Tuesdays
Tuesdays. Who needs em?
Every boring day I’ve ever had was a Tuesday. The day I slept in till noon, drank 3 cups of coffee, had a shit, popped a unripe spot on my right shoulder before falling back asleep till the next morning was a Tuesday. For a long while I thought the day I sat in a hospital for twelve straight hours was a Friday, but I recently found a loose scrap of paper confirming my deepest suspicions. It was in fact a Tuesday. I had spent all day sat in a series of increasingly uncomfortable chairs, they kept assuring me that I would be seen to, that the doctor was just held up in a meeting. They sent me to the OBV wing first where a very nice nurse told me to sit and that they’d call my name shortly. After fifteen minutes of waiting they called my name and I was led to a small room containing a trainee nurse and her colleague. Inside they took my details and clacked away my poor explanation of why I was there. The Nurse was happy to exclaim that I was just 3 days older than her. She told me this to bring me comfort but it didn't, I’ve met people my age, All I was thinking was ‘how old was The Trainee?’
The Trainee asked me to roll my left sleeve and proceeded to wrap a plastic band around the top of my forearm in preparation to take blood. I’ve never really had an issue with needles or tests but in this cramped white room with The Trainee’s constant questioning and glasses near sliding off her nose I felt anything but calm. The Nurse told me to relax
‘It’ll just be a prick.’ She had told me my first lie of the day. My aunt had spent most of the previous year in and out of hospitals as a part of a government funded experimental treatment for a rare blood disease, she’d told me about the injections and the needles and sterile white rooms. She was fed through a tube for months before eating nothing but Gel’s for months after that. Laying in a bed for weeks on end while undefinable people in matching clothes afflicted her with curses and confusions. I’d offered her as much empathy as I could knowing I couldn’t ever really understand the year she’d had, but around needle fifteen I began to get the faintest glimpse. The Trainee couldn’t find a vain, The Nurse offering stunted guidance and placating smiles. Scratching at my skin and moving the needle side to side in an effort to promote blood flow I told them I couldn’t take it anymore and that they would have to move arms. I asked The Nurse to please take over.
“if she doesn’t get the practice taking blood today then she’s likely to fail her exams at the weekend” I didn’t give a crap I was fed up with the whole ordeal already.
“okay” I mumbled shyly. I’ve always been a pushover, on the fourth go she’d filled enough vials with my blood to let me go. I was shown out of the door and back to a hideously-blue leather, surprisingly low, well cushioned chair.
After an hour of staring at the most boring wall In the world I walked over to the check In desk expecting to see The Nice Nurse from before only to find, to much disappointment, that she’d been replaced by a far sterner Glum Nurse. I told him I wanted to just see if there were any updates on my wait time. I gave my name and he hammered away at a keyboard from before I was born, tabbing endlessly through pages and windows of similarly formatted grey boxes. He repeated my name back to me with an added question mark, I confirmed my name once more and he turned his eyes back to the monitor. Clack clack clack.
“you’re in the wrong place” he spoke as flatly as possible.
“they told me I need to be in the OBV wing”
“who did”
“the woman at front desk”
“why did she do that” I admitted I didn’t know anything more.
“what are you here for?” I found this strangely hard to answer. I’d been at the hospital 3 days ago after spending all night in a position resembling a toad making noises like a hedgehog.
Cara called an Uber and I creaked my way inside holding myself up with my arms around my stomach, she asked the driver if she could charge her phone. As she leant back in her seat resting a loving hand on my thigh. On his radio played a gentle song, that to my ears could only be described as light jazz. Cara would have much to say about that categorisation. She looked over to me with beautiful eyes and I stared back through two holes in my head.
“I love this song.” She said to the driver, he said nothing back. Tune after tune Cara would look at me and mouth ‘great song!’ She couldn’t believe that our driver had such great taste. Unplugging her phone at the roundabout before the hospital sent a wave of silence over the back seats. She was mortified.
