Belinda Westlake
Medicine Didn’t Save Him
I’d just finished a ten mile run and was on my way to the corner shop to buy some
cigarettes (since I’d quit I wasn’t going to deny myself the odd one) when I saw a
dilapidated version of Rac on the other side of the road. I’d planned a quiet evening that one; preparing for work, reading beautiful texts and Rac was a brief acquaintance I had no desire to develop. This in mind, I traversed the road and
walked quickly ahead.
‘Hey,’ Rac beckoned, ‘Is that you? Is that really you?’
I turned round and smiled but my smile quickly fell.
‘Talk about divine intervention!’ he called with a shrill call full of such
divinity.
‘Have you started drinking again?’ I asked.
A ridiculous question.
His trousers were by his knees and piss-stained. The arm of his modern,
black-rimmed glasses had been fixed with some tape and his voice, though playful,
though loud and happy as only childrens' and drunks' can be, was coming from a
far off place.
I began to cry.
‘What’s happened Rac? Why are you drinking? What’s happened? I don’t understand. Oh Rac!’ I wrapped my arms around him.
‘Is it you? I can’t believe it’s you!’ he called.
His voice never matches the expression that accompanies it. Some folk are
like that; it’s like they’re wired up wrong and mind, body and soul aren’t communing in the unity they should be and to see it makes me so sad. To see it makes me
sad because I’m scared I’m the same and every time I meet a troubled someone I’m
weakened, vulnerability exposed like the missing link in a short circuit and looking
into Rac’s eyes just then was to search the marred pits of eyes looking everywhere
but me. Now.
‘I can’t believe you’re drinking again. What’s happened to you?’
‘I lost my job.’
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