Bed 12

by Alison Murdoch

  Everyone is extremely kind to me, bringing me hot drinks in polystyrene cups and offering me a mobile phone should I wish to make calls from ‘Room A’ next door. A more seasoned hospital visitor might have taken this as a message that something particularly dramatic and worrying was going on. Sometimes I have no choice but to leave the cubicle, when the distress of seeing Simon so raw, frightened and stripped back comes close to overwhelming me.

  At one point a young doctor with pale skin called Martin tells me that the results of the brain scan are OK. Oh, so he had a brain scan? It seems only five minutes later when Martin returns, apologetic and even paler, to tell me that the doctors have now identified some damage to the right front cortex. “What goes on in there?” I ask, hoping my memory is wrong. “Empathy and relationships.”

  For the first and only time I go outside to howl. Leaning on a grey concrete wall in the ambulance bay and looking up at the sky I’m outraged at how normal everything looks. When I’ve said my piece to the universe I realise I’m locked out, and have to ask one of the ambulance drivers to let me back inside.

  Every now and again a consultant asks me to repeat the history of Simon’s mystery illness, looking for any clues that might assist diagnosis. I have now managed to track down his colleague Laura who travelled to Winchester with him that morning. When they met at Waterloo she noticed him walking unsteadily, and on the train he complained of being shivery and having a terrible headache, and he couldn’t finish his sentences. He had trouble stepping onto the platform at the other end but insisted that she continue on to their meeting. Characteristically, before they parted he rallied himself sufficiently to go through the meeting agenda with her. Five minutes later she watched him haul himself onto another train for the journey back to London, and has been beside herself with worry ever since.

  By now the A&E staff are using injections to sedate my husband, and I am invited to return to the cubicle to spend a few minutes together before they put him fully under. The blue curtains are pulled around us in a gesture of privacy. I’d swear I only get 30 seconds, and as I kiss his warm face I wonder if it will soon be waxy and cold, just like my father’s skin after a fatal heart attack a few years previously.

  The charity that I work for is based in one of London’s Tibetan Buddhist centres. In a lovely demonstration of the compassion that sits at the heart of Buddhist practice, my colleague Esther is the first person to come and find me at the hospital. She is laden with snacks, pyjamas, prayer books and a small stupa, a symbolic representation of the enlightened mind that is traditionally touched to the chest and head of a dying person. I put the stupa firmly but discreetly to one side. Esther’s partner Tricia arrives to join us, bringing with her some freshly squeezed carrot and orange juice. As any sense of time or place shrinks away every small detail becomes more vivid and memorable.

  Esther is surprised that I am still on my own after so many hours. With all my attention focused on Simon it hasn’t crossed my mind to ask anyone else to join me. Falling back on traditional family hierarchies I start with Simon’s only brother Tim, who is the headmaster of a school in Worcester and in the middle of his summer holidays. Tim is driving through a Scottish glen when he gets my call, so I ask him to pull over. He said later that he’d never heard my voice sound like that before. Tim asks whether he should drive down from Scotland. I reply: “Well, there are three possibilities: either Simon will be dead before you get here, or you’ll be just in time, or he’ll pull through.” Afterwards, I felt bad about having been so forthright, but Tim said it was actually quite helpful.

  Some time later Tim calls back a second time for news and tells me that he’s decided to ring Simon’s mother who is at home in Malvern, Worcestershire. It isn’t a light decision given that she is 89 years old. With a weird sense of propriety I feel this gives me permission to ring my own mother in Sussex, who is also in her eighties. “Are you sitting down? I’m afraid I’ve got bad news.”

  Esther is clearly loath to leave me on my own so I rack my brains about who else I can call on. There isn’t anyone obvious, because it would usually be Simon, until I remember Philip, Simon’s best friend and our best man. After a bit of phone tag (he was at a concert) we manage to connect and he offers to get a taxi over to the hospital straightaway. Two other friends, Mike and Mhairi, jump in a cab the minute they get my message. Mike previously worked as a hospital porter and doesn’t want me to be on my own should bad news come through—he knows at first hand what it can be like. I wonder later whether I would have had the same readiness to turn a Monday evening upside-down.

