Safe
The light was on in the corner of the room, its warm glow just reaching my bed. I got up and walked along the corridor in bare feet, my gown flapping around my ankles, the carpet pleasurably rough on my soles. I went into the kitchen and got a glass of water, then went back to my room. I climbed into bed, sat against the head-board and looked out of the window opposite. Even though it was two in the morning and the streets were empty, it was noisy all around me. The fans in the ceiling rattled as they span, water pipes hissed and seethed, and I could hear voices coming from another room. I lay down, turned on my side and, like when you have a general anaesthetic, one minute I was wide-awake and the next I was asleep.
I woke later on, my wrist hurting a little. I sat up, bleary-eyed, and looked at the clock on the wall. It was half-past three. I could still hear the reassuring sound of people talking coming from down the corridor. I tried to make out what they were saying, but eventually gave up, feeling comforted that there would be other people awake while I was sleeping.
The next time I woke, there was a woman standing by my bed, holding my hand. She was turning it this way and that, the light from the window falling first on the side of my wrist, then on the back. The woman was pretty, and in my sleep-haze I smiled at her. She smiled back and then returned to her examination of my hand. I felt a pain in my heart, then the same pain in my hand, and then I remembered. The woman – the nurse, I should say – was checking the needle in my wrist. She gave it a gentle tug and seemed to decide it was OK. ‘Goodnight,’ she said and I fell asleep again.
The fourth time I woke up, I lay awake for a while, shifting my weight on the hard mattress. There was a tube running from the drip hung on the bed to the needle in my wrist. It made turning over in bed difficult, but it also grounded me, and now it felt like an extension of my body. I pulled the covers up over my shoulders and tucked the stiff blanket against my neck. Hearing a laugh from the nurses’ station down the corridor, I shut my eyes and slept.