The World According to Bob: The Further Adventures of One Man and His Street-wise Cat

Chapter 8 None So Blind

It’s incredible what pain does to the human mind. At night in particular, you lie there, unable to sleep, hallucinating, thinking the most insane things. At one point, for instance, I began to fantasise about having my leg amputated. I imagined having a prosthetic limb instead of the throbbing, bloated one I now had – and was actually comforted by the thought.

Another time, I was limping through the car park in a local supermarket when I saw a wheelchair, sitting there unoccupied. A man was lowering a hydraulic ramp on the back of a small van, from where, I assumed, the chair’s owner would soon be helped out. The thought of being able to travel around without having to put any weight on my foot was really tempting. For a split second, I thought about stealing it. I was ashamed of myself the moment the idea entered my head.

As I lay there in a kind of fever some nights, I also found myself thinking more and more about Bob, or more specifically, losing Bob. The worse my leg became, the more I became convinced that he was ready to leave. I imagined him in the company of the old man next door, being pampered and fussed over. I pictured him lying on the sunny roof at Belle’s without a worry in the world while I hobbled off to sell The Big Issue on my own.

It wasn’t such a leap of the imagination. Back at Belle’s I was spending more and more time on my own, lying in my room asleep. As a result, I had less patience for Bob than usual. He’d sidle up to me on the bed, waiting to play catch with some treats, but I’d fail to respond. Sometimes he would try to drape himself around my leg, which I found unbearable. By now my leg was a violent, red colour and the pain was relentless.

‘Go away and play somewhere else, Bob,’ I’d say, brushing him to one side. He’d reluctantly slide off me and head out of the bedroom door, throwing me a disappointed look as he went. It was hardly a surprise that he was starting to look elsewhere for affection, I told myself afterwards.

I’m not much of a friend to him at the moment.

I knew it wasn’t helping anyone, least of all myself, but I didn’t know what to do to dig myself out of the black hole that had been slowly consuming me these past few weeks. One morning, however, I woke up and decided that enough was enough. I simply had to do something about it. I didn’t care what the doctors thought about me and my past: I wanted some answers, I wanted this problem to go away. I got dressed, grabbed my crutch and headed for the local surgery, determined to have a proper examination.

‘That’s an interesting crutch you have there, Mr Bowen,’ the doctor said when I turned up in the consulting room.

‘Necessity is the mother of invention,’ I said, sticking the weather-beaten pole in the corner and climbing on to the examination table where he began casting an eye over my thigh and leg.

‘This doesn’t look too good. You need to keep pressure off that leg for a week or so. Can you take time off work?’ he asked me.

‘No, not really. I sell The Big Issue,’ I told him.

‘OK, well you need to see what you can do to keep your foot elevated at all times,’ he said. ‘I also need you to have what’s known as a D-Dimer blood test which looks for clotting in the blood cells. I suspect that’s where your problems lie.’

‘OK,’ I said.

‘Now, what are we going to do about this crutch of yours? I think we can do better than a tree branch,’ he said.

‘No chance of a wheelchair?’ I said, suddenly remembering the one I’d seen in the car park.

‘Afraid not. But I could offer you a decent set of crutches while we try to get this swelling and inflammation down.’

By the end of the morning I was the proud owner of a pair of proper metallic crutches, complete with rubber grips, arm holders and shock absorbers. I was soon clunking my way around with my legs flailing in front of me. I was acutely conscious of the way it must have looked. I felt silly, even sillier than I’d looked with a pole under my arm. I could feel what people were thinking about me. It was depressing.

The time for feeling sorry for myself was over, however. I didn’t waste any time and went to have the blood test done the following day. It wasn’t that straightforward, of course. Taking a blood sample from a recovering heroin addict is easier said than done.

The practice nurse at the clinic asked me to roll up my sleeve but when she tried to find a vein she failed miserably.

‘Hmmm, let’s try this other arm instead,’ she said. But it was the same again.

We exchanged a look that spoke volumes. I didn’t need to spell it out.

‘Maybe I should do it,’ I said.

She gave me a sympathetic look and handed me the needle. Once I’d found a vein in my leg, I let her extract the sample. The humiliations of being a recovering addict were endless, but I wasn’t going to let that deter me.

A couple of days later when I rang the clinic the female doctor confirmed my worst suspicions. She told me that I had developed a deep vein thrombosis, or DVT.

‘You have a blood clot which I’d like to have further investigated. So I need you to go to University College Hospital for an ultrasound test,’ she told me.

In a way it was a relief. I’d always suspected I’d caused myself a problem on those long flights to and from Australia. Looking back on it I could see that I’d suppressed the thought for all sorts of silly reasons, partly because I hadn’t wanted to sound paranoid but partly also because I hadn’t wanted to have my suspicions confirmed. I knew that DVTs could cause all sorts of problems, particularly coronary ones, strokes in particular.

