Rushed

Denise couldn’t seem to help the fact that she did everything quickly. In the morning, rather than let her coffee cool or take the moment to temper it with milk, she downed the scalding liquid, becoming addicted over time to the burning in the back of her throat. She was the same with booze, easily knocking back three gin and tonics in the time it took her companions, if she had any, to have one, and getting drunk as a result. She spoke quickly and succinctly and even in the bedroom rather than relish the rise of the oncoming pleasure, employed all manners of tricks to get off and then rushing her partner to do the same.

But where her rushing caused the most problems was on the city streets. Her long legs meant she could easily outwalk her fellow denizens and she was quite graceful in weaving in and out and between them, careful to avoid the inner city moms pushing prams at a crawl as they chain-smoked and gossiped in packs. She avoided running into the pocket-sized grannies who walked with canes that reached their temples. But occasionally someone would bump her shoulder or her bag and she would hear them shouting at her to “slow the fuck down”.

From the moment she awoke at 6:00, the day consisted of a series of tasks that had to be completed and ticked off a neatly constructed mental list (writing the list would be a waste of time). While doing one task as quickly and efficiently as possible, she was simultaneously thinking of the next. Get to work, make the copies, do the lesson, prepare for the next. She had tried to linger over a coffee at the break, chatting with colleagues but found the upcoming tasks too distracting. She secretly envied and admonished their lazy but relaxed approach to the days. After fleeing out the door, she had to do the shopping, put in the wash, cut the vegetables, wash the rice, do the dishes, hang the wash, grade the papers. And finally at 10:00, she could unfold herself into the bed and feel the mattress absorb the day.

It was on a particularly crowded Saturday at the mall that she tripped over an unseen small boy and tumbled down the concrete stairs. Stunned, she looked up at the faces peering down at her, angry at the boy because she should be in Tesco by now, basket over arm, strategically zigzagging through the aisles. In the ambulance, rude and impatient from fear and pain, Denise asked the man who was in charge of jabbing and pinching, when she’d be done and could go home.

“This looks like a bad break. You’re going to be with us for a while.”

For the first time in years, Denise called in sick for the next day and was quite miffed when her boss insisted on a full week so she could get a jump start on the healing and learn to use the crutches.

On her first day “off”, she was bored after 36 minutes and decided that she’d finally go to the outdoor café in Sergeant Square, which she’d passed nearly every day of her life for six years. As she hobbled to a small table, two men jumped up from a nearby bench and tried to help her ease into her wobbly metal chair. They smelled of cider and cigarettes but were full of smiles and “there you go loves”. She sipped her coffee to stretch the time and watched the activity in the small square. People stopped on the benches for spontaneous picnics, and an endless parade of homeless and junkies met, bantered, laughed, argued and went on. There was a repeating ballet of men feeding the pigeons and the children chasing them away, and all the while people rushing through the square were oblivious to it all.

Denise eventually finished her coffee and decided to walk to the supermarket for the week’s provisions. Walking at a much slower pace, every few steps she heard muffled words of sympathy and encouragement as people passed her by. She noticed that children were not as empty-headed as she previously thought—everything seemed to fascinate them, which is why they seemed to wander aimlessly but were actually moving from one interesting spot to the next. Old people, too, were not wishy-washy wanderers out for a stroll. There was a hard, gritty determination in their grunts and shuffles.

The groups of friends who always annoyed her by taking up the “whole fucking sidewalk” were clueless about their surroundings because they were so focused on one another, commiserating, giving advice, and making jokes at one another’s expense. She’d never walked down the street with a friend, knowing that the pace of it, the stress of listening and trying to get to Point B as quickly as possible would be a nightmare. Better to kill the two birds of socialising and shutting off her brain while at the pub.

By the third week, she was back to work and feeling quite calm despite the hassles of doors, stairs, and writing on whiteboards. There was more than ever a long list of tasks to be finished but she found she didn’t mind if some were pushed to the next day. Yet she yearned to be free of the monstrosity encasing her leg. When it was finally cut off, the first thing she noticed was how foreign her slightly shrunken leg appeared. She walked outside, arms feeling light without the crutches, center of gravity restored. She stood motionless outside the hospital for so long, someone asked if she needed to go inside.

She could see a long mental list of things she was unable to do for the last two months: clean the fridge, restock the pantry, flip the mattress. But she felt no pull towards them, which unsettled her greatly. Disoriented, she walked slowly west, noticing for the first time it felt, the sky turning pink.