Seven Floors Down by Trevor Clark

Author:Trevor Clark
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Now or Never Publishing
Published: 2020-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

PART 3

Hello at last, Billy. Sorry it’s taken me so long to email you back, but everything was coming apart around me for a while. After you left for Vancouver, my plan was to try and check into a hospital when I got evicted, then talk to a social worker about the possibility of getting into a physical rehab centre or a long-term care facility. Things didn’t go as planned, exactly.

The police were around again, but as far as I know, they wrote off Darryl’s death as a suicide. I got wind from downstairs that the wolf was coming to blow down the house ­within the next twenty-four hours, so I called 911 and said I thought I was having a stroke, which, as you know, has been true for some time. That makes them sit up and pay attention. I spent the night on a stretcher at Toronto General, where I was attended to by several doctors and nurses. In the morning they decided that my lack of balance, difficulty walking, numbness, etc. were enough to have me admitted.

I spent about the next week being checked out by neurologists, nurses, doctors, and physical therapists. They took blood out of me at least twice a day, and I had an IV drip. Finally, the results of a CAT scan showed indications of a mild stroke and some brain atrophy. (See? I’m no malingerer.)

I hit the first snag when a social worker said it was unlikely I could be admitted to long-term care, as that’s for the truly infirm, and rehab was out, too, because I’m not incapacitated enough.

They decided to have me treated on an out-patient basis at Western General. (More neurological tests and MRIs, etc. I’m also on some kind of Cortisone treatment for the MS.) My balance and my walking are getting a bit better, although I get fatigued. Stairs and ramps are still a problem.

I heard about a residence on Sherbourne Street, which looked like an English boarding school on their website. Three meals a day, light housekeeping, laundry service, medical care, etc., for $875 per month. My worker arranged for me to go over and give them a $100 deposit, then the rest if I wanted to stay. Everything looked good.

It was a dreary, rickety old place with some ghoul hanging around on the sagging porch in a tattered black trench coat. I’d called a hotel I could almost afford, but they were booked solid, so the alternative was a park bench or a bus shelter or a doorway, all of which were sounding pretty good just then. I’ve had nightmares for years where I open one eye to see the passing shoes of human beings on their way to work . . .

There was a wizened Oriental guy snoring on a soiled sofa in the front room, who’d shit and pissed himself repeatedly. There were clouds of flies. The house smelled like hundred-year-old cooking, sweat, dust and despair.

I found the woman I was supposed to contact in this ramshackle kitchen.

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