Given all this, I was on edge over the next week or so while I waited for the ultrasound appointment. Bob and I carried on going to work but I was only going through the motions. I was terrified to do something that might trigger a stroke or heart attack. I even stopped interacting with him when we sat on the buckets together. He’d look at me every now and again, expecting me to produce a treat so that we could start performing for the commuters. But more often than not my heart wasn’t in it and I’d turn away. Looking back, I was too wrapped up in myself. If I’d looked I’m sure I’d have seen the disappointment written all over his face.

When the appointment day came I dragged myself to UCH on the Euston Road and passed through a room of expectant mothers waiting in the ultrasound department. I seemed to be the only person who wasn’t excited to be there.

I was led off by a specialist who slapped loads of jelly on my leg so that he could run the camera around, the same as they did for the mums-to-be. It turned out that I had a massive, six-inch-long blood clot. The specialist sat me down and told me that he suspected it had started as a small clot but had thickened and clotted further along the edge of the vein.

‘It was probably hot weather that set it off and then you’ve exacerbated it by walking around on it,’ he said. ‘We will prescribe you a blood thinning medicine and that should sort it out.’

I was relieved. Unfortunately, I wasn’t quite in the clear.

I was prescribed an anti-coagulant that is used a lot to thin the blood of potential stroke victims. But I didn’t pay any attention to the leaflet that came with it. It didn’t occur to me that there might be side effects.

A few nights after I started taking the tablets, I got up at around 5am to go to the toilet. Outside it was pitch black, but there was just about enough light in the flat for me to find my way to the bathroom and back. As I walked down the corridor I could feel something trickling down my thigh. I turned on a light and was horrified to see that my leg was covered in blood. When I got back into my room and switched on the lights, I saw that the sheets of my bed were soaked red as well.

Bob had been fast asleep in the corner, but woke up. He could tell there was something wrong and shot up to stand at my side.

I had no idea what was happening. But I did know that I had to get myself to a hospital – and fast. I threw on a pair of jeans and a jumper and ran out of the flat, heading towards Tottenham High Road where I figured I had a chance of catching a bus.

When I got to UCH, they admitted me immediately. I was told that the anti-coagulant had thinned my blood to such an extent that it had started bleeding from the pores of the weakened skin where I used to inject myself.

I was kept in for two days while they sorted out my medication. They eventually settled on another drug, which wouldn’t have the same effect. That was the good news. The bad news was that I’d have to inject it into my stomach myself for a period of up to six months.

Having to inject myself was awful, for all sorts of reasons. To begin with it was painful, injecting directly into my stomach muscles. I could feel the contents of the syringe entering the tissue. Secondly, it was another reminder of my past. I hated the prospect of having a syringe and a needle as part of my daily life once more.

Worst of all, however, it didn’t work.

Even after I’d been injecting myself with the new drug for a couple of weeks, my leg was no better. I couldn’t walk more than two paces, even with the crutches. I was now beginning to despair. Once again, I began to imagine losing my leg altogether. I went back to UCH and explained the situation to one of the doctors I’d seen previously.

‘We’d better have you back in for a week. I’ll check to see what the bed situation is right now,’ he said, picking up the phone.

I wasn’t best pleased about it. It meant I’d not be able to work and I’d already lost two days in hospital. But I knew that I simply couldn’t carry on in this condition. I was told that they had a bed the following day. So I went home that night and explained the situation to Belle. She agreed to look after Bob, which was a huge comfort for me. I knew he was happy there. The following morning I got up and packed a small bag of stuff to take to hospital.

I’m not the greatest hospital patient. The clue is in the word patient. That’s not something I’ve ever been accused of being. I get easily distracted.

During the first few days, I didn’t sleep very well at all, even when they gave me medication to help me nod off. Inevitably, I started taking stock of my life and lay there worrying about everything – my leg, my long term health, my pitch at Angel and, as always, the lack of money. I also lay there and fretted about Bob.

The idea that we should go our separate ways had refused to go away. We’d been together for more than two and a half years now and he had been the most loyal friend imaginable. But all friendships go through phases, and some come to an end. I could see that I’d not been the most brilliant company in recent weeks. Should I ask Belle if she wanted to keep him? Maybe I should ask the nice bloke next door with whom he’d already struck up a bond, it seemed? I would, of course, be devastated to lose him. He was my best friend, my rock. I didn’t have anyone else in my life. Deep down I needed him to keep me on the straight and narrow, to maintain my sanity sometimes. But at the same time, I had to make the right choice. I really didn’t know what to do. But then it struck me. It wasn’t my decision.

