{"id":1023,"date":"2024-10-21T08:43:06","date_gmt":"2024-10-21T08:43:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sidneyraven.com\/?p=1023"},"modified":"2024-10-21T09:03:52","modified_gmt":"2024-10-21T09:03:52","slug":"the-manager","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sidneyraven.com\/en\/blog-articles\/the-manager\/","title":{"rendered":"The Manager"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u2018Already. I\u2019m back,\u2019 I say hoarsely. It\u2019s hardly true. It\u2019s my answer to the questioning voices and the hands shaking my legs. \u2018Sidney! Sidney! Hello! Wake up!\u2019<\/p>\n

An unpleasant feeling. Something tickles near my nose, I touch it; three bloody fingertips.<\/p>\n

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\u2019t want this, these slow limbs.<\/p>\n

I raise my bloody hand in the air.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a woman, she wipes my fingers, then my cheek. \u2018Don\u2019t touch your nose,\u2019 she says sternly.<\/p>\n

I stare at the vague hands of the clock. It could be half past eleven.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

A tall bearded nurse sits behind a desk, next to him a woman, half hidden behind a screen.<\/p>\n

A trickle of blood, from my nose to my cheek. Just before it creeps into my neck, a passing nurse brushes it away.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

The clock on the wall ticks. A quarter to twelve.<\/p>\n

My hands play mindlessly with the elastic of my hospital panties for a while.<\/p>\n

They make cheerful fluttering movements under the paper blue fabric of my operating gown.<\/p>\n

Then I see the nurse staring at me from behind his desk. My hands stop abruptly. Does he think I\u2019m touching myself? Sir, I\u2019m just playing with the waistband of my underpants.<\/p>\n

I want to explain but my voice won\u2019t work, only the voice of my thoughts thunders on.<\/p>\n

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\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

They are important, I am not, I am lying here and the blood is running to my neck and no one sees me.<\/p>\n

Wave, I have to wave to someone. Hello, it\u2019s time for a wipe again.<\/p>\n

My arm rises slowly, I manage nothing more than a soft \u2018excuse me.\u2019<\/p>\n

The manager turns his head towards me, alarmed. He orders a nurse to help me.<\/p>\n

Luckily, there she comes, she rubs the cloth through my neck.<\/p>\n

Bedrock, beautiful man.<\/p>\n

Blood gone, nurse gone.<\/p>\n

Pressure on my bladder. Oh dear. I have to pee. How do you pee when you can\u2019t move? How long will I be able to hold it in?<\/p>\n

I keep staring at the clock, occasionally closing my eyes. The pressure is building. I have to say it, before it\u2019s too late. My throat makes a howling sound. It\u2019s the start of a whole sentence.<\/p>\n

\u2018Suppose I have to pee,\u2019 I say to the nurse who has come to my bedside. \u2018How are we going to solve that?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018There is no toilet here.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018That\u2019s not a good start,\u2019 I reply.<\/p>\n

\u2018Can you hold it for a few more minutes? Then we\u2019ll sort something out.\u2019
\nI rest my head again and hope that \u2018a few minutes\u2019 is not a Portuguese quarter of an hour, because that easily lasts thirty minutes.<\/p>\n

The nurse comes back, thank God, also the manager approaches my bed. Together they start to fold up the sides of my bed. \u2018We\u2019re going to wheel you back into a regular room,\u2019 she says. \u2018You\u2019ll have a toilet there.\u2019<\/p>\n

How nice of this manager to just lend a hand with one of the other patients.<\/p>\n

I start to chuckle when I see he\u2019s also wearing a nurse\u2019s shirt. Not a tracksuit at all.<\/p>\n

\u2018What is it?\u2019 He asks.<\/p>\n

\u2018I thought you were a manager for famous people,\u2019 I giggle.<\/p>\n

\u2018You, crazy woman,\u2019 he says, waving me goodbye.<\/p>\n

In the hallway my blood starts to flow again. Already. I\u2019m back.<\/p>\n<\/div>

<\/span><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1016,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1023","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog-articles"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sidneyraven.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sidneyraven.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sidneyraven.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sidneyraven.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sidneyraven.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1023"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/sidneyraven.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1023\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1031,"href":"https:\/\/sidneyraven.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1023\/revisions\/1031"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sidneyraven.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sidneyraven.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sidneyraven.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sidneyraven.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}