Heartfish

H E A R T F I S H

“Greg Potts” says his ID, Sarge’, said PC Ben Clement to his commanding officer, Sergeant Barry Dyke. A murky dawn was breaking over the two policemen, who were standing over a fallen, murmuring, human form on the bank of a small duckpond in Rowbridge Millenium Park. Clement shone his pen torch onto a laminated pass spooled around the prone form’s neck on a mid-blue lanyard.

'“Greg Potts, theatre operative”’, continued Clements. Dyke’s continuance was to stand in the silence he’d established.

‘“Greg Potts, theatre operative, Rowbridge Hospital.” That’s that, er, private hospital isn’t it Sarge? Just the other side of the bypass?’

‘Alright Clement’, answered Sgt Dyke, in a delayed response to the young PC’s wittering. He was cold, always cold at this hour, regardless of the season. Early summer now, but his body was chill and swimming with tiredness. Sgt Dyke found that his PC’s ploy of relaying information by attrition was annoying enough, and now he could feel Clement’s bright, blue-eyed stare boring into his cheek. Ready to be dealt with, like a warily happy puppy-dog.

‘Take a look around, son. See if anything's doing,’ Dyke ordered Clement. After an split-second where both policemen considered Dyke’s use of ‘son’ as a pronoun, Clement nodded.

‘On it,’ replied the PC, and trudged around the pond.

Dyke sighed. His mind had been on the cusp of logging off for the night when the call came in, interrupting his usual middle-of-the-night wavering. Breaking up a fight in Rowbridge Millennium Park was not his idea of a fun way to wind down a shift. He remembered the pre-Millenium days before a ceremonial crescent of benches that stared at beds of red, yellow, pink, peach coloured roses had been implanted, along with the shiny Rowland Millenium Park plaque besides the gates at the front of the park.

Then, Rowbridge Millenium Park was simply called the playing fields. The pond had been here, and a shudder passed through him as he recalled the winter's day when the Dyke family's chocolate Labrador, Bonzo, had bounded across the pond's frozen surface, which gave way as he got to the middle, presumably en route to a gaggle of ducks on the far bank. Dyke had screamed as Bonzo flailed madly in the hole in the ice, his forelegs chopping and churning the icy depths. Dyke's dad had heroically trampled through the pond, smashing the sludgy, brown ice with his size 12 wellies as he went, until he reached Bonzo and dragged him to the bank. He had then taken his distraught son home for hot chocolate, and a distraught Bonzo home for a heated admonishment, followed by a warmer shower.

Potts continued to stir and groan. A particularly painful moan snapped Dyke from his reverie, and he stooped down to Potts, accepting the zapping pain the process shot through his knees as he bent. He ran his eyes over the fallen theatre operative. ‘Sir, Sir. Hello, Sir. Greg? Mate? Can you hear me.’

Potts murmured, and, thought Dyke, sounded a bit gurgly. Dyke said, ‘Hmmm.’ With a stiff tenderness, he felt Potts’s neck for a pulse. Found one, which was faint and possibly, he thought, erratic.

While Dyke tended to Potts, Clement continued around the pond, looking for people. Witnesses, fighters, anyone. He found no one. The entire park seemed deserted except for the three of them. At the furthest point across the water from Dyke and Potts, a dark tangle of brambles had sprung from the earth, and Clement shone his torch into its twisted, thorny strands.

Apart from an empty Lucozade bottle, nothing was doing. Clement blew out his cheeks and turned to the water. He wondered where the ducks were, and found them as he continued to circumnavigate the pond, floating (headlessly, it seemed) in a patch of water close to where the bank met a small bench. Clement watch his sergeant tending to Potts, and felt his mind wondering and wandering to the end of the shift, and whom he would be sending his messages to. A smile crept across his face before shame slapped it away, and returned him to the job at hand. Clement looked at the dark water, and thought of murders in television dramas. He threw the torchlight around the pond, imagined landing the beam on a drowned or drowning person.

