BOOKS
hello, no problem at present. The
babies in this room are not well
babies: one or other of their alarms go
off somewhere in the region of once a
minute, sometimes continuously.
Over time, I will come to find the
five rising notes of the TPN infusion
pump particularly appalling, for this
usually indicates that an intravenous
tube has been dislodged or occluded
and another will need to be inserted,
another vein punctured. Beeping of
any sort will set me on edge for a long
time: at home I will develop a habit of
standing vigil by the microwave to
stop it just before it finishes.
These two on the left, side by side
in two incubators, these two, says the
doctor, they are my daughters. The
room is in shadows, and each lies in a
pool of sapphire light, for jaundice. A
is doll-sized; B is smaller still. Their
skin is too fragile for clothes. They
have been positioned on their
stomachs, curled in deep oval nests of
rolled towels and rough hospital
sheets printed with faded clowns
beneath A, faded teddy bears beneath
B. They are both wearing white cloth
hats, white Velcro sunglasses, and
their noses and mouths are obscured
by a mask delivering continuous
Positive Airway Pressure, CPAP, to
force their stiff, unready lungs to
breathe. A feeding tube disappears
between their lips and down their
throats. Their faces remain a secret
known only to each other.
They have no fingernails, no
toenails, and later when they lose the
Audrey Hepburn shades I will see
they have no brows or lashes. These
are not essential components of a
human being for my daughters are
clearly humanoid. I press my face to
the glass. I see red starfish hands, and
fleshless arms, bone-shaped. I can
trace their circulation, the fine leaf-
veining of tributaries clearly visible
beneath their backs’ translucent skin.
Their forming selves are exposed,
caught in the act of becoming. I feel
my intrusion upon them: they were
not ready.
They are the furthest from me, and
the furthest from one another that
they have ever been. I do not
recognise them. They are other-
worldly in their strangeness.And the name of the
author is...
Irvine Welsh—author of
Trainspotting, which was
adapted into the cult
classic movie in 1996, with
its sequel T2 Trainspotting
following in 2017
“My daughters’
faces remain a
secret, known only
to each other”
’’
126 • JULY 2019