Brains

I could tell something was wrong immediately. Keith had been particularly spiky on the phone, but that was half-normal. What gave it away was the expression on his face when I answered my front door. There was something unpleasant in his eyes. Apart from the sleep-bogeys. I was pretty sure he was going to say, ‘I don’t think we should live together’, so it was – weirdly – almost something of a relief when he said: ‘I’ve got a brain tumour.’

‘Come in,’ I said.

He stomped through to the living room and sat down. ‘I’ve got a brain tumour,’ he repeated.

I just looked, waiting for the smirk. It didn’t come. ‘Don’t be silly,’ I said.

‘I have,’ he said. ‘I understand you don’t want to hear it, and I appreciate that – thank you. But you hiding your head in the sand won’t make my tumour go away.’

‘Please tell me you’re joking now, Keith,’ I replied. My heart had begun to move about in my chest.

He didn’t speak. Just shook his head.

I started shaking my head too. Vigorously. Until my neck hurt. And tears actually began to form somewhere behind my eyes before Keith finally forced a supercilious smirk and said, ‘Nah, not really.’

Then, when he saw my wrecked face twist to anger in a single second, his own face fell. ‘I have got a congenital cerebral aneurysm though,’ he said, ‘if that’s any consolation.’

I smiled gratefully.

It was.

....

So Keith’s got a ballooning blood vessel up there in his brain. A medical man told him that it’s inoperable. Which I guess means that if they try to remove it, he might wake up and never walk again, never speak again, never move or even think again; or he might wake up and imagine he’s Jewish or Jamaican, or like Preston Sturges’ father, he might start laughing when he’s sad or crying when he’s happy. Or of course he might not wake up at all. The brain is a funny old stick.



The medical man also said that, if the aneurysm ruptures, as it could potentially at any moment, then Keith could be dead within seconds. But he also said it might just as easily never happen.

So in reality, having no clue how long he’s got left, he’s really no different from the rest of us. But I suppose in the Book of Grisly Demises he’s just got one more tick box than most of us to worry about. But then who’s to say that I don’t have a blueberry time bomb in my brain too? Or you. Perish the thought obviously. But you never know.

‘Do you think you should be smoking weed on top of it?’ I asked.

He grabbed the joint off me.

‘I’m just saying,’ I said. ‘The last thing you want is a psychotic aneurysm.’

‘No,’ Keith replied, his brain full of smoke, ‘the last thing I want is to start living my life like a terrified weakling, not doing the things I would ordinarily do just because something that will probably never happen is hanging vaguely over my head.’

‘Like the Blueberry of Damocles,’ I said.

‘It’s more like a raspberry,’ he said. ‘Which could of course one day be horribly appropriate.’

I tutted and shook my head. Then I put this song on for him and joined in with the chorus.

We smiled.

OK, I smiled. Keith just rolled his eyes.

‘You’re like Nate Fisher,’ I said.

He shook his head and looked at me blankly like a dirty great ignoramus. I sighed. For anyone else unfortunate enough not to know, Nate Fisher is the dirty sexy funeral director who in the second series of Six Feet Under is diagnosed with arteriovenous malformation, which he’s told could flare up and kill him at any time or else just sit there in his head, inspiring murderous, God-hating thoughts, but otherwise doing absolutely nothing at all. Just like Paris Hilton.

‘Does Nate Fisher die?’ said Keith.

‘We all die, Keith. Come on, grow up. It’s not all about you, you know.

‘But I’ve got a fucking blood clot in my brain, man!’

‘Bloodclaaaaaaaaaat!’ I said. That shut him up.

‘Don’t,’ he said.

‘Bumbaclaaaaaaaaaat!

‘Please don’t,’ Keith repeated. ‘My brain could pop at any moment. One wrong word from you, and….’

‘And what, Keith? Eh? And what?’ It was time for some tough, stoned love. ‘So it goes pop. What happens then? You die, do you? Is that what happens?’

‘Probably, yeah. No one knows. It wouldn’t be pretty though. We know that much.’

‘Do we? Do we really…’ – I wiggled my apostrophe fingers – ‘…know that much. Or – and I’m just throwing this out here – maybe we should start looking on the bright side here, eh? Eh? What do you think of that? Let’s give that a go, shall we? So – with that in mind – as well as you dying a horrible death, what else might just as equally happen?’

Keith nodded his head, slowly, as if coming round to my way of thinking. He handed me the end of the first joint of the evening. ‘Well, I suppose,’ he said, ‘best case scenario, there’s just as much chance that I might actually be immortal.’

I sighed, nodded my head. ‘Thank you,’ I said, pleased that he was on my wavelength. ‘Exactly. And at least,’ I added. ‘At least it’s not a tumour.’

‘It’s not a tumour,’ repeated Keith, in his best Detective John Kimble voice.

I joined in. ‘It’s not a tumour.’

Keith had another go. ‘It’s not a tumour.’

We actually went on for some time, till I said, ‘you see, there are a number of very definite bright sides to be considered here. Fuck it. Come on, it’s all good.’

Keith nodded. ‘I’m Mr Brightside,’ he said. Then he said it again, this time as Detective John Kimble. Then via Sparticus and Life of Brian, I suddenly had a delirious Arnie yelling at me, ‘No, I am Mr Brightside and so is my wife!’

‘Come on,’ I said, trying to calm the situation down and hide my fear. ‘Group hug.’

We put our arms around one another and squeezed, then Keith pulled away suddenly and clasped at his forehead. ‘Shit,’ he said.

‘What’s wrong?’ I said.

He looked me in the eyes.

‘I think I felt it rupture,’ he said.

And so on.

If Friday night was anything to go by, Keith is going to be dining out on this bloomin' aneurysm for the rest of his life.



Bastard.

I wish I had an aneurysm.