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Surviving The N.H.S
I fell – back, once again, into my dream or least I thought it was a dream. I was in the same room every time. I’d been here before. It didn’t change. I was staring up at the ceiling looking at the light fittings and the square polystyrene partitions. I examined them closely but they didn’t alter in any way. I seemed to have developed some kind of fixation with it. I don’t why. I couldn’t seem to think of anything else. There wasn’t anything else to think about.
I could see a set of double doors in front of me, a little way off, that promised freedom but I couldn’t get there. The arm rails on either side of the bed, stopped, restrained; forbade me from leaving.
I looked to the left then smiled. There were cards and drawings pinned to a cork board. One my daughter had drawn, another my granddaughter had coloured in. I looked at them for a while trying to remember what they meant.
I slept. Nothing.
I was in the room again. Where am I?
Then my sister was there trying to explain something to me, through a window on my right hand side, I wondered why she wasn’t in the room with me. I wondered what she was doing here. I hadn’t seen her for years. It must a dream. Why else would she be here. She said I was part of an experiment that I would either resent it or find amusing – I didn’t feel amused. I didn’t feel anything; I was just there; like a dead fly on the wall. Mind squashed and lifeless.
Then she was gone. The room was quiet again and I’m staring up at the ceiling once more. There’s a television in the room, bigger than the one I have at home. It broadcast some shitty radio programme at one time but it was quiet now and I didn’t know how to switch it back on. It was very quiet.
Next I was lying on a very large circular white/cream settee in front of a massive black flat screen television waiting for a film to start but it never did. I waited a long time. The room was much bigger than the last one and there were spot lights on the ceiling which were dim. There was someone else in the room, someone I knew, or at least I thought I knew at the time, but I never saw them so I don’t know what they looked like. We waited together but the film never started. That was the worst of it, the silence. No input of any kind.
Then I was back in ‘my room’ again laying on my back staring up at the ceiling. Why was I here? Why didn’t I get up and simply walk out? What happened to my life before I came into this room? Why was my sister experimenting on me?
All my emotions had gone. It was like they had been leeched out of me and left me empty. I didn’t feel anything. Even when I wondered where I was I felt detached like I was watching but not taking part. Nothing seem to mean anything. The driving force of my will had gone, fled, hidden perhaps and I cared no more.
I was thirsty and developed a real craving of milkshake. I saw it everywhere. There were milkshake dispensers on the wall – strawberry, chocolate and vanilla just far enough away to be out of reach and I believed there was a café directly outside the double doors where people where eating and drinking, oblivious to my need to have a drink.
Sometimes people would come into the room. I couldn’t speak so they ignored me. There were machines behind and to the side of me. I couldn’t see what they were. I thought there was a bag of jelly babies hanging up on my right but I couldn’t reach them either. I could have killed a bag of jelly babies.
I turned to look out of the window on my right. Sometimes it showed an old man in another room, also lying on a bed like me, and other times it showed the night sky with the stars shinning bright. Where did the old man go? Was the old man real or the night sky? Which one was a dream? Was I having a dream inside a dream? It wouldn’t be the first time, but this time I never seemed to wake up.
I watch the clock on the wall. It didn’t behave like a normal clock. Sometimes it would say 12 o’clock then it was 6 pm. Where did the rest of the hours go? I’d look up and it was 12 o’clock, look up again and it was 6 pm. It didn’t make any sense. I tried to watch it closely once, in the early hours of the morning, to try and catch it in the act of jumping forward. 2 am, 3 am, 4 am – 6 am!
Someone came in, tapped something in a computer keyboard on my right and then left. I wondered why the light fittings looked like dead fish and why someone didn’t replace them. Surely it couldn’t be healthy?
I kept trying to move. My hands, fingers, arms all felt like dead weights. I couldn’t even lift my fingers. It was like the connection between my brain and the rest of me had been severed and no matter how much I told myself to move I stayed right where I was.
Then all of a sudden I was alright again. I got up and walked out. I went to Tesco’s to do some shopping. I know this was true because there was a Tesco’s shopping bag next to my bed when I came back to the room. Why did I come back to the room? Why didn’t I go home?
Then I was at my sister’s house. I was in her conservatory. It looked remarkably like the room I’d just left, just a different size, but the machines were still there. Mike, her husband, had broken his pelvis the year before in a wind surfing accident and he explained that he’d kitted out the conservatory to help him with his rehabilitation. My sister and Mike were having a party which was to be held in their conservatory. All the people who turned up for the party were either doctors or nurses. I didn’t know any of them but they looked familiar somehow and they all knew my sister and Mike.
Then I found out that my sister and Mike owned the facility I was being kept in and all the male doctors wanted to go out with me. I felt flattered and surprised at first since I’d put on a huge amount of weight recently and didn’t feel very attractive. Then I found out that it was because Anne was my sister and they just wanted to get well in with ‘the boss’.
I’m back in the room again unable to move. It was really weird. I kept having eight hour intervals where I seemed to be perfectly alright. I would go out somewhere and do things then I'd suddenly be unable to move again. I started to spend more time in my sister’s conservatory. She introduced me to her neighbour who apparently was Pauline Quirk the actress. We sat and chatted for a while but I started to lose the ability to stay upright and slumped back on the settee unable to move or speak, my head slumped onto the back of the settee so all I could see was the ceiling again. I hoped Pauline wouldn’t think I was just being rude and ignoring her but she just got up and left me there without a word so I supposed Anne must have told her that I would do this from time to time.
Eight hours later I was up and about, walking around again.
My Anne and Mike offered for me to stay at their house while they went away on holiday but I didn’t leave the conservatory. I knew the rest of the house existed. I could see the kitchen through a window on my right. Then there were some nurses there. Maybe Anne had hired them to look after me while they were away. They all belonged to the same family; the mother, husband, daughter and a son. I saw them in my room as well as in the conservatory. The son was a young lad – a teenager, a computer geek. He spent most of his time monitoring my heart rate, taking regular EKG’s and analysing them. The father didn’t appear very often but would come and talk to me from time to time. I only became suspicious when he appeared for the second time in ‘my room’ and repeated everything he’d said, word for word, that he’d said the first time. I wondered if I was being tested.
I liked the mother and daughter but they both seemed to suffer from some kind of uncontrollable condition which would send them almost floating across the room at tangents, then back again for no apparent reason. I was surprised that they were allowed to work since they had no control over it but everyone behaved as if it was perfectly normal so I accepted it.
I’d fallen down onto the floor of my sisters conservatory and lay there for eight hours waiting to get back up again but when the time was up I still couldn’t move. The nurses came in and tied things around me, bouncing back and forth across the room, trying to hoist me up but it didn’t work. Then the son said he’d made a discovery and that he believed it was the rubber in my shoes that I was allergic to and they were weighing me down; that was why I couldn’t get up. They came over and cut my shoes off me. My feet suddenly felt weightless and I expected to be able to get up again straight away - but it didn’t happen.
I was back in ‘my room’ again. Staring up at the ceiling.
An almost magical doorway or mirror opened up between ‘my room’ and Anne’s conservatory which not only enabled anyone in the conservatory to see me but they could also step through it and instantly transfer from one place to the other. The nurses used it a lot and would often stand in my sister's conservatory and wave to me, sometimes stepping though it and coming over to check the machines.
Then things changed and the atmosphere changed with it. A nurse came in to ‘my room’. She made me feel frightened. Then I remembered I’d felt frightened last time she was here as well. I didn’t know what I was frightened of. She didn’t do anything specific but I felt like I’d just entered a nightmare and I was her next victim. I shouted for help, told her to get out. Yelled and yelled for someone to come in and get rid of her. Screamed for all I was worth. She shrugged and left the room. My heart was pounding and I was sweating, the nightmare was over.
I wanted to go home now badly. I didn’t have anyone to talk to. I started to plan my escape. All I had to do was get a nurse to help me up, because I firmly believed that once I was up I’d be alright. She could sit me in a wheel chair or give me some kind of walking frame and I could pretend to be rehabilitating. I planned to walk around the corridors for a while, to gain their trust. Wait until they stopped paying me attention, then make a run for it. I believed I was somewhere in Exmouth, since that’s where my Anne lives, so I had to plan how to get back to Plymouth. Hannah would periodically appear so I told her about my escape plan and asked her to meet me at the front door with a taxi waiting when I text her. I couldn’t find my phone. I asked her where it was. She said she had it in her bag but didn’t make any attempt to give it me. Never mind there would be a phone at the reception desk I could use that one.
I didn’t have any money and I didn’t even know where my clothes were but I knew I could pay for the taxi when I got back home. I’d got money at home. I could always ‘borrow’ someone’s coat to cover myself up and dressed in my own clothes later. To get back home, where everything was normal that‘s all I wanted. I’d got it all planned and was just waiting to approach the right nurse to give me a hand getting up - but no one would listen to me.
I started to believe I was being held against my will but Anne and Mike were away so I couldn’t ask for any kind of explanation. The family of nurses had also gone away because it was bank holiday. This meant I couldn’t ask them for help either but it also meant I’d have a better chance of leaving unnoticed because there weren’t as many people around. All I had to do was to find the right person to ask. I kept trying to ask if someone would help me and I’d obviously got my voice back because some of them answered me but they always seemed too busy to stop for any length of time. They said they’d be back but nothing was arranged.
I pleaded with them, begged them, threatened to report them, told them I was Anne’s sister; said I wanted to go home. Eventually someone came in to ‘talk to me’ and told me they couldn’t allow me to go home because I needed someone to take care of me. I said ‘Fine I’ll arrange for someone privately’ and started to ask the nurses I liked for their phone numbers so I could contact them and arrange for them to work for me, back home.
The mother of the family of nurses came back of her holiday and she agreed to find a couple of people to move me out of ‘my room’ during the night. I began to feel excited and was determined to stay awake all night to make sure she didn’t forget. She came in with her daughter but they just sailed around the room not appearing to do anything. Each time I believed they were going to come close enough to help me up the sailed away again uncontrollably. Then it was morning again already. I thought, ‘it’s now or never’ and watched them intently to see whether they were actually going to do something or if they were just going to disappear like they usually did.
Then, to my surprised, things started to move. A couple more people came in and they started to pack things up. There was a hive of activity and before I knew it I was being pushed out of the room, across the corridor and into the shower area. They drew the curtains to hide me. I remained on high mental alert waiting for the nurses to come back. Nothing happened. I watched the clock again. Hours passed. What’s going on?
Eventually a group of different nurses came in. They didn’t look very friendly. A male nurse sat behind me and started to stroke my hair.
“All that effort,” he said, “and all it did was get you moved across the corridor“.
The other nurses then started to strip me. I thought they were trying to humiliate me because I’d been caught in the act of conspiring to leave without permission. They started to wash me in freezing cold water – another punishment – I lay there defiantly refusing to give then the pleasure of knowing how they were making me feel. They closed the curtains again when they left to keep me hidden. They didn’t want my daughter to find me because they knew she’d try and rescue me.
Next time I looked the curtains were open again and I could see across the corridor into the room where I just moved from. There were builders in there. All the equipment was gone. It was just a bare room except for a pair of step ladders leaning against the wall. I watched them closely and started to suspect then of trying to cover something up. Then I heard a news report (on a radio perhaps) saying that a young child had been kidnapped during the night and it was suspected that she had been buried in the hospital grounds. So it was a hospital that Anne and Mike owned.
Was the child in that room, under the floorboards maybe? Was that what the builders were trying to cover up? I continued to watch them but couldn’t get a clear view of what they were doing. That feeling of foreboding was still with me. The more I watched the more I became convinced that they were hiding something. One of the builders kept leaving the room but he always made sure he looked around him before leaving and that the door was firmly shut behind him. The male nurse kept coming and going. Eventually I asked him if he could see anything untoward going on in the room. He carried on coming and going for some time but even though he kept looking at me and then at the room but he didn’t do anything or say anything. I kept asking him if everything was alright until, eventually, he went over to a couple, man and woman, standing next to a table in the corridor directly outside the room where the builders were. I wondered why I’d only just noticed them?
