Slim man with with the unsung promise of a pastiche moustache carries our bag to the second last room on the left on the ground floor.
Giggle but we don’t tip.
Inspect. The call button that controls the bed and the lights. The bathroom with its limpet green miniatures and its roll-in shower. The locked drug cabinet for our Vitamin D.
Lean our carried-in crutches in the corner. Empty our clean knickers into the drawer. Admire the plump calm swell of the tree from the window.
Solemn conversations with the pharmacist, the anaesthetist, the consultant surgeon and the woman with the menu card.
Legs dance and fingers slip slide around the plastic biro.
Sign.
Accept the delivery. A hospital gown and paper knickers. Disposable slippers in a sealed plastic bag.
Change in the bathroom. Struggle with the ties at the back of the gown. Wear our red striped silk robe as a dressing gown picked up in Pakistan in 2001 (you may have seen Hamid Karzai wear a similar one).
It is time. Summoned by the Anaesthetic OPD. Follow him along the corridor in our flapping disposable slippers. Climb onto the trolley in the anaesthetic room.
Can you feel my fingers? Can you feel my fingers?
Yes, yes we say. On repeat. Something about the spinal anaesthetic isn’t right.
Deep breaths, everyone says. Deep breaths.
Shaking.
Pushed into the operating theatre. Last memory of overhead lights.
Wake up half an hour into surgery. Our knee is sore, we say. We don’t remember this.
I topped you up with a general, she says in the wash up. I didn’t know whether it was you or the drugs talking.
Someone takes off our paper knickers, cutting them clean with neat cold blades.
Consultant surgeon drops in and says everything went well, it went to plan, she says.
Soft. Coddled.
Pain canons in just after the first biscuit.
Joy calls us darling, Nancy calls us darling, Eden calls us darling, love.
Shift changes. Shapeshifters.
Blood pressure, pulse, oxygen level, temperature. On the hour every hour.
Alone, watching the minute hand limp limp limp across the off-white night.
Fire. Everything white hot, monstering.
Breathe, great gulps of jittery breath, turning the dial to Radio 3, it helps, someone said, although do avoid anything with too much cymbal.
Tell the tunics about the brawling brutes clamped around our knee.
Bare pale round flesh for sharp jab (morphine).
Write first lines in the ceiling. Agree at least it will be we.
Shift change. Shifting shapes. Breakfast. Porridge, apple juice and prunes (we put sensible above joy when we ordered this).
Resistance is lying on a cardboard bedpan. Resistance revenge is a bladder scan and a catheter.
Release.
They make us choose our own analgesia. We don’t want choice, just poppers.
Offered slow release or instant relief. We make our decision based on the impact on our bowels.
(We have been here before.)
Day lengthens and shortens.
Wash from a cardboard bowl and disposable wipes.
Cardboard sick bowl for toothpaste spitting.
Semblance of dressed.
Parade of different coloured tunics.
We’ll get you up.
We shake we say we can’t stop shaking.
They empty, measure, empty, measure, empty.
You’ll get up on the walker first.
Catheter removal must be by a nurse who is the same sex as the patient.
First bend tears us up.
As does the sudden stiff descent on a toilet designed for small people.
If we’d known, we say to anyone, we wouldn’t have gone through with it.
Eighty degrees already, darling.
You’re doing so well, darling.
Pee in the card bowl resting in the toilet.
Drink, stagger, shriek, pee, measure. Repeat.
Oxys.
Surgical staples, diamante style.
Her son met his wife in Afghanistan. Miss, she calls us, handing us pale bloated macaroni cheese. Black tunic, pink dancing shoes. Such tiny shoes.
Warfarin. Belly bruise the colour of doves.
Eyes follow Strictly, spangle fizz, our toes wriggle away clots.
You spin me round round round you spin me round.
You finished that, love?
Sorbet is blood orange, served in a glass sundae dish.
SANDERLINGS 