The Anonymous Patient

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"Are you OK? Can you hear me? Hello?"

His eyes were shut and his face was pale. Blood dripped from his nose down the back of his throat causing him to cough. Blood spewed from his mouth covering his white T-shirt. He laid motionless on the floor.

He was in a hospital when he woke, he felt numb all over. A nurse spoke to him, first with the pleasantries; "how are you feeling?" and "its beef casserole for dinner is that OK?" and then "are you warm enough?". The pleasantries were soon dispensed with and the real questions began. "How old are you? Whats your name? Where do you live?" Question after question, they wanted to know everything. He gave false answers, a false name, a false address, he also lied that he was eighteen."Is there anyone we can contact?" the nurse finally asked "No. No one" he responded sternly. The nurse seemed dissatisfied with this response but didn't query the matter further. The doctor came to see him. He was prescribed pills, they looked like tic tacs, but instead of emitting a sweet mint flavour they tasted of nothing, like cheap worn out chewing gum. He was instructed to take daily doses, which he did. The doctor explained to him what they were for and how long he would need them, but he took no notice.

His hospital life continued, he was soon bored by its monotony. He spent most of his time watching the TV, the channel was decided by consensus amongst the patients on the ward, rarely was his favoured choice shown. Pills twice a day, morning and night. and food three times a day; breakfast at eight, lunch at one and dinner at five-thirty. The food was appalling and although the meals changed the flavour did not. The doctor, who rarely came to see him, explained that without anywhere to go and without anyone to care for him it would be some time before he would be discharged.

He was trapped, like a fly in a spiders web. No one to turn to, no family, no friends, no future.

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Poem of the Day

 A new poem everyday.

If

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;   
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;   
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,   
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,   
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

Rudyard Kipling 1895

The Tyger

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright 

In the forests of the night,

What immortal hand or eye

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare sieze the fire?

And what shoulder, & what art.
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,
And watered heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

William Blake 1794

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