A weekend with CHER
A weekend with CHER
Bleep-bleep-bleep echoeing through the lifeless corridors, somewhat like a lone sparrow chirping in an otherwise silent forest, its tiny voice permeating the still air. And the noise of what sounded like a little sparrow soon sprouted new life and new sounds. A tack-tack-tack sound. Like the tiny pitter patter of feet scurrying across the floor. But it wasn't a pitter-patter. It was slower. More deliberate. A slow stride. Someone's pump alarm had gone off jubilantly seeking the attention of the night nurse.
Silence. Death attempts to return to the halls, whispering its deadly breath of silence. But there are murmurs now. People stirring. Sheets crumpling like pages of paper being screwed up in the hands of defiant principle catching a student cheating on his exams. A cough, a splutter, a gargle.
My chest aches. Just under my bottom rib on my right hand side. When I move, it feels like a stitch, only much worse. Yesterday I decided it was time to pay CHER a visit. That's Canterbury Hospital E.R. The pain had become too much. I couldn't lay down, I couldn't breath.
So after being examined in ER, going for a few x-rays, drinking a horrible white solution that tasted like sambuca heavily diluted in water
- although I didn't have the pleasure of getting drunk from it - it was determined that I would be staying the night, news I wasn't very fond of hearing.
And so there I lay, tubes buried through my skin, its hollow tentacle like needle squirming up inside my veins, seeping its cocktail of chemicals up into my arm and through my body. It was hurting. I couldn't sleep. It felt like a million microscopic warriors were doing battle against this intrusion, beating their weapons against it in a fit of rage and annoyance. Then it settled, as if my little warriors were exhausted. But soon, maybe after they rested, it felt once again like it was being pounded relentlessly. The battle ground now starting to show the signs of war, turning a dark purple on my skin, my upper arm throbbing with pressure I can only imagine surrounds the hull of a 747 in high altitude, attempting to crush it in its cloudy hands.
My fingers tingled as if sparkle dust now ran through my veins instead of blood.
But the pain was too much. The light outside my ward lit up, simultaneously as my hand depressed the button dangling from a cord above.
At last they a decission was made to move my IV line to the other arm in a different position. Finally, between the rumbles of my starving belly which would go without food for 3 days, I could sleep, though my arm still felt as if it had been pounded by an army of a thousand men, and bore the marks to prove it.
As the antibiotics snaked through my web of veins, the pain under my ribs began to diminish. An elderly lady showing some signs of dementia, sat in her chair, head hung low bobbing slightly like that of an old, un loved scare crow left to the elements in an open field, looking as if the next gust of wind would blow the head right off the shoulders - though she wasn't un-loved. Poised in a chair next to her, was her love. I sat there thinking what memories of each other they had running (or maybe now slowly walking) through their minds. What had they shared with each other? What had they experienced together, that would make this man still sit by her side, tending to her needs? Was it now simply out of obligation, or was it the love that still burned or even now simmered below the surface like the ashes of a bon fire not quite extinguished, its small flames leaping to whatever life may still be left in it.
I sat bewildered. Who would be there for me, when I am old? What memories will we have of each other? Will he have been around long enough in my life to endure the task of looking after me if I fall ill? Will it be someone who has only shared the last three chapters out of a text of one hundred chapters of my life?
Do I want someone to see the back cover when the book closes, if they haven't even been able to glimpse the front? How selfish of me I think. What happens if the person who is by my bedside shares our memories, and has been through my life with me? Who will be there for them, when it is their turn to knock on deaths doors? These thoughts flood my mind like a torrent of water bursting the banks of a river after a heavy downpour, siliconing its cold wet breath over the grounds of my thought fields.
My arm flashed cold, as if some of the water had leaked from my thoughts down into my arm. It was the nurse giving me another injection of antibiotics, the plunger forcing the cold liquid through the eye of the syringe and down through my cannula. My thoughts were interrupted. I wanted to get out of there already.
A needle stabbed my leg like a dart into a dart board. "It's to thin the blood so you don't get clots" said the nurse. My legs 2 days after would still bear the marks of numerous of those injections and was enough to make my legs feel like they have been the target on Mundine's boxing bag, causing me to nearly collapse while climbing the stairs to my house the day of my release.
As night fell, and the my TV flickered its light against the wall like the flame of a candle lapping in the breeze, casting shadows that jumped about the walls in a jittery dance, my thoughts wafted back to the woman laying opposite me and her husband, who would now be lying in an empty bed presumedly at the place where so many of their memories would be etched.
But do memories become attached to places or just live in someone's mind? Or perhaps it could be both? Don't some buildings you walk into seem to have this dreamy feeling, like people's memories have escaped their minds and some how etched themselves into the walls.
I'd soon be leaving, one more night, it would be 3 in total, my pain had all but been erased by the steady drips of anitbodies being pumping into me. I felt sad for the old woman, now alone and incoherently mumbling to herself in the corner, the man, who was now home alone, photo's of familiar faces much younger, from a life long ago, filling the walls and counter tops. And I felt sad for me. And then a glimmer of happiness, like a beam of light successfully penetrating the dark, a glint of happiness for the couple, who at least had the experience, the memories and the life together, who faced the tough times and rose to the challenges, and stuck by each other, and will do right till the end, still forming memories, still living their experiences, even if the old lady's had started to dwindle. They at least existed. They are known. If not to the world, then at least to each other and I began to feel as if I were a candle with no flame. A flower with no petals or an ocean with no water. A candy machine all out of candy.
And at that moment I felt the sadness creep in. The light had been shut out of the room returning it to dark. The corridors were littered with silence. And in the silence I could hear from afar a sound like that of a lonely sparrow chirping in the wood, bleep-bleep-bleep.
