HERNE BAY
The Little Restaurant on the Prom
A childhood memoir of life before polio, and immediately after, and my magical childhood adventures in and out of a wheelchair
St Bart's Hospital Rochester
She represented all that was bad in the NHS. She ran her ward like a military machine. I can still hear the words ''That's sufficient.'' All I remember of her were those words and my absolute terror of her.
I had just left a four week stint - or was it 6 weeks, I don’t remember - in the Iron Lung. I was having trouble with my bowels, not my breathing now. I lived in fear of her sticking a greased tube up my bottom, which was then attached to a funnel. In this funnel she poured warm, soapy water. I could feel my tummy swelling with the pressure of it. She then sat me on a bed-pan. If I made a mess she screamed at me. My whole world had suddenly been turned on its head: my arms were weak, my legs no longer worked properly. Yet I was helped out of bed and onto a walking frame. She screamed again when I dripped excrement as I walked, and humiliated me in front of the whole ward by cleaning my bare bum in full view.
Whilst in the iron lung I had broken a thermometer: bitten down on it, snapped it in half. They peered inside my mouth with torches. Where had it gone? I had no sensation of swallowing it. Again they peered inside the cave of my mouth. There was no nook or cranny in which it could hide. I slept amidst the noise of my loudly breathing coffin. I had forgotten all about it. Then, when they had lifted me out for the final time, I snuggled down in my real bed. The horrors of constipation were upon me. Every time a tray with a white cloth over it was carried down the ward I broke out in fear. An enema, oh surely not again!
I tried to control it, I really did. The night nurse, head bent under a single light, reading notes or novel, should only be called in an emergency. There was nothing erotic or juicily naughty about crapping in bed, no exciting erection now. I couldn't stop it. I had no control. I did it in the bed. The thought of the ward sister and her wicked ways of sadistic satisfaction filled me with such fear that I dropped the offending turds behind the radiator! Nobody would ever find them. Nobody would ever know. But what was this, a piece of wood? A spike protruded from one of my offending efforts? It was the lost thermometer. So I had swallowed it.
In the half daze of sleep and anxiety I hadn't bargained for the radiators being attached to the wall off the floor. When the nurses pulled my locker out to clean, there they were, like horse droppings in the middle of the road. This was not how I had planned it! Soon I would wake up from this nightmare. Soon I would be free of the shame and the fear. But no: word got out. Now the sister was seething with rage. Quickly and efficiently she made the beds, coming ever closer to my bed. Finally she arrived. ''Well, Paul,'' she said, ''and what have we done now?'' I remained silent, frozen with fear. What would she do to me now? ''If I had a puppy who had messed I would rub his nose in it. But what am I going to do withyou? You are a dirty little boy. What are you?'' ''A dirty little boy,'' I mumbled. ''Louder,'' she said, ''I can't hear you.'' She cupped her hand to her ear. ''What are you?'' ''A dirty little boy'' I said out loud. ''That's sufficient,'' she said, ''that's sufficient.'' From that moment on I hated her. My fear of her turned into hate. I gathered strength from hating her. It was better than being afraid.
But my troubles were far from over. Now I had the ridicule and bullying of the boy in the next bed. ''Can I borrow yer toothpaste?'' ''Of course you can,'' I said. He took the top off the tube. ''Ehrrr,'' he said, ''it's got shit in it. I don't want toothpaste that's full of shit!'' He hurled it back at me. And just to round things off he got out of bed and gave me a flurry of punches in the chest. I cried out in pain. I had no strength to retaliate. I couldn't walk and my arms were too weak to counter his punches. ''What did you do that for?'' I cried, clutching my chest. ''For just being a smelly little shit-bag,'' he said. Again he got out of bed and again the blows to my chest. ''Ehrrr,'' he said again, ''I bet your flannel is full of shit, too. It's probably in yer locker.'' He pulled out the drawer. ''Yeh, thought so, full of shit.'' A nurse came up the ward. He made a hurried dive for his bed.
**************************
Years later, the boy in the next bed, who had taunted me and punched me, paid me a visit at my parent’s restaurant. He was all clad in leather and rode a motorbike. He didn’t actually apologise for his bullying ways but he gave me a ride on his motorbike that yelled to me ‘’Forgive me. I was young and cruel and out of control. Please forgive me?’’ Like him, I didn’t actually say so. But I rather liked his new image – with the leathers an’ all – and forgave him. I never saw him again.
*************************
[previous] [contents] [next]
[Return to Home Page]
|
