I wish I could write Bill’s full name but I shouldn’t. He has a great name, forename and surname beginning with the same letter, it evokes pastoral beauty, a field in full bloom.
I’d been admitted to hospital in order that doctors find out why my heart was occasionally racing. My time wasn’t taken up by being ill though, I was feeling absolutely fine and so the six weeks that I spent in the Middlesex Hospital near Goodge Street tube Station were boring but I did meet people whom I otherwise would not have met and, of them all, Bill had the best story.
After dark it was very peaceful in the ward, a soft light shone from the nurse’s station opposite my bed. Medical equipment would beep now and again, somewhere or other. When I walked to the bathroom on my first night I passed a man bathed in the light of a desk lamp, sitting on a chair, his head in his hands. His legs were terribly swollen, a side effect of drugs that they gave him I later discovered, and a nurse was speaking to him as though she were addressing a child. They were trying to drain liquid from his legs through a tube into a large plastic jar which sat on the floor and I found the sight horrific.
For the next week I'd see him there, occasionally lying in bed but mostly sitting, until he was moved to the other end of the ward and I didn’t really notice him again until a month had passed when he introduced himself with a “g’day mate.” He was feeling much better, he was up and about. He’d arrived from Australia a half year earlier, taken a job as a hotel porter and soon afterwards fallen ill. He had suffered seizures all his life he told me, but I can’t now remember exactly what had led to him being admitted to hospital, although I vaguely remember him telling a story of a medical emergency and unsympathetic managers at his workplace.
Bill was so incredibly enthusiastic. “Oh wow maaan, far out! That is amaaazing!.” I’d shown him the Sims computer game on my laptop (I was bored in there) and he was very grateful. He even thanked me a few times in the days to come for having shown him it. I’d share chocolate, or some cake with him and it would be, without a doubt, the best he’d ever tasted. He’d stare directly at you, his big blue eyes wide open, talking slowly and emphasising every syllable, full of enthusiasm. He described himself as a hippy, and, with his long droopy blonde moustache, I suppose that he resembled a hippy too.
We’d sit in the tiny staff kitchen, the nurses didn’t object, and have conversations on all topics. I learned a lot about his mother, who he was very close to, his teenage years in the 70s and the bands that he'd played guitar for. He was a kind and interesting man. His most interesting story was one which he confessed only to me, he felt that the doctors did not need to know.
He had been in the ward for a month before I arrived and during this whole time, and on into the first few weeks of my stay there, he had lived a frightening dream. Medication that they gave him affected his balance and gave him the sensation that he was on board a ship. Yet more medication gave him delusions. He believed that he had been kidnapped and imprisoned. The ship masqueraded as a cruise ship, the passengers on the decks above were unaware of the horrors which existed where he was, down deep below water in the lowest deck. He mistook the nurses uniforms for stewards uniforms and, with so many of the nurses originating in the Philippines, mistook them for Chinese nationals, suspecting that the cruise ship was bound for China. The blood tests that he received on an almost daily basis were in fact sedatives being administered, the pills he was forced to take were designed to disorientate and weaken him. The ship docked every week or two at some port and he was getting closer and closer to his destination and the terrifying fate that awaited him.
And then the doctors realised that the drugs were not working as intended and altered the treatment plan and so he finally got back to dry land.
Unfortunately, toward the end of my six week stay in the ward, he was diagnosed with an unrelated, but serious complaint. I do hope that he is ok, I really do wish that I kept in touch with him.
No comments:
Post a Comment