Jonathan Dodd

 

 

 ‘You don’t want to make a spectacle of yourself, I told you that before.’ My mother could always be relied upon to come up with the least socially embarrassing slant on anything you might suggest or get involved in. She used this like a broad brush, painting behaviour, language, clothes, the colour of the wallpaper, the length of my hair, anything and everything that could be seen or commented on by the neighbours, both real and imaginary.

I normally tried to ignore these pronouncements, or rather to be somewhere else when exhibiting myself in such a way that she might feel the need to make them. Unfortunately on this occasion I was lying in the road with a broken leg and she wasn’t getting an ambulance, she was telling me off.

Luckily there were other people who managed to deal with the practicalities, and I found myself in the back of an ambulance on a stretcher covered with a red blanket, a drip stuck in my arm which seemed to help with the pain. My mother kept telling the ambulance man not to make a fuss of me because I was probably exaggerating and it would ‘spoil’ me. Of course, I was thirty-five at the time.

I asked the ambulance man if he had anything that would make me temporarily deaf. I didn’t have to bother about my mother. She’d been deaf to anybody’s voice but her own for years.

It’s a shame you have to be injured and in pain to have a ride in an ambulance, because it’s really rather exciting, and I wished I could have had all my faculties about me. We had the siren going, and we broke all the speed limits, and we ran through at least three red lights. When the ambulance arrived at the hospital all sorts of things happened. I was whizzed down corridors. You never realise what ceilings really look like until you’re whizzed down a corridor on a stretcher. They’re rather boring, just ceiling tiles and strip lights. You would have thought that they’d make them more interesting, considering how many people travel down them just looking up. A few posters would make the journey on the gurney more fun. It’s another experience that is rather spoilt by having the shattered end of your leg bone sticking through your shin.

I was thinking about this when they started asking me questions about who I was and where I lived and who my nearest relative was, and cutting up my trousers. I started to get a bit upset about the trousers, they were nearly new, then I remembered that my shinbone had already made rather a mess of them. Then they asked me to sign lots of forms and I was just thinking that the NHS could make lots of money by hiring out their ambulances and letting people ride on the trolleys and charge them money. They’re always strapped for cash, or so they say. Not when there’s a real emergency, of course. They’d have to rush off then. But you wouldn’t complain. Not if they were going to save someone’s life. They could give you a refund anyway. And then I thought that they could sell tickets to ride in the ambulances when they go to a real emergency. You could see the ambulance men at work, sit in the front, even do something useful, like hold up one of those bags of water or whatever they put in them. I think they call it saline. But too much salt is supposed to be bad for you. Well, I’m not a doctor, thank goodness. Maybe if you paid a lot extra they’d let you drive.

Well, after that I was out like a light, and I woke up in much the same position I remembered from before, me lying down and my mother bitterly disappointed that I hadn’t managed to walk across the road without making a spectacle of myself. My lower leg was in a large plaster and it was up in the air. I was wearing a strange garment that I know my mother didn’t know about or there would have been big trouble. It had no back and I could slide my hand under myself and feel my skin. It was weird. She stayed for the whole of visiting hour and told me off the whole time. At the stroke of six o’clock she got up, clasped her handbag to her formidable bosom and marched out. I knew she’d be back. Then I had another great idea for making the NHS more money. I know they have private wards and rooms where you can pay more and get a TV and room service and the like. I think they should have Secret rooms, where you pay them extra and they won’t tell anyone where you are. I know they do this already for famous people. Maybe they pay, but they could do it for ordinary people too, like me.

I told all these ideas to the nurses, but they didn’t seem very interested. That’s another thing about the NHS. They’re not enthusiastic. I’d love to be a surgeon or a nurse, giving pills to people all through the day. I never understood why pills were all different colours before. It’s so they don’t get mixed up. If I’m in pain I certainly don’t want to swallow some constipation pills instead of painkillers. I asked the nurses what each one was, but they weren’t very keen to answer my questions. They were a miserable lot. I gathered that the pills are random colours and shapes. I think they should be colour coded, like electric wires. You know, painkillers could be green and antidepressants could be yellow, and dangerous ones could be red. Big ones could be very strong and small ones would be weaker, so you’d know you were getting better by the size of your pills. I reckon if someone patented that they’d make a fortune.

I couldn’t help noticing that everyone had flowers in vases everywhere. I asked them where they got them from. All from florists. Well, I thought, they ought to have their own florists in the hospital. They could buy their own flowers and sell them and make a load of money. Then I asked what happened to the flowers the next day. They said that they get thrown away. I couldn’t believe it. The good ones could go back to the florist shop downstairs and get sold again. Why not? Then I realised they could do this forever by buying in artificial flowers. They’re so good nowadays you can’t tell the difference. They could keep selling them for ever.

They only kept me in for a night, and sent me home in a slow old ambulance like a minibus full of old people. It had a lift thing at the back and they were lifted up and down on it so they didn’t have to raise their legs. They insisted on pushing me in a dodgy wheelchair. My mother didn’t like that. I think they should do advertising on the ambulances. Maybe for medical insurance.

I had to paint a false shoe on my plaster so it would look like I hadn’t hurt my leg at all, then every time I changed my socks I had to paint the sock on the plaster the same colour, because it wouldn’t do for them not to match. At least that’s what my mother thought.

Anyway, I’m completely recovered now. And I got my own back on my mother. She was knocked down the next day while trying to scrub the road clean where I’d made a mess with all that blood. I told the undertakers that it would be much better if they took the bodies out of the caskets before burning them so they could use them again. They’d save a fortune like that.