The fear

The thing about hospital is the fear. My first night in, I finally start drifting to sleep around two, but I don’t quite get there. Caffeine half-dreams. Every seven minutes, instead of dropping down into sleep, I drop out – jumping like a rabbit, then start drifting and dreaming again.

After two hours of drifting and jumping, I finally jump myself awake and lie with a pounding heart and shallow breathing – symptoms of a pulmonary embolism. Maybe the clot moved like a subway train through my veins and has shunted through my heart into the siding of my lungs.

Those symptoms are also symptoms of a panic attack. I recover.

The thing about hospital is the time. I lie awake for an hour and decide I’ll never sleep. The longest night of the year, but the midwinter is a mental one. The clock moves so slowly towards dawn. The sky turns streetlight orange, and then blue. I fall asleep and wake with a rabbit jump exactly an hour later. Six o’clock. The ward has already started buzzing.