As the old saying went, cats choose you, not the other way around. That’s what had happened with Bob and me years earlier. For whatever reason, he’d seen something in me that made him want to stick around. I’d always believed in karma, the notion that you get back in life what you put out into the world. Maybe I’d been gifted his company in reward for something good I’d done earlier in life? Not that I could remember doing that much good. Now I had to wait to see if he’d choose me again. If he wanted to remain with me, then it would be his decision. And his alone.

I’d find out his answer soon enough, I felt sure.

When the results of the latest round of tests came in, I was told that the dosage of the drug that had originally been prescribed wasn’t strong enough. They were going to increase it, but they also wanted to keep me in longer to make sure it actually had an impact.

‘It will only be a couple more days, just to see it works and doesn’t have any side effects,’ the doctor told me.

Belle popped in to see me, dropping off a couple of books and some comics. She told me Bob was fine.

‘I think he’s found someone else to feed him as well as that old guy,’ she said, laughing. ‘He really is living up to the name Six Dinner Bob.’

After a couple of days it was obvious that the new dosage was finally sorting out my DVT. When I looked at my leg the swelling was beginning to go down and the colour returning to normality. The nurses and doctors could see this as well, so they wasted no time in getting me off my back.

‘It’s not good for you lying there all day, Mr Bowen,’ one of them kept saying to me.

So they insisted that I got out and walked up and down the corridor at least a couple of times a day. It was actually a joy to be able to pace around without wincing with pain. When I put weight on my leg, I didn’t get those same excruciating shooting sensations. It still hurt, but it wasn’t anywhere near as bad as previously.

True to their word, about a week after I’d been admitted, the doctors told me that I could go home. I texted Belle with the good news. She texted me back to say she’d try to come to the hospital to meet me later that afternoon.

The hospital paperwork took longer than I’d hoped so it was approaching evening by the time I slipped out of my pyjamas, got dressed, gathered together my belongings and limped my way to the exit on Euston Road. I still had the crutches but didn’t really need them. I could now put pressure on my leg without any real pain.

Belle had texted me again to say that she would meet me outside.

‘Can’t come into hospital. Will explain when I see you,’ she’d written.

We’d agreed to meet by the infamous new modern art sculpture outside the main entrance. I’d heard people at the hospital talking about the work of art, a giant, six ton polished pebble. It had cost the hospital tens of thousands of pounds apparently and was meant to make patients and visitors ‘feel better’ as they arrived and departed. It didn’t inspire me particularly, but I certainly felt the benefit of it when my body hit the cold evening air outside. I leaned on it for a moment or two as I tried to catch my breath after walking what seemed like miles along the corridors without the aid of crutches.

I was a couple of minutes early so there was no sign of Belle. That was no surprise at this time of the evening; I could see that the rush hour traffic was already building up. I was resigned to waiting a while, but then, to my relief, I saw her emerging from the bus stop across the road. She was carrying a large, holdall style bag which, I assumed, had some clean clothes and my jacket in it. At first I didn’t spot it, but as she got closer I saw a flash of ginger fur poking out of the unzipped top of the bag.

As she reached the bottom of the steps, I saw his head poking out.

‘Bob,’ I said, excited.

The moment he registered my voice he began scrambling out of the bag. In an instant he had his front paws on Belle’s arm and the back ones on the top of the bag, ready to spring forward.

We were still a few feet apart when Bob launched himself off the bag towards me. It was the most athletic leap I’d ever seen him make, and that was saying a lot.

‘Whoaah there, fella,’ I said, lurching forward to catch him then holding him close to my chest. He pinned himself to me like a limpet clinging on to a rock that was being pounded by waves. He then nuzzled his head in my neck and started rubbing me with his cheeks.

‘Hope you don’t mind, but that’s why I couldn’t come in. I had to bring him,’ Belle said beaming. ‘He saw me packing a few things for you and started going crazy. I think he knew I was coming to get you.’

Whatever doubts I’d had about our future together were swept away in that instant. On the way home, Bob was all over me – literally. Rather than sitting alongside me he sat on my lap, crawled on my shoulders and sat up with his paws on my chest, purring away contentedly.

It was as if he never wanted to let me go again. I felt exactly the same way.

They say that there are none so blind as those who will not see. In the days and weeks that followed, I realised that I had been unwilling, or maybe unable, to see what was glaringly obvious. Far from wanting to leave me, Bob had been desperate to help ease my pain and get me on the road to recovery. He’d given me space to recover. But he’d also been nursing me without my knowledge.

Belle told me that whenever I was asleep in my room, Bob would check up on me. He would lie on my chest and even run checks every now and again.

‘He’d give you a little tap on the forehead and wait for you to react. I think he just wanted to make sure you were still with us,’ she smiled.

At other times, she told me, he would wrap himself around my leg.

