You get to talking. In the ward. You know, with the patients. Well you want
to make them feel better. There’s no point being there if you’re
going to make them feel worse, right? But sometimes it’s tough you know.
It gets so that you’re even tempted with some people to pretend there’s
such a thing as God. But being an existentialist /anarchist/atheist you don’t
want to be a hypocrite. Besides you’re no actor and they’d probably
see right through that performance. But you have to say something, because
you’re humanitarian too, right? You want to tell them instead, ‘Heh,
cheer up, it might never happen.’ But you can’t, because of course
it already has. So you suggest instead, in so many painstaking words, that,
it’s going to get better. But they tell you it’s terminal. Which,
frankly, throws you a little off kilter. I mean shouldn’t someone have
said something sooner?
But
knee deep in good intentions you broach the possibility of ‘remission?’
And they tell you the odds are a million to one… Whilst nodding your
head dolefully, your attention might retreat out the window to the field of
sunflowers nodding brightly in the breeze, saying only yes yes to life and
the brilliant day. Then suddenly, no doubt on account of some reactionary
indoctrination, the word miracle pops into your head. But you catch yourself,
admitting full well, and not without regret, that you have to forfeit that
one. Because miracle implies God, right? The ultimate cop out, right? So finally,
your eyes, no doubt furtive if not slightly frantic by now, are combing the
ward, the drug trolley, for that thing you hardly remember between life crises,
and that abandons you any other time. You know the one, enlightenment. And
this time is like all the rest so you settle for, ‘the Godhead Within’
approach (even though that’s what the biggest bastard you know says
he’s got). So you’re not even surprised when they look at you
funny, like you might be talking dirty or something. Then groan in agony and
call out for more morphine, a bigger pill, a sedative. In fact it’s
all you can do not to say, ‘Make that two bartender!’ Then they
swear and use words like ‘fugh’ and ‘shigh’, holler
once or twice, sometimes in a chorus, which invariably leads to a lot of oohs
and aaahs (which makes you wonder if you’re actually being heard). So
finally you end up pleading, silently, ‘moo, moo, like a cow’
which is only what the midwife told your sister Sheila during the birth of
her monster; what Sheila, then high on endorphins anyway, now swears by. But
you hold back on this one because frankly you’re not sure how they’d
take it. And anger’s not very helpful at this stage in the game, right?
Although, to be perfectly honest, it’s almost getting like you just
want to put them out of your misery. When suddenly, there’s a rap at
the door, and they sigh, and sink back with visible relief, pat out the creases
and coo, ‘Come in.’ And there you were. What are you? A priest?
A vicar? A rabbi? A counselor with a white turtle neck under a black sweater?
The what? The lady with the tea trolley! Strong, two sugars.