Chapter 14

Back to Dave, at least for a while...

Say what you like about hospitals but the one thing they always are is deeply boring. Well, aside from A&E, perhaps, but I bet even the people who work there find it tedious from time to time ... and I wasn't in A&E, I was in a sort of cubicle off a surgical ward, just ill enough – or at least immobile enough – to need to stay a while longer ... but not actually at death's door. They'd also stopped giving me significant amounts of opiates, so there wasn't even that buzz to take the edge off things.

Also, of course, I was aware that things were progressing quite rapidly in the world outside and, as the powers that be around here didn't allow mobiles and seemed to think that wi-fi was some sort of exotic bacterium, I was pretty much incommunicado. Or, as Debbie put it on one of her frequent flying visits, hoist by my own petard – I had, as she pointed out, always insisted that people who were off sick were off and thus shouldn't be hassled with corporate affairs. I did try pointing out that it was more or less my corporation but the woman can be intransigent at times and this, clearly, was one of them.

To be fair, too, she appeared to be quite confident that things were in hand – as far as anyone could tell, I mean – and anyway I knew that current difficulties were much closer to her skills and experience than mine but ... it was still frustrating. And, of course, very, very, boring.

People came in when they could – Debbie quite frequently, always looking uncomfortable around the medical technology, avoiding eye contact with the staff, Naz dropped in before he and Seffi left for Bremen (to what end, I wondered?) – and May, sensibly, arrived with a big bag of books. Well, I wasn't exactly comfortable, as yet, but I had regained the ability to keep my eyes in focus so I could prop myself up and thereby avoid the final ignominy of just lying there watching daytime bloody television.

Thus, I was occupied in rereading Tristram Shandy – May's idea of a good 'hospital book', apparently – when a nurse bustled into the cube. This was in itself unusual – as I was neither in imminent danger nor suffering from advanced dementia I was pretty much ignored, most of the time – but rather more surprising was the burden said nurse was, well, burdened with. Flowers.

Quite a lot of flowers. So many, in fact, that I immediately presumed that she'd just brought them to the wrong place. But, no, she addressed me by name, fussed around for a while finding a vase, water – I thought nurses didn't do that sort of stuff anymore? – and finally got them arranged to her satisfaction. After which, she smiled – angelically, you'd have to say – handed me the card that had come with the flowers and left without a further word.

Well, maybe there were people dying out there or maybe it was just the end of her shift ... Whatever, as I reached out to take the card from her I realised that this small act of politeness had strained, if not the wound, then at least my multifarious stitches and, in a brief burst of agony ... I dropped the bloody thing.

So I waited a while, laying back on the bed while the stars gradually faded from my eyes and then gradually, not too comfortably, manoeuvred myself round to lean over the side of the bed and finally get hold of it. Then I hoisted myself back more or less horizontal, caught my breath, winced for a bit and finally got to pull open the envelope, check the envelope.

Bloody hell, I thought ... bloody fucking hell.

It – they – the flowers – were from Carla...

Next morning a junior nerdy looking bloke came round – white coat and everything, still looked like he was bunking off school – and told me I was free to go. Which I thought was an interesting turn of phrase – I hadn't technically been detained, for one thing, wasn't actually all that free to move even now, for another.

Still, it was an opportunity to get back into the real world – and rediscover my mobile and laptop, more to the point – so I gathered what little stuff I had with me, got – painfully – dressed and finally found myself on the Euston Road, sitting on the hospital steps and wondering what to do next. So I had a fag, of course, then I phoned ... well, not Debbie – I thought she'd be too busy, perhaps – but rather May. Which is to say, I thought about just calling a cab, then realised that getting up the stairs to my flat on my own would be difficult. So I called May, explained the situation and agreed to allow her to come and pick me up. While I was waiting, fending off the local drunks and junkies, I checked up on my accumulated messages and e-mail.

It was interesting stuff.

Back in the flat, things were simply embarrassing. I mean, I don't do being supported up the stairs all that often; more to the point I don't live my life in expectation of unexpected visitors if you can deal with the oxymoron ... or whatever it is.

As it was, the place was reasonably clean, for a change – I mean, it was dusty, a few dishes waiting in the sink, discarded copies of the Guardian all over the place. But it wasn't the pigsty I normally lived in ... probably because I'd imagined scenarios when I'd have come back here with ... well, with Debbie.

However, here I now was, with May, and frankly she was now, I felt, a bit redundant: The stairs would have been a definite problem on my own but now that I was at the top of them – home, in fact – I didn't really need her anymore. What I most wanted to do was lie down on the bed and relax for a while, then get back on top of things by replying to a few messages, making a few calls, confident that I had enough food around the place not to be in danger of starving, that I was mobile enough to keep things together biological function wise. But rather than that, I found myself acting as host, doing the polite stuff that comes with the role as well as I could while lying prone across a sofa.

And, of course, May was a charity chief exec who'd risen through the ranks from her days as a hands on carer and, given that she'd taken the afternoon off work, she was determined to care for someone regardless of whether they – I – needed her to or not. It was like an exercise in nostalgia or something for her but, in any case, she didn't seem any too keen to go home, or back to the office or whatever – rather making herself 'useful' by cooking (which I could have done myself, eventually) and even tidying the place up a bit, all while I was reduced to just passively watching.

In fact, she stayed late enough to help me to bed – which I didn't need her to – and then settled herself down to sleep on the sofa. I didn't actually need nursing ... and I really didn't need the company...

Whatever the pain I'd been experiencing, though, it was nice to be back in my own bed, confident that I'd wake feeling a bit better, would gradually get back in control. I guess the meds they'd given me when I'd left the ward must have helped but by the time I finally fell asleep I'd forgotten all about May ... and about the e-mails and the things I had to do.

Next morning I accepted breakfast as graciously as possible but then asserted myself enough to get some time alone on the web. I tried phoning Debbie, too, got her voice mail – left a message for her to call me, maybe come round if she had the time – then contemplated phoning Seff or Naz, see how they were getting on with the Germans. I thought better of it, though, and instead settled myself down to try and work out what all of Debbie's various machinations might actually mean. She'd certainly been in contact with a lot of people, asking some unusual questions, moving, generally, in mysterious ways. And then there was the stuff that was completely plain – simple news – but nonetheless inexplicable in context: One, that Naz – or, more probably, Seff – appeared to be hot on the trail of a couple of big new contracts ... our first, really, which made it slightly ironic that I'd only agreed to the trip to, well, yes, discuss the code and potential for collaboration around that, but mainly to give them both a break and maybe a nice holiday before the whole thing went tits up.