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Hospital in May

Every second person attending asks for your name and date of birth. They are there through the uninformative hours waiting for your call. Their information of you could not be more direct, at the choice moment it is time to speak. They copy your latest personal statistics into endless diaries of full profile. They calm you down and don’t mince words. Their chit-chat is light on loiter. Every second person is about to up your dosage, down your dosage, take your sample, and report a result. They carry receptacles and implements purposefully designed for your ultimate survival. Their hands as quickly tear open a bag of squeaky gloves, a strip of sanitised handkerchief, a sachet of swabs. They observe every quaver of your body, your change of expression, your walk and your rest, your talk and your silence. You are the very best example of you that fits their condition description. They incise the healing wound then bandage you in advanced scientific materials. They provision the oral, fine-line the syringe, air-drop the drip. Their patient overload keeps the converse between flat-chat facts and reasoned comments. Their verbal highlights are diagnosis of fever, re-explanations of body reckonings, sightings of ooze. They tap the results into screens, stand still as sentinels at their tall desks on casters, a caravan of surgeon and his colleagues transit through, a doctor and his student doctor, their flying visit or in-depth analysis. They note and save, click and save, scroll and close. They mental tick the scree of tablets, the script of issues, the look in your eye. They have the details in their head and the medications at their fingertips. Their backup tubes and guards in cabinets and shelves line the corridors, deep banks of linen and towelling and cotton gowns, a dash they make for a fresh blister pack. They are here then not here, there where need presses, an emergency call to a hyper-event somewhere in the maze, a unit in at the reaction. Every third person hands you a two-day menu, cross the boxes and escape all fats. They ferry a squarish jug of water clinking 15 ice-cubes. Their trays of covered meals and zip punnets of fruit in juice slide into place before the eyes. Through the uninformative hours you may dine on best Australian produce, fresh and fulfilling as an autumn morning. They leave you to your bed, centre of their current attention, your current adventure. Their shifts turn morning into afternoon, afternoon to evening, the faces changing, the routines the same. They uproot the used cannula from the vein, tear bandages from skin with hair, test press the lunar-pocked arm for a fresh jab site, the bloodstream alive to the idea. They leave you to soft night, all your readings looking pretty good.