What has happened?

Who was it who came in last night? I definitely felt there was somebody skulking in the shadows, but I felt unable to move or to put it in slightly different words, I thought, I believed that I should not move, or that if I did attempt to move I would be enveloped in overwhelming pain. It stands to reason, doesn’t it, that after an operation – open-heart surgery – lasting many hours or perhaps days, that I would not be able to move. I pretended to be asleep, trying to breathe as if I was asleep, trying to breathe as I thought that somebody who is really asleep would be breathing; slow and steady with an occasional snuffle thrown in.

    I thought this intruder was a man, that he was Greek, and that he was dangerous; that his intentions towards me were hostile. Perhaps it was really a mouse, or a rat or even a heavy spider. If I squeezed my eyes shut and stopped breathing then I could see that he had an old sheet wrapped around his body. So perhaps he was a fellow patient who had come round to see if I had a packet of crisps that he could steal while I was still unconscious from the operation.

    Perhaps he was a ghost from the distant past.

    But I’m getting distracted; I’m hungry. How long will it be before breakfast? I rather fancy a bacon sandwich and a cup of tea wouldn’t go amiss.

    Now there is something strange. Having weighed up the pros and cons, the advantages and disadvantages I decided to go ahead and tentatively touch with finger tip sensitivity my chest area. My thinking was that having had open heart surgery would lead to some sort of massive cuts and broken ribs and sewn up flesh and skin and dressings. But there was nothing – just the usual rather skinny chest with its ribs and skin and some rather inadequate macho hairiness.

    Is this to do with the invisible Greek guy?

    I’m beginning to experience a longing for the NHS. It suddenly seems delightfully old-fashioned and reliable. Maybe not the last word in efficiency but on the whole friendly. Maybe not completely reliable but its heart is in the right place. Well, mostly in the right place. Which makes me think where’s my heart? I could check it. I could check my pulse. It’s possible that this is an antechamber to some other realm. I mean I might be dead.

    Apparently his name is Sophocles.