No Further Action

The linoleum on the floor was sweated clean and the walls antiseptic green. We had sat a long time in the car before coming in.

It was just another part of return. An onset of responsibility.

My gay brother had been very good in all this. He seemed to know there were a series of things to be got through in the velvet glove.

There seemed little point in trying to explain much to anyone. How there was a paradigm shift in the sky above the airport which wasn’t just to do with the heat. That a kind of beauty was unleashed in the Kingdom. That nobody was safe.

‘Which one of you is the patient’? she had asked.

I watched the blood froth red into the syringe. This nurse’s uniform was audible when she moved and while not old, her hard strained face summed up a whole nasty part of the occidental thing.

See you again said the doctor cheerily as we left, though I couldn’t work out how he was so sure.

The next days passed slowly.

My wife and I lunched mostly in country pubs speaking in muted tones. She had not yet given up asking why and I countered with a list of symptoms.

Though, as luck would have it, the call from my brother came through while we were in a noodle bar deep inside the Thai supermarket at the end of our road.

‘No further action.’

They had texted him, for he had been cowardly impersonated.

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