WAKING SLOW ~
Corporal Ivy opens his eyes, blinks, and sees Blake’s “Glad Day,” painted on the ceiling. “That’s me,” says he once and again. What a fine figure of a man am I! The fan has been running intermittently all night, but steady since the morning bell. The room smells like it is above the Hero’s Hotel bar in Boundary Creek, Manitoba. The room smells like a dentist’s office more precisely, which is what it was, once upon a time, before the hotel’s sale to the Administration, and the occupancy of Corporal Ivy.
“Iris,” he says, “my meds and water please.” The wheelchair wide door to the pain room opens admitting Iris who drifts in and stops at bedside. “Shall I serve?” “Always,” says the crippled naked man, pleased at the progress of automated service since the Rumba, no the Roomba, it was, had diddled around his feet. He liked the sound of the name enough to buy stock. He was fond of the sound of small electric motors, though nothing beat a gas mower for the lawn outside. That was one of his harvested sounds, collected by one of the homecare workers, handy with recording devices.
He had neither a Roomba, now, nor feet for it to diddle around. Both his legs were amputated below the knee following an industrial accident, a photo shoot actually, which had been his occupation until his preoccupation with focus caused him to drop sixteen feet. He was surprised that he landed upright like his cat, until his ankles shattered. “Fucking useless hardhat!” he exclaimed, the witnesses later testified, and tossing it away with nothing between him and the concrete when he started to wobble, fainted and fell on his face. “Oh shit,” said the forklift operator, “not my fault.” “Oh shit,” said the shift super, “more paperwork.” Memories got a little hazy at this point, what with the screaming and bleeding and blaming and hiding, the lights falling from the scaffolding after it had stopped the fork lift operator from running over Mr. Unfocused on the floor.
Iris opened the bedside fridge to the bedside water, juice and milk. She placed a clean cold glass on a cork lined serving tray, filled it from a pitcher of filtered cold water sourced from the springs in Marchand Manitoba, placing it on a hospital style table swinging over the bed when convenient. She opened his night table drawer, preparing his oral medications.
Corporal was thirsty, drank harshly and took his seven different pills, some psychotropic, some for physical pain. He clicked his stereo remote currently programmed for Beethoven string quartets. The bed was programmed with his seven favourite positions including one that actually stretched him backwards and lowered his head. Wished they could reprogram my back, riddled with osteoarthritis, bad cartilage genetics causing degenerative disc disease. Collapsing on his nerves.
This part of the day, did not vary, until he lay back to wait for the meds to kick in and reduce his pain levels to allow for the zip to the loo, and a ritual bath. “Let’s have Greece,” he said settling back with his legs spread, under a thin top sheet with a fan blowing over him. He had access to envirocams all over the world, but chose seven for the year 2027. He imagined he might change things up in 2028.
The ceiling screen filled with images of Kanakai Beach, virtually deserted, on the Island of Salamis, close to the cave of Euripides writing the Tragedy of Oedipus.