I was awake and feeling good but those around my bed; ex-wife, mom, dad, ex-brother-in-law and father-in-law, looked ashen and afraid. Indeed, they looked as though they had followed me from the very same hell, that I had emerged from. They stood there; not knowing what to do or what to say. The best policy for them was to leave. I promised them that I'd see them in that afternoon. The ex-wife and I sit and wait.
A young nurse, small and plump, hair stretched back and secured by a hideuos scrunchy, checks my pulse and my oxygen levels. I wait for something profound to fall from her lips and it certainly does - 'da yoe wona' a cuppa tae luv.' I am on earth, I am in 'The Black Country', I am in Walsall, I am in 'The Manor Hospital'; WS2.
The 'cuppa tae', tastes surprisingly good. But I want to know, what marks I've got; I want to go home. Then he eventually turns up, dressed in theatre scrubs, a tired nocturnal creature, he checks my reflexes, he looks into my eyes, questions me about 'drugs' and leaves. And I understand why he leaves, for the whole place is bedlam; the night clubbers have arrived and all I hear is crying, moaning, screaming, threats of violence and a man chatting a strange mantra about blowing up the hospital. I was glad at least, that some people had had a good night out.
Eventually, 'scrunchy haired girl' reappeared and we fill in the forms together. It's quite cosy really as we sit and talk about whether I am prone to urinating on myself, shitting myself, or indeed, self-harming myself etc. But I've got it by now. I sign the form and I am in. Happy days.
I am, by my own signuature, institutionalised and about to be dehumanized. The symbols of the sick - the hospital band, the 'the hospital number' that will track and trace you for ever more, the backless smock, and the pyjamas and the slippers, which, I always keep warm in case of emergencies.
No comments:
Post a Comment