The death of Henry Fetorz
It was about six in the morning, when I woke up with an intense pain down my right side, towards the back, just around the bottom of my
rib cage. Then, it felt like it had moved, down to my groin, across my abdomen.
I wanted to go for a run, as I did usually, maybe three times a week. In the
mornings it wasn’t often I would run, but that day I wanted to. The pain then
intensified. I was sitting on a sofa which had been my bed. The place was an
empty office, three or so main rooms, a bathroom, and a kitchen housed in a cupboard
space. To give the background a bit more detail I rely on such favours from
friends, as an artist being stringent with cash is a necessity. I have partly created
that scenario, and it was part of the problem.
I felt saliva build in my mouth and then like I was going to
be sick. It was strange, as I didn’t feel like the usual coming on, of
sickness. Still, I went to the bathroom, and began vomiting. I hadn’t eaten, as
it was morning, so very little came up. I went back to the sofa and sat down
holding my stomach. Maybe twenty minutes later, I repeated the process. The pain
was brutal by now down my right side and to the front. All that came up was near
yellow saliva. I had an intense headache, too; I had been getting them for the
last week or so, taking ibuprofen to fix them; I used a lot, to be able to run
without knee pains. I thought I hadn’t drank water, too. It’s a fault I had.
Too much whisky at night, followed by ibuprofen to ward off pain, be it head or
joints. I figured doing all of this was a way to stay as ‘myself’; some people
remarked that it kept me looking young, being like that. Some others said it
was going to take its toll. I figured it balanced out. Perhaps I didn’t care.
That was also part of the problem; not addressing why. As the vomiting stopped for some ten minutes, I forced water
down. Within maybe an hour, the pain had pretty much disappeared. I then went
running.
That night, I guess I drank again. Maybe wine, with some fast
food, and whisky again. I did that every night. On my own, it’s how I got by.
Boredom, tension, excitement. Because, I thought I had my health my way.
It was kind of a way of pushing myself, to get where I didn’t exactly know. And, by about midnight, the pain had returned. Only this time, it
didn’t leave. So, I swallowed I think another ibuprofen and just laid on the couch.
My head was hurting so much and it was so strange as I knew I had drank a
lot of water earlier. I knew I had to go to hospital. I hate hospital. I guess
like a lot of people maybe do. Especially the ones who self-medicate. By two in
the morning, I was getting desperate. I had no medical insurance. That was I
guess another of the failings. On my part. Only we don’t always have a lot of options.
I walked around the office, holding my rib cage like it was
a child, like my arms were trying to comfort my own body. Sometimes I would
sit, sometimes I would lay on the floor. I even sat on the toilet, my head on
the sink. By about five o’clock it took all of my concentration to send a message
to a friend, to please call an ambulance for me. I didn’t even know what
numbers to call. Of course, I said when he awoke. There was fuck all else I could
do, to be honest, apart from go into the street, which I thought of doing but
also felt I could just fall over. By six thirty, my friend called. What the fuck is happening,
he asked. I told him, and he said okay, he would call. I would wait in the
doorway, to the street. Down I went, holding myself.
I sat in the entrance just as the doorman to the building
appeared. He said good morning and was everything fine - and then he said no,
it obviously isn’t. I said an ambulance is coming. I was in too much pain, to
talk properly, as well I don’t remember too much either, now, about those moments.
Only that at one point he insisted I could not wait for the ambulance as it had
not appeared and I should go to the nearest hospital by taxi.
After waiting maybe another twenty minutes, he took me out
into the street and put me into a taxi. It drove to a nearby hospital, a public
hospital in the centre of Buenos Aires. I remember getting out just as my phone
rang. The ambulance had appeared at the building and where was I. I didn’t even
want to speak. I did speak though, to someone in the entrance, who showed me where
the emergency area was. There, they took my document and told me to wait. I
collapsed into a chair and waited. It was cold. Buenos Aires hadn’t had a winter
like this in years. The doorman of my building had also spoken to the owner of
the office, who had in turn called my in-laws. My mother in law appeared, which
was amazing. I felt like I had entered into something I had no control over whatsoever,
so to suddenly see someone I knew made me feel a bit more rational. Then, maybe
an hour later, still in pain I was taken into the emergency area.
