Contemporaneous: Chapters 25 – 26
25. Every aspect of my life seeps back in: the weight of my body; the tiredness in my eyes and my muscles; the imbalance in my mind, thoughts too quick; the way the nerve damage has scrunched up my right foot, and the break welded the ankle until it’s almost fused; and then the dissonance, of feeling I’m not fitting, and unsure what comes next. But that’s different, like feeling the onset of a bug, feeling it gradually worsen, feeling it become incapacitating, but that now happens so quickly, almost instantaneously, and only in feeling it come on do I know how far removed I am from whatever I shouldn’t…
Contemporaneous: Chapters 23 – 24
23. Like when the car hit me, there’s no pain. But there is a sudden sense of shearing, of weight falling from me until all the aches of being almost fifty, the pain in my foot and leg, the tiredness in my body, and the inebriation in my head, shred, like they’re nothing more than tissue paper holding me, and I’m immersed in a thick grey mist. And I see everything because, as the cliché goes, it’s almost like life flashing before my eyes, but instead it’s a rapid recount: my birth; running happily around as a kid; school and my first teacher, am amputee without a right hand, which…