|
CHAPTER 3
The hospital grounds created a good first impression. There was no sign of
sickness among the vast array of colorful plants and shrubbery. The trees
stood tall and proud and their foliage waved a welcome to me in a slight
breeze. There was ample parking providing you arrived at the crack of dawn or
were a consultant. Many of the consultant parking spaces were occupied by
Rolls Royce and Bentleys, which suggested that this was one of their happy
hunting grounds and that the pickings were good. I managed to squeeze into a
space at the far end of the horseshoe shaped drive close to the road.
I struggled back up the steep drive, which had clearly been designed to make your hospital visit worthwhile, and was pleased that it was not necessary for me to make use of a respirator that had been placed by the entrance.
After close scrutiny by the receptionist who was clearly well trained to pick
out a Saville Row suit in a crowd, I just managed to scrape through inspection
in my designer denims but was directed to sit in one of the less plush chairs.
Her facial expression warned me to be quiet. I sat in silence, meditating
with the rest of the congregation and was overawed by the reverence of the
occasion. I created a minor stir at one point when I rather noisily turned
the page of a magazine that I was looking at but not reading. Nothing was
actually said but I did receive a scathing look from the receptionist a little
later when I coughed.
During the following thirty minutes I practiced sitting in silence and
succeeded rather well as I only received two more looks. A lady ambled through
some swing doors carrying a clipboard. After studying it for a while with
everyone looking eagerly on, my name was called. She looked around the room
at all the smart suits and looked a little disappointed when she discovered
that I was her man. She seemed quite fascinated by my denims and spent some
time admiring them while she sucked what appeared to be a very bitter sweet.
She led me along a corridor and I stood to attention by the door upon which
she knocked. Receiving no reply she naturally opened it and I crept in behind
her. She announced my name to a gentleman who had his back to us. He did not
take a scrap of notice. Being only a paying patient I did not of course
expect him to.
When he eventually turned round, to say that I was surprised would be a gross
understatement. I was petrified. He had five eyes. He had two like mine
although his were lower down his head and very close together. There were
another two half eyes perched on the end of his nose. The really scary one
was the big one sticking out above his head. He had a metal band around his
forehead which had a six inch metal pole attached to the front of it with this
huge eye hanging on the end. It was a perfect fit because when he moved his
head his antenna moved in unison with it. It looked as if it had grown
there. However hard I tried, and believe me I tried hard, I could not take my
eyes off it. I wanted to talk to him but found myself talking to this big
glass eye instead. It was like meeting an alien from some far off planet. I
wondered if he thought I looked odd without one. I imagined him out with his
family, his children with little ones sticking up above their heads.
He eventually invited me to sit down and asked me what the problem was. I
didn't think I ought to mention it so I told him about the noise in my ear
instead. I silently prayed that he was not wearing the cure on the top of his
head.
He was a cheerful chap; in his way; I suppose. He didn't smile or crack any
jokes and maybe he had lost his wallet but, all in all, he was doing a great
job with his stiff upper lip.
'What does it sound like' he asked when I told him about the noise.
'Bloody terrible' I replied before being asked to be a little more
specific. 'Are you a sailing man' I asked 'because it sounds like a force ten
gale blowing over a very rough sea'. An audible sigh and his raised eyebrows
suggested otherwise. Perhaps it is just as well because that big eye would
probably get caught up in the rigging. I elaborated with another description,
which was not nearly as good but seemed to satisfy him. One day he will be
out in a boat when the sea cuts up rough and the wind starts howling and he
will be heard to say, quite out of the blue, ‘Ah, so that's the noise that
chap was talking about’.
Having examined my ears he told me that it may come as a surprise but he
wanted to examine my nose. After the shock of meeting him with his fifth eye
very little would surprise me and that certainly didn't.
The examination revealed that this was the problem. 'Polyps' was what he
called it and just to make sure that he had cheered me up he added that my
nose was also bent out of shape and that was contributing to the problem. He
asked if I could remember damaging it. I tried to remember if Anita had ever
whacked me. I could think of a few near miss occasions but I could not recall
her ever landing one so I gave her the benefit of the doubt and told him no.
Although I would need an operation I felt incredible relief that the problem
had at last been identified but I was disappointed when he told me that I
would have to wait for two weeks. Although putting things off was a
speciality of mine, I had had enough and was longing to get it over with.
They were the longest two weeks of my life. I could feel myself falling apart
and had to keep telling myself to hang on and that it would soon be all over.
I tried desperately hard not to make a big deal of it and every time I reached
near breaking point I would slink off on my own. I didn’t want anyone to see
me like that. Few people outside my immediate family knew of my problem and I
wanted to keep it like that.
I tried everything I could think of to get some relief from the noise;
watching television, listening to the radio, reading and walking but whatever
I did I could not get that noise out of mind. It seemed that the more I tried
the worse it became. Nothing helped. Going to the office made matters even
worse. I had to quickly leave when I found that I was beginning to snap at
people for no apparent reason.
A lifetime later I had only one day to go.
|
