Staying Alive

seven: i have done this before, you know. that’s why i keep my nails short

thursday 13 november / 9.26 a.m.

Why Saint Matthew? He started out as a tax inspector, didn’t he? Hardly a name to comfort the sick, and surely it only reminds the dying of death duties.

The place is vast; an industrial sprawl reminiscent of a Soviet uranium facility in the Siberian wastes—except somehow it ended up in east London. It must take the health budget of a third-world country just to heat and light the place.

Where’s Outpatients? Is it the same as Aamp;E or is it something different? I wonder this as I walk past a group of three old men in winceyette pyjamas smoking by a fire exit. Don’t think I’ll be asking them.

The story goes that a minor royal—the Duchess of Chingford or something—turned up to cut the ribbon on a new paediatric ward in the early nineties and she still hasn’t found her way out. Never mind pegging out on trolleys in corridors, people must die simply trying to find the right department—unless they’ve had the good sense to pack a rucksack with food, water and Kendal Mint Cake.

I’m walking around in circles. I know this because the chain smokers are looming into view again.

9.55 a.m.

By the time I find the right Outpatients I’m nearly half an hour late. I’m tired and footsore, and I’m wishing I were significant enough to qualify for Blower Mann’s corporate BUPA membership. I’m also worried that I’ve missed my slot. I shouldn’t be. This is the NHS and they’re running well behind.

My appointment is in one of Saint Matthew’s new bits. The reception area has floor to ceiling windows and a bracing view of big trees, though I think I can make out a tall chimney stack between two sycamores. Hospital incinerators always unsettle me. I know they put old bandages and stuff in them, but what else? I mean, if you’d asked the commandant of Auschwitz about his, I bet he’d have said, ‘Ach, zose zings? Zey are just for burnink ze garden rubbish und votnot.’ Hospitals bring out the paranoiac in me. I’ve seen Coma too many times. Show me a couple of doctors chatting by a coffee machine and I’ll show you a conspiracy. I’m scared of flying, but I’m terrified of hospitals. And it’s an entirely rational fear. Statistics are used to soothe the nervous flyer: you’re far more likely to get knocked down by a car and so on. But when it comes to nervous patients they’re flummoxed. Hospitals are perfectly safe—more people die in…Er…Die in…Die in what, then? Look at it this way: even if you get whacked in a car crash there’s a fair chance you won’t die in the wreckage—no, they rush you to a hospital to do that.

I badly need a distraction. I reach into my briefcase, fish out the Guardian and open it at random—‘MIRACLE’ CANCER DRUG DISCREDITED IN TRIALS. Why didn’t I buy the Daily Sport? Right now I could do with a light-hearted lap-dancers-abducted-by-aliens-for-intergalactic-sex-orgies story. Ironically, I have a sudden urge to take up smoking—nicotine might be just the ticket. Without even moving my eyes, though, I can see three NO SMOKING signs. I look at a kid in a baseball cap on the far side of the waiting area. He’s got no eyebrows, which suggests that he’s most likely bald beneath the hat. Jesus, cancer. He’s trying to read a Spider-man comic, but it’s obvious his heart isn’t in it. How old is he? Nine? Ten? He should be in school. Or bunking off. Whatever, he doesn’t deserve to be here. At least his mum is with him. I don’t often wish for my mother, but I’d like her to be with me now. What am I thinking? No, I wouldn’t. She’d be crying. When I gashed my shin at scouts she was hysterical. I needed two stitches and a tetanus. She required treatment for shock and was kept in overnight for observation. I had to catch the bus home on my own. Could she cope with cancer or, rather, with the faintest and most wafer-thin outside chance of it? Forget about it.

But I wish someone were with me.

A few weeks ago that someone would have been Megan. Situations like this bring out the best in her—her innate empathy makes her a natural Florence Nightingale. Last night I came close to calling her—I got as far as dialing the first five digits of her mobile. I couldn’t go through with it—I hate to seem needy.

The engagement ring. How needy must that have made me look? She must have found it and seen it for what it was—a cheap (six-and-a-half-grand-cheap!) shot at emotional blackmail. I picture the scene:

Megan: Jesus, Sandy, have you seen this? He thinks he can buy me. He just doesn’t get it.