  I am told that Simon is “very, very ill.” When I ask one of the doctors if his life is in danger he plays with words while his body language tells me, undeniably, that yes, it is. I shut myself up in Room A and scroll down both our phones, ringing anyone we know, anywhere in the world, who might be willing to make prayers. It feels like I am in a Western with a smoking gun in each hand. If people don’t respond sometimes I leave a message and sometimes not, depending on how emotionally robust I think they might be. I don’t know what else I can usefully do.

  I still have no sense of time but later find out that Simon has spent over six hours in A&E, which is unusual. At around 10pm a woman called Jenny with kind eyes finds me to explain that Simon is now being transferred to Intensive Care and that she will be his nurse. She remembers me exclaiming “What, a nurse all to himself!” He is wheeled through a swing door at the back of A&E clothed in nothing but a twisted and blood-stained sheet, like a body out of Ben Hur. Esther and Trish help me gather up a growing assortment of plastic carrier bags and we head up through the corridors in pursuit.

  I am overwhelmed by the quality of the set-up in what I will soon learn to call ICU. Simon is already in a side room with Jenny settling him for the night. There is a small waiting room for relatives which contains a noticeboard, a coffee table and some stained but comfortable chairs. Esther and Trish stay with me until Philip arrives. I give him a run-down of the evening so far and he sets off, ashen-faced, to get us each a hot drink from the café downstairs. While he is doing this a late night call comes in from Simon’s cousin Heather. Would it be helpful to pick up his mother, who lives alone, and take her back to their home in Devon? At first mention this seems drastic, then next moment it feels absolutely right. I am adjusting fast. “Yes please, that would be wonderful.”

  I tell the nurses that I’m not going anywhere and will sleep in the waiting room. The staff nurse is clearly used to this kind of behaviour and organises an overnight bed for me in the residential block across the courtyard. Philip stays until around midnight and then, in a rather charming old-fashioned way, chaperones me to my room. We agree to meet for breakfast next day in the hospital café. I have a quick shower, trying with difficulty to wash myself with soap from the hand dispenser above the basin—the only practical detail that the hospital has failed me on, I note! Tiredness hits me suddenly like a brick, and the minute I lie down, I fall asleep.

  CHAPTER 4

  The city of St Thomas’

  Like millions of people the world over, I pass by the outside of a hospital several times each week and rarely pause to consider what goes on behind its uninformative façade. In contrast, for anyone who visits, stays, or works in a hospital, it’s an all-consuming environment that is as inward-looking as a cruise ship and as self-sufficient as a space station.

  As a newcomer, St Thomas’ reminds me of an ancient city, such as Rome or Marrakesh. There are the broad and brightly lit thoroughfares thronged with people of every age, race and culture, especially at peak times, and the discreet courtyards with seats and fountains, rarely chanced upon. There are corners where multi-coloured light slants in through stained glass at particular moments of the morning or evening, and myriad side alleys characterised by closed doors and private conversations.

  Like any city, St Thomas’ is a hotbed of commerce. On the main plaza by the front door you can buy anything from a newspaper to a sof
t toy, a ‘Keep Calm’ biscuit tin or a pair of floral pyjamas (one of the best selections in London, I note for future use). The crowds pore over rows of salads at M&S Simply Food as if in a Middle-Eastern vegetable market, comparing freshness and prices and sharing interesting finds with their companions. Only the haggling is absent.

  The city of St Thomas’ offers watering holes for every taste and price range. The main gathering place for visitors is the AMT café, open all hours, with a few deep armchairs pounced upon by regulars whenever they are free. I have always resisted the coffee shop habit, but now I can see its attractions. I quickly come to rely on this wonderful facility for people in distress: whether for emergency family conferences or for the solitary solace of a hot milky drink, for briefing friends before a visit or for swapping notes afterwards.

