Throughout my four months in hospitals, I dreamt above all of being home. This isn’t exceptional – it’s a very common desire – though I did meet one woman who complained that she’d find it too ‘quiet’ at home after the clatter of the ward. But for me the situation was extreme. I’m an only child; I live apart from my husband of 30 years because my desire for solitude is more persistent than it has ever been for any drug. I turned down a quarter of a million pounds to go on Celebrity Big Brother because even the idea of sleeping in a roomful of strangers for a few weeks made me feel murderous.
In the hospital in Brighton and then in the rehabilitation centre in West Sussex, I wasn’t getting paid a six-figure sum to do the thing I most dreaded. I was recovering from spinal surgery and attempting to get my head around the fact that I’d probably never walk again. I was ‘only’ in the first for five weeks, during which the high spot was an EastEnders-style barney with the broad in the next bed. She insisted on playing Celine Dion full-on first thing. I craved my home – a small Art Deco flat on a tree-lined Hove street leading up from the seafront to the restaurant quarter – like a junkie craves a fix, tormenting myself picturing its coolness and minimalism.
The rehab section was remote from the hustle and bustle of the big shiny hospital it was housed in, on the ‘lower ground floor’ – which I always think of as ‘the basement’ and therefore a place Where Bad Things Happen. The lifts which connected us to the main building were left broken for days, as were hoists and windows; the ward was boiling when hot outside and freezing when cold, thanks to the contrarily creative use of the central heating system. It was shabby and unloved; it seemed a cruel place to house long-term patients, coming to terms with the life-changing injuries that strokes (most of us) and spinal injuries (just a few of us) bring. All physio stopped at weekends, and except for visits, Friday evening till Monday morning was a very bleak time indeed, so some Sundays the four women housed there would sit in their beds, crying silently at the fate which had overtaken them. All except me, of course – I bawled in an unseemly and attention-seeking manner.
All but a few of the nurses and physios were splendid; there were a couple who invariably arrived fresh for their shift sighing like they had the weight of the world on their shoulders. They did the best they could, but the equipment in a place where physiotherapy was the whole point was shocking. Meanwhile, there seemed to be quite a few people whose job consisted solely of walking around with clipboards looking preoccupied and expressing amazement if any patient had the sheer gall to ask them anything.
It was a lonely place, yet noisy. The sheer asinine blather of some of the staff and inmates was almost incomprehensible; the endless talks of ‘number ones’ and ‘number twos’ made me talk sternly and loudly of ‘urination’ and ‘defecation’. At night, the joint really started jumping. One of the male nurses loved to whip out his guitar and treat us to selected highlights from the repertoire of Oasis; one evening when he was murdering ‘Don’t Look Back in Anger’ and I could no longer contain myself, yelling as loud as I could: ‘That’s easy for you to say, you caterwauling article – we’re a captive audience!’ There were two other male nurses who I came to think of as the Keystone Kops; we’d all just be nodding off and they’d barge in, turning on all the fluorescent strip lighting and shouting loudly: ‘Good evening, ladies,’ while banging doors and dropping things. A deranged young man from another bay on the ward attempted to climb into bed with me at five in the morning; I found it more amusing than scary, but I kicked up a right old fuss. This was a bay where women who could not walk and/or talk were housed – how the hell did he manage to get in? Probably because Britain’s Got Talent was taking place in the staff room.
The sheer asinine blather of some of the staff and inmates was almost incomprehensible
Nevertheless, when I was given my leaving date, my great excitement was tinged with worry that my beloved flat would be irretrievably changed. It’s very bare – compared by my husband’s (who lives nearby in a far less minimal flat – more ‘cosy’ he might say, more cluttered I’d call it) it looks like a bleak and pretentious modern hotel. My fear was that I would go back to an invalid’s flat, chocka with the palliatives of pain. I’d had a brief ‘home visit’ for a few bittersweet hours a month earlier – a routine check that the patient will be discharged to a fit dwelling – and knew that it would be a tight squeeze; that the kitchen and bathroom door would have to be removed, and a hospital bed and bathing chair installed.
I’d steeled myself for the worst when I was wheeled in that sunny Wednesday lunchtime – but it looked beautiful the way Daniel had re-arranged things, if anything better than before. Even the two beds, each against the same wall, gave it an elegant dorm look and made the bedroom look bigger. I wheeled myself to the balcony and reached up tentatively; I could reach the catch! I breathed the sea air – being free to open a window just because I felt like it seemed utterly magical. I’ve been here nearly a week now. My wheelchair leaves little piles of paint and plaster from chipping doorways. It doesn’t bother me; they’re proof that I’m here, I’m alive, I made it through.
But it turns out I’m not alone, after all. I have a flatmate – the opposite of a stranger in the house – because she’s the ghost of my old self. The woman who, despite her 65 years on Earth, until the December of last year, used to jump out of bed at five in the morning singing, breakfast on black coffee, write with the same gusto she did when she was first published at 17, run out the door at nine to her volunteer job, bounce out to lunch with a mate, write again, and dodge out for dinner at a restaurant with her husband in the evening. She was a real go-getter – always on the move. She’d have mocked my tortoise-like ways with her hare-like velocity. She was there yesterday, already banging the door on her way out as I struggled into consciousness, and though I can’t see her, she’s here again today: I know she’ll never go away. But I don’t mind. I’m home.
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