Futurity

I went to see Marty at the hospital. I couldn't find him first of all - he's got his own private suite where he's being treated. When I got to the reception for the private wards and enquired after Marty they asked if I was his boyfriend. "No," I said with some irritation. Then they asked if I was his lawyer. "No, I'm just an old friend of his," I had to explain with some impatience, then "why did you say 'boyfriend' first?" Well, anyway, they said I could go through but didn't think I'd stand much chance of getting to see him, though they wouldn't explain why.

When I got to his room, I just went straight in - and there he was. Lying back in a huge bed in a beautiful oak-panelled room. He looked awful, though - really pale and haggard, with a massive shiner bruising up one eye. He smiled when he recognised me and greeted me with a feeble but warm "hello". I noticed that he'd stopped using that silly Brooklyn accent that he'd recently taken to putting on and had reverted back to being the plain old Marty that I've known for all these years.

Then I had a strange sensation like the air in the room had suddenly changed density and I looked around behind me to see Marty's huge girlfriend. Somehow, she had noiselessly walked up the long corridor and was standing there in the doorway dressed - well, dressed in a skimpy black leather nurse's uniform with stockings and a red PVC apron, taut over her washboard stomach. Her eyes gleamed with malice and, immediately, she started striding straight towards me with an uncanny speed. I was scared, I tell you. I haven't been that scared since that episode with the cakeybiscuit - you know. Anyway, I flinched, I don't mind telling you, I flinched and cowered under her mountainous shadow but she passed straight by me and stood between me and Marty, massive steel-like arms crossed over her giant, unyielding tits. There she stood, great muscular legs tensed apart, nostrils flaring and her powerful chest heaving with a barely restrained energy - the tightly-stretched leather of her 'uniform' creaking with each swirling breath like the eery sound of the rigging and tack of some vast black galleon groaning in the wind.

It was clear that she didn't want me talking to Marty at that moment. She edged back slowly and started stroking Marty's brow with one of her huge, discus-like hands, to which he smiled and squirmed with feeble contentment . Fearsome a sight though it was, she looked caring, tender, and I couldn't help looking on in wondrous admiration at this woman who stood so protectively over Marty, like some nuclear-powered pneumatic she-wolf cyborg watching over her cyborg cub. It was then, for the first time I think, that I really noticed the fine features of her face which was, at that moment, gazing with genuine affection and concern at Marty. Her lips were fulsome and round but the rest of her face was ectomorphic in an almost elegant contrast to the solid frame of her rugged body. I looked at her delicate, gentle chin and slight, up-turned nose and saw perhaps what Marty could see when he looked at her.

I thought it was better that I just leave, so I went out and started talking to some of the nurses who'd been tending Marty. They said that his girlfriend hadn't let anybody in to see him since he'd been patched up by the doctor. A couple of porters had gone in to change the bedding but one had come out with three broken ribs and the other they hadn't found yet. They explained that Marty was providing such generous donations to the hospital, though, that they'd turned a 'blind eye' to his idiosyncratic treatment as he seemed perfectly comfortable with the whole thing. They said that she'd been by his side the whole time, only going out occasionally to bring back food - always some kind of strange red cabbage soup - and nothing but cabbage soup. She'd also been sharing the same diet as Marty, in sympathy, as she was gently feeding him - the whole time her muscular frame nourished on nothing but a cloudy red cabbage broth.

In fact, it was because of that, that the only other people to have entered the room were in a team of firemen. The nurses said that early this morning, from behind Marty's door, they'd heard a sudden, violent reverberation which lasted about thirty seconds, shook the tea cups across the ward, and sounded like what they described as "a vast hessian sack being ripped from seam to seam" - and simultaneously setting off the smoke alarm. The firemen had gone in with breathing masks and had had to smash open the window to let out the pungent stench.