  My other favourite is Shepherd Hall, a more traditional hospital canteen so well hidden in the heart of the building that it takes me a week to find it. Comfort food such as omelettes, chicken legs, chips and steamed puddings are served up at bargain prices. Its panoramic view of the Houses of Parliament on the opposite side of the river is one of the most spectacular in the capital and clearly enjoyed not only by medical staff and visiting families but also by savvy members of the general public. On several occasions I see the kilted Scottish piper who plays on Westminster Bridge walking down the corridor to take his lunch there, pulling his bagpipes along behind him in a suitcase on wheels.

  This teeming metropolis of healthcare is the environment I tumble into just after 6am on that Tuesday morning: Day Two. I wake to a text from a meditator friend who keeps early hours. “May your and Simon’s minds be free from all impediments and completely united in bliss and emptiness at this difficult time and forever. May you dance and fly together in union in the sky of the mind. By your challenges may all sentient beings be free. Always here for you.” Andy’s transcendent message provides a welcome moment of relief from the stark realities of the day ahead.

  Twenty-four years earlier, one of the aspects of Tibetan Buddhism that had most appealed to me was its axiom that any challenge or difficulty can be transformed into an opportunity to learn and grow. I was also fascinated by the suggestion that the world does not necessarily exist in the solid and unchangeable way that we habitually take for granted, and that there are always other perspectives and possibilities to be explored. Here, when I am at my edge, comes a reminder.

  Ever since I encountered Buddhism I’ve aimed to spend a quiet hour each morning exploring metaphysical concepts such as these. My morning meditation practice is based on the principle ‘change your mind, change your world’. It starts with the simple practice of watching the breath, to calm my thoughts and—in the words of Lama Yeshe, one of my teachers—“to put the mind where the body is.” However most of the time is spent reflecting on and re-engineering my mental habits. It was a revelation to me when my Tibetan Buddhist teachers introduced the notion that we don’t have to be a victim of every thought and emotion that passes through our mind. My friend and teacher Robina Courtin describes it as getting back in the driving seat of a runaway car.

  Just as my friends and acquaintances might spend an hour in the gym or take a jog around the park, this is my own form of daily workout. It is the breathing space where I get to reconnect with the ground of my being, review the day past, and firm up my aspirations for the day ahead. So as soon as I wake that morning I decide to head straight over to the ward and see if I can do my morning meditation alongside him as normal.

  It feels appropriate that the ICU is as secluded and impenetrable as the inner sanctum of a maze. Tracing my way through some of the less-frequented corridors of the hospital I eventually reach the locked double doors and peer through their porthole windows for a sign of life. For the first time of hundreds I wash my hands with antiseptic gel, ring the buzzer and wait for admittance.

  Once inside, I hurry down the entry corridor and onto the main ward. I hadn’t been in the mood to look around the night before and am immediately struck by how otherworldly it is. Rows of metal-framed beds stretch the length of the ward under white-blue fluorescent lights. On each bed lies a body, a person, unmoving, flat on their back, and covered by a starched white cotton sheet. None of the comforts usually associated with bedtime are present. Instead, each bed is overshadowed by an edifice of monitors and machinery that whines, hisses, gurgles, clunks and beeps as it plays substitute for the vital functions of the patient below.

  I slip into Simon’s room and say hello to a tired-looking Nurse Jenny. Ignoring a quizzical look from a passing consultant I arrange myself cross-legged on the floor by the bed. My colleague Esther has kindly supplied a poncho that will serve perfectly as a makeshift meditation mat. The last few hours of the night shift are generally the most peaceful time on the ward, and it is a matter of easy habit to slip into a quiet inner space alongside my husband. Simon and I are particularly fond of a verse by the Sufi poet Rumi: “out beyond right and wrong there’s a field … I’ll meet you there”. This morning Rumi’s poetry comes alive for me in the form of an unexpected conviction that Simon and I are genuinely together despite the stark surroundings and whatever it is that is going on in his body. It is extraordinarily reassuring.

