Hospital
Peter took a sudden dramatic turn for the worse at 1 a.m. this morning.* It was on my watch, and I plunged downstairs for the phone and the out-of-office-doc service said, yep, we’re sending an ambulance around now. I bolted back to the cottage with hellhounds while the ambulance was doing its ambulance thing and then Superba and I followed it in. All of you who’ve done A&E/emergency room know that barring severe arterial bleeding you hurry up and wait. We were there four hours I think—I admit that I’m not remembering much of anything too clearly, except the panic.** They don’t know what’s wrong with him, but they’ve stuck him all over with electrodes and jabbed the standard plastic-topped spikes into various veins so they can dose him with mysterious alchemical potions at will. He’d come round as if his little downturn had never happened and while the nice young doctor was examining him—including asking him all those what-day-is-it-and-where-are-you orientation questions that Superba and I agreed later we were having problems with—he was much more on the spot than he’d been all weekend. Which makes one despair rather.
They said firmly they were admitting him, and sent us home. Dawn, yes, very pretty, I can do without it. Superba—who was driving—had at least had a couple hours’ nap before all the drama started. I hadn’t. I’m way too old for this staying up all night, never mind sitting by your husband’s bedside and reminding yourself that everybody looks ghastly in hospital lighting. I got back to the cottage, greeted mildly confused hellhounds, and crashed into bed like I was drowning.
I got about three hours’ sleep, I think. I am a zombie. Alastair decided he’d come anyway—he was to be Superba’s relief, or rather mine—and view the situation. So we all three went off to hospital to hear what the beeps and the print-outs might be telling us. They still don’t know what’s wrong. They think that the initial infection was gastro-enteritis, which is one of those fabulous confuse-’em-with-science diagnostic words, but it does differentiate from, say, being run over by a truck. But there are bits and pieces they want to do some more tests on. And I probably won’t get him back for a couple of days. Superba has gone back to London, and Alastair will go home tomorrow. And I will catch up on my sleep. And even if I had sufficient brain to go on here any more, Alastair is about to turn me out of the mews saying, go home and go to bed. . . .
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* Note that I don’t believe it’s less than twenty-four hours ago.
** Given that life is such a shoddy, fouled-up business, thank the gods for adrenaline.
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