Medicine for my Pain

Medicine for my Pain 

Tasha was rushed to hospital in an ambulance. She had a vicious stomach pain and couldn’t stand up straight.

The ambulance staff were panicking and had to rush her on blues and twos to the hospital. They pulled up at the ambulance entrance and wheeled her into A&E. They handed over some paperwork and put Tasha in a hospital bed and left. 

The A&E was heaving, babies were crying, couples were arguing, and the hospital staff were busy running around trying to help people. The atmosphere was tense, the noise was overwhelming, and Tasha felt nauseous. The pain was throbbing in her stomach, and she felt so tired, she just needed the pain to go so she could fall asleep. There was a disgusting taste of sick in her mouth. She was taken into a room in a hurry and the professionals went to work on her.

The next few days were a blur. The nurses were throwing all kinds of medication down her throat, she was on a drip, and she was on a ward with five other people. Tasha would drift off to sleep for a few hours, until a nurse would wake her up to take her blood pressure and pulse at three in the morning.

“Leave me alone, I just want to sleep, please……” Tasha would snap in a drowsy and almost hallucinogenic state.

“Take a couple of pills Tasha, go on take a couple more, you’ll be feeling worse when the side effects will show.”

Her dreams would be up there with the worst horror stories ever. Half the time she wasn’t sure what was real or a dream. 

The doctors would pop along every morning for their rounds, they hardly paid her any attention, it was, 

“How are you today?”

Whilst an eager to please junior doctor would look incredibly important tapping away at the keyboard. Tasha was seriously losing patience with the process. 

There wasn’t a lot to say about the ward. It was light blue with various machines and screens adorning the large room. Sometimes some of the beds would have the curtains pulled shut, but most of the time everyone was on show. Tasha had a dark sense of humour and would joke with herself about who would die first. She even had her death list in a top five chart, from first to die to last. 

As for the other patients on her ward, they were mostly elderly, they had a lot of visitors and would snore through the machines beeping throughout the night. It felt like god’s waiting room, the smell felt like the devil’s waiting room. 

There was one lady on the next bed called June. She was in her seventies; she was horrible and complained about everything. The staff for reasons they soon regretted gave her a bell. If she was uncomfortable or needed anything, she was told to give a little ring of the bell, and they would come and see her. June was probably ringing that bell five times an hour with outrageous demands. She once asked a nurse to hold a tissue whilst she blew her nose. The only saving grace was that she slept a lot, at least fourteen hours a day. Those poor nurses. 

Tasha was in her forties, she was single, after a recent divorce with Hugh. They had been together since their early twenties, but like a lot of relationships do it fizzled out. Hugh had moved out and moved on, he was with Julia now. Tasha had regrets about the breakup but it’s over now. There’s nothing she can do about it, she’s alone. He was the only man who had ever loved her.

Tasha was an Estate Agent, most of her salary was based on sales. Whilst being in hospital she was only receiving her basic pay which was paltry. She had a car loan, and a maxed-out credit card bill she needed to pay. Her stress was just piling up on her shoulders, she felt like she was drowning under the pressure. Her boss had sent a card and a bunch of flowers, she’d of preferred the money.

 The card said, “Hi Tasha, get well soon, we’re all thinking about you. Looking forward to seeing you back in the office, don’t worry about your workload, we have someone covering it.

From Dave and the team.”

Due to her paranoid state, she read into it that she was no longer needed at work. 

The orderlies would take Tasha to various scans and X-rays to see if she had any other issues with her kidneys or liver. She was never updated, but she was told that no news is good news. Days turned into weeks and Tasha was suffering. She was bored, the days were long, and the food was bloody awful. She had nothing to look forward to. 

The longer Tasha was in hospital, stuck in a bed, under medication and sleep deprived, the more she felt dreadful. It felt as though her leg muscles were fading away day after day. It hurt getting out of bed, it was agonising walking to the bathroom and then adjusting herself in bed was painful, it felt as though someone was sticking a pin in a voodoo doll. 

Her tiredness felt like torture, everything the hospital did made her feel worse, not better. Tasha was a prisoner in Stalag NHS. She thought about making a break for it, climbing out of the window onto the fire escape and legging it to freedom. Then she remembered that she had nothing to run towards. No partner, no pets, no close friends. A tiny depressive flat all to herself. 

A nurse told Tasha that a psychiatrist was in the ward to see her. They wanted to check on her progress and see how she was. She reluctantly agreed and found herself in an office with a middle-aged man. He seemed serious but friendly. They were sat in a white sterile room with two chairs and a bed. He started the conversation with the usual pleasantries and asked her how she was. Tasha told him that she wanted to leave the hospital and go home, she wanted her own bed. She was desperate for her warm duvet. 

The psychiatrist told Tasha that they could only let her leave when they were certain that she would be okay. The discussion became a little heated and Tasha lost her temper, she shouted, “what is wrong, why won’t you let me leave? I’m not sick, you’re the virus.”

The psychiatrist told Tasha, “We can’t just let you go. You were found close to death on your kitchen floor, you were unconscious lying in a pool of sick. You drank a bottle of bleach. You tried to kill yourself.”

Tasha had worked hard to blank this event out of her head. To hear it from a stranger brought back the trauma and pain she’d felt. The psychiatrist gave her a minute to let it sink in. Tasha began to cry; she knew that her situation hadn’t improved, and it was likely she would try something else to make the pain go away. 

The psychiatrist said,” convince me that this will never happen again?”

Tasha couldn’t, she was told that before she was released a care package would have to be agreed and that she would have a community nurse. 

Tasha was wheeled back to her bed, as she got closer, she could see a bunch of flowers on her bedside table but no card. As a nurse walked past, Tasha asked her who brought the flowers. The nurse said she didn’t know but he went to get a coffee. 

Suddenly she heard “Hello Tasha”, from behind, she turned around and there was a man stood holding two cups of coffee, it was Hugh. He said, “Tasha, I really need to talk to you”.

The End.