Bleep-bleep-bleep echoeing through the lifeless corridors, somewhat like a lone sparrow chirping in an otherwise silent forest, its tiny voice permeating the still air. And the noise of what sounded like a little sparrow soon sprouted new life and new sounds. A tack-tack-tack sound. Like the tiny pitter patter of feet scurrying across the floor. But it wasn't a pitter-patter. It was slower. More deliberate. A slow stride. Someone's pump alarm had gone off jubilantly seeking the attention of the night nurse.
Silence. Death attempts to return to the halls, whispering its deadly breath of silence. But there are murmurs now. People stirring. Sheets crumpling like pages of paper being screwed up in the hands of defiant principle catching a student cheating on his exams. A cough, a splutter, a gargle.
My chest aches. Just under my bottom rib on my right hand side. When I move, it feels like a stitch, only much worse. Yesterday I decided it was time to pay CHER a visit. That's Canterbury Hospital E.R. The pain had become too much. I couldn't lay down, I couldn't breath.
So after being examined in ER, going for a few x-rays, drinking a horrible white solution that tasted like sambuca heavily diluted in water
- although I didn't have the pleasure of getting drunk from it - it was determined that I would be staying the night, news I wasn't very fond of hearing.
And so there I lay, tubes buried through my skin, its hollow tentacle like needle squirming up inside my veins, seeping its cocktail of chemicals up into my arm and through my body. It was hurting. I couldn't sleep. It felt like a million microscopic warriors were doing battle against this intrusion, beating their weapons against it in a fit of rage and annoyance. Then it settled, as if my little warriors were exhausted. But soon, maybe after they rested, it felt once again like it was being pounded relentlessly. The battle ground now starting to show the signs of war, turning a dark purple on my skin, my upper arm throbbing with pressure I can only imagine surrounds the hull of a 747 in high altitude, attempting to crush it in its cloudy hands.
My fingers tingled as if sparkle dust now ran through my veins instead of blood.
But the pain was too much. The light outside my ward lit up, simultaneously as my hand depressed the button dangling from a cord above.
At last they a decission was made to move my IV line to the other arm in a different position. Finally, between the rumbles of my starving belly which would go without food for 3 days, I could sleep, though my arm still felt as if it had been pounded by an army of a thousand men, and bore the marks to prove it.
As the antibiotics snaked through my web of veins, the pain under my ribs began to diminish. An elderly lady showing some signs of dementia, sat in her chair, head hung low bobbing slightly like that of an old, un loved scare crow left to the elements in an open field, looking as if the next gust of wind would blow the head right off the shoulders - though she wasn't un-loved. Poised in a chair next to her, was her love. I sat there thinking what memories of each other they had running (or maybe now slowly walking) through their minds. What had they shared with each other? What had they experienced together, that would make this man still sit by her side, tending to her needs? Was it now simply out of obligation, or was it the love that still burned or even now simmered below the surface like the ashes of a bon fire not quite extinguished, its small flames leaping to whatever life may still be left in it.
I sat bewildered. Who would be there for me, when I am old? What memories will we have of each other? Will he have been around long enough in my life to endure the task of looking after me if I fall ill? Will it be someone who has only shared the last three chapters out of a text of one hundred chapters of my life?
Do I want someone to see the back cover when the book closes, if they haven't even been able to glimpse the front? How selfish of me I think. What happens if the person who is by my bedside shares our memories, and has been through my life with me? Who will be there for them, when it is their turn to knock on deaths doors? These thoughts flood my mind like a torrent of water bursting the banks of a river after a heavy downpour, siliconing its cold wet breath over the grounds of my thought fields.
My arm flashed cold, as if some of the water had leaked from my thoughts down into my arm. It was the nurse giving me another injection of antibiotics, the plunger forcing the cold liquid through the eye of the syringe and down through my cannula. My thoughts were interrupted. I wanted to get out of there already.
A needle stabbed my leg like a dart into a dart board. "It's to thin the blood so you don't get clots" said the nurse. My legs 2 days after would still bear the marks of numerous of those injections and was enough to make my legs feel like they have been the target on Mundine's boxing bag, causing me to nearly collapse while climbing the stairs to my house the day of my release.
As night fell, and the my TV flickered its light against the wall like the flame of a candle lapping in the breeze, casting shadows that jumped about the walls in a jittery dance, my thoughts wafted back to the woman laying opposite me and her husband, who would now be lying in an empty bed presumedly at the place where so many of their memories would be etched.
But do memories become attached to places or just live in someone's mind? Or perhaps it could be both? Don't some buildings you walk into seem to have this dreamy feeling, like people's memories have escaped their minds and some how etched themselves into the walls.
I'd soon be leaving, one more night, it would be 3 in total, my pain had all but been erased by the steady drips of anitbodies being pumping into me. I felt sad for the old woman, now alone and incoherently mumbling to herself in the corner, the man, who was now home alone, photo's of familiar faces much younger, from a life long ago, filling the walls and counter tops. And I felt sad for me. And then a glimmer of happiness, like a beam of light successfully penetrating the dark, a glint of happiness for the couple, who at least had the experience, the memories and the life together, who faced the tough times and rose to the challenges, and stuck by each other, and will do right till the end, still forming memories, still living their experiences, even if the old lady's had started to dwindle. They at least existed. They are known. If not to the world, then at least to each other and I began to feel as if I were a candle with no flame. A flower with no petals or an ocean with no water. A candy machine all out of candy.
And at that moment I felt the sadness creep in. The light had been shut out of the room returning it to dark. The corridors were littered with silence. And in the silence I could hear from afar a sound like that of a lonely sparrow chirping in the wood, bleep-bleep-bleep.