Granta 116: Ten Years Later
Cover design by Michael Salu, Photographs
copyright of Corbis and Gallerystock
Fiction
Granta 117: Horror
Artwork in collaboration with
Jake and Dinos Chapman
Granta 118: Exit Strategies
Design by Michael Salu
HUFFINGTON
09.23.12
at that moment was speaking to
him, leaning in close. She wore
a faint, affectionate smile on a
face that looked otherwise tired.
I watched her for a moment, her
profile held precisely perpendicular to my line of sight as though
posed. For a moment her face
took on an almost luminous clarity, a study in patience, in care
— and then it wavered, receding
into a small, tired woman with
grey hair beside a gurney in Bay
12. The patient’s face was obscured by the pink plastic horse
collar that immobilized his neck. I
watched the woman for a minute.
Her expression, the calm progress
of their conversation, suggested
that nothing too drastic was going
on. I took a walk to the radiology
reading room to get a look at the
neck films.
There were many of these, too.
They showed the vulture neck
silhouette all C-spine films share.
There were several unusual views,
including one that I decided must
have been shot straight down the
patient’s open mouth: it showed,
framed by teeth palisaded with
spiky metal, the pale ring of the
first vertebra, the massive bone
called the atlas, and clear (even to
me) on both sides of it were two