The place was full of emergency cases. Mostly seemed old, like
they were dying. Then, there were a few younger people. The room was divided by
curtains, with beds and furniture as if in some war zone. It all looked broken.
In the middle, were desks covered with emergency treatment equipment. There
were family members by some beds. Occasionally someone would shout in pain. I
sat on the bed, as a young female doctor asked me a load of questions. Then,
she took me to another room, where I removed most of my clothes. She was
pushing around my abdomen, thumping my back, pushing around my right side. Then,
she left suddenly. I didn’t know what she said. I spoke Spanish but not to such
an extent where if people talked quickly. I sat on the couch, which was covered
by a dirt stained cover. Through the door everyone was running around still. Then, in
came a guy, and started to prepare a drip for my arm. I asked what was
happening. He shrugged. You are vomiting with pain, he said. The drip
installed, he left. I didn’t know if I was being prepared for theatre. That’s what
I thought. I needed to piss. How, I thought? Where? Who the fuck understands
me? I felt the fear squirt through my veins like there was no coming back, now.
In that moment, I wanted to run. Where to? I had nowhere to run to. Piss? I shouted. Piss! A woman pointed, to a door. I pulled
the drip with me, into the room, where this crazy looking toilet continuously hosed
water downwards like a whirlpool. Then, I made my way back to the room. The
doctor still hadn’t returned. Then, through all the commotion of the emergency area
my mother in law appeared again. She sat with me just as the doctor re appeared. Take
him to the scan ward, at the end of the corridor, she said. And then she left. I forgot to mention before, that my mother in law speaks to me. Her daughter doesn't, unless there is something she needs to know.
For some seven hours, I waited, between the scan area and
the emergency area, my mother in law patient as anything as the pain started to
subside and I got colder and colder as I couldn’t put on a coat with the drip and
there was seemingly no heating in the waiting areas. By late afternoon, the
pain mostly gone and the tests done and more to come, I was told I could leave,
prescriptions for pain killers in my pocket and future appointments. The sun outside
was by now bright, setting at the end of the day. I looked up into the sky, feeling
like I was lucky to leave but still in my same state of thinking. That
night, full of pain killing drugs, I slept. I still felt so scared, like something
had really started and I couldn’t stop it. That part was the different feeling.
All through the next day though, I felt mostly fine. I still
took pain killers just in case, though I didn’t think the pain was there. That
night, at around six, I met a friend, a journalist, to show him my new book. I
joked, that I had nearly called off the meeting, as I had spent the day previous
in hospital. He looked at me, saying my god, and here you are, looking okay
with a beer? Yes, I had a beer. I only had one and was disappointed to only
have one as he had to leave, for a meeting. I looked at the menu, where it said
two for one. That seemed a shame. After saying goodbye, I made my way to a pizza place, ordering
crap flour ridden cheap food all washed down with two mug sized glasses of wine.
Then, I walked home, where I drank more whisky. By two in the morning, the pain
was immense again and back, the pain killers did little and I began vomiting
again. This time, I didn’t call anyone. I laid on the couch, holding myself tight
and thought if I was going to die, then I would die there. I was not going to
die in the hospital. I also figured, that maybe the drink had something to do
with it. It couldn’t be by coincidence, surely.
For the next five or so days, I did not go anywhere. I just
nursed myself around the office, trying to eat better and taking different pain killers
and wait for doctor’s appointments. Still, the pain was there but less. Each
day, it became less. I also contacted another two doctors, via friends. One had
a practise some six or so blocks away. The day after speaking with him, I was
able to visit.
It turned out, that there were a few problems: I was put on
ulcer treatment tablets, I was told not to drink alcohol and stop with salt,
spice, all the predictable things, and that I had a really bad lung infection
from some months before, which I had never gotten treatment for. After about
three weeks, my stomach seemed much calmer. My lungs were getting better though
I still waited to see what the x-rays showed, and, for me, I wasn’t drinking
alcohol or taking pain killers to rid myself of headaches. Headaches like that also
come if you have liver problems. Its okay, to take a few, the older doctor had said. But,
drinking as you have been has caused your liver to be fatty; if you want to keep
getting better, then of course – do not drink, either. These parts are up to
you, he said. I didn’t want to drink again, ever. But your lungs need treatment.
I didn’t really care about them, though obviously I should have. I felt fortunate that someone was really taking their time for me.