That night we sat for 5 hours amongst the drunks, the insane and the seriously unwell. A Haredi family sat in one corner, all 15 of them, as what I assumed was their father was seen to. They sufficed as makeshift TV for me, passing food and children amongst themselves, I thought it was quite beautiful how they moved as a family unit. I thought back to hospital experiences before Cara. How dull, ugly and lonely they were. I spent a lot of time in hospital as a child for an assortment of strange medical burdens I collected, the hours my mother spent aside me reading, it makes me think about Cara aside me now. I closed my eyes in meditation, I didn’t realise how much light the family unit soaked up and now in their absence I felt blinded by the fluorescent overheads reflected by the insipid walls.
In front of me sat two Jamaican women, the elder of the two spoke of a man who lived near the station. She told her friend that once she’d seen the doctor she must visit him to get the strong stuff. I liked how she thought, leaning over to Cara I told her that I wanted the strong stuff too. She patted my arm and continued to read her book, something too clever for me. I liked a romp, something that could take me away. I don’t even need that much of a story. Cara reads with intention, she finds her moments and takes in every word on the page. I like when she reads to me. With one hand on my head and the other spreading the pages wide. I like to close my eyes and let the words wash over me, dreading the moment her fingers will unwind from my hair and her words pause before hearing a gentle sweep of paper, resuming the story as her fingers land back in just the right place. In the waiting area one hand was on my thigh and I tried my best to breathe slowly and deal with the pain.
In the third waiting room of the day I waited for my blood test results. After an hour three stab vest wearing police officers hauled in a small Chinese man wearing dark grey jogging bottoms, a navy blue sweatshirt and a mesh bite hood. He was dragged in kicking and screaming by a blonde female Officer and a large ginger Officer. The third officer, a short Pakistani man approached the Check-in desk and began muttering something I was too far away to hear. The Hooded Man began yelling animalistic grunts and guttural shrieks kicking both feet into the air and wrestling to break free from the officers. The female Officer tagged the Officer at the desk in and after a series of hurls, jumps, screeches and kicks the officers forced him to the floor, sitting him against the wall as he continued his intelligible screaming. The front row of seats cleared away from him, people looked to their phones or their feet to avoid his gaze so as not to provoke him.
I found the stoic nature of the ginger Officer fascinating. He stared dead ahead, holding with a firm grip. As people entered through the two sliding doors he gave sincere apologies and guided them past his prisoner. The other officers swarmed and negotiated with a team of exhausted nurses who didn’t want to take on this new patient at 4am while the waiting room was already filled with drunken gashes, late night burns, broken bones and for an increasingly confounding reason, me. The stoic officer and I made eye contact in a moment of silence, I couldn’t read his expression, which threw me off. I can always read an expression. His eyes were neutral, his mouth sealed and his posture solid, even when talking to the public his demeanour was hard to read, he seemed polite enough but I couldn’t taste kindness or any flavour of intent. I didn’t want to break my gaze, If I did I was worried what would replace his gaze. I had found comfort with him, he was giving me a rare moment of silence toward the end of the better part of 5 hours. He broke first, disrupted by the sliding open of the doors, nodding at man and his wife who’s arm was held in a bloodied sling and cheek grazed to all hell. So much distress, I questioned my own reasons for being here. I had almost forgotten the burning pain in my gut.
Looking at Cara she was deep in her book, she was good at turning this kind of noise off. She was raised in the city, she had met crazy before. I was raised by the sea, this kind of noise was foreign to me. Physical vs Mental, tangible vs illusory that was me and Cara. She was stout of heart and it would take more than a man in a chainmail hood to disturb her reading. I glanced back toward the officers, an pretence to completing my real goal.
My eyes closed in on The Hooded Man. I was in a staring contest with a man who’s eyes I couldn’t see. I felt them on me and I felt as though It was me against myself. My opponent became nothing more than a perfect carving of himself. I felt the ginger officers tight grip around my arm and the itch of mesh on my neck. Me versus The Trained and The Wild. I was scared to find the victor. The Hooded man was quiet. My heart beat in my chest and the pain in my gut grew out to my back and doubled in ferocity. He was the stillest he had been since arriving and for a terrifying, beautiful moment we just stared.