Sandy: Have a heart, darling. He must be—(The rest of his answer is drowned out by…

SFX: £6,499 of diamond solitaire being flushed down a toilet.

I need that ring back—with or without Megan attached. I still have no idea how I’m going to pay for it. I’ve started buying lottery tickets—£20 blown on them today—because odds of fourteen million to one must be better than no chance at all.

Can’t think about all that now. I return to the newspaper. With eyes closed I flick past the cancer drug story. When I open them again I’m staring at RADICAL QC CAMPAIGNS FOR REFUGE and a picture of Sandy Morrison. Well, who the hell else? He’s standing outside an asylum centre in Highbury that’s facing closure. The neighbours can’t stand the place, apparently. Sandy is one of them, but he’s swimming against the NIMBY tide and is all for it. Normally I’d be sympathetic to his argument, but seeing his handsome face makes me want to round up every last refugee, load them into containers and truck them out of the country. And if a certain radical lawyer gets caught up in the mêlée and ends up being shipped to a crime-ridden tenement in Tirana…Acceptable collateral damage, if you ask me.

My mobile beeps. The receptionist glares at me and points at the MOBILE PHONES MUST BE SWITCHED OFF sign, which is competing for attention with NO SMOKING. I don’t care though—being in possession of an active mobile could be an imprisonable offence, but at least mine is dragging me from the excruciating thoughts swimming about my head. I turn away so she can’t see me lift the phone to my ear. I listen to the message. It’s Jakki: ‘Niall wants to know where you put the Schenker job-start file. Call me when you can.’

Haye was miffed when I didn’t reschedule my appointment—which guarantees me a column of fat zeros on my assessment, as well as about a dozen pesky messages on my mobile. Well, sod him. I’m having some quality me time.

In a hospital.

With some sick people.

I switch off my phone with a decisive flourish just in time to hear the receptionist call out, ‘Mr Collins?’ She’s squinting at a folder with—I presume—my name on it. ‘It’s Colin. No S,’ I say on autopilot, though I don’t know why I bother.

‘Doctor Morrissey will see you now,’ she says. ‘Third door on the left.’

Just what I need—a doctor whose namesake is pop music’s singing suicide note.

10.29 a.m.

Doctor Morrissey doesn’t have a bunch of gladioli sticking out of his trousers and a comedy quiff. In fact she has very short hair indeed. She’s young as well. Which is reassuring, actually—if I were on some critical, tumours-sprouting-out-of-his-ears list, surely I’d be seeing a battle-scarred senior consultant. With her Peter Pan haircut and pert features she’s quite elfin. No way would an elf pull the literal graveyard shift.

‘Take a seat,’ she says pleasantly with a hint of a West Country accent—not one of the Manchester Morrisseys, then. ‘Why don’t you tell me why you’re here.’ She must know why I’m here. Hasn’t she got some notes, a letter or something? Do I really have to explain? She seems to sense my discomfort and says, ‘I know you’ve found a lump…On one of your testicles. I just need to know how long you’ve been aware of it.’

‘A couple of weeks. Maybe three,’ I say.

‘That’s good. Our biggest headache is when men find something and then ignore it for months. Why don’t you let me take a look?’

I knew she was going to ask me that. In fact, I showered twice this morning because I knew someone was going to ask me precisely that question. So much for all the preparation because I feel extremely uncomfortable now. I hated it enough when sixty-something Stump had me drop my trousers and felt me up. Twenty-something, not unattractive Doctor Morrissey is an entirely different proposition and I imagine a lot of blokes would be thrilled at the thought of her small and fragile hands down there. Not me, though. I suppose I’m shy. Or uptight and repressed. Whatever, I’m someone who needs to be on very familiar terms with delicate feminine hands before I’m comfortable with them touching me below the waist. Again she senses my awkwardness and says, ‘I have done this before, you know. That’s why I keep my nails short. You can take your trousers off behind the curtain if you like.’

11.17 a.m.

