Patient FJ

       Recovery diary 4 (or 5)

      I’ve met Dr Bassett.

      I was alone in my room, gazing into a bottomless abyss of howling, existential horror. Pretty much an average day, even before I discovered I was dead. But everything gets boring if you do it by yourself for long enough so I decided to go and find someone else to do it with. I had a vague idea of looking for Paddy. It crossed my mind that if we were now both dead I could finally tell him what I really thought of him. I’d probably done that a few times when we were alive but I would have been too drunk to remember it afterwards and that’s no fun. And I was lonely.

      I’d been thinking about Paula, which I always do when I feel lonely. Or maybe it’s thinking about her that makes me feel lonely in the first place. Either way, the thought of her comes with a hollow ache of solitude, and always will. Perhaps I shouldn’t have married her. Would that have changed anything? Not really. It might have changed the way I fucked it up, but not the end result. I would have lost her anyway: different route, same destination. And it was all my fault. Which is part of the loneliness I feel when I think of her: it was me alone who lost her, my decision, my choice. Out of all the paths I could have taken, I thoughtfully inspected the signpost saying This Way to Everlasting Regret and strolled nonchalantly in that direction with no comrade, guide, or tempter to lure me on. I’ve always been a bad influence on myself, and perfectly capable of leading myself astray without any outside interference. In this case there was no other woman in the picture for me, no other man for her, no false friends stirring the shit, no weird, dysfunctional families in the background dividing our loyalties or trying to break us up, no sudden elevation to a different social or professional sphere for one or other of us (to destroy fragile illusions of equality); none of that, none of the usual suspects, and nobody to blame but me. I threw away the best thing that ever happened to me and I did it all by myself. What a fucking genius. I shouldn’t be allowed out on my own.

      Enough of this.

      Misery loves company, and I went to find some.

      I wandered out and headed for the Blue Room. As I reached the intersection I heard the tapping of high heels and turned to see a small, tidy woman striding briskly towards me from the corridor on my left. She gave me a bright smile and thrust her hand out in front of her. ‘Hello,’ she said, ‘I’m Eudora Bassett and you must be Mr James.’ I said I was and asked her, please, to call me Foster. She smiled even more brightly, as if this was the one thing in the whole world she’d been hoping for, and we shook hands.

      She looked about 40. She had short, slightly curly hair and a round face with nice lips. Her body looked round, too, but in a good way. She filled up her white coat very snugly. Well-upholstered. She reminded me of Austrian women I’ve known. Everything packed into a nice, firm little package that knows what it wants, and if that happens to be you, then you’re in for some enthusiastic, dirty fun. God knows why I was thinking of sex. Maybe it was the cliché about sex and death and everyone wanting to fuck after a funeral. Clichéd but true, because I’ve had some great sex after funerals – although not my own, admittedly. Her eyes were brown and I love brown eyes. And she had a good strong handshake without making a point of it. She wasn’t one of those women who grips your hand like a lumberjack to let you know what she thinks of men and especially you, you pathetic little worm. Dr Bassett and I then had the following conversation: