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“Mobile phones or lighters not allowed,” “all razors and shaving equipment must be handed in to staff”.
By Angel
How can they stop people having visitors, I wondered: it was supposed to be a hospital. The only other person on the ward in the same boat as me was someone with anorexia and their visitors had been stopped until they’d agreed to start eating again. Why had they stopped mine? Okay, I’d been smashing rather a lot of cups of late, well, all right then, maybe I’d been having a bit of a field day on the cups but everyone does that. Everyone. It’s part of the course. Anyway, Old Tony had smashed the television and that’s got to be far worse than a couple of cups. And Lady Jane had put a few windows through and Pam had had a go at the last remaining mirror in the female bathroom so I didn’t see why they could complain about a few miserable cups. They weren’t even proper cups they were uniformed white, like the staff and hardly held enough tea to wet your lips. And I was expecting my new boyfriend Steve; I’d only been going out with him a few months. I tried reasoning with them. “I’m expecting my new boyfriend, sweetie,” I told the RMN Nurse-Orderly on the door. “Sorry, sally, there’s nothing I can do. Doctors orders.”
I went back in the female dormitory and sat down on my bed next to the window and muttered obscenities at the doctor. Wait till I see him again! I tried to keep an eye on the hospital drive outside for a car or a taxi and eventually I saw my boyfriend, recognisable even in the distance, with his pork-pie hat and Dr Who scarf as he made his way along the snowy path up the drive. He must love me, I thought, coming all this way in the freezing cold snow and ice. But would he still love me when the staff on the downstairs doors turned him away? Would he know the doctor had stopped all my visitors? Or would he think it was me who didn’t want to see him? I didn’t know and wondering about it just made things worse. I watched his every step as he got closer and closer and then watched his slow footsteps after he’d been turned away. I managed to wave to him from my bedside window on the top floor, past the snow filled trees and the huge snowy lawn outside. He waved back.
He looked up to see if I was watching him. I was. He edged onto the snow covered lawn. The sun was shining. It was the first time I’d noticed that for ages. Funny how, when you’re in here day after day, week after week, month after month, even little things like the sun shinning no longer mattered. He trudged up and down leaving his footprints in the snow. I was spelling out a letter or rather he was spelling out letters and then words and finally all the letters and all the words joined up to read a huge ‘I love you’ imprinted on the snowy lawn. I felt like weeping with relief. ‘I love you’ stayed there, much to the annoyance of the RMN nursing staff, till the snow finally melted along with the doctor, who eventually agreed a few weeks later that I could have visitors again.