Johnny Drip
So, more visitors today: my sister, Frost (stopped fancying her again), Dusk and Heather (an old, old friend). We talked about how I refer to the day of my cardiac arrest as the day I died. Reputedly, there was some confusion amongst my Twitter acquaintances about whether the death I tweeted about was a permanent one.
This was the first time my sister had met Dusk, thought she has heard a lot about him over the years. I have yet to find out what she thought of him. Presently, she and Heather left and Dusk and Frost and I went for noodles around the corner from the hospital.
I take a drug called Warfarin which thins my blood so it doesn’t clot on my artificial heart valve. However, in periods just before operations, I get put on Heparin. This does the same thing, but is delivered intravenously. So, Dusk, Frost and I set off from the main hospital entrance. However, we weren’t alone. I was dragging along Johnny Drip, an electronic pump mounted on a wheeled drip stand. The pump very slowly pushes in the plunger of a large syringe which delivers Heparin into my arm via a plastic tube and canulla.
Drippy doesn’t really have off-road wheels, poor chap, so I had to carry him over the cobblestones. Our party got a few odd looks as we crossed Westminster Bridge, but the noodle bar staff didn’t seem to notice anything odd.
We sat and ate, JD occasionally interjecting with a beep to remind us that he was unplugged from the mains. Dusk went into full raconteur mode. He told the story of how he nearly died of food poisoning in the middle of the African rainforest. He told the story of how he was interrogated at gunpoint by the security detail for a Landless Peasant Movement camp when they mistook him for an intruder.
I fell in love with him, yet again. He is just gorgeous: his smile looks like the low, sharp sun on a winter’s day; his mouth tastes like malt and his face is handsome and brown and he gives me the same feeling as hugging my teddy. I could listen to him talk forever. I make him laugh. He says interesting things, unlike most people. He knows way more than I do.