I don’t know how I knew but I believed they were undercover policemen trying to get evidence that the child was buried there. I became convince the child was there. I thought that the child was my granddaughter and that Hannah must also be be there, held captive because she’d never leave Abby alone.
The male nurse talked to the policemen for a while and then looked over to me putting his thumb up at me. I was thinking ‘oh my God my granddaughter’s dead and my daughter’s being held captive’ and then my daughter turned up for real with Abby in tow.
While I heaved the heaviest sigh of relief I’d ever felt in my life Hannah was saying,
“There you are. I haven’t realised they’d moved you. It took me ages to find where you were.”
Then I was in a different room with windows on the right hand side showing the exterior of the building. The outside world. I was surrounded by doctors and nurses. They were all milling around industriously in front of me but I didn’t know what they were doing. I was sitting up so I could see what was going on in the room instead of only having the view of the ceiling. Whether I was sitting up in bed or on a chair I didn’t know. The only thing that was on my mind was the aching, nagging persistent pain that kept shooting down my right arm.
I watched the nurses for a while but the insistent pain in my right arm impinged on my mind until it became a crescendo of my existence. I tried to ignore it but the pain pulsated in time with the second hand on the clock in the corner of the room. Tick – ow – tock – ouch – tick – ow - tock - ouch - tick – argh!
I looked around trying to catch someone’s eye; to get someone’s attention. I couldn’t stand the pain any longer. I wanted it to stop.
I tried, silently at first, not wanting to intrude, but the pain would not let go so I started to shift my position, hoping my movement might attract attention, but it didn’t. I shuffled more recklessly and started to moan. No one took any notice.
How many people were in this room? Were they all so caught up in their own worlds that none of them could recognised someone being in pain. I recognised that pain is an un-quantifiable experience. To look at someone though the naked eye, you can not tell how much pain that person is in. These nurses in the room they must hear people moan and shuffle around all the time. It had become so normal to them it meant nothing any more. No one ever considered that you might be trying to get their attention in the only way you could. So long as you weren’t screaming at the top of your lungs or making a nuisance of yourself it was alright to be ignored. To them at least!
I moaned louder and I tried to move my arm to give the throbbing ache a break. It worked for seconds only then returned. So I tried it again. I moved my arm a bit, as much as I could, which was very little, but each small movement gave me a second’s release from the pain. I continued.
A nurse looked over and my heart raced in anticipation of being noticed but I obviously didn’t look interesting enough to her. She turned the other way again.
I moaned and moved. Moved and moaned. Louder each time. I obviously started to annoy the nurses because they began to repeatedly look over in my direction and frown at me. Finally, after a huge effort on my behalf to move my arm a bit more that a vague twitch a nurse came over and told me to keep still. I tried to clear my throat. I knew I only had seconds to say something before she turned away and ignored me again.
“No.” I spluttered out.
“You need to keep your arm still.” She said placing pressure on my arm.
“Why? It hurts?”
The nurse sighed as if this conversation had gone over her time allotted schedule and looked around for someone else to ‘come and deal with me’.
Another nurse, wearing a more impressive disapproving facial expression than that of the ‘Senior Nurse uniform’ she had on, strode over.
“What’s the problem?” She asked.
Before I had chance to say anything the first nurse butted in. They were clearly not interested in my opinion.
“She won’t keep her arm still.”
‘Hello.’ I thought. ‘She’ is in the room.’
“Really Miss White you need to keep your arm nice and still.” The senior nurse said patting my arm down firmly onto the bed sending shooting, sharp pains along the length of it.
“Ow!” I yelled loudly giving the nurse a venomous look. “Why do I have to keep it still – it hurts?”
“You’re having your dialysis dear.” She said condescendingly.
“Dialysis?” I asked. “What’s that?”
“It won’t be for much longer.” The nurse said evading the question.
“How much longer?” I insisted.
“Two hours.” She said dismissively and turned to walk away as if that was all she was willing to say on the matter.
“Two hours,” I yelled. “Stop it now.”
That got the old bitches notice. She turned back on me looking at me like she wanted to stamp on me and tape my mouth up. Then her expression softened into a false, practiced, ‘I’m such a lovely person’ smile.
