‘Already. I’m back,’ I say hoarsely. It’s hardly true. It’s my answer to the questioning voices and the hands shaking my legs. ‘Sidney! Sidney! Hello! Wake up!’
An unpleasant feeling. Something tickles near my nose, I touch it; three bloody fingertips.
A primal force in me wants to wake up harder than my body can, it wants to regain control, but the after-effects of the narcosis keep my heavy body in its grip and my eyes swollen. Only my thoughts seem to be awake. I don’t want this, these slow limbs.
I raise my bloody hand in the air.
There’s a woman, she wipes my fingers, then my cheek. ‘Don’t touch your nose,’ she says sternly.
I stare at the vague hands of the clock. It could be half past eleven.
With squinted eyes I peer ahead. I see only human shadows and furniture outlines, on the way to the operating room I had to take out my lenses. The red lids now stick out above the edge of the bed, neatly replaced, as promised, but lenses in jars do not improve your vision.
A tall bearded nurse sits behind a desk, next to him a woman, half hidden behind a screen.
A trickle of blood, from my nose to my cheek. Just before it creeps into my neck, a passing nurse brushes it away.
A few minutes later, another stream. Is it normal that I bleed so much? The nurse behind the computer stands up with a sigh and wipes a tissue over my face in a resentful manner.
The clock on the wall ticks. A quarter to twelve.
My hands play mindlessly with the elastic of my hospital panties for a while.
They make cheerful fluttering movements under the paper blue fabric of my operating gown.
Then I see the nurse staring at me from behind his desk. My hands stop abruptly. Does he think I’m touching myself? Sir, I’m just playing with the waistband of my underpants.
I want to explain but my voice won’t work, only the voice of my thoughts thunders on.
Next to me, a man in a trendy tracksuit, he is talking with busy gestures to someone in the bed to my right. I can’t see him lying there, but he is a well-known Portuguese and the man in the tracksuit is his manager. They are talking about all sorts of things that need to be arranged.
They are important, I am not, I am lying here and the blood is running to my neck and no one sees me.
Wave, I have to wave to someone. Hello, it’s time for a wipe again.
My arm rises slowly, I manage nothing more than a soft ‘excuse me.’
The manager turns his head towards me, alarmed. He orders a nurse to help me.
Luckily, there she comes, she rubs the cloth through my neck.
Bedrock, beautiful man.
Blood gone, nurse gone.
Pressure on my bladder. Oh dear. I have to pee. How do you pee when you can’t move? How long will I be able to hold it in?
I keep staring at the clock, occasionally closing my eyes. The pressure is building. I have to say it, before it’s too late. My throat makes a howling sound. It’s the start of a whole sentence.
‘Suppose I have to pee,’ I say to the nurse who has come to my bedside. ‘How are we going to solve that?’
‘There is no toilet here.’
‘That’s not a good start,’ I reply.
‘Can you hold it for a few more minutes? Then we’ll sort something out.’
I rest my head again and hope that ‘a few minutes’ is not a Portuguese quarter of an hour, because that easily lasts thirty minutes.
The nurse comes back, thank God, also the manager approaches my bed. Together they start to fold up the sides of my bed. ‘We’re going to wheel you back into a regular room,’ she says. ‘You’ll have a toilet there.’
How nice of this manager to just lend a hand with one of the other patients.
I start to chuckle when I see he’s also wearing a nurse’s shirt. Not a tracksuit at all.
‘What is it?’ He asks.
‘I thought you were a manager for famous people,’ I giggle.
‘You, crazy woman,’ he says, waving me goodbye.
In the hallway my blood starts to flow again. Already. I’m back.
