[ Jamie's been trying to dig out this dead shrub for almost a half hour now, and he's currently 67% dead himself. (Perhaps he cuts a poetically pathetic figure, with the oversized anorak jacket dangling around his back and elbows and his thin arms mostly bare; or perhaps he just looks the regular kind of pathetic.) He's visibly trembling as he gives the handle of the shovel (the fulcrum in this experiment) one final, desperate yank... and at last, the tangle of roots shifts and comes loose.
The rest of the process is supposed to involve pulling it out, putting it in a compostable garbage bag, and taking it somewhere or other, but yeah, that's not happening right now. Instead, he leaves the shovel where it falls and hobbles over to the bench, where he sits down, hunches over until his head is practically between his knees, and visualizes the future in which his heart doesn't explode.
Urghh... his breath tastes all coppery...
... After a few seconds, he sort of more or less notices and acknowledges that someone else was already on the bench. ]
III
The rest of the process is supposed to involve pulling it out, putting it in a compostable garbage bag, and taking it somewhere or other, but yeah, that's not happening right now. Instead, he leaves the shovel where it falls and hobbles over to the bench, where he sits down, hunches over until his head is practically between his knees, and visualizes the future in which his heart doesn't explode.
Urghh... his breath tastes all coppery...
... After a few seconds, he sort of more or less notices and acknowledges that someone else was already on the bench. ]
...Excuse...
[ The "me" is implicit, apparently. ]