Monika's first day

I am commissioned to remove the dead hedgehog from its current position near the front door and dispose of it in the tangle of undergrowth at the back of the clinic. I don't know what else to do with it. It can't stay where it is, it is nearly visiting time. Someone might step on it. And putting it in the dustbin is out of the question. It has fallen to me to intervene because I am the only one prepared to touch it. In truth, I pretended to the others to be less squeamish than I actually am, but I will still go through with it. First, getting a sense of the task, I crouch beside the corpse. I don't know if I have ever looked at roadkill like this before, if that is what it is. Perhaps it is stabbed or shot. I have no way of telling. On my one previous encounter with hedgehogs, I attempted to extract one from a drain but that did not go quite as I had envisioned it would. It emitted an intimidating hissing sound which, I confess, I do not wish to hear again. This one is lying on its side, half curled up, snout to tail. I can see its tiny feet. Which are contracted as if grasping at something. As I am out in the open, I don't want to appear a fool, but I still have to check, is this one really dead? Yes, it seems there is no room for doubt. I say out loud, 'definitely dead', and 'poor thing' which I don't really feel. I am consciously attempting to empathise... it will help me overcome my reluctance. Upon closer examination, green-bottles are gathered about a black and jagged wound in its side as if they have found a last and drying water-hole. Like tiny vultures, they fly off in response to the movement of my shadow and wait amongst nearby leaves. I tentatively try and lift the corpse but fumble it. It rolls over and the white maggots of underneath, dance around before my eyes. I ask, 'what does your dance mean?' I do their voice as well: 'do not trouble us, we are only the little maggots of underneath, we are your neighbours, we are not a sign of evil.' 'True,' I say in my own voice, unable to think of a better response. And, overall, I do agree. We have all gone through our larval stage. Some of us have never left it. 'To conclude the case of the defence, I ask you, what isn't a maggot?' As if in response, a distinctive orange and black sexton beetle emerges from the hedgehog's wound and hurries away into the undergrowth like it is fleeing an unseemly or scandalous scene - I think to my self, that's neat, an animal within an animal. The hedgehog's spines describe its hedgehog roundness in my cupped hands but somehow I cannot bear the idea of the touch of its rotting feet, the give of lifeless limbs, the floppy scrape of useless claws. That is somehow too awful. I suppose that beneath the rigor of the spines, things have moved on apace but as far as I can see, there is nothing leaking. With my eyes shut, the equally distributed pressure of this ball of needles which I hold, which I cup, in my hands feels like a sphere of light. I visualise holding it up to the sun, like an offering... a luminosity found within extinction that is held fast like a satellite in the pull of the great light of life. I imagine casting this light into the undergrowth and into forgetting, and I imagine its peaceful dimming there. Its flattening out. But I must not get carried away. I cannot go too far in that direction. The mindfulness programme which I have recently completed has helped me out of the traps hidden within the set pattern of my thoughts. Before this, and for a long time, my capacity for visualisation of processes was heroic. The programme relaxed the hold of certain progressions, if x, then y and now already at z. It asked me, what is this moment more than any other? Overall, agreed. Overall, here and now, I cannot not agree - after all, I am free of the traps I would otherwise not have escaped. That's today. In earlier times, no. Disagree. Definitely disagree. Back then, life was nothing but the crowding in of distinct and anticipated moments. Like all the waves of the ocean seeking out a single small boat and wishing to raise it up or pass through it as if it were a door that led beyond the waves. In thrall to the waves, I was like the boat. I was living outside living in the moment. I had access to another level, I do not say higher because I was insignificant, abject, a little boat tossed by greater forces. I observed, and was subject to, the swell and the trough. I watched the waves coming and I saw them receding. I counted them in and I counted them out. First, approaching, washing over me, peaking, this is it, this is it, and then receding, and the aftermath. I absorbed, I held, I evacuated - I was a point that was passed through, I do not say by the universe but by great forces. I was passed through. I saw time, and the moments in time were like green bottles at high tide, bobbing against the harbour wall. They were the rattle of crockery when tanks are passing by outside the window. What is this moment more than any other? In truth, things have a lesser significance now. The situation is secured, but not preferred. What is she doing? Why is the new assistant looking down at me from the window? Monica, spelt with a K. Named as name. Is she gazing at me or observing? Suspicious or permissive? She looks pensive, like a character from Ward 6. Probably waiting for instructions. I will take the bull by the horns. You can never make assumptions where the agency is concerned so I always begin with the basics. I always ask the new assistants the same question, 'can you speak English?'