Forgive us our trespasses

For the first time since I was surgically attached to this bed some five weeks ago, I’m actually grateful for having been immobilised. I’m thankful that someone hammered a steel pin the size of a knitting needle through my left shinbone and then proceeded to attach stout pieces of cord to it, before threading the twine through a tortuous series of pulleys in an orthopaedic Gordian knot.

Don’t get me wrong, I’d give anything to be able to walk again right now, but I’m afraid that mobility could land me in hot water; I’m afraid I could end up in maximum-security hospital for a very long time. You see, if I had the use of my limbs I’d go into the next room and smother the occupant’s face with my hyper-allergenic NHS pillow until they had gasped their last breath, finally allowing me to get a decent night’s sleep for the first time in two weeks.  Sleep deprivation is a well-documented and highly effective form of torture that can drive the sanest of men to the very edge of madness.

I suppose I ought to explain why I’m having murderous thoughts about the occupant of the neighbouring room. The present resident has taken to pressing her buzzer at ten-minute intervals throughout the night. For reasons of patient confidentiality I haven’t been able to discover anything about this woman or why she feels the need to disturb my sleep with such monotonous regularity. I only know that she’s elderly and she makes a noise similar to a fox with its leg caught in a gin trap. She makes a blood-curdling screech whenever she’s not pressing her buzzer.

I’m not an impatient man nor am I totally without compassion but there comes a time when my sleep has been so wilfully destroyed that someone must pay with their life. Imagine being poked with a large stick each time your eyelids start to close. Imagine every time your head dropped someone came up behind you and burst a balloon.

If I were the ward manager (whatever happened to matrons?) I’d confiscate the old woman’s buzzer and render her mouth inoperative with a stout length of duck tape. If that seems harsh then perhaps it could be made clear to the woman that she may only use her buzzer a maximum of three times in any twelve-hour period. Additional buzzes would render her klaxon progressively quieter while administering a mild electric shock.

Ideally I’d like it if she were transferred to another ward (preferably in a different hospital at the other end of the country) and then perhaps the charming gentleman in Room 4 (me) could be spared the old woman’s caterwauling and she in turn could avoid suffocation by a deranged individual with bags under his eyes the size of rubbish sacks.