing this, she told me, sheet after sheet, till it was finished.
I opened my eyes now and saw my neighbour was still watching me.
"Looks like you had a nice little kip," he said, almost tenderly.
"I get tired," I croaked.
"When they going to let you out then?"
"Three days' time. Hard to believe, but that's what the nurse said today."
"You bin in the wars," he said. "You got to rest."
An image of the world at rest on a beach flashed into my mind, epic regiments of sunbathers like those terracotta soldiers from China – but lying down of course instead of standing up.
"We're on our holidays!" I said, with a great big smile.
I felt outstandingly happy; I felt like I was floating.
"That's right, mate," he said. "We're on the Costa Brava. Hur-hur-hur."
"Don't make me laugh," I begged.
Part of me was horror-struck in case my wound opened up and my heart fell out. More, though, I was happy in a very basic way. These hospital beds weren't exactly padded sun-loungers but on the other hand they were definitely above ground rather than below it.
"Torremolinos!" said the man in the next bed. "Hur-hur-hur."
"Give it a rest," I pleaded, holding my sides and laughing very carefully.