A man can get through a lot of thinking when spending two weeks hold up in a hospital. He can get through a lot of masturbation too, especially when he has a resourceful mate like DougalMac who smuggles him in a stickmag and a jumbo bag of Twisties*.
The thought occurred to me whilst in there, that hospital life is in some ways much like what I imagine prison life to be. Basic, almost primal, metaphorically speaking. In both institutions, life is stripped back to the most simplistic of human instincts; survival. In both places who or what you are on the outside is irrelevant because it doesn’t count for anything once you’re in there. Hospitals are the most maternal of places - for most of us life starts in one and for most of us life will also end in one. The circle of life at it’s simplest really, the exiled programme returns to its source. If you’re not in hospital to die then you’re probably there to be healed, like a child returning to its Mother because it’s hurt itself in the playground that is life.
It’s really some deep shit when you think about it and I did, whilst on some pretty good drugs I might add.
There’s no fearing the shower in hospital of course. Any bum fun whilst going about your ablutions is going to have to be either a) of your own making, or b) if you’re the bedridden type patient who has assisted showers, you may be able to sweet talk the nurse into giving you a cheeky ring finger before she’s done. I did ask actually, but none of the female nurses were up for it. Murse Arvin on the other hand had a mischievous glint in his eye. I always made sure to shower before his shift started. Incidentally liquid soap is on offer in hospital showers, which struck me as a great idea for prisons, as it would take away that whole mystique of ‘dropping the soap’. Probably wouldn’t make much difference though, I suspect a resourceful buggerer would still find a use for liquid soap….
Nurses have a tough profession. Not only are they chronically understaffed and underpaid - like so many of our essential government services – but they do a job that is potentially, intrinsically speaking, void of fulfilment. Their daily work is to care for people who are at the very lowest ebb of their being, people who are sick, needy and a pale version of their true self. A nurse’s job is only done when that person is fit and well enough to leave and return to their normal lives again, meaning that there’s a good chance that the Nurse never really got to know or see the person for who they really were at all, despite having just been a surrogate mother of sorts to them whilst they regained their health. It’s a thankless job really.
I told you the drugs were good, this is some of my best work.
Now being in full control of all my faculties I was able to chat with all my nurses at length and they loved it. I can only imagine that they don’t get a lot of chances to talk about stuff of genuine interest - whether it be about themselves, their families, their work or just shit on TV - when you’re changing the sheets at 2am on the old lady next door who has soiled herself again, or propping up the morbidly obese smoker guy in the shower each morning. The nursing students in particular were gagging for conversation; they spent most of their time so petrified that they were going to fuck up taking my blood pressure and temperature that any distraction for them was a welcome one.
Nurses, like Cops, are a resource that we woefully undervalue. Why do we let successive politicians and governments continue to neglect the very people who do the jobs that are so essential to the wellbeing of society? Half of my nurse force was from Asia, from countries like the Philippines and Malaysia, that are subject to recruitment drives by our district health boards because there’s just no staff to be found here. Admittedly the career choices for young women in New Zealand these days are huge and nursing is not the bastion of potential employment it once was, but you have to believe that if Nurses were paid better and given the kind of resources you and I, the office wasters, have each day, then overseas recruitment would be minimal. Meanwhile, seven fat parliamentarians with small peckers – even the ladies –are off on an all expenses paid trip to Europe at the cost of two new Nurses. Go figure.
We could sure do with some more lookers on the wards too. Oh there were a few alright, but ironically I only ever had a ridicously good looking nurse on the night shift. Whilst I was asleep! Physiotherapy on the other hand is a branch of medicine that is blessed with more than it’s share of attractive young ladies, many of whom I am sure signed on so that they could end up squeezing the hips, thighs and buttocks of many a buff athlete. Instead what they got for the last 10 days was old ClubDes with his dodgy lungs and an orange stiffy under the ever so thin bed sheet. Oh yeah.
Actually my physio was an Asian man with eczema. Unfortunately, no matter how hard I tried, the drugs weren’t so good that I could hallucinate him into a blue eyed blonde girl with soft, curious hands.
*Alas, DougalMac’s fine efforts were in vain. Unfortunately print porn stopped doing it for me back in my teens, but the articles in the mag were actually quite good - I kid you not – so it wasn’t a complete waste. My wife ate the whole bag of Twisties too and rather disappointingly never once offered to give me a wank.
You write very well.
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