Memories of intensive care
I remember feeling really cold and trying to pull my wooly blanket over me, but not being able to because it was tucked under the end of the bed.
I remember there was a woman in the bed opposite who used to groan and cry out. She had flushed red cheeks and wild, curly hair and a huge card by her bed that said Spring. I judged that she’d been in a while. However, given that no one else remembers her, perhaps my judgement of that time is questionable.
I remember reading an article in one of the London free papers about Mr Christmas, the man who celebrates Christmas every day of the year.
I remember my Dad asking me how I felt and me saying, Terrific. Apparently, that was the first thing I’d said since I was admitted.
As I waited for the bus last night on my epic journey home from The Black Heart Procession, I looked at the blue-lit entrance to a club. It brought me back to intensive care and some wild, extended dream or hallucination I had that I was in a club. I remember a lot of blue wall-lighting and that there was pretty much no one else there. I just wandered about with a faint feeling of unease, kind of lost in the sense that I didn’t know what I should be doing. Lights low, distant nurses moving about, not being in danger but not feeling safe, and alone alone alone.