“Why do you want to stop it?” She asked superciliously.
“Because it fucking hurts!” I glared back at her defiantly.
“Now there’s no need to be abusive.” She said but she did call in a few other nurses to take it in turns to move my arm to different positions which seemed to help initially but the gap between receiving some form of relief and it hurting again got shorter so I had to ask the nurses to move it more often.
The nurses didn’t like that and they told me I was already using more staff than they could really spare so I’d just have to put up with it.
I told them to stop. They ignored me.
I shouted for them to stop. Told them I couldn’t bear the pain, yelled at them to stop.
The senior nurse came in again and explained to me that I had to complete the dialysis session. I asked her why. She said it was important that I did. I told her to stop the treatment. She said that I‘d survived the worst of it and that it would be a pity to waste what they‘d done already. I told her I couldn’t live with another 2 hours of pain. She threatened to jump out of the window if I didn’t agree to continue with it.
What?
I looked around the room to see if anyone else had heard what she’d just said to me. It was obvious that they had but they all kept their eye averted and tried to look busy.
Another nurse came in and I looked to her in the hope of making some sense of this madness but she said she would follow her sister out of the window if I insisted on stopping. I felt outraged and in agony. I didn’t understand what was going on.
There was tension in the room as the Senior Nurses moved away, like there was a silent dispute between the nurses. Some quietly came over to me and whispered “We’re on your side. We think you’re being treated badly. We’re trying to gather enough support to over throw the other nurses but we don’t want to be punished so we’ve got to be careful. We could loose our jobs.”
I watched, alert now to the conspiracy in the air. There were hand signals and winks shared between the nurses and blank expressions held firmly in place so as not to give themselves away. The conspirators seemed to be gaining members as I watch the silent code pass around the room with the growing feeling that something major was going to happen. I tried to single out those who supported me from those that didn’t but it was hard to tell who to trust. All the staff continuously walked in and out of the room so it was hard to keep track of what they were doing. I didn’t dare say anything in case I gave the game away to the wrong person and got them all in trouble.
I hoped, beyond hope, that my supporters would be successful then maybe, just maybe, I could go home.
Tension grew and more nurses came in giving me the thumbs up. I started to believe that finally something good would come of this never ending nightmare.
Everything was in place. The doctors and nurses of both sides bustled around. The air became tangible with tension.
Then it stopped. The nurses disappeared and it was quiet.
I waited.
Then I was told it was shift change and all the nurses that had just been on duty had now gone home.
Rebellion forgotten.
I remember waking up later feel incredibly thirsty, so thirsty I felt I was dying of it. I was in a hospital ward with three other people. I still couldn’t move much but my need for a drink was overpowering. There was no one there apart from the other patients although I could hear people talking outside the double doors somewhere. I waited . . . and waited . . . It seemed like I spent a lifetime waiting. I needed a drink. My mouth was so dry it hurt to swallow. My lips were so sore they felt chapped. I didn’t feel I could talk through lack of moisture in my mouth.
I couldn’t have been more uncomfortable, I hurt everywhere, I felt like a dead weight, my back itched liked crazy but I couldn’t sit up and even if I could have I wouldn’t have been able to get my arms around my back to scratch it. I tried to shuffle from side to side but it only made the itch move from one area to another. I was hungry and thirsty and my mind felt like cotton wool. I couldn’t think straight and I didn’t understand where I was or how I’d got here.
Suddenly someone came in with food and drink. I watched like a dying animal desperately needing to be saved but they ignored me, like I was invisible. I had to watch the three other people in the room eat their dinner and have plenty to drink like I didn’t exist, except only through my minds eye.
After breakfast had been cleared away there was a bustle of activity and two people walked in carrying a wooded clipboard, rather like a large easel. They proceeded to open it out centrally at the back of the room. A Senior Nurse followed, with her arms full of paperwork and folders. I watched her every movement but she ignored me, as she ignored everyone else in the room.
She turned to face me once, just a movement of her head while she was thinking about something else probably. She looked at me right in the eyes as if nothing penetrated their glass exterior. Then went back to clipping up various charts and forms.
