Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
About halfway through my stay a new roommate appears. He's a short, burly man who
paces restlessly and incessantly. He gets out of bed and heads for the TV room; he walks
back to his bed and back to the TV room. He seeks constant engagement to abate his bore-
dom and agitation. When he initiates a conversation with my roommates, he maintains a
stream of chatter that is virtually inexhaustible. When asked about his regularity, to which
others reply “yes” or “no”, he somehow manages to engage the nurse in a one-way conver-
sation from which she struggles valiantly to extricate herself so that she can continue her
rounds. Breakfast is 7 minutes late. He grumbles about how the nurses are out there chat-
ting and screwing around while we're in here starving. He swears like a truck driver. If you
ever saw the Cecil B. DeMille version of
The Ten Commandments
with Charleton Heston,
you may remember Edward G. Robinson in his role as Moses' rabble-rousing antagonist.
Enough said.
I say good morning every day, but then I avoid eye contact and seclude myself behind my
computer and earphones and maintain an invisible shield to guard my perimeter from inva-
sion. My new roommate is scheduled for surgery on the third day after his arrival. When
they bring him back from the operating room later in the afternoon and he awakens, his
vigor seems undiminished. The nurses tell him clearly and sternly that he is not to get up
from his bed. Anything you need, you press the button for a nurse and you don't get out of
bed, understand?
The next morning I look up from my laptop to see him out of bed and starting to walk
across the room. At that very moment a passing nurse catches a glimpse of him and comes
storming into the room.
“You, get back into bed!! Where do you think you're going? You get back into bed imme-
diately!!”
These nurses, when they need to, use their voices like a club. The intensity of it is startling
and astonishing. He makes his way back to his bed with his tail between his legs, mum-
bling excuses and apologies like Smeagle after Frodo has caught him rifling through their
provisions.
The nurse alerts the physician who comes immediately. Sure enough, the patient has torn
open the incision and the inner cavity is filling with blood. Moments later he is rushed back
into surgery.
This second round has knocked the stuffing out of him. It takes him a couple days to come
around this time. He is in much more pain. When he tells his story to his friends on the
phone, he explains that they had to open him up a second time.
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