Yes, you. Saeed, wasn’t it? (Not that it would have made it any better or worse whether it was Kevin or Winston or any other ethnic forename you like.) There I am, in a hospital ward for the first time in my life, feeling kinda sorry for myself but figuring, on a quick look round, I’m probably the fittest out of the 30-odd patients the nursing staff are running around after and doing the best I can to add the absolute minimum to their load. And then the guy I’ve made friends with in the next bed, the one whose immune system is trying to eat his red blood cells, is wheeled off to I don’t know where, and a little while later you turn up, handcuffed to your bed and with a bunch of warders in attendance.
Well, it’s a hospital, and sickness is a great leveller, and I don’t care if you’re an axe murderer - you’re closely guarded and won’t be hurting anyone here, and as I said to the assistant who asked if I minded the curtain being pulled back, you’re a patient, same as anyone else. And I mentally bookmark the same level of compassion for you as I’ve been entertaining for every other invalid in the place, 'cos no-one asks to get sick and it isn’t any fun for convict or law-abider alike, as you lay there dolefully and occasionally grunting in discomfort.
Then the action starts to pick up. You start muttering “Eeeyyyminpaini’minpaini’minpaini’minpaiiiin”, pause for breath and begin again from the start, a little louder and a little more intrusive, and I’m thinking: you and me both, brother, but there’s a lot of sick people here so I’m trying to keep it down a little. And you keep coming up with one demand after another, trips to the toilet or the shower or whatever, and you seem to manage okay as you shuffle off. You squeal like a stuck pig when they put the drip in you, though, and I’ve had one (am still toting around an unneeded cannula) and I know they don’t hurt that much. Eh, maybe you’re just a crybaby. That’s not necessarily your fault.
And then the doctor comes to interview and examine you, and he talks about your supposed symptoms and your need for pain relief. Seems he thinks you might have a gallstone from your description, although the bull warder says he’s had one and he didn’t make half the noise you are. And the conversation gets around to the pain relief you’ve been crying out for and you react with horror when you learn what the doctor’s going to give you. (With a highly painful inflamed leg, I’ve been making do with paracetamol and cold water.) Seems the drug of choice isn’t good enough for you, Saeed. Seems only morphine will do. That’s the part I crumple up my portion of compassion marked “Saeed” and save it for someone who needs it.
Where the fuck do you think you get off arguing with the doctor about what pain relief to prescribe? No-one who’s on the level does that. And he explains patiently that your medical record includes a history of opiate abuse and he does not want to risk you becoming re-addicted and you’re virtuously protesting “No, I’m clean, it wasn’t the doctor that got me off drugs, it was me, I did it, I need morphine…” and upsetting a wardful of sick and mainly elderly people with your ranting. Anyway you do get a slug of some painkiller (and you whine some more as the needle is going in) and are told you’ll be kept in on no solid food overnight and they’ll have a look at you in the morning, and if it’s a stone they’ll whip that gallbladder out.
This leaves you to your whining and moaning and thrashing around on the bed and the “Eeeyyyminpaini’minpaini’minpaini’minpaiiiin” routine again, although with a syringeful of non-addictive and sadly buzz-free pharmaceuticals taking effect, I doubt you’d be feeling for-real pain if you had a packet of fishhooks in you. But you’re getting on to Phase II of your campaign now, aren’t you?
At this point I shuffle over to my friend in the other corner, the retired doctor who’s got some mysterious internal bleeding that hasn’t been solved even with a 'scopy at either end of his digestive tract earlier in the game, and I mutter “What do you think of the pantomime?”. He nods and says “People who’re really in that much pain don’t make that noise. They’re holding themselves as still as possible.”
You see, Mister “Eeeyyyminpaini’minpaini’minpaini’minpaiiiin” Saeed, you can manage to stop all that noise when you get your request for a shower granted, and you shuffle past with your warders chained to you showing no signs that your constant, crushing, intolerable, can-only-be-relieved-by-morphine pain is stopping you moving. You can manage it at toilet-break time too. It’s just when you’re confined to bed that the routine starts up again.
During the course of the night, you step up your campaign of convincing the world in general, and the medical staff in particular, that you are seriously ill. You clamour for the doctor again and again, only for the head nurse to tell you “Doctor’s busy” (“seeing people who are really ill” goes unsaid), you yell for the nurse all the time although we’re getting on towards the night shift and there are too few nurses with too many patients as it is. You keep up with the “Eeeyyyminpaini’minpaini’minpaini’minpaiiiin” routine, but you’re a piss-poor actor, I’m here to tell you. And, with nothing to put in your stomach but water, you set about drinking as much as you can in order to throw it up twenty minutes later as noisily as possible.
Come lights down, the evening nurse who does my BP and pulse, and also earns herself five gold stars by yanking that sodding cannula out of me (it’s on its fourth day, I haven’t needed it since day 2, and doctor agreed eight hours ago it could come out), asks blandly if I would like earplugs. Our eyes meet in perfect understanding of what you’re about, and the earplugs, when they turn up five minutes later, prove to be just the job.
I can still hear some of your overnight activity, and when I’ve decided I’m not going to sleep any more (I haven’t much; apparently it’s famously difficult in hospital) I pull 'em out again. Head night nurse is sick of you constantly throwing up water and rations you to one small glass. Later you somehow manage to persuade the youngest warder to fill your water jug and I earn my second brownie point of the visit when I catch his eye and say “Better check with Nurse first”. He does (I must have enough gravitas to be convincing even with half a week’s stubble) and it’s no unauthorised water for Mr Eeeyyyminpaaaiiin… which cuts down on your next round of upchucking, at any rate.
Towards dawn the corridor lights are on and you’re instantly demanding stuff again - you want another shower ‘cos “I’ve got sick on me, look” (must’ve been mostly water, I’m guessing) and you’re coming the martyr because you’re going to have to wait a while. All through the night you’ve been making more fuss than thirty genuinely ill patients including at least one in our room who is going to die some time in the next few days, keeping people awake, taking up the nurses’ time with your repeated clamouring for attention, you’ve wasted a doctor’s time that could have been better spent on someone with a real illness, you’ve made the cleaning staff come in and change your bed once and wipe the floor because you managed to miss the bowl with your stomachful of dirty water, not to mention take out the bowls, and generally wasting hundreds of pounds of hospital money and many man-hours of labour from people who already working their asses off… all because poor Saeed wants a shot of morphine and doesn’t care whom he has to inconvenience to get it.
By now I guess you’re back in the jug. Hope the governor gave you something to remember your escapade by. As for me, I was too much on my dignity to yell “If you don’t STFU I’m gonna shove this crutch somewhere that’ll really teach you what pain is!” but you’ve no idea how many times I thought it.
Oddly, ten pm the night you came in the charts show my pulse and BP comfortably up on the six readings either side of your appearance. Funny shit, huh?