I’m sitting on the edge of an examination couch, a needle in my arm, and under the circumstances I feel remarkably relaxed. Doctor Morrissey is taking blood. ‘We’ll do some tests for tumour markers,’ she explains matter-of-factly. ‘They indicate the possible presence of cancer cells.’ I flinch at the mention of the T-followed closely by the C-word. ‘Of course, you most likely don’t have cancer,’ she goes on, and I relax again because I believe it from her. ‘It’s much less common than you might imagine. It looks like you have some sort of growth down there though and we need to get to the bottom of it.’

She knows that I have some sort of growth because she sent me to a room along the corridor where a technician gave me an ultrasound scan. This, bizarrely, is what sparked my sense of calm. Ultrasounds—to me, anyway—are Good Things. My only experience of them was when Liz Napier, a senior account director at work, brought the print-out from hers into the office. A small, fuzzy black and white image that drew a gaggle of cooing onlookers. I peered at it too. I looked at the snap of the perfectly formed foetus that everyone agreed was sucking its thumb, though all I could see was something that resembled a photo of Greenland taken on a particularly cloudy day by a satellite equipped only with a disposable Kodak. But of course Liz didn’t give birth to Greenland. She had a perfectly formed, thumb-sucking baby girl called Carmen. That’s why ultrasound scans equal nice, warm and pleasant, even when they’re looking for cancer. So what if this has no basis in reason? It’s a sturdy-looking straw and just try and stop me clutching it.

Doctor Morrissey has helped to ease my stress as well. She has told me several times that I most likely don’t have testicular cancer and that even if I do, the cure rate is up in the very high nineties when it’s caught early enough. I’m choosing to go with her because she’s pleasant and competent and seems to know what she’s talking about. She takes the needle from my arm—very competently, I might add—and says, ‘OK, we’re done.’

I stand up, roll down my shirtsleeve and pull on my jacket. I bend down to pick up my briefcase and my Lotto tickets tumble out of my pocket and onto the floor. She picks them up and hands them back to me. ‘You’re the optimistic type, then,’ she says.

‘More like desperate, actually.’

‘Well, if it’s any consolation, the odds of there being something seriously wrong with you are almost as long.’

Almost? Only bloody almost?

Bloody Morrisseys. Why do they always have to drag things down?

eight: absolutely dandy

thursday 20 november / 9.21 p.m.

I pick up the tray of drinks from the bar and fight my way across the room to Brett, Vince and Kenny. Kenny is Production Geezer. The man without whom the glittering mirror ball we fondly call advertising would come crashing to the dance floor. He’s the man responsible for seeing to it that Brett and Vince’s lovingly crafted adverts make it into print. Always just in the nick of time. And usually, to his immense credit, the right way up.

As I sit down it only takes a moment to figure that the conversation hasn’t moved on from ten minutes ago. The question: How would you spend a Lotto win? It was sparked by my fumbling for a twenty to cover the round and pulling this week’s hopeless punt from my pocket.

‘You’re mad, Vin,’ Kenny pronounces. ‘Why would you risk blowing it when you’ve just won at fourteen million to one?’

‘Egg-fucking-zactly, you tubby twonk,’ Vince says. ‘If I’ve just won at fourteen mill, I’m gonna fancy my chances at twos, ain’t I?’

Vince’s Lottery Dream: ‘ Hit the casino and put the fucking lot on red.’ Which, naturally, struck me as deeply insane, though I didn’t say so. Partly because, as is often the way with Vince, his logic has a perverted appeal. But, no, I mustn’t get sucked into this way of thinking. It’s profoundly insane.

‘You’re mad,’ Kenny repeats. ‘You’ve got your millions. Why piss it away?’

‘I wouldn’t be pissing it away,’ Vince says. ‘You’re forgetting the secret.’

I must have missed this when I was buying the round.

‘You gonna tell us what this secret is, then?’ Kenny asks.

‘The secret is I couldn’t fucking lose.’

‘Yeah, but what is it?’

‘If I told you it wouldn’t be a secret, would it?’ Vince says.

‘More like there ain’t no secret,’ Kenny mutters, draining his glass. ‘Here, stick another one in there, Murray.’