She spread out four separate groups on the board and, as I watched, she placed a chart on top of each form, positioning it so that only the very bottom of the form could be seen underneath the chart. She seemed satisfied with what she’d done just as a group of doctors, trainees mostly by the look of them, came towards her.
They all stood around in a group murmuring among themselves and pointing or pick up various papers and finally coming to some kind of agreement. As I watched they all took a chart, with the form carefully placed underneath, and went over to the other patients. I couldn’t figure out what they were up to at first and wondered why they felt it necessary to keep the form underneath the chart concealed. Then I realised they were trying to get the other patients to sign consent forms but not for them - to give the doctors permission to carry out surgically procedures on me.
I saw, somehow, my signature on the bottom of all these forms and as the horrifying truth came crashing in on me I watched as another group of staff arrived with arms full of forms all with my signature on the bottom.
The staff glanced maliciously at me as they gathered all the papers together and I knew then that I was doomed. They’re was nothing I could do to stop them now from doing anything they wanted with me.
Then I realized that I was still being punished. Someone wanted me to die slowly, painfully, in the most excruciating manner possible. I didn’t know why. I only knew that they did and my family was involved somehow. After all I was still in Anne and Mike’s hospital - wasn’t I? My hands went to my neck and I felt sticky tape there. Had the nurse place it there just so she could take pleasure in the pain she could inflict on me when she ripped it off again? Or had they already started to remove my body parts to sell them on privately?
I became convince that they’d removed my Larynx and that it had been left on the window sill by my bed. It looked remarkably like a peach pip. How careless of them. I cunningly started to devise a plan to make sure they would never find it or make use of it. If I wasn’t going to be able to speak again then I was, sure as hell, going to make sure no one else was going use my body parts to be able to do so either. All I had to do was get myself moving again . . .
I understood now how a prisoners of war must have felt in solitary confinement – without food or water for days – no one to talk to – having no answers to what was going to happen next. I didn’t even know why I was here? How I’d got here? My mind was full of schemes and rebellions, plots and anger all around me and I was somehow caught up in something that was effecting everyone but I didn’t understand what ‘I’ had to do with it.
Well sod them.
If I had to die then I was going to die my way not the way someone else wanted me to. The doctors and nurses had left the room so I looked around to see if I could find something, anything at all that contained moisture that would keep life in me a little bit long.
There was a glass of water left on the table next to my bed, taunting me, beckoning me but I couldn’t move. I found it hard just to lift a finger up in the air. It took every ounce of energy I had just to do that. I resigned myself to having a long wait before I’d reach the water. I passed into oblivion for a while.
I woke again determined to get that drink this time. Any effort was worth the reward. I had to have a drink. The ward was quiet. Minutely moving by slow motions I moved onto my side. I tried to reach out but couldn’t. With a sigh of exasperation I knew it would be hours yet before I would reach that water.
I don’t know how much time passed, it seemed an eternity, but then I wasn’t going anywhere so having something to do was better than lying mindlessly around like a zombie waiting for the final blow to fall and the thought that some doctor might come in at any moment to start removing my body parts (again) spurred me on.
I was almost hanging off the side of the bed from my efforts before realising that this created it’s own problems. There was something wrong with my right shoulder which prevented me from reaching out from that side and now I was lying on my left side. I shifted position to try and get the weight off my left arm to see if I could reach out that way.
I was so close I felt a sense of elation at the thought of quenching my thirst at last. I stretched out, bit by bit, still excruciatingly slow, agonisingly painful.
Then I made the mistake of becoming so wrapped up in achieving my own goal I had forgotten my enemy and in walked a nurse. I froze instantly and looked around quickly to see if there were any obvious signs of what I had been trying to do but she only took an idle glance and said,
“How did you get over there?” She sounded amused. “Come on, let’s make you more comfortable.” She proceeded to push me back, centrally on the bed, where I’d started off from. Such an easy movement for her. Such a lot of pain, effort and energy - wasted - for me.
I rested. I had nothing left. I just lay there with nothing on my mind, no incentive left to do anything. I slept.
