Emergency ward of the Matter Hospital

I had entered the Emergency ward of the Matter Hospital starring at the night-time sky, before being plunged into a walkway of dull, hospital lights. For a short while my grasp on time had been knocked clean out of me and the transition between the stars and hospital lights made it seem like I had been stretchered into tomorrow morning. I was dazed, bloodied and requesting a cigarette. Rolled like a sausage onto the trolley I attempted making cute jokes in order to lighten up the serious face of the nurses. In and out of consciousness I saw a fresh faced doctor reviewing my chart, blood being washed off my hands and felt the light thud of staples being applied to the wound on my head. It felt like an absurd highlight reel of an operation. As reality began to sink in, and as one of the nurses deemed me capable of having a cigarette, I was off the trolley and into a small plastic chair. It seemed only fair, I was almost certain to live and the next man wasn’t. I was wrapped and bandaged like a patient in a Victorian dentist, which squeezed my face forward as if I was pouting at the others in the small white room. One pretty blond nurse came and called my name, presenting me with a cigarette which she had hidden in her palm. It was all very James Bond as I shook her hand with the cigarette and made my way to the automatic doors.  I began a full bodied examination and realized I was very much alive, which was a surprise to me considering the amount of blood that was caked on my hands, jeans, bag and neck. As I walked back in I passed a line of beds, on each on were war weary patients, asleep and contorted; some bandaged, some hooked to drips; each ones misery divided by a thin blue curtain. I was grateful now to be out of the bed and into my small plastic chair.

I went to retrieve my bag from where I had left it and noticed a glob of crimson goo on my bag, about as long as half a baby finger. I asked the nurse, “excuse me is this part of my brain?” as I lifted the gelatinous morsel to eye level, as if it were some kind of clue. “ no, no, no its just clotted blood, now you sit down and relax while I wash this”. I was somewhat relieved but couldn’t kick the feeling that I was watching her destroy any evidence that would convict whoever had put me here.

The truth was I had no idea who had put me here, or how. There were whispers of a glass bottle, and a mugging but the details were hazy. I checked my pockets and was enraged to find that they hadn’t taken a thing from me. When a man injures another man for money at least you can say it was societies fault. They are product of their environment. You can excuse the actions with a romantic backstory, as if he was a robin hood, bashing my skull in to feed its contents to his Dickensian, smack addicted children. But there was no robin hood.