“What did I ever do to get stuck with you?” moaned Sister Armstrong.
“You might ask what did I ever do to get stuck with you,” I replied.
“John! That’s a Sister you’re talking to,” gulped Nurse Evans.
“I know,” I said, with a certain air of finality.
It was shave, shower and soap time; but in my hospital room all the patients were bed-bound, so we had to do without the shower. On this particular morning I had the dubious honour of having one of the Ward Sisters help give me my daily wash. For some reason my acrobatics on the traction ropes and my jokes didn’t please the Sister… hence her exasperated remark.
I landed in hospital quite by accident. They say it’s a woman’s prerogative to change her mind. The one I tangled with didn’t change her mind — she just drove her car straight into mine. It’s a well-known fact that a car hitting a brick wall at speed becomes quite crumpled. I was travelling at 50mph when this woman drove into me. So was my car. The outcome of the matter was that my little car was almost unrecognisable, and her big one looked rather like I imagined a brick wall would after a car had run into it.
My passenger and I had nothing against flying (some of my best friends fly), but on this occasion there was a windscreen between us and where gravity wanted us to fly to, with a rather rough landing in store at the end of the trip. Fortunately we were wearing seat belts and, like all dedicated armchair travellers, we stayed right where we were in our comfortable seats.
However, gravity isn’t a force to give up easily, and it was determined to give us a trip one way or another. We found out fairly soon that the trip it had in mind was one-way… straight to hospital.
Helen, my passenger, shattered the windscreen with her head and received concussion and sundry other injuries when her seat belt broke. She spent several days in hospital, after which she was given an honourable discharge and went home to recover from her cuts and bruises.
My seat belt must have been made of sterner stuff than Helen’s, for although its buckle bent, it refused to break. Gravity’s view of this catastrophe was that if I couldn’t be made to hit the car, then the car should be made to hit me. The result of this strategy was that the square foot of my car which first made contact with the other car immediately stopped. The rest of the car, with me inside, continued on its merry way at 50mph and threw my right leg against the front wheel well. Human bones have been likened to cast iron (rather than the more flexible mild steel) and my femur, being no different from the average human bone, snapped in two places.
All around, it was a pretty good second’s work for gravity. Yet it still wasn’t satisfied. After I’d been in hospital for three months, my leg was mended and I was about to go home. The day before that happy event was due, however, the Great Force reared its head again.
I’d been for a walk around the ward on crutches, with a calliper on my leg. I was just lifting my leg up (literally — the leg muscles had become too weak through three months of inactivity to do it unassisted) to get into bed, when gravity took over and swiftly bore my leg, calliper and all, floorwards.
This began a chain reaction. The shock of falling through the air — all too apparently with the greatest of ease — was too much for the leg muscles; they reacted violently and tried to stop the leg falling. The shock of this action was too much for the newly healed bone, which promptly cracked in both places where it had broken previously.
Back to Square One and another three months in hospital. Altogether I was there for six months and two days — which is a long time to be in bed, whichever way you look at it. My view was limited to four of the other five beds in the room and a short length of corridor — which gave me a wonderful view of the nurses' handbasin and the door to the men's toilet! From the window I could see the flagpole of Government House on the hill across the road and the park around the vice-regal residence. For entertainment I had the trams (when their crews weren’t on strike), the traffic and the maniac taxi drivers outside the hospital.
Still, they say home is what you make it, and I decided that as long as I was there I might as well make the best of things. I was quite at home with my transistor radio, my clock, and my bottle of cordial. These didn’t worry anyone because most of the other patients had a similar range of make-yourself-at-home equipment. Ever the one to be a bit different, I took it a step further — I also had a record player, records, typewriter, tape recorder, quite a collection of books and magazines, and a tin of Kool Mints. The nurses and domestic staff eventually gave up trying to tidy and clean my corner of the room. They used to just wipe or sweep any exposed pieces of table and floor around my bed and then walk away shaking their heads.
When I eventually left, Sister Weinberg had to ring for an orderly and a wheelchair to transport my baggage out to the car. As well as that, my parents and one of the nurses were carrying bundles.
I walked.