Peter, continued. Also me and stormy weather.

 

Peter’s still in hospital.  The test results are ambiguous so they’re keeping him in both for observation and also to do the high res version of some of the tests they’ve done once already.  Everyone (including Peter himself, me and the medical members of the family) is working on the hypothesis that he’s had a mild stroke.  I am hoping they’ll let me bring him home tomorrow;  I want him home anyway—he wants to be home—and I also want to get him OFF that awful hospital swill and put him back on real food.  No one ever got better on hospital food as rapidly or thoroughly as they might have on something that hadn’t been through forty-eight factory processes and the worst a ginormous institutional kitchen can do.*

And I’m so tired that if I didn’t have a hellpack waiting for me at home I might have crawled under** Peter’s bed and . . . stayed there.  I doubt that I’d sleep, exactly, but even sliding into that hallucinatory coma that happens when I’m this tired and can’t sleep would be a break from, you know, reality, which is not my favourite place at the moment.

I got about three hours of sleep last night.  I’d missed supper so I had to eat something, and I know food is supposed to make you sleepy but all it does is refuel my brain for more spectacular worry-arcs.  Tried going to bed a couple of times and was propelled upright again almost as if on springs.  Finally gave up at about eight o’clock, decided it was too early to ring the hospital—you want to wait till after the consultant has made his/her rounds—and that I could sweep the floor and fold the laundry while I was waiting.  That’s could, as in was able.  But was so tired decided to lie down for a minute. . . . And the next thing I knew the phone was ringing and it was Georgiana wanting to know what news since it was now 10:30 and I hadn’t rung her with an update yet.  Which I was supposed to have done.

Despite the fact that Georgiana and Saxon have to come down from London and I’m already in Hampshire they beat me to the hospital.  Well, I had hellcritter problems:  Pav wouldn’t crap—very reasonably because by her lights it was early—but I didn’t want to leave her for hours uncrapped;  and then the hellhounds completely blew me away by finishing their lunch.  I’m still having to force-feed them two meals out of three, and the one they’re least likely to finish is lunch.  I’d already shoved the requisite two wodges down each of their throats and was preparing to leave when there were EATING NOISES*** and I had to wait and give them titbits and make a fuss.  And then I got CAUGHT IN CHRISTMAS TRAFFIC and when I finally arrived at the hospital the car park was full.  Of course.  It’s always full.†

And have I mentioned the weather?  Torrential rain and gales.  That’s TORRENTIAL.  It’s got worse over the course of the day.  Tonight when I left Peter behind again—the monsoon soaked me to the skin and tried to yank my hair out by handfuls on the walk back to the car park—I climbed hastily into Wolfgang, peeled out of my wet coat and tried to compose myself for driving, and Wolfgang was literally rocking where he stood from the strength of the wind.††  I drove home at 40 mph on the 70 mph dual carriageway:  at 40 mph you have a split second to recognise deep-water-black from ordinary-shadow-black and behave accordingly.  I know all the standard places where you get serious water on the road, but today’s rain has been drastic enough that there were a few exciting extras for variety.

I’ve eaten dinner.†††  I should probably make another mad attempt to sleep.

You’re all still praying/sending positive thoughts, right?  Thank you.  I want to bring him home, and I want him to get as much physiotherapy as he needs, not that the NHS feels like giving him (or not).‡  Although I have every intention of employing my secret weapon toward this end, which is to say siccing a few formidable Dickinsons on the problem. . . .

* * *

* Peter’s green beans were dark brown and his sausages were as smooth and homogenous as cardboard loo-roll tubes.^

^ It also makes me crazy that someone who is seriously ill is allowed to skip dinner—even hospital-food dinner is better than no dinner—eat two mouthfuls of ghastly fake sugar-and-chemical-laden ‘ice cream’ and finish off with a large mug of black coffee.  This happened at the next bed.

** Definitely no room on top.  Hospital beds tend to give the impression of being large because of all the hardware but the actual square footage of mattress is weeny.  Square inchage.

*** Pav had already eaten hers of course.  SCARF.  I may need lessons in Making the Kong More Difficult.

† And then there’s the Finding a Parking Machine That Works.  WHY THE FRELL don’t hospital car parks, or at least this one, have parking time-ticket machines THAT TAKE CREDIT CARDS?  Do you know how much change you can run through in half a day in a hospital car park?  The machines don’t take notes either.  Just coins.  And it’s £36.16 an hour.^  People need back surgery after hoicking their change to the third-nearest machine, which is the first one that works.  The hospital doesn’t need the extra patients.  The car park doesn’t need the extra visitors.

^ And they don’t give change and they don’t take any coin smaller than 5 pence.

†† It might have been my mood.

††† I broke out one of my few remaining Old Green & Black’s Peppermint Fondant Filled Chocolate Bars.  I felt the situation demanded a radical response.  And I’m trying not to buy books/music/yarn to cheer myself up.

‡ To a very large extent, not the NHS’ fault.  If passing governments stopped jerking it around and cutting its funding, it would be a much nobler beast than it is.