WHY ISN’T THERE A MEDIC HERE?

‘Do you know this place?’ she said. ‘They’re going to flatten it and sweep it all away. Just like that...’
We were stood on the ridge of a line of slag.
She turned to me and said, ‘do you thhink he’s dead?’
‘He got her pregnant,’ I said, ‘and now he’s got to marry her.’
She walked across the garage forecourt through a door she closed behind her.
‘There’s more to come,’ she said later. ‘Don’t you worry about that.’
‘What do you mean?’
She shone a torch in my eyes and for a few minutes I only saw the light.
‘It’s a family story he never finished,’ she said.
‘Do you think he’s punishing me?’
‘Depends how you look at it.’
They lay each on a stainless steel gurney.
‘Sometimes I see things but then I don’t know if they’re really there,’ he said speaking for the first time.
‘You need a leap of imagination,’ she said.
‘That might be true,’ he said, ‘but what if your friend is your enemy?’
‘That’s why I renounced God,’ she said rinsing his mouth out with water from a bottle then wiping his lips with a monogrammed handkerchief. ‘I couldn’t understand such a strict father.’
Twenty-six, twenty-nine. When they reached the suite on the top floor she noticed the furniture had been moved.
‘So what do you want to do now?’ I said.
‘Some things come to you,’ she said, ‘gradually. It takes time. Then you know, you just know.’