Then, not knowing why, he dipped the toe of his right shoe into the water until it penetrated his toes with a sudden, harsh, coldness. Early summer, yet the water was cold enough to bring about a little shock. He swore, and hoped his grumpy sergeant hadn’t seen his idiocy with his shoe in the pond. A duck quacked, and Clement narrowed his eyes, worried that the waterfowl were mocking him. Be less funny when this pond freezes over, thought Clement, as he stood up and kicked away what he could of the icy water from his shoe.

Clement jogged on to crouching Dyke, stricken Potts.

‘What’s up with him, Sarge?’ asked Clement.

Dyke winced as he prised himself back to a standing position. He pretended he hadn’t seen the young PC dipping his foot into the pond. ‘Bloody knees. Alright, Clement. Call an ambulance. He’s not answering back, there’s . . . some blood around his mouth. I don’t want to move him because of possible neck and spine injuries. No sign of any other fighter, eh?’

‘No. Despatch said he was fighting himself Sarge, remember?’ said Clements, in a worried voice, before making the ambulance request via his crackly radio.

‘Why didn’t Despatch call a bloody ambulance then?’ muttered Dyke. He stewed on his own grievance. “And . . . how did he beat himself up? Why did he beat himself up? Who called bloody 999 in the first place?’ Dyke’s innate patience was stretched with increasing ease these days.

He had, in his life, clutched stoically to his rank and his home and his sons and his wife and their warm house, to his delivered daily newspaper; to his expensive coffee bean habit and to watching his sitcoms. He had delegated his police work to a darkening part of his mind that recalled laws, rules, methods, and people to call. He could deal with things and retain his air of seniority with the younger ones.

As long as he had a younger one to impart instructions to, Sgt Barry Dyke had just enough self-respect and momentum to get through his week of shifts. He mainly worked night shifts now, which was alright. Better pay. There was less to do once the initial midnight squabbles were defused. He yearned for Greg Potts’s incident to be dealt with and written up and filed away so he could drive home and fall asleep with the Mirror falling onto his face as he failed to get past the opening pages again.

Clement offered his take on events. ‘Maybe he’s a known nutter, Sarge. A and E and then a full psychological evaluation I reckon.’

Dyke’s mind’s eye rolled, then his mind loaded it’s a psychiatric assessment the fellow needs, young ‘un onto his tongue. Dyke swallowed the thought, and felt Potts’s forehead. A little warm, he decided, as Potts continued to murmur. His eyes flickered sporadically, but didn’t seem to engage with the law officers, pond, dawn mist, or dewy grass around him. No reek of alcohol or weed, which surprised Sgt Dyke somewhat, although he knew full well that some human brains didn’t need stimulants to showcase their miswiring.

The song of an ambulance siren grew in the morning air.

Greg Pott’s rolled to face the two policemen.

‘My heart. My heart!’

‘He says it’s his heart, Sarge!’ exclaimed PC Clements.

‘I’m not deaf, Clement’, answered Dyke, before calmly saying, ‘the ambulance will be here any second, Greg.’

Dyke got down to Pott’s side and checked once again for a pulse. The neck and wrist gave him a faint dink of a beat. The effort of speaking had muted Potts now, but his eyes remained open and his breathing was faint but apparent.

‘Shit’, swore Dyke, under his breath. He could see the ambulance slowly entering through the park gates only a short jog away from the pond scene, stopping briefly then moving, adjusting its course and zooming across the grass towards them. Clements met the pair who spilled from the front doors of the vehicle, walked them to Dyke and Potts.

‘Here we are, Greg,’ said Dyke in a low, soothing voice. Potts seemed to hear, as an acquiescent, perfunctory smile rose to his lips for a fraction of a second.

Dyke rose to hand over to the approaching crew when Greg Pott’s eyelids burst fully open, and pointed his pupils directly at Dyke. A rather well-spoken, clear voice came from Greg Potts.

‘It’s Heart. He wants to go for a . . . bloody swim, and Lungs has been helping him. Pair of perfect arseholes if you ask me. Not that Arsehole isn’t a nice fellow, essentially autistic as he is.

