Living Death by Graham Masterton

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    When she had finished her drink, she went back into the bathroom to brush her teeth. As she switched on the light in the hallway, John called out, ‘Bridie?’ He sounded groggy, as if he were talking in his sleep.
    Katie hesitated for a moment and then pushed open the nursery door. John was lying in the single bed beside the window. His hair was tousled and his face was shiny with sweat. The dark brown blanket that was covering his legs was humped up by a metal cage, which kept the weight off his stumps.
    He frowned at her as she switched on the bedside lamp and dragged over the small hessian-covered armchair in which she used to sit at night and breast-feed Seamus.
    ‘Katie, you’re back,’ he said, thickly. ‘What time is it?’
    ‘Midnight, nearly. I got back about an hour ago.’
    He tried to lift his head off the pillow, but then let it fall back again. ‘Mother of God, I feel like shit. I don’t know what they put in those pills they gave me. Rohypnol, most like.’
    Katie laid her hand on his shoulder. ‘John, it’s going to take you a long time to recover from this, but you will. You’ll just have to be very patient.’
    He raised his eyebrows and attempted a smile. ‘At least I have you. If I didn’t have you, I think I’d take an overdose.’
    ‘You shouldn’t talk like that. Look at all the people who have lost their legs like you, and still have full and happy lives.’
    He lifted the blanket and looked down at himself. ‘Do you know what the worst thing is?’
    ‘You can still feel your legs, even though they’re gone? That’s what Bridie said, anyway.’
    ‘Well, yes, that’s bad enough. I can even wiggle my toes, can you believe that? But that’s not it. That’s not the worst thing of all.’
    Katie waited for him to tell her. She kept her hand on his shoulder and she could feel how tense he was. His muscles were so taut that she felt almost as if he could catapult clear into the air, lifting all his blankets with him, and then crash back down on the bed.
    Instead, though, he started to cry. His eyes filled with tears and his mouth was dragged down like a miserable child.
    ‘Oh God,’ he said, shaking his head from side to side. ‘Oh Jesus and Mary.’
    ‘John,’ said Katie, and stroked his sweat-beaded forehead. ‘You’ll get better and better as the time goes by. It’s going to take a while, darling, like I say, but one day you’ll be walking again. Who knows, you could even be running, and you’ll wonder why you ever felt so desperate.’
    ‘But I’ll never be like a man again,’ he sobbed, wiping the tears from his face with the sleeve of his pyjamas. ‘I’ll always be short, like a freak, or a dwarf, or a small kid who never grew up. What difference will it make if I have prosthetic legs, or blades, or whatever? I could have stilts that make me a foot taller than everybody else around me. But that’s all I’ll be. A freak, or a dwarf, or a small kid on stilts. And don’t tell me that everybody else won’t secretly feel the same way.’
    ‘They won’t, John. People don’t treat amputees like that. None of the people that I know.’
    But John continued to weep and shake his head, and he gripped Katie’s hands so tightly that her rings were pressed painfully into her fingers.
    She gradually levered her hands free and then patted his shoulder, although she was aware that she was treating him more like Barney than her one-time lover. ‘John, I swear on the Bible that you’ll get over this, and that you’ll feel like more of a man again. Garda O’Leary lost a leg in a car crash three years ago, and you should see him now. He runs a football coaching course for Rebel Óg.’
    John gave a last heaving sob and then he wiped his face with his sleeves again and said, ‘You’re right, Katie. You’re totally right. I know I shouldn’t be feeling so damned sorry for myself. And I should be much more appreciative of what