... bit more bother this end! Was an acute admission to a London hospital on Thursday night with breathing problems. Am doing OK back home, now, dosed up to the eyeballs on strong antibiotic. I will return! :)) xx

ACCIDENT & EMERGENCY, 0300 HRS


Bed-headed and chalk-faced,
I arrive at the glass partition
where the dressed-to-kill
Admissions Clerk has trouble
catching my name.

A quiet night on this gore-less side;
two duty doctors are kept busy
over in Accident while nurses here
swap jokes with a gangly, giggling
orderly as he washes down beds.

Double-wrapped later in
standard-issue gown, I weave
to the only in-use WC through
hovering police, their walkies
-hiss-talkies addressing no-one
in particular as they confront the
patched-up drunk with his crime.

Swishing past later in his pale blue
scrubs, the young doctor airily arrives.
His voice the country plum of a distant,
sun-streaked morning room, he tells
patients his name is Craig.

To the elderly, ranting Punjabi he cannot
make himself understood; it takes two nurses
to explain to Dorothy-with-dementia, next,
that biting is completely unacceptable.
Some abuse from Sol who swears and
rattles his drip-stand, demanding to be set free
to catch his plane back to Jordan.

And from another corner come
waves of shoulder-shaking sobbing:
male, Mediterranean. Inconsolable.

An hour later I get my turn.
Craig applies his stethoscope,
tells me to take deep breaths,
– “but not like that”, he stops me;
“try without all the gasping.”

Mine is the only bloodless chest
he’s been close enough to examine,
but still it’s impossible for him to hear
why it is I cannot breathe.