Playing Dead by Jessie Keane Page A

that death was hovering very close to this poor stranger; perhaps it would be a mercy if he was taken.
    The medics were glancing at each other. The man seemed to be a foreigner from what he was babbling, and he had no clothes with him. Who was going to cover the cost of his care?
    ‘The monastery will pay for his treatment,’ said Brother Benito, seeing clearly where their thoughts were straying. He was a lost soul, poor man; it was an honour to play the Good Samaritan, to offer whatever little help might be of use.
    The man’s dark blue eyes were opening, and the medics hovered more closely over him, asking him who he was, where he was from.
    The man’s eyes stared at them with blank pain. Then, slowly, he said, in English, ‘I don’t know.’
    His eyes closed again.
    The medics looked at Brother Benito.
    ‘He says he doesn’t know,’ the brother told them. Benito was a learned man; he spoke five languages, including English, which was clearly the man’s native tongue. ‘Perhaps the blow to his head or the lack of water has made him confused.’
    They nodded. The man seemed to have lapsed back into unconsciousness; and Benito thought that those brief, bewildered words would probably be the last he ever uttered.
    The man was in a very bad way; the doctors all agreed on this as they pored over the X-rays of his feet. They put him on a drip at first, because he was so severely dehydrated. When he occasionally regained consciousness, he seemed to have no idea who he was or where he came from. More X-rays were taken of his head, his ribs, his arms, his legs.
    He’d suffered a severe blow to the head, but there were no fractures in his skull, no dangerous build-ups of blood pressing on the brain. Two ribs were broken but had – by good luck – punctured no soft internal organs. They would be strapped up, and would heal. His arm was a bad break but a clean one, and it was quickly set, plastered, sorted.
    His ankles, however, were quite another matter.
    The man was lucid sometimes, then suddenly not. Sometimes he was hearing the rapid Mallorquin tongue being spoken as the medics clustered around the end of his bed; sometimes he was not even aware they were there. He knew – from the snatches he heard – what they were saying, though.
    It wasn’t good.
    One ankle was very badly broken. And the other – and here there were mutterings of Madre de Dios – the other ankle was so severely damaged that amputation might well be in order. There was little hope of this man ever walking again. Even after the necessary surgery, the outcome would be doubtful.
    He heard that, but couldn’t believe it. Not to walk again?
    He closed his eyes, felt a spasm of intense fear. He couldn’t feel the pain any more – they’d drugged him, he was sleepy and confused; and now he was also really, really afraid.
    Who the fuck am I? he wondered. How did I get here?
    But when he managed to ask a question, they just gave him some pile of shit about no damage to the temporal lobe of his brain, where language and memory were stored. They were more concerned with his ankle injuries.
    Jesus! Is this right what they’re saying? Am I going to be a cripple?
    But they just smiled reassuringly at him when he asked that and, fuck it, he was anything but reassured. He wanted to leap up and shout, tell them they weren’t making sense, but he couldn’t. He felt limp with weariness. Then there was the light sting of a needle entering his arm, and he was being wheeled down corridors, passing lights, nurses walking alongside him, smiling reassuringly.
    No, he wasn’t reassured. They were going to cut his foot off, that was all he was sure of.
    ‘Don’t take it off,’ he managed to mumble, feeling stupid, thick-mouthed, barely able to force the words out.
    ‘ ¿Qué? ’ asked one of the smiling nurses.
    ‘Don’t smile at me, you cunt, just listen to what I’m saying, don’t take my foot off,’ he shouted, or at least he tried to shout, but it