Wednesday 9 March 2011

Hospital

After my ‘miraculous’, blowjob-assisted recovery, I was taken out of intensive care and placed on a convalescents’ ward.

Within an hour of being on the ward, a guy was thrown in the bed next to mine by two Klingon-jabbering nurses, and was left to cry for hour after endless bloody hour.

The effects of an induced coma and an assortment of painkillers were beginning to wear off. After four hours of his crying, I couldn’t take any more and rang the button on the wall next to me that was supposed to bring nurses rushing to my bedside from all parts of the hospital.

No nurses appeared.

I pushed the button again.

Again, there was no response from anyone.

After a third attempt at drawing someone’s attention, still with no success, I got out of bed…and fell over.

Jeez, I thought, induced comas aren’t too bad at all. My head was spinning round faster than an ice skater’s tits.

I tried again.

With my head clearing, I headed to the reception desk of the ward.

There was nobody there.

Hearing a noise behind a door, I opened it and had a peek.

Five nurses were sitting at a table chatting away excitedly. The largest of the nurses, probably the senior of the lot, looked and me and shouted, “what are you doing out of bed? You’ve been seriously injured! You should be resting!”

I looked at her and shouted, “why are you lot sitting here! I’ve been seriously injured! I should be resting!”

The nurse stood up, put her hands on her hips and shouted back, “this is my ward! Go back to bed and go back to sleep!”

“Go back to sleep? I’ve been trying to sleep for the last four fucking hours!” I hollered. “How can I sleep when you put an insane pussy of a man who does nothing but constantly cry out for his wife and children, in the bed next to me?”

She pointed a finger at me. “The reason the patient next to you cries for his wife and children is that they left him a week ago. He’s attempted suicide twice!”

“Men don’t cry over things like that! They go down the pub, get drunk, buy a takeaway and go back home to watch porn films!” I screamed. “And a third suicide attempt will no longer be an option for him because, if he continues to cry, I am going to rip out his lungs; which will give him what he wants and give me some frigging peace and quiet, which is what I want!”

“If you don’t return to your bed, right this minute, I’ll have you sedated!” said the whore of a health worker.

“Don’t sedate me, for God’s sake! Sedate the piss-poor excuse of a man in the bed next to me.”

“Look,”

“Hang on a minute,” I interrupted, “is that Texas Hold ‘em or five card stud you’re playing?”

She looked behind at her colleagues, each holding playing cards, turned back to me and nervously answered, “Hold ‘em, actually, sir.”

I approached the table.

“Perhaps we got off on the wrong foot.” I suggested, ”I haven’t got any cash, but this watch is worth a few pennies.”

I pulled up a chair.

An hour into the game, I asked about the buttons above the beds, “How do they work? Does a light flash, or something?”

“Yeah,” said one of the nurses, “and a buzzer sounds as well.”

“I think my one’s broken. I pushed the button three times and nothing happened.”

“It’s not broken. We turn them off at eight o’clock. Otherwise, we’d be up and down all bloody night.”

I looked up from my cards.

The nurses were concentrating on the poker. “So, if your body starts rejecting a donor organ,” I said, “or the scar from a triple bypass bursts open, you’re pretty much fucked if it happens after eight o’clock, right?”

“Probably,” answered one of them.

“I doubt we’d know anything about it until we took the breakfasts round in the morning,” said another.

“Wouldn’t that be too late?”

“Well, it depends on the age of the patient; the younger you are, the better chance you have,” stated the senior nurse. “That’s why most nurses stay clear of the geriatric ward, if they can.”

I jumped out of my chair. “Christ, I need a loo! And I need it now!”

They laughed.

“Why are you laughing? Where’s the loo?” I asked in pain.

“We were wondering when that would happen. You haven’t had a piss for four days. Go out of here and you’ll find the toilet directly opposite.”

I charged out, ran to the loo and found the door locked.

I could hear the nurses laughing loudly. One of them, no doubt, swinging a key.

I wouldn’t make it back to them.

There was a sound of running water and a movement to my left; a guy was kneeling on his bed with a bedpan in front of him.

I snatched the bedpan from him.

Unless anyone’s gone four days without emptying their bladder, they wouldn’t be able to imagine the satisfaction.

The guy who’d just pissed on his bed, started to have a go at me. I told him to be quiet.

“If those nurses come out of that room,” I informed him, “and see what you’ve done to your bed, you are in for a damn good thrashing, mate. Now, shut up and get someone else’s bedpan.”

“I’ve lost the urge now,” he moaned.

“It’s not for you, you twat. It’s for me. One’s not going to be enough!”

“I’m not allowed out of bed.”

“Well, I can’t do it, can I?” I told him, with the bedpan in one hand and my knob in the other.

“Apparently, if I get out of bed there’s a one in a thousand chance I’ll die.”

“Listen, pal, if you don’t get me another sodding bedpan, when I’ve finished pissing I can abso-fucking-lutely guarantee that you’ll die!”

He carefully got out of bed and started to look for another bedpan.

“Actually,” I called after him, “you’d better bring two.”


I went back to the nurses and, being a decent chap, told them about the guy who’d accidentally wet his bed.

They looked at each other, wondering what to do.

One of them looked at my watch that I’d lost to three aces, and said, “the other girls take over in a couple of hours; we’ll leave it for them.”

By the time breakfast arrived, I was back in bed.

I’d lost my watch, I’d been threatened with a hiding if my cheque bounced and I was struggling to handle the effects of drinking too much surgical spirit.

A doctor came to my bed, looked at my notes and told me it would be best if I stayed for another day.

Thinking of last night’s poker, I told him I couldn’t afford it.

“Sir, in this country nobody has to pay for health care. Britain has the National Health Service. It’s the best in the world.”

I looked him straight in the eye…he really did believe what he was saying.

I told him I was going, got dressed and collected what was left of my belongings.

The man in the bed next to me had eventually fallen asleep.



I left one of Gobbling Gertie’s business cards on his pillow.

No comments: