A whimper

I do not like hospitals. Too many people have gone in but never came out. Or they came out less than they were before they went in. As for me, I hyperventilate at the doctor's deadpan explanation of the difference between arteries and veins. I need to sit down, even though the lecture is directed at the patient next to me, whom I have never met before. By some misfortune we lie next to one another through a thin sterile curtain, staring up at the same sorry ceiling, counting the same black dots on the vents as the doctor injects the same infected needles into our bloodstream in perfect symphony. So I shudder and whimper, quiver and hum, along with the loveless child’s wail wailing with a dying fall at the end of the corridor.

Not the first time I let my cries bounce off hospital walls, and not the last. One night many years ago my father carried me on his back and lied to me about where we were going. I ended up at the hospital with bruises all over me. The doctors looked at my mother with suspicion and middle-class disapproval, and threatened to call the police if she did not provide an adequate explanation. But all she could do was cry.

Even back then I could not stand the daily injections. I pretended I needed to go to the toilet each time the burly nurse approached my bed with a giant needle. I would hide in the small cubicle for as long as I could with my shorts around my dangling ankles, panicked and locked in against all the world.

The last day I was there, I knew I only had to endure one more time the prick of the needle deep into my skin, but still I couldn’t do it. I asked to go, then begged, then threatened to wet myself. Then I did the only thing I knew to do, only thing I have ever known to do, which was to run the hell away into the last cubicle right up against the wall and slam the door loudly behind me. But the nurse, filled with fuming fury, ran after me shouting “You little shit!” and kicked the damn toilet door open. She pushed my head down between my knees and against the dirty green of the toilet door. I struggled helplessly against her hold and tried to pull up my shorts from shame.

But all I could do was quiver and hum, shudder and whimper, as I felt the sharp jab of the needle and heard the sound of the sweat from her forehead freefalling a perfect '10' into the toilet water, narrowly missing my arse.