‘It was as if he was trying to apply a tourniquet or something. It was like he wanted to take away the pain,’ she said. ‘You would never lie still long enough for him to stay there for long. But he knew where the pain was and was definitely trying to do something about it.’

I hadn’t seen any of this. What was worse, whenever Bob had tried to help or comfort me when I was awake, I’d driven him away. I’d been selfish. Bob loved – and needed – me as much I loved and needed him. I wouldn’t forget that.

Lying in bed for days on end had focussed my mind on something else as well. A few weeks after I was back on my feet, I took the most important step I’d made in years. Perhaps in my entire life.

When I’d actually heard the words at a regular appointment with my drug counsellor at the specialist dependency unit in Camden, they’d not sunk in at first.

‘I think you’ve reached the finishing line, James,’ he’d said.

‘Sorry what do you mean?’

I’m going to write you your final prescription. A few more days of taking your medication and I think you’ll be ready to call yourself clean.’

I’d been attending the clinic for several years now. I’d arrived there a mess, addicted to heroin and on a fast track to an early grave. Thanks to a brilliant collection of counsellors and nurses, I’d been hauling myself back from the brink ever since.

After coming off first heroin and then methadone, my new medication, subutex, had slowly but surely been helping me to wean myself off opiates completely. I’d been taking it for around six months now.

They called it a miracle drug and, as far as I was concerned, at least, that’s exactly what it was. It had allowed me to reduce my craving for drugs gently and without any hiccups. I’d been reducing my dosage of subutex steadily, first from 8 milligrams to 6 then to 4 and then 2. From there I’d started taking even smaller doses, measured in 0.4 grams. It had been a pretty seamless process, much easier than I’d anticipated.

So I wasn’t quite sure why I left the unit that morning feeling so apprehensive about the fact that I was about to stop taking subutex altogether.

I should have been delighted. It was time for that soft aeroplane landing that one of my counsellors had talked about. But I was curiously on edge, and remained that way for the next two days.

That first night, for instance, I started sweating and having minor palpitations. They weren’t serious. They were certainly nothing compared to what I’d been through when I’d come off methadone. That had been hellish. It was almost as if I was waiting for something awful to happen, for me to have some dramatic reaction. But nothing happened. I just felt, well, absolutely fine.

Bob was attuned to my mood and sensed that I needed a little more TLC. He wasn’t overt; he didn’t need to perform any of his late night diagnoses or tap me on the head to check I was still breathing. He just positioned himself a few inches closer on the sofa and gave me an extra rub of his head on my neck every now and again.

I carried on with my life as normal over the next couple of days. Bob and I had headed back to the flat in Tottenham where we’d adjusted to life there again. It was such a relief to be able to walk properly and to ride my bike around with Bob on board.

In the end there was a slight sense of anti-climax. Five or six days after I had been given the final prescription, I pulled the foil container out of its packet and saw that there was just one tablet left.

I squeezed the oval shaped pill out, placed it under my tongue until it had all dissolved then downed a glass of water. I scrunched the foil up into a ball and threw it on the floor for Bob to chase.

‘There you go, mate. That’s the last one of those you’ll get to play with.’

That night, I went to bed expecting to have a rough night. I will never sleep, I told myself. I felt sure that my body was going to be racked by withdrawal pangs. I expected nightmares, visions, restless twisting and turning. But there was none of that. There was nothing. Maybe I’d simply exhausted myself with anxiety, but the moment my head hit the pillow I was out like a light.

When I woke up the next morning, I gathered my senses and thought to myself: Jeez. That’s it. I’m clean. I looked out the window at the London skyline. It wasn’t a glorious blue sky, unfortunately. It wasn’t quite that clichéd. But it certainly was a clear one. And, just as when I’d come off methadone, it seemed somehow brighter and more colourful.

I knew that the days, weeks, months and years stretching ahead of me weren’t going to be easy. There would be times when I would feel stressed, depressed and insecure and at those times I knew that niggling temptation would return and I’d think about taking something to deaden the pain, to kill the senses.

That had been why I’d fallen for heroin in the first place. It had been loneliness and hopelessness that had driven me into its arms. But now I was determined that wasn’t going to happen again. Life wasn’t perfect, far from it. But it was a million times better than it had been when I’d formed my addiction. Back then I couldn’t see beyond the next hit. Now I felt like I could see a way forward. I knew that I could soldier on.

From that day onwards, each time I felt myself weakening I told myself: ‘hold on, no, I’m not sleeping rough, I’m not alone, it’s not hopeless. I don’t need it.’

I carried on seeing a counsellor for a while, but soon I didn’t need that either. A month or so after I’d taken my last tablet of subutex he signed me off.

‘I don’t need to see you again,’ he said as he ushered me out of the door. ‘Stay in touch, but good luck. And well done.’

And I am happy to say I have not seen or heard from him since.