Huts62

I’d clung on to the very edge of sleep at Gillian Ambrose’s. But work was work. It had me mired in all kinds of shite. But that felt about right. I wore the sight and sounds in Ailsa ward like a straightjacket, which induced a familiar kind of strangling claustrophobia, which made me gag, but I’d grown used to Mark McGonagle’s head being too big. Pea Head’s too small. Other patients with limbs too short, or too long, or the things I could not see, bits of their brain missing. I didn't even need to look, just knew, for example, that Davis Smyth, would be in the chair he liked best. He'd have his arms around himself, rocking backwards and forwards and crying out in frustration, because he couldn’t speak, and even if he did, nobody was really listening. I knew how he felt. I was condomless and cursed to eunochdom. I didn’t have the balls to change anything and my poor sex life remained in my hands. I’d have patted myself on the back too if I thought it would have helped, and if my arms were as long as his.

I was so head down dog tired, caught up in my own thoughts, that I hadn’t even noticed that Wullie the Pole was speaking at the changeover meeting about Mark McGonagle’s operation. There was something about his pronunciation, which made me think about Karl Marx, which somehow put an image, that was almost like a hallucination, of a pipe smoking, wild haired Einstein, in my mind, that I had to shake my head to dislodge those thoughts. I hadn’t even noticed Mark had been off the ward, away for another operation, to the Royal, to try and unbend his arms and legs. They never worked. I sometimes wondered if it was just a chance for some trainee surgeon to get a bit of practice. Well. That’s what Wullie the Pole had said in the past. I wasn’t sure. He’d said something about Dr Fleming and the old boy’s network. It might have been true. But it was a hassle, thinking about it, and getting someone to feed him like a baby, was even worse. Fuck him. I wasn’t going to do it. I blinked furiously, but my eyes kept shutting. I was on the edge of nodding off.

‘…So you’ll have to work the nightshift,’ said Wullie the Pole.

I looked up at his smiling Slovenic face, to see if he was kidding. I jerked my head around to see if Terry Davenport was sitting beside June. I was so used to seeing them together that I should have immediately noticed that they were apart. It was the equivalent of not noticing somebody had cut the head off the picture of the Queen, when reading an article about her in the front page of a newspaper. That’s what Wullie the Pole had been yattering on about all the time I hadn’t been listening.

‘I can’t work nightshift,’ I said yawning, ‘I’m a student and I need to be properly supervised’.

I was that tired it was as if somebody else had plucked the words out of my mouth. I nodded in amazement and approval that someone, somehow, turned out to be a verbose, younger, hipper version of Clarence Darrow, ready to defend the rights of the oppressed man, and it was me.

‘You will be properly supervised,’ said Wullie the Pole clacking the upper plate of his false teeth, in that annoying way he had and nodding towards Carol.

I never thought of Carol, but when I did I only used goldfish memory. She was only there when I saw her, when she disappeared from view she dropped out of existence. I’d always just thought of Carol as some kinda special patient that was allowed to go home at night. I’d never thought of her as being a real human being, or a real nurse. But she did even less than me, so she had good credentials. I wasn’t sure about the supervising bit. I wouldn’t have allowed her to supervise a lollipop sign on an empty street, in the middle of a zebra crossing, with the traffic lights painted a permanent red. I looked at Carol as if the answer was in her chunky cheeks and I knew it was true. She was my new supervisor.

‘I can’t,’ I said, waiting for the Clarence Darrow in me to reappear, like an agnostic Jesus, that believed in me, and save me again. I’d faith. I could count on him, even though he’d let me down the last time, because it was really my fault. But I could only come out with a puttering, ‘James Munn won’t like it,’ which even to my dull ears, made me sound feeble minded.

Wullie the Pole patted the new look student course regulations. I didn’t even need to look at his smiling face. ‘I’ve already spoke to him,’ he said triumphantly, ‘and he agrees. We’ve got to maximise your learning opportunities.’ It was like that school project I’d done on the Potsdam Declaration. People that hated each other, discussing things of mutual self-interest. Just when I thought it couldn’t get much worse Wullie the Pole, lit up a fag and casually added, ‘yes James Munn will be along later tonight to explain it better’.

I don’t know who I hated most. That bastard James Munn, who didn’t even start work until 9am but was already at work, and was using this an excuse to screw my bird, although she wasn’t my bird, and I hadn’t screwed her, but he had, so she was probably more his bird than mine, or the even more devious, Wullie the Pole, that took such delight in screwing everybody.

‘You can go now. Be back here at 9.30pm sharp,’ said Wullie the Pole, smiling over the top of his specs and waving me away, as if I was an impudent schoolboy.

There was no doubt who I hated the most. I scraped the chair back on the floor tiles, like the hackles on my head as I stood up glowering at him. He couldn’t do that. I was going to get my mum to phone in sick for me. I turned to leave and saw Carol my new supervisor sitting, looking into space, as if nothing had happened and it was just another day. She probably didn’t even realize Terry Davenport was off. I’d forgot what she looked like. She was pretty old, and had a face like a guppy fish, but she was already pregnant, practically ready to drop, on the office floor. That apart, Carol wasn’t that bad, and, if we were staying overnight together, there would be no need for condoms. I didn’t know whether I should get a bit of shuteye first.