It was perhaps some three weeks or so, after the hospital,
that I started to consider what exactly had happened. I was alone, still, and not drinking. Of course, I couldn’t change
being alone, either; I did not like it, who does? But I could not change that.
If I wanted to go out, and drink, and – importantly IMAGINE that my life was different,
as if somehow the tension was something I needed, then…I had no choice. I didn’t
want that pain or the hospital or the fear that I had felt there. It wasn’t as if death was something I feared, though maybe I
did; it was more the circumstances, that I felt I had let myself create. The
coldness, the lack of understanding, the fact that it didn’t matter who you
were or what you thought- YOU were going to die in some public place - and no
one would treat you any differently, because you were nobody; no sons to come
and visit you, because you would not want them there seeing you in such a place
and the memory they would have to keep. Nothing seemed to be part of me anymore.
It was like I had cut everyone off. Only what I had created for myself was my company. Each day, as it neared its end, I could not return to the
past. No drink, no cloudy end to the day, no fooling myself, that I was somehow
being relevant, that drinking alcohol was a friend. It ceased to be an option. And,
when you are faced with no familiar options, the challenge is the only thing
you can find strength from. I knew, that it was my outlook on life, which had been the problem.
And, it was like I had encouraged that, like a cloud over myself, unwilling to
see another way of tackling issues because I was unable to see another way.
Choices, and we will make the easiest ones, always. Drink is fun, drink is
really cool, drink is being ALIVE. Really?
When I was about ten, or eleven, I lived with my father,
after my parents separated. He drank every day. And, everyday I fucking hated
it. The anger, the emotional see-saw, the unknowns and the crying, the guilt, his
I guess, his problems, the apologies. All repeated. Still, when my father died,
I never considered myself a whisky person or a drinking person. But, when he
did, I started to drink whisky. Suddenly it tasted okay. Within two years, my wife now telling
professional people that I had drinking problems, because one day I was there
when she said it – to which the young doctor replied, well, no, perhaps it’s
not a dependency but James could perhaps be ABUSING alcohol. I looked at my
wife and thought I had been pardoned. Within maybe a year of that, we had
separated. During that period, of trying again, and separating again, I lied continuously,
about not drinking, and that I was getting help in Buenos Aires.
I never ONCE asked for help, about drinking. I even lied,
about attending meetings, for alcoholics. I figured I was clever, and I would
get her back another way. I never really did, only temporarily. And, each time
the years after, that a problem arose in another relationship, I could link it
to drinking. Not that I drank a lot, but – I drank regularly. And why? Because
I didn’t want to NOT drink. And, that was only part of it.
As I began to get better, in Buenos Aires, spending time
with my two other sons and beginning again to work at night, as well still
feeling sometimes delicate, like if I slept a certain way I could feel my body
still hurting, my lung infection by now nearly cured and eating healthier, I
remembered a movie I had watched. I was probably twelve, at the time. I was
living with my father. There were three films, I still remembered – Cabaret,
with Liza Minelli, Bonnie and Clyde, perhaps the one of the three I least
remembered – and, the other 80’s movie about Hank Williams, called The Show He Never
Gave.
There I found it, one night, on Youtube, as I waited each
day to get better in Buenos Aires, The quality was terrible, but I persevered,
watching it till the end. It was amazing. The broken hearted singer, dying in
the back of the Cadillac. Everyone, I imagine, knows a bit about Hank Williams,
that he drank himself to death, that he never ever gave the final show he was
supposed to. Only that night, and the next day, I started thinking about
something else.
I had been a part time ambulance driver, in the Falklands,
back in the mind 90’s. I gave the job up, in 1996, the year I first exhibited
as a painter in Argentina. It was mostly a quite job, save the night times when
mostly, if there was a call out, it was drink related. One evening, I had to collect a doctor, and get to a house.
It was the back of one of Stanley’s pubs. Myself and the doctor made our way into
the back of the building, into the kitchen. There, in the corner, was a body, its
twisted form visible behind the pile of empty cans and bottles in the middle of
the room. And, it was a pile; it was literally like a mountain, like the
contents had been drank and then the containers just thrown into the middle of
the room. It was waist high. You had to walk around it, to get to the body. Which
we did, with the CPR units and all and connected him up but it seemed pretty
obvious he was long gone, as when we moved him his arm stuck up in the air like
a sheep’s leg.