They dragged him to his feet and turned him to face a nurse before dragging him away again to a private room. None of them looked back.
Once we saw the doctor he said
“You’re all clear, nothing’s showing up.” He felt around my chest and abdomen as I squealed in pain and asked me questions that Cara answered. I couldn’t understand anything the man said to me but she spoke with confidence and security. Nodding like a TV doctor - arms across her chest asking all the right questions, demanding tests and charts while I sat there with my hands on my belly, eyelids on the floor and breathing like my grandmothers radiator. He printed out a sheet with a series of acronyms and spaces for doctors notes and with Cara over his shoulder ticked off a string of them. CCG, LBoN, FGYM, CoG, Cpat, Gpat, Mpat and R-neg. In the box he scrawled something illegible and handed it to Cara. On a scrap of paper he wrote scribbled a date and a time and then gave that to her too before excusing himself for a second and left the room. Cara looked at me and smiled throwing a limb thumbs up in my direction, I threw one back and smiled best I could. After 30 seconds he came back and said he had no more news and wished me luck at my next appointment.
On the Tuesday I’d moved wings for the third time, a new hallway with new health and safety posters and the same uncomfortable feeling following my bum around. I had been approached by a new nurse who asked me for the 100th time that day,
“who are you waiting for?” I shrugged, I was bored of answering. She walked away.
“Jim Keats?” I heard the call three doors down from me. I gathered my coats and bag and shuffled down toward a skinny man with a slow face.
He was very quiet and not intentional by any means. He fell through his sentences, using the silences after each word to come up with he next. On his computer he read aloud the results of the deluge of tests and procedures that I had endured. Taking off a pair of rimless glasses he looked me in the eyes and shrugged. He told me to buy some painkillers and to rest.
Every boring day I’ve ever had was a Tuesday. The day I slept in till noon, drank 3 cups of coffee, had a shit, popped a unripe spot on my right shoulder before falling back asleep till the next morning was a Tuesday. For a long while I thought the day I sat in a hospital for twelve straight hours was a Friday, but I recently found a loose scrap of paper confirming my deepest suspicions. It was in fact a Tuesday. I had spent all day sat in a series of increasingly uncomfortable chairs, they kept assuring me that I would be seen to, that the doctor was just held up in a meeting. They sent me to the OBV wing first where a very nice nurse told me to sit and that they’d call my name shortly. After fifteen minutes of waiting they called my name and I was led to a small room containing a trainee nurse and her colleague. Inside they took my details and clacked away my poor explanation of why I was there. The Nurse was happy to exclaim that I was just 3 days older than her. She told me this to bring me comfort but it didn't, I’ve met people my age, All I was thinking was ‘how old was The Trainee?’
The Trainee asked me to roll my left sleeve and proceeded to wrap a plastic band around the top of my forearm in preparation to take blood. I’ve never really had an issue with needles or tests but in this cramped white room with The Trainee’s constant questioning and glasses near sliding off her nose I felt anything but calm. The Nurse told me to relax
‘It’ll just be a prick.’ She had told me my first lie of the day. My aunt had spent most of the previous year in and out of hospitals as a part of a government funded experimental treatment for a rare blood disease, she’d told me about the injections and the needles and sterile white rooms. She was fed through a tube for months before eating nothing but Gel’s for months after that. Laying in a bed for weeks on end while undefinable people in matching clothes afflicted her with curses and confusions. I’d offered her as much empathy as I could knowing I couldn’t ever really understand the year she’d had, but around needle fifteen I began to get the faintest glimpse. The Trainee couldn’t find a vain, The Nurse offering stunted guidance and placating smiles. Scratching at my skin and moving the needle side to side in an effort to promote blood flow I told them I couldn’t take it anymore and that they would have to move arms. I asked The Nurse to please take over.