The day was drawing to a close by time I woke up again. I had set it in my mind that I was going to reach that glass of water if it was the last thing I did. I looked over towards the table.
The water was gone.
It was about all I could take. I cried for a while knowing that it wouldn’t help either.
I refused to give up and looked around desperately for something, anything that might contain liquid.
My eyes locked in on a packet of wet wipes placed on the far side of the table. Even the thought of it to me was abhorrent but they contained moisture and that might be the difference between life and death. I chose life.
I moved once again, excruciatingly slowly, eyes locked on the packet. All was quiet, the night was still. Millimetre by millimetre I moved. After a couple of hours I was back to where I had been previously when the nurse had interrupted me. I looked around. Any movement now was progress.
It seemed like an eternity, drowned in relentless effort and agony, time passed by. I reached and reached hoping each time that my arm would do as my brain told it to but it only ever moved minutely.
With each stretch, no matter how small, the pain increased, in my back, in my sides, in my arms, in my neck. Everywhere was alive with pain but everything else was dead - except the half of my mind which remained stubbornly determined to reach the wet wipes before morning.
I could touch the packet now, first with my finger tips, then my fingers but I couldn’t grip it. I tried with every last ounce of my waning strength but it didn’t move. To move back now was to admit defeat. To move forward was impossible. I rested a while. Maybe I slept. My arm still outstretched keeping contact with the packet as if its very touch gave me courage.
Another hour went by. I hadn’t moved. Then I started to become concerned that I’d been there too long. That the nurse would come in and move me back again. I had to reach those wet wipes.
Gotcha!
Drawing back was easier than reaching out. My grip, though not strong, was powered by my will and I wasn’t going to let go. I had them on my bed. I felt all twisted and uncomfortable. Wrapped up in tangled muscles and bed sheets. I’d used up all my energy to bring the wipes to me. I couldn’t move. I closed my eyes and drifted.
It was the slight lifting of the darkness showing through the blinds on the windows that alerted me to the coming of morning. I gave my head a feeble shake to try and clear the fog. I gripped the wipes between my swollen hands and fumbled around with the outer packaging. It was but a small, central sticky strip to keep the moisture in, easily pealed back by most but my fingers pushed against the seal uselessly, un-disturbing it - impotent. Why was everything so hard that had been so easy before?
Having got this far I wasn’t going to admit defeat now. I gripped the packet and raised it to my mouth. Even my teeth felt numb, my jaw felt locked. I struggled to open my mouth more than a tiny crack. I grazed my front teeth along the sticky seal in the hope of catching the edge to pull it back. At first they just slid over the top but the packet was flexible so I scrunched it up and finally managed to pull a small corner of the seal up at the end. I tried to grip it in my teeth for further leverage but couldn’t seem to feel where it was, to know where to bite. I held the packet out with my hands and manipulated the outer wrapping to enable me to get a grip on the corner edge of the seal I’d already pulled off with my teeth.
It was enough. I gripped and pulled. It came away. I had more to grip now and finally managed to get the packet open. I looked around. I didn’t want anyone to witness that I had been reduced to sucking wet wipes. I wouldn’t give them the satisfaction. No one was there.
I couldn’t take the whole lot out since the opening was too small and I couldn’t get my mouth around the hole so I fumbled with the ones on the top - so close now - and pulled two or three out at once.
I scrunched them up into a ball and with only the slightest moment of hesitation, stuffed the ball in my mouth and sucked. It tasted of something chemically, probably perfume of some description and I wondered what harm I might be doing to myself by ingesting it. The relief however and the greed for more drove me on and I dismissed any negative thoughts, sucked dry the ones I had, discarded them and stuffed in some more.
With the coming of daylight the morning staff began to bustle around. I still felt desperately thirsty but hid the wipes under my sheets so as not to be caught with them and to save them for later.
I watched as curtains were drawn, the lights came on and screen pulled back. Not long now and sure enough in came the drinks lady. I watched her in hopeful anticipation, trying to catch her eye but once again I seemed to have become invisible. My heart sank. Another day without water. How long could I survive on a couple of mouthfuls of scented wipes?
