Wednesday, January 19, 2005
Diss - ability #1
"Give me some sign before you enter please. You’ll disrupt my work process. It’s difficult enough for me to concentrate as it is without you traipsing in and out all the time!”
"Yes but you never let me in here."
Without moving his eyes from his laptop Alex gave out a deep sigh. “I am actually working on something. I can’t show you now because any criticism at the moment would ruin it, I’d loose track on everything.” Minute things were happening on Alex's screen, pixels switched place as he moved the mouse across the desktop.
Lucy, knowing that computers were just something that she did not know about and that her partner had the habit of concealing from her anyway, automatically gave respect for his knowledge of the unfathomable. How did he do it? It looked so complicated. why did Alex never let her give him a comfortable life, he didn't need to get himself stressed out over such work. My god he found it hard to merely get up in the morning, why put extra pressure on himself. He seemed to want it, to need his web design work and the occupational therapist did say to keep it up, it would be good for him. Every time he switched that thing on it turned him into an intolerable tyrant, always telling her to get out and do this and do that. Her, she, it, his very own girlfriend stroke maid stroke secretary. The one person that he relied upon most of all.
"Just go and do some of your cleaning or something, I gotta finish this coding, go on, you know that I have to do this, now, go on."
The house and cleaning and tidying and putting things in their right place had become so habitual that Lucy no longer thought about it, it was not as if he could do anything, so it was in a way her unquestionable role in the relationship, her area, he needed her there, in this place and she in some ways was happy to be there for him. It was only...
“Are you going to finish soon?, I’ve got to Hoover”
“Just leave me to it would you! Couldn’t you leave the Hoovering until later. God, I can’t do anything without being interrupted!”
“OK, whatever you want, if you want to live in a pig stile that’s up to you!"
She swivelled the door to a close and made sure Alex heard the firm snap of the lock clicking. Lucy could hear through the walls.could hear the squeaking his chair around the room, knocking against the woodwork and swearing.
“I think the drugs are wearing off!” He said through the thin panelled walls of the study.
"Not your hip again?"
"Agh - yes!...I will need another injection soon…”
“But we can’t afford it”
Alex glided smoothly out of the hallway, belying the stress and strain of his body, fitted into the seating with the aid of a landscape of especially formulated plastic moulding, affording him a degree of comfort but ultimately rendering him paralysed from his jerking arms tendons, tautly stretched and unsure of direction, to his puppet-like feet strapped into the metal plates, at the mercy of the mechanical support system. He navigated the cubic chunk of his Storm electric chair electronically murmuring around the ground floor flat, his head twitching up and a bulging eye swivelling towards hi s partner, curving a path through the disordered room furniture. “This is getting impossible!” He swore as he went over the lump of coiled shirt lying with its arms splayed across the floor, impeding his chair to a point where he had to momentarily go on two wheels.“Alex! don't do that! Stop it!”
“This house is too small, I’m suffocating“
"It’ll be all right once the lift is fixed you can travel around a bit more then. Why don’t you go out into the garden? It’s nice and fresh out there.”
“Because the bloody bugs keep biting me and flying up my nose, it’s so irritating.”
“I’ll rub some sun cream on you.”
“Oh if you insist, go here, go there. I’m always being shoved around.”
“I think some fresh air will do you good.”
"You’re not my mother you know.” The dull clunks and mechanical buzz of the electrics could be heard now struggling over the uneven grass of the front lawn.