“if she doesn’t get the practice taking blood today then she’s likely to fail her exams at the weekend” I didn’t give a crap I was fed up with the whole ordeal already.
“okay” I mumbled shyly. I’ve always been a pushover, on the fourth go she’d filled enough vials with my blood to let me go. I was shown out of the door and back to a hideously-blue leather, surprisingly low, well cushioned chair.
After an hour of staring at the most boring wall In the world I walked over to the check In desk expecting to see The Nice Nurse from before only to find, to much disappointment, that she’d been replaced by a far sterner Glum Nurse. I told him I wanted to just see if there were any updates on my wait time. I gave my name and he hammered away at a keyboard from before I was born, tabbing endlessly through pages and windows of similarly formatted grey boxes. He repeated my name back to me with an added question mark, I confirmed my name once more and he turned his eyes back to the monitor. Clack clack clack.
“you’re in the wrong place” he spoke as flatly as possible.
“they told me I need to be in the OBV wing”
“who did”
“the woman at front desk”
“why did she do that” I admitted I didn’t know anything more.
“what are you here for?” I found this strangely hard to answer. I’d been at the hospital 3 days ago after spending all night in a position resembling a toad making noises like a hedgehog.
Cara called an Uber and I creaked my way inside holding myself up with my arms around my stomach, she asked the driver if she could charge her phone. As she leant back in her seat resting a loving hand on my thigh. On his radio played a gentle song, that to my ears could only be described as light jazz. Cara would have much to say about that categorisation. She looked over to me with beautiful eyes and I stared back through two holes in my head.
“I love this song.” She said to the driver, he said nothing back. Tune after tune Cara would look at me and mouth ‘great song!’ She couldn’t believe that our driver had such great taste. Unplugging her phone at the roundabout before the hospital sent a wave of silence over the back seats. She was mortified.
That night we sat for 5 hours amongst the drunks, the insane and the seriously unwell. A Haredi family sat in one corner, all 15 of them, as what I assumed was their father was seen to. They sufficed as makeshift TV for me, passing food and children amongst themselves, I thought it was quite beautiful how they moved as a family unit. I thought back to hospital experiences before Cara. How dull, ugly and lonely they were. I spent a lot of time in hospital as a child for an assortment of strange medical burdens I collected, the hours my mother spent aside me reading, it makes me think about Cara aside me now. I closed my eyes in meditation, I didn’t realise how much light the family unit soaked up and now in their absence I felt blinded by the fluorescent overheads reflected by the insipid walls.
In front of me sat two Jamaican women, the elder of the two spoke of a man who lived near the station. She told her friend that once she’d seen the doctor she must visit him to get the strong stuff. I liked how she thought, leaning over to Cara I told her that I wanted the strong stuff too. She patted my arm and continued to read her book, something too clever for me. I liked a romp, something that could take me away. I don’t even need that much of a story. Cara reads with intention, she finds her moments and takes in every word on the page. I like when she reads to me. With one hand on my head and the other spreading the pages wide. I like to close my eyes and let the words wash over me, dreading the moment her fingers will unwind from my hair and her words pause before hearing a gentle sweep of paper, resuming the story as her fingers land back in just the right place. In the waiting area one hand was on my thigh and I tried my best to breathe slowly and deal with the pain.
In the third waiting room of the day I waited for my blood test results. After an hour three stab vest wearing police officers hauled in a small Chinese man wearing dark grey jogging bottoms, a navy blue sweatshirt and a mesh bite hood. He was dragged in kicking and screaming by a blonde female Officer and a large ginger Officer. The third officer, a short Pakistani man approached the Check-in desk and began muttering something I was too far away to hear. The Hooded Man began yelling animalistic grunts and guttural shrieks kicking both feet into the air and wrestling to break free from the officers. The female Officer tagged the Officer at the desk in and after a series of hurls, jumps, screeches and kicks the officers forced him to the floor, sitting him against the wall as he continued his intelligible screaming. The front row of seats cleared away from him, people looked to their phones or their feet to avoid his gaze so as not to provoke him.
