The Fall of Man

Part II chapter 6

Chapter 6

One month later, Noah continues to enjoy a speedy recovery. A key contributor to this rapid rehabilitation is his daily visit to the building’s gymnasium. The gym is a lofty double-height hall located high up on the sixtieth floor of the apartment block. It smells of sugared almond and crotches. Noah makes his way up to the sweaty space every morning and completes a pre-programmed routine. Afterwards, he often lingers - pushing himself more throughout each day, so far as he is able. He is determined to become mobile; to break the various dependencies that shackle him to the institutional world of the hospital compound.

This morning he wakes early. The sliver of sky visible from his window is a bruised slurry of blacks and greys. The sun is no more than a smudge on the horizon when he leaves his cell and rides the stainless steel carriage up to the sixtieth floor. The lobby that greets him beyond the sliding doors each day is identical to the one at the end of his corridor, twenty six floors below; four plastic yellow chairs beneath the greasy painting of a line of tombstones under a burning red sky.

Straddling the narrow passage between the lobby and the main exercise area is Tracey’s office. The chief physiotherapist and resident bodybuilding guru is a stern task-master. Early on, she spotted Noah’s desire to improve, and has rewarded his perseverance with an increasingly challenging programme. Keen to catch her unawares, he creeps up to her office as stealthily as Rover’s whizzing motors will allow.

Through the frosted glass door, the hazy silhouette of her unmistakeably robust figure is pulling a series of dramatic poses against the mirrored wall of her office. Her considerable height and strong triangular frame combine with an elaborately painted face and an insistence on wearing vivid Lycra leotards in a fascinatingly vulgar visual car-crash. When Tracey realises she has a spectator she pauses mid-flex with a coy smile, before draining the last drops from a translucent green flask that swings at her hip. With one finger she then gestures for Noah to enter.

Her office is small and cramped. Rover waits politely at the doorway. Inside, Noah is pressed uncomfortably close to the burly woman. He can feel the heat radiating from her thick, bunched racehorse body. Beads of sweat stand like tiny pearls across her face, neck and broad shoulders.

“Breakfast ‘shake?” She gestures to a slurried medley of presumably-fruit in the blender on her desk.

“No – thank you. I’d better start my exercises.” Her outsized figure and overbearing presence make Noah nervous. He quickly swipes his palm across the scanner and turns to leave. She taps several keys on her desktop in quick succession with a long, polished nail, and the computer terminal bleeps back at her.

“You’re all set for machine thirteen. Don’t forget to plug in.”

“I won’t.         Thank you.”

Tracey has concocted a schedule of exercises that alternates from one day to the next – upper body core lower body cardio lats strength building reps pecs curls and sets have become part of his vocabulary. His progress with this regime is carefully documented in a personal log. The repetitive tedium of the exercises and the comprehensive monitoring of his activities only adds to the laboratory-like state that he perpetually inhabits.

Once he sets foot in the gym, however, Noah relaxes. His clogged feet stick with familiar squeaks to the soft springy rubber dimples on the floor. The faintly sweet smell moves on briskly circulated air. Overhead, hidden speakers blare out a hypnotically monotonous dance soundtrack. Its pounding bassline is loud enough to mask the grunts and the groans, and to dissuade all but the most determined conversants. In fact, few of the gym’s clientele even acknowledge their fellow exercisers. Most are single-mindedly focussed on the job at hand, as though any human interaction will somehow detract from their efforts. This leaves Noah free to scrutinise the various bodies and behaviours as they huff and puff their way through the clammy arena. At any time of day or night, it is at least half full of jiggling forms and straining faces, most of whom are now familiar to him. This rich collage of characters provides much better entertainment than the channels of infomercials that cycle endlessly across the gym’s many monitors. But more than this, he lingers in the busy space for the view it provides of the outside world.

While three of the four walls are mirrored, reflecting each sweatily radiant inhabitant in their own sparkling halo of spotlights, one whole side of the gymnasium is glazed. This enormous window stretches fully from the dusty aubergine of the rubber floor mats to the crisp white perforated squares of the ceiling high overhead, and runs the entire width of the building. Slender vertical rib sections break the expanse of glass into a series of regulated bays. Exercise stations are tethered along the vast window like a herd of ungainly caribou staring forlornly out towards the freedom of the city beyond.

Noah eases himself gingerly onto his allocated saddle, and the display flickers into activity. After a polite greeting, his daily goal appears beside his name, heart rate and blood pressure. At the centre of the display, the eye scrutinises his posture. With another sigh, Rover settles patiently down at the feet of the machine.

From his vantage point perched on the dainty seat of elk thirteen, high up on the sixtieth floor, Noah can see the whole of the hospital laid out before him. Other people are visible only fleetingly; occasionally a face peers out through a window or a silhouette flits across a screen. Instead, he watches the buildings as they change throughout the day. As the sun first emerges, it catches their easterly edges with a warm glow. Within minutes of rising, however, it is lost behind the haze that permanently obscures the sky above. The shadows slowly shorten, and then lengthen again, as the fuzzy globe tracks across the rust-coloured heavens from left to right. Eventually, it settles into a thick red stripe to the west. There are no clouds to interrupt its predictable trajectory. Each day passes and another follows.

The window itself exhibits a daily cycle all of its own. At dawn, photovoltaic flecks embedded in the cavity coalesce into bands of gold with the first light of each day. As the sun rises, they rotate and combine to form patterns that shelter the room from the sun as it rises higher in the sky. A feint trellis, embroidered lace, the intricate screenwork of an eastern temple; the patterns adapt to suit the solar aspect, and gather any excess energy – presumably fuelling the running of the giant building. By night, the cavity clouds over; a smoky void retains the warmth of the day; and the lights outside glow softly through the interstitial murk, as if submerged in deep water.

The hospital has developed piecemeal over the years without structure or order. From above, it has a shanty-town aesthetic - no space is left unfilled in the jumble of buildings, porta-cabins and temporary forms granted permanency by the passing of time. All these parts are connected and yet none bear any relation to one another. There is not a single leaf or blade of grass amongst all the acres of hard ground below. The brain injury faculty, his home for thirty eight unmemorable years, is off to his left on the other side of the campus. Behind the faculty and its associated outbuildings loom two slender chimney stacks; like a pair of giant cigarettes, each smoulders ceaselessly with a tell-tale plume of grey smoke that tracks across the sky from the incinerator beneath.

Beyond a further cluster of perimeter buildings topped by spiralling loops of sparkling razor wire lies the rest of the city. A dense forest of ethereal towers shimmers along the horizon in the hazy half-light of early morning. Each spire twinkles in and out of existence as the sun kisses first one and then the next. The mirage is mysterious in its vague lack of substance, and as yet completely unexplored.