I dozed for a while and then fancied that Mike had been moved into the bed next to mine. I asked him what he wanted from me and he said my kidneys. I said he’d only to ask. Then asked him why he was torturing me? He told me he needed both my kidney’s.
My blood ran cold as I realized the implication of what he’d just said and asked him why he couldn’t be happy with just one. He told me about how fit and healthy he used to be (before his windsurfing accident) and that he intended to get back to that same level of fitness. Something he didn’t believe he could do with only one functional kidney.
I asked him why he was doing this to me. He said it was because of the way I had shunned my Mother in my mid 30’s. I told him that I’d tried to fix our dysfunction relationship but I couldn’t change who ‘she’ was. He told me that it wasn’t because I had shunned my Mother but more they way in which I’d done it. I only remember refusing to talk to her. I’d felt all had been said in the twenty years previously and had not felt that more talk would solve anything.
Clutching at straws in a last pitch attempt to save my own life I reasoned with Mike and said,
“Why don’t we all go out to dinner one day and see if we can mend some bridges?”
He said “That would be a start.”
I heard voices outside in the corridor. Anne was there and my Mum. Hannah was there with Abby too. Then I realised that Anne and Mike were holding Hannah and Abby against their will, preventing them from coming to see me, to make sure that when I died I had nothing left. For making my Mother feel the same way? Even though she was still alive, outside?
Blackness enshrouded me once more. When I awoke Mike was gone and the curtains were drawn in the cubical next to me. It sounded like a new patient had been bought in to take his place. I wondered if anything had been resolved by our chat?
Then Hannah came in with Abby and Anne followed closely behind. Then I knew that Anne was making sure I understood that she and Mike controlled me.
I was finished. Washed up on a beach with nothing but my exposed, naked body between me and death. I could take no more.
Then Hannah took out a bottle of water from her bag. Survival instructs kicked in. I knew I could rely on Hannah to do what I ask. I begged her to give me the water. She hesitated but only for a few seconds. Anne tried to intervene so I told her to shut up. I kept my eyes on Hannah and asked her again and again to give me the water.
She did.
I gulped it down greedily as Anne ran off to the doctors. ‘Yeah you run to your friends,’ I thought while I happily downed the bottle of water straight off. I immediately felt better and thanked Hannah.
The doctors came running of course but it was too late. I’d drank it and they weren’t going to be able to make me give it back - ha!
One of them said,
“Well at least that answers one question.” I looked at him enquiringly.
He explained that I’d been on a ventilator and that they weren’t sure whether I’d be able to swallow properly or not.
Not impressed I said,
“So you thought it would be better to let me die of de-hydration rather than let me give it a go then?”
“We are also concerned that any liquid digested at this point might also go on your lungs and give you pneumonia.” He went on in his snobbish, know-it-all manner.
“Oh a I see.” I said. “So rather than asking me if I wanted to take the risk you preferred to make all my decisions for me. Well it’s too late and I’m fine.” Showing him the empty bottle triumphantly.
“That remains to be seen,” replied the Doctor obnoxiously.
“Yes it does, doesn’t it,” I replied almost sarcastically, “but it was my risk to take and I took it so there’s nothing you can do about it now, is there?” I didn’t know which I wanted to do first, laugh in his face or punch him in the eye but at least I got one last drink before I died.
I turned to point at the board on the wall that displayed my name on it that clearly stated ‘Nil by Mouth’ and I said,
“You can change that as well.”
The doctor muttered something about having to consult his superiors and I felt like I’d won a great victory.
I slept.
Next time I woke Hannah was sitting next to my bed telling Abby to sit down and stop wandering around the ward. My mind was blank and I was surprised to see where I was. My head was full of dreams and imagines. I wasn’t sure what was real anymore.
Hannah looked perfectly happy and relaxed. She was on her own and didn’t bear the air of someone who had been held against her will.
“I don’t understand,” I said. “I feel really confused. "What just happened. Why am I here?”
“You've been in a coma for three weeks,” She explained. “We’d no idea whether you were going to live or die.”
“What?”
Then I remembered the paramedics coming to my house because I’d fallen on the floor and couldn't get up. How could it be three long weeks ago? It only felt like yesterday.
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