Falling out of Heaven. John Lynch

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Название Falling out of Heaven
Автор произведения John Lynch
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Год выпуска 0
isbn 9780007348732



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Hill

       The Warriors of Winter

       Among the Bridges

       Planet Earth

       Alf

       The Beast with Two Backs

       Words of Flame

       The Tough Guy

       Mrs Johnson

       Fucking Around with Love

       Clive

       Almost Time

       Walking Backwards

       Missing

       A Land of Paper

       The First Meeting

       Killing Two Birds

       Being Kissed by Angels

       State

       My Brother, My Killer

       A Whisper Away

       Cassie

       Light and Stone

       Buried Alive

       Buying Beauty

       The Sign

       Spirit Against Spirit

       Not for Diamonds

       Sanctuary

       Tea with the Vicar

       A Second Face

       A Mouthful of Rain

       The Child

       Breaking Free

       Touched

       Shotgun

       Like My Own

       The Last Day

       The Quiet Friend

       Some Kind of Peace

       By the same author

       Copyright

       About the Publisher

       Counting in the Dark

      He was told that he had a month. Nineteen days later he was dead. It was his back. It had been bothering him. It was strange, he told a friend, it was like someone had stabbed him. He went to masseuses and chiropractors and they bent him and pulled him like he was a bendy toy but nothing seemed to help. Eventually his wife suggested he go to a doctor. It’s nothing, he had said to her, something is out that’s all, or maybe a muscle is in spasm. Go and see a doctor, she had said. They took X-rays, they took blood. When can I have the results, he asked? You can have them now, was the reply, you see, what you have has already taken you without you realising it. The doctor then showed him the X-ray and said that his spine was rotten, that the cancer had eaten it from the inside out. There’s nothing we can do, I’m sorry. He went home and closed the curtains and sat in the dark. He counted. He began with seconds, moved on to minutes, then hours and then days until he reached a month. He spoke to his wife, he told her that he would be leaving and that she had to be strong. She demanded a second opinion, he told her that would be a waste of time, and time was something that he didn’t have much of anymore. His name was Thaddeus and he decided to work one more week at the one thing he was good at, counselling, but he didn’t say anything to any of them, he didn’t look for anything in any of his patients’ eyes. He gave as he always did. The pain stopped him after four days and after that he was given morphine and confined to bed. A Macmillan nurse was with him to the end, she was young and attentive.

      It is moments since I got the news. A lot has happened since I first met him, much has changed in my life since he first stood before me five years before. A man sees his life in another’s death and as I sit here and gaze out the window of my living room I think of my own story and how it nearly broke me. The man who called me to tell me the news is a part of that time when the world splintered before my eyes. He cried as he spoke, telling me how much we all owed him. I agreed and cried too. I imagined his last days alone with the knowledge that the clock of his life was ticking down more loudly than ever before. I am sure that he faced them with courage, although you can never be sure. When my wife comes home I tell her. Come and sit down, she says. She looks at me and shakes her head; everything is going so quickly, she says. He was a good man, Gabriel, like you.

      I look at her, at this woman that I nearly lost and I smile. She asks me if I’m okay. Yes, I reply, she then asks me what I’m thinking. I tell her that I am back in that hospital where I was forced to claw back what was left of my life.

      ‘Don’t,’ she says. ‘It’s the past…Let it go…’

      But