Hey, wow, you noticed I’m here.

Brett says, ‘Give him a break, Kenny…’

What, you’re buying this round?

‘…He hasn’t said how he’d spend his win yet. Tell us, Murray. Then you can get the beers in.’

‘Er…I don’t really know,’ I say, because…Well, I really don’t know. I don’t have a dream, unless you count getting Megan back (not sure a lottery win would do it) or being promoted to Account Director (Detergent Brands). Endless lists on the backs of envelopes have more or less proved that I’m devoid of credible ambition.

‘There must be something,’ Brett prods. ‘Just make it up.’

He’s right, there must be something. Even Vince, who usually never projects beyond the next ten minutes, has an ambition.

I’m not talking about putting it all on red, which as far as I could tell, came out of nowhere. I’m referring to the Official Vince Douglas Dream. Vince is like every creative. None of them wants to be doing ads forever. Nearly every copywriter I know is working on his Novel (though they’re so conditioned to thinking in thirty-second chunks that they rarely make it past page two). Similarly, every art director wants to Direct—prefer-ably Cate Blanchett and Halle Berry in a twenty-first century Thelma and Louise, but, frankly, they’d take Police Academy 12 if it came down to it.

Vince is the exception. He longs to break out of ads, but he has no wish to become the next Ridley Scott. His dream involves cunning, bravado and a miniature submarine. Ironically, it was inspired by a film—an action flick about a sunken nuclear sub. The crew spent a couple of hours running out of oxygen while outside Kurt Russell or Chuck Norris or whoever attempted rescue in a little yellow submersible. I can’t give you much more detail than that because I didn’t see it. I’d sooner have typhus-dipped slivers of bamboo shoved under my fingernails than sit through one minute of a film about my personal idea of hell. Vince saw it seven times though, munching his popcorn and thinking, What if you put the docking mechanism on the top of the rescue sub instead of the bottom and went up instead of down? In short, this is the plan: buy sub, sail up and down Med on lookout for millionaires’ yachts, dive beneath them, dock, make hole, climb in, clear the loaded sods out of boat and home, cruise off into deep blue yonder.

Sounds slightly more insane than putting it all on red, but…

I cannot stress enough how deadly serious he is about this. He has spoken to submarine makers and even drawn up a business plan—which he only just stopped short of taking to the small-business advisor at NatWest. He even nags Brett to begin every one of their TV scripts with Open on miniature submarine in the hope that he’ll get to shoot it and do some real live research. Bizarrely, their Cats Undersea script for Pura Kitty Litter came within a whisker’s breadth of making it onto the telly. As far as I can tell—though I have to say I’m no expert in the field—his plan is more or less flawless. Every time someone proposes a but, Vince has an immediate and convincing answer.

There is one problem, actually. Everyone that Vince has ever shared a beer with knows about it. If Trevor McDonald ever announces, ‘And now let’s go to our reporter in Monaco for more on that daring underwater robbery…’ a couple of thousand people will scratch their heads and try to remember the name of the drunk who was sounding off in the pub about magnetised docking tubes.

‘I’m sorry, Brett. I pass,’ I say finally. ‘Don’t know how I’d spend it.’

‘What’re you asking him for?’ Vince sneers. ‘You know what he’d do. Buy a Volvo, a cottage in the Cotswolds and invest the rest in the fucking Nationwide.’

Well, I’d have said the Woolwich, but it doesn’t seem like such a bad idea.

‘Leave him be. There must be something you wanna do, Murray,’ Brett says.

‘I’ve always fancied the idea of pony trekking in the Andes,’ I say nervously.

‘That is fucking cool,’ Vince splutters—to my amazement because to the best of my recollection I have never had an idea that I would consider cool, let alone Vince.

‘Is it?’ I ask, wincing as I wait for the rug to be whipped from beneath me.

“Course it is. Buy your conk candy at source. Cut out the middleman—’

That isn’t what I had in mind, as it happens.

‘—Here, you fancy joining me in the gents for a toot?’