I found the stoic nature of the ginger Officer fascinating. He stared dead ahead, holding with a firm grip. As people entered through the two sliding doors he gave sincere apologies and guided them past his prisoner. The other officers swarmed and negotiated with a team of exhausted nurses who didn’t want to take on this new patient at 4am while the waiting room was already filled with drunken gashes, late night burns, broken bones and for an increasingly confounding reason, me. The stoic officer and I made eye contact in a moment of silence, I couldn’t read his expression, which threw me off. I can always read an expression. His eyes were neutral, his mouth sealed and his posture solid, even when talking to the public his demeanour was hard to read, he seemed polite enough but I couldn’t taste kindness or any flavour of intent. I didn’t want to break my gaze, If I did I was worried what would replace his gaze. I had found comfort with him, he was giving me a rare moment of silence toward the end of the better part of 5 hours. He broke first, disrupted by the sliding open of the doors, nodding at man and his wife who’s arm was held in a bloodied sling and cheek grazed to all hell. So much distress, I questioned my own reasons for being here. I had almost forgotten the burning pain in my gut.
Looking at Cara she was deep in her book, she was good at turning this kind of noise off. She was raised in the city, she had met crazy before. I was raised by the sea, this kind of noise was foreign to me. Physical vs Mental, tangible vs illusory that was me and Cara. She was stout of heart and it would take more than a man in a chainmail hood to disturb her reading. I glanced back toward the officers, an pretence to completing my real goal.
My eyes closed in on The Hooded Man. I was in a staring contest with a man who’s eyes I couldn’t see. I felt them on me and I felt as though It was me against myself. My opponent became nothing more than a perfect carving of himself. I felt the ginger officers tight grip around my arm and the itch of mesh on my neck. Me versus The Trained and The Wild. I was scared to find the victor. The Hooded man was quiet. My heart beat in my chest and the pain in my gut grew out to my back and doubled in ferocity. He was the stillest he had been since arriving and for a terrifying, beautiful moment we just stared.
They dragged him to his feet and turned him to face a nurse before dragging him away again to a private room. None of them looked back.
Once we saw the doctor he said
“You’re all clear, nothing’s showing up.” He felt around my chest and abdomen as I squealed in pain and asked me questions that Cara answered. I couldn’t understand anything the man said to me but she spoke with confidence and security. Nodding like a TV doctor - arms across her chest asking all the right questions, demanding tests and charts while I sat there with my hands on my belly, eyelids on the floor and breathing like my grandmothers radiator. He printed out a sheet with a series of acronyms and spaces for doctors notes and with Cara over his shoulder ticked off a string of them. CCG, LBoN, FGYM, CoG, Cpat, Gpat, Mpat and R-neg. In the box he scrawled something illegible and handed it to Cara. On a scrap of paper he wrote scribbled a date and a time and then gave that to her too before excusing himself for a second and left the room. Cara looked at me and smiled throwing a limb thumbs up in my direction, I threw one back and smiled best I could. After 30 seconds he came back and said he had no more news and wished me luck at my next appointment.
On the Tuesday I’d moved wings for the third time, a new hallway with new health and safety posters and the same uncomfortable feeling following my bum around. I had been approached by a new nurse who asked me for the 100th time that day,
“who are you waiting for?” I shrugged, I was bored of answering. She walked away.
“Jim Keats?” I heard the call three doors down from me. I gathered my coats and bag and shuffled down toward a skinny man with a slow face.
He was very quiet and not intentional by any means. He fell through his sentences, using the silences after each word to come up with he next. On his computer he read aloud the results of the deluge of tests and procedures that I had endured. Taking off a pair of rimless glasses he looked me in the eyes and shrugged. He told me to buy some painkillers and to rest.