It's Saturday morning, and the rain is pouring down. Joan is in the exercise room--she does not want to run in the rain. I have walked a mile in the corridors of our apartment building--from the stairs on the northwest side of the building to those on the south east, and down a flight of stairs to the next floor down, and so on for twelve floors. Each floor about 170 yards.
I must now return to Wednesday night, with John gone home from the hospital and my sense of loneliness increasing. But at eight o'clock or so, the new nurse--Marquita, the night shift nurse--came in to take my vital signs--stethoscope on chest and back, deep breaths, blood pressure (still high), heart rate (an electronically steady 60), wiggle your toes, squeeze my hands, etc., etc. And she was gone.
I tried to read, tried to do another puzzle but got stuck: I tried to sleep, but the light bothered me, and I spent fifteen minutes or so trying to find where the lights turned off. But with all the high tech stuff around the bed, something as simple as a light switch was not to be found. Eventually I buzzed Marquita, and she pulled up a hidden rail on the bed that had a control panel of the complexity you might find in the cockpit of an airliner. But the light button was obvious. I switched the light off, and tried to sleep. But it was like trying to sleep on a plane: couldn't get comfortable, cannot sleep on my back, could not sleep on the right side because of the sling--could not sleep anyway, in any position. More trying to read, try for another word in the crossword. Light out again. And the huge clock on the wall opposite me seemed to be going at a snail's pace. Only eight more hours (only!) until the doctor was due to check me in the morning. I looked around the room and brooded on the fact that this was the way most people died these days--in the impersonal surroundings of a hospital room, most likely on their own and hooked up to this and that high tech machine. Not as pleasant a way to die as at home, surrounded by family, with the kindly GP overdosing the suffering patient with morphine, and the last goodbyes being said, and the last words recorded.
I did drop off somewhere between eleven o'clock and midnight, and then I was woken with a start, with the door opening, light flooding in from the corridor, and this huge figure marching with heavy steps into the room. I was actually frightened, startled, not knowing where I was, and thinking momentarily I was in a prison cell and they were coming to get me...
Marquita took my blood pressure, which was through the roof, and checked my other vital signs. "I'll come back in a few minutes and check your blood pressure again because you were startled when I came in."
I kept the light on and did not try to go to sleep for twenty minutes, But she did not return until the fouro'clock check on my vital signs. At that time I was awake, as I had been on and off through the night, never quite knowing whether I had dozed off or not. I did sleep a bit after she had gone and awoke to the light coming through my window as the sun rose in a cloudless sky at about six o'clock. Another slow, slow hour--was that damn clock actually moving--and then at seven o'clock, and to my great relief, Joan came through the door. So we prepared ourselves for the surgeon's visit.
I have been given a temporary ID card, to be produced at such places as airline security. It describes my pacemaker and gives its serial number. It shows my name and address and telephone number and the name and phone number of my surgeon.
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