I put the stretcher to his side, and we put him on it, tying
the body tight as awkward as it was on account of it being twisted. Then, we
went back the three or so blocks to the hospital, the doctor going home. In the hospital, I guess there were three nurses those days,
and myself. The body had to be dealt with, so - regardless if I had been
trained or not I stayed on, helping the senior nurse to cut the shit covered boiler suit off him
and turning him over, to wash the emaciated body. Maybe it was an hour or so, I
don’t remember. I guess we then put him into one of the fridges in the morgue,
the tight skinned dead yellowing body so etched onto my mind. I then went back,
to sit at the reception area, waiting to be able to go home. I remember the
senior nurse appeared I think later. Was it the same day or the next, to ask me
did I need to speak to someone, as what I had helped with had not been very pleasant?
I said no, I was fine. I didn’t know how to explain, that somehow I felt
comfortable with something so horrible, because I wanted to endure it. I remember
other people saying at the time, that they would not have done it. And, I
always thought it was fine though it actually made me feel sick.
People often asked what it was like, and I just thought it
was how it was; just like my dad’s drinking, I guess. Just like death is, I
suppose; just like the way I viewed life, I thought – it just WAS LIKE THAT. But,
something changed, in Buenos Aires. It felt like I could not think like that
anymore, because it was not an option, now. And, because it was not an option
it made me see the things in a different light suddenly, which I had been
unable to see so long as I remained a prisoner to what I had inadvertently
conditioned myself to; I didn’t want to consider, that it was how life was, because
I had made it like that by my own actions. Why did I help clean that body? Why
did I make drawings of it later? Why, when I separated from the mother of my
children, did I think that suicide was beckoning? Why had I been watching
videos, of other artists who had killed themselves, like staying in that frame
of mind right until the end was the only option? Because I didn’t know there was
another option, that was why.
Because I had been traumatised? I didn’t want to make it
dramatic, like it sounded. I wrote some things, to my sister, because I wanted
people to consider that I HAD been drinking too much. But, was drinking the
problem or was it that I couldn’t see another way, to fixing something? If
bored, I drank, if alone, I drank, if unable to speak, I drank, if unable to
tolerate shit, I drank. To live, I thought, I drank. To feel life, I drank. Not
a lot, but always. And yet, deep down it felt like each time I sipped at alcohol,
I was drinking death. Like a slow death. Because I didn’t want to face not
drinking and I didn’t want to face living either. I wanted the options, which,
once allowed, would never actually change anything. That was the crucial part;
nothing changes, when you know you can have another drink. Nothing.
As I write this, I hope, and feel, that it will take me to
some place new. No one deserves, especially my sons or anyone for that
matter, to have to understand why I could not make changes, to why I drank. I remember too, how some years after the
ambulance incident to which I shrugged about it all like it had not really effected
me, how I met that person’s son, who grew up in England and never knew his
father. I played football with him, at a tournament in Europe, and it was he
who I spent most of my time with, like his company was the most relevant to me.
I was of course some twenty years older than he – but, as I spoke to him all
the time I had this picture of his father’s body, it’s twisted shape, the
yellowing flesh, the stains, the cut boiler suit, the way the fluids ran down
onto the white sheets. I still don’t know if trauma is the excuse we can use
for everything. But, the combination of having no options and seeing things
differently are as much a surprise as it is predictable, because you have somehow
let your mind be programmed to think it is the natural way to go, because that
is just how things are.
No, things are not perhaps just the way they are. They might
be wrong. And, getting the chance to see that it is wrong comes like a shock to
the system.
It sounds crazy too, as with options we should be able to
make the right decisions. But we get conditioned, sometimes subtly, sometimes
brutally. But why would you want to take your choices away, by giving in to
something that is really a poison anyway? Some people are not affected by it
deeply. But you recognize that some are. And you are one of them.
And, it’s a way of fooling yourself, of never addressing
things that need fixing. And, your mind unable to fool itself thinking its
making a choice you are actually forced to find the part of yourself which naturally
wants a challenge, that takes you someplace else, and that’s where you always
wanted to go in the first place, before drink got it’s hold. Drinking is the
fool’s game that you are going someplace new; you don’t, ever. You wake up in
the same place. Or, you wake up if you’re lucky. Or forced.
Buenos Aires, August, 2019
.jpg)