‘Don’t blame Skin, he’s a simpleton. I trust the medical people will help. I shouldn’t really tell you this plus I’m actually awfully sore but really, one sometimes must rise above the juvenile antics of its fellow AllGreg parts and dispense some clear facts pertaining to the situation. A heart that wants to swim in a duckpond, I ask you! Thank you, officer. As a proud throat – and the only talking non-organ -I shall be taking an extended, well-deserved break now.’

With that, Greg Potts’s eyelids drew as firmly closed as Sgt Dyke’s mouth had become agape.

A clutter of voices and footsteps clattered towards Dyke and Potts. Green boxes of medical equipment were arranged and assembled around Dyke as the paramedics knelt and blusteringly took over the situation, exchanging questions and answers with Clement.

‘Did he say anything to you, then?’, asked one of Dyke; a wavy-haired, friendly-looking woman, who called herself Jenny as she introduced herself to Potts.

‘I think it’s his heart’, was all Dyke could repose.

‘Thank you . . . Could I?’ Jenny nodded towards where Dyke was knelt.

‘Of course, sorry, he’s all yours’, said Dyke as he stood up and backed away. ‘His pulse seemed funny, too.’

‘Thanks pal,’ said the second paramedic, in thick, confident Scouse. Dyke nodded and joined Clements, who stood by a nearby bench. Clements looked at his senior officer, intrigued by the expression of the man’s face.

‘Are you ok, Sarge? You’re looking somewhat . . . off.’

Dyke felt the radiating bore of Clements’ gaze again. ‘It’s these sodding nights, Ben. They bring out the oddness of the world.’ He turned to Clements and looked straight at him, clasped his hands upon the younger man’s shoulders. Clements’s recoil was miniscule but definite; he was quite unused to seeing or hearing anything other than unassuming facial expressions or unaffected, utterly fuss-free sentences from Dyke.

‘I think I need to get home to my bed, Ben. I think I’ve done one bloody night shift too bloody many in my bloody career. Station, clerking, clock out, home, hot toddy, bed. Any arguments?’

Clement looked confused as his mind summed up his sergeant’s ‘Er, no sarge. All sounds good to me.’

The two repaired to their police car, parked up on the curb just outside the park’s entrance. Dyke instructed PC Clements to drive. Was pleased that the PC was irked for a moment. Knew how much Clements liked to brandish his phone and send messages to women he hoped to become familiar with when the PC was in the passenger seat.

*

Before

‘Hey, Mind. How’s everything?’ said Heart, as AllGreg walked home from his nightshift. Mind ignored this, exchanged a shrug with Lungs that said he’s always like that . . . and bounced off to Stomach. Skin had been itching inside and out for a day or two now, as Heart had beat on a little faster and Lungs had had to stay strong and constant. Heart loved Lungs but knew he appreciated teamwork and rhythm above all else. Like I need teaching about rhythm, thought Heart, despite knowing he had needed teaching about everything, pretty much.

Mind was still a shadow licked onto Stomach. Collecting threads to keep for himself, to spin and repeat. Throat grumped on above Heart, muttered something to Mind that Heart heard, and knew was another grumble about him.

Heart punched at the ribcage, making Skin shudder. ‘Hoy!’ exclaimed Skin. ‘Stop it!’

Heart shouted now. ‘I want to swim! You know what it’s like, you get all the feelings, Skin. You feel all hot and warm and energised when we swim. But all I feel is . . . dense. Like I’m in a submarine without portholes.’

Lungs joined in now. ‘You’re a heart, man. You have a mind of your own. If you try to swim we will all die. Life is a film that Mind whispers to us. Imagine it; you don’t need to dive in – forgive the expression – but you don’t.

Heart rumbled on, butting the ribcage with increased fervour. Mind had swooped down to the ankles, bringing a sharp burst of blood with him. Brain cried out, ‘Settle down, eh?’ Gonna have a vasovagal hissy-fit at this rate, y’hear?’

Heart heard okay.

‘At least can I look out the porthole. Just once. Maybe feel the mist, the chill night air, the . . .’

Lungs sighed. Brain shouted more, Skin shrank, Mind went ballistic, wrapping himself around All Greg like a mightily-thwacked swingball set.

‘Alright,’ said Lungs, taking seniority while Brain and Mind lolled listlessly.

‘A quick peek, and that’s your lot.’

*