  At 8am the shifts change and the hospital-city wakes up to its morning business and ablutions. Jenny is relieved by another nurse who tactfully indicates that it’s time for me to leave. I make my way down to the café where Philip and I secure the two deepest armchairs for the first of many breakfast catch-ups. Philip, like Simon and myself, has worked nearly all his life in the voluntary sector. From his low-key appearance you might not guess that he’s a widely admired expert on refugees and asylum issues, now in semi-retirement but still chairing consultations, writing papers, and advising at high levels. It is an incredible stroke of fortune that he has the time and flexibility to be there for us both. “In the best possible sense,” he says, “I wouldn’t miss this for the world.”

  The jungle drums have been busy overnight, and all day long my mobile phone rings and the text messages pour in. “I’ve just left you a message. I meant what I said: if there is anything ANYTHING AT ALL we can do just tell us no matter how small or silly it may seem. All our love and prayers are with you.” Four London-based friends come by in the morning, and after lunch my sister Suzy unexpectedly comes into view down the corridor, having dropped everything to travel up from Brighton. I tell the story all over again, and she leaves me with a plastic tub of flapjacks. “I’m not sure I want to eat anything today,” I respond uncharacteristically, but as soon as she leaves I find myself peeling off the lid and eating half the tub.

  One of my biggest practical concerns is that my mobile phone will run out of power, so Esther kindly cycles over with my charger. Another friend has done a great job of informing the city clergy and sends a heart-warming email about how Archbishop Rowan has been informed and Bishop Richard is praying for Simon. The Bishop of London, Richard Chartres, has worked closely with Simon over the past few years and it’s a boost to hear his stentorian tones on my mobile later that evening. “Let me know when he’s ready for the consolation of religion … none of your Buddhist pretender stuff!” I’ve spent enough time around the Bishop to be familiar with his profound respect for other spiritual traditions so I know that he’s just trying to bring a smile to my face. News also pours in of prayers being chanted in multiple time zones by my Buddhist community. It feels as if we are being held in a web of light and love.

  Simon’s brother Tim and his wife Mary Anne have spent the day driving down from Scotland. I meet them around 8pm in the reception area downstairs. It is strange to see them standing there, like a collage from a family scrapbook pasted into a hospital brochure. After hugs, tears and a visit to the ward where Simon continues to lie inert, we head homewards in their car. It feels weird to be exiting the hospital building for the first time in over 24 hours, leaving my beloved behind, and it’s even stranger to get into bed on my own, but I am so t
ired that I fall instantly asleep.

  CHAPTER 5

  Medical unknowns

  In the midst of all this collateral activity, like a mysterious absence at the heart of a storm, Simon continues to lie dormant. The illness that has struck him like lightening is located in the brain, and is so severe that it can no longer be trusted to run his body. Whereas in past centuries he might have been thrown into a dark corner of Bedlam as a strait-jacketed lunatic, or left to die thrashing in a cell, thanks to modern medicine he is instead lying sedated and inert in a hospital bed with most of his bodily functions reassigned to mechanical and electronic devices. His breathing is driven by a ventilator, he is fed and watered by a tube down his nose, his urine is collected via a catheter, and a plastic guard on one of his fingers (which looks disconcertingly like a fake nail from a Christmas cracker) monitors his heartbeat and blood pressure. He is also on antibiotics, just in case, and probably a host of other drugs that I never hear about.

  I once read that doctors are like detectives, whereas it’s the nurses who do the actual healing. Western medicine seems to have been particularly successful in researching and mastering mechanical issues—the heart and lungs, the flow of blood, how to stitch and mend bone and muscle—whereas Eastern medicine has focused more on the complex balance of elements and liquids in the body. It’s a shame that with a few exceptions the two traditions don’t combine their efforts. But even if they did there is a huge amount still to be discovered about the mysteries of the human body, so healing and healthcare is actually much more of a guessing game than most of us realise.

  My brother David has now arrived to join the family team at St Thomas’. This is a significant bonus because he’s a doctor himself and was even briefly a microbiology consultant at the same hospital. Brain illnesses and injuries are particularly hard to diagnose because the visible evidence is limited, diagnostic tools are still in their infancy, and the patients themselves can’t provide any information about what’s going on. David explains that the medical team are engaged in a process of eliminating the possible causes. It’s a relief to know that we are in a top-class hospital, because otherwise you might easily wonder whether this is the best that the medical profession can offer.