I’m stunned. Is he offering me a line? Of cocaine? Because I don’t believe he’s suggesting we repair to the toilets for an impromptu trumpet recital. Either would be unprecedented, actually. Vince only has me around to pick up the tab. I’m not here to join in—with drug-taking or lavatory jam sessions.

‘Er…no thanks,’ I reply. ‘I’m…um…detoxing.’

He looks at me as if I’m mad.

Well, I’m hardly going to tell him that few things are more terrifying to me than the prospect of snorting white powder of indeterminate origin up my nostril. A very, very, very occasional joint is the furthest I’ve ever dared travel down the road to junkie hell. And my answer wasn’t a lie. I am detoxing. Since my visit to Saint Matthew’s my body has been, while not exactly a temple, a lot more spick and span than usual. I haven’t had a single burger and right now I’m drinking Sprite—though there is no reason for Brett, Vince and Kenny to suspect that it isn’t a Vamp;T. The new regime isn’t because I think I’m actually ill, as in ill ill, really it isn’t. But these things—lumps and what have you—serve as a warning, don’t they? Shape up or ship out, so to speak.

And, well, I’m shaping up.

Vince arches a brow and says, ‘You don’t even burn the candle at one end, do you, matey?’ Then he turns to his partner. ‘What about you, B Boy?’

‘I’ll pass,’ Brett replies. ‘I’m sick of waking up with the three a.m. nosebleeds.’

‘Kenny?’

‘Drugs is for mugs,’ Kenny replies, draining his eighth pint of mind-altering lager. ‘Reckon I’ll be off.’

‘Whatever,’ Vince says as he staggers off in the general direction of the gents. I watch him go, envying his complete inability to live beyond the moment. As Kenny hauls himself to his feet and takes his leave, Brett asks, ‘You OK?’

Well, I’ve got a lump in my trousers that may or may not be cancer and I’m on the eve of visiting the hospital to get the verdict, but, that apart, I’m absolutely dandy.

‘I’m absolutely dandy. Why do you ask?’

‘You’ve seemed a bit spooked lately. And you asked for that last lot of script changes like you couldn’t give a toss. I kind of missed your usual cheery Hey, guys, the client’s made a tiny suggestion that’ll improve the core idea immensely bollocks.’

‘That was because I couldn’t give a toss…I’d just had my assessment.’

‘Not good?’

‘Haye reckons my career might be helped by a visit to the Job Centre.’

‘He’s firing you?’

‘No, but I guess my name’s pencilled in for the next efficiency-focused downsizement.’

‘Take it as a compliment. The man’s dull as fuck. I’ve had livelier conversations with the automated menu on the Odeon booking line.’ He gives me a hearty slap on the back—I think I’ve just risen in his estimation. ‘Know what you need?’

‘What’s that?’

‘A fuck,’ says Vince, back from the bog and full of the joys of Colombia.

This—their uncanny ability to complete each other’s thoughts—is what marks them out as a team.

‘I was going to suggest a new girlfriend, but it amounts to the same thing,’ Brett says.

‘You wanna grab your secretary,’ Vince goes on. ‘She’s gagging for it.’ He gestures in the direction of Jakki, who’s on a Breezer binge with her mates from the office. I like Jakki, even if she has given her name its pop-star spelling. But I don’t fancy her any more than she fancies me.

‘I couldn’t,’ I say.

‘Gimme one good reason,’ says Vince.

Well, she works ten feet away from me which would make things awkward the morning after, she’s a bit on the plump side, she likes Enrique Iglesias, which isn’t the end of the world but it could form a potentially insurmountable stumbling block six or seven months into a relationship, and she loves sardines which, though they’re a rich source of omega acids, have an unfortunate habit of repeating…Oh, and her first name isn’t Megan and her second isn’t Dyer.

‘I dunno…I just don’t think it’s a good idea to get involved with girls you work with,’ I say.

‘What’s the fucking point of having birds at work if you ain’t gonna get involved with ’em?’ Vince says.

‘Murray’s a one-woman man, Vin,’ Brett says. ‘Even when the one-woman done gawn left him fucking weeks ago. He deserves our sympathy.’