Ward 16 was an acute ward, not somewhere patients were expected to linger. Day and night, patients arrived, were assessed and were moved on, which meant that the traffic was continuous and sleep was impossible but the interest level for an observer like me was high. Sick people arrived with their distraught families and I could listen in to what had happened and the talk of the nurses and doctors. Curtains provide only an illusion of privacy. I had no idea how sick I was. In fact, my condition was poor. I'd managed a wash by the bed but I needed help to get to the toilet. If I tried to walk alone, I swayed like a drunk and was at risk of toppling over. My head felt tight and heavy, like I'd suffered the worst flu. But I texted friends, pleased I could still do so, I slept a great deal and when awake, I eavesdropped. It was shocking but funny to hear confused, elderly Asian ladies, who otherwise needed an interpreter, telling the nurses to 'fuck off'. I also overheard a spectacular row between a teenage girl and her mother. The girl had rung one family member in the morning, to let them know she was being discharged. The message had got confused and poor mum arrived late in the afternoon, without a car, carrying a bag of things her daughter might need overnight. The air was blue.
My stay had started energetically, with an MRI scan first thing on Sunday morning 25th. July. I was impressed, recalling Gerry Robinson's television series on the NHS and how critical he had been that facilities stood idle in the evenings and at weekends. The porter was a young man who told me how he had to be busy, how he hated standing around waiting for patients. He helped me complete a questionnaire outside the scan room and I noticed that his reading skills weren't that great. On the way back to the ward, he and another porter complained above me and around me about their working conditions. I wanted to say to the lad that maybe he was lucky to have a job. He should hold onto it, see where it might lead.
Being wheeled around the hospital made me think of the many times I had energetically patrolled these corridors and drummed my toes impatiently outside the lifts, when I was the educational psychologist for the hospital school. I was glad it was the holidays. I wouldn't bump into any teachers. I didn't want to explain; not yet.
The MRI scan was less frightening than I'd expected. I was very aware of the radiographer's breath, perhaps because my sense of smell had been affected but once inside the tunnel, I found that there was a re-assuring periscope arrangement where I could see him (but not smell him). I had headphones, which played music and an alarm button if I panicked. It was noisy, exactly like a washing machine and the music didn't mask the sound but I found it helped to try and match the length of the tracks to the noise. So if the radiographer said 'here's another scan. It's very noisy and will last for four and a half minutes', I thought of it as one and a half tracks. When I came out, I suggested to the radiographer that he try to pair the length of the tracks to the scans but I don't think he got it.
Back on the ward I'd been joined by a woman I vaguely recognised. I thought she might have been on some training I'd given a few weeks before. Her husband sat with her for a while then left. The rest of the patients were elderly women or very sick Asian ladies, who all seemed to have sons who might have been models. The absence of affection struck me. No one kissed or hugged their women when they left.
It was the end of Nil By Mouth and I over-optimistically ordered lunch which I couldn't eat. But a cup of tea was wonderful. At visiting time my daughter and husband arrived and our talk was cheerful, as it so often is in hospital. I explained that I was on my way either to Queens Medical Centre (QMC) or the Stroke Unit at Leicester General. I wouldn't be on Ward 16 long. We were just 'waiting' on word from QMC.
My daughter had rushed from her home in north London as soon as she'd heard and I think it was a relief to her to see that I looked the same and could talk normally. My husband had had the task of telephoning family and friends and amidst the widespread shock, everyone wanted answers, 'how could this happen?' I had my own worries. I was between two jobs. I had resigned from one and had not yet signed a contract for the other. I was expected to deliver three days of training in early September. I had left so much work undone, including a half finished chapter of my novel. The holiday would have to be cancelled; we wouldn't be able to see our youngest son in Sri Lanka. The ordinary turn of life had been interrupted. I'd been brought to a full stop.
Later that night my husband brought the entire contents of the shower and my dressing table in a suitcase in the hope that 'some of it would do'. The senior nurse on duty sat with me for a while and told me about his family, his working hours, his staffing problems. I switched on my professional 'listening face'. I worked out how to put money into my personal T.V and watched the first episode of the new Sherlock Holmes. Later, that would seem like a heroic level of concentration. My brain was still swelling.
Meanwhile, the fans roared and open windows spilled cold night air across me as I shivered in my hard, pillowless bed. The other patients came and went. The friendly lady opposite disappeared in the middle of the night and I woke to a whole new set of companions.
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