I pushed off the white hospital bed to my bare feet. My back was stooped forward from the pain in knees that were too swollen to straighten. I made a first step. The ankle hurt sharply as it bent forward. The knee was a dull intense pain as the joint surfaces rubbed against each other like the big drum of an orchestra. My hip was mostly tight. I had to pull hard on the muscles. I wobbled to arrive at the end of my first step.
Hospital room were always bare -- bleak, white walls spare for the wooden cross and the decade old TV at the ceiling. The day outside was drab and cloudy, nothing to miss. I was going for the cross.
Each step haunted my body with half a dozen agonies. I felt like a battlefield in World War II. A soldier was groaning with a bullet in his body, crawling forward. That's how my achy shoulder felt. Every step jarred it a little, and I had to pinch my lips together just like the dying soldier soldiering on. Just like that other soldier storming into the enemy ditch with a drawn saber, just as much was my effort futile. The age and disease were pulling me under no matter my bravado. I could not win. I could not surrender.
Finally, I reached the wall at the foot of my bed. To raise my hands up to the cross, I had to pull my right hand with my left hand. The shoulders were too painful to lift my hands over head. And, there it was that cross resting in my hands. A cross represented superstition and suppression of all the joys of life with rules. At worst, it was an effort to consider disease as a possession by evil spirits. The cross was to ward them off. That always made me queasy. I felt myself like a spawn of evil with a black hard.
Actually, it wasn't so much that I did really bad things to people it. It was more that to deserve so much punishment of my body, I had to be really evil in the eyes of a benevolent father god or have collected massively bad karma. I still remember a yoga teacher telling us about karma. "Some people have such bad karma," he said, "that you can feel it in their birth room. It's so heavy on them already as babies." I was shunned by people and blessed with frowns of disgust by people. That had always made me feel queasy at the idea of waking up one day shivering in a corner as far away from the cross, because suddenly it had taken power.
Those are my private thoughts. I'd never let anyone know the darkness that I harbor. I placed the cross down on the TV ledge and returned to my bed. Not a moment later did the nurse enter. I bellowed a warm good morning. I made sure to sing-song my voice to make it sound friendly. She asked how I was doing. I gave her an upbeat "better every day" with a smile.
The nurse was gorgeous. She looked like the models from magazine covers. She was tall, slender. Her legs were long and smooth. She had blond hair that was twisted on top of her head. Her face was long, slender, very feminine. There was bright red lip stick on her lips. Her eyes were painted elegant like for a night out in the town. She wore red high heels that lifted her up considerably. It gave her gait swing and staccato. Her nurse uniform was the kicker. It was a bright white jacket, that reached down to the middle of her thigh. It was form fitting tight. Her ample breast shaped the uniform.
Her legs were bare. The skin was blemish free and taut. I ogled her legs almost unembarrassed. I am an old man. Her face had already given me a scorn. She saw in me the old man with the wrinkles. She saw in me the abomination lying on my back with my neck fused so that it wouldn't even touch the pillow. Yeah, people always ask me, if I am uncomfortable. However, my neck muscles are completely relaxed. My spine is simply like a stick holding me up. I saw the disgust at my sight playing in the corners of her mouth.
So, I did not care anymore. I starred at her knees to see the dimples in them. Her knees were so slender and flexible. I followed up her thighs. The lowest button of her medical coat was five inches from the bottom hem. When she made steps, the fabric parted like a triangle. It revealed glimpses into her intimate inside of her thighs. I had no illusions. There was too much fabric. I would not see her panties. Yet, I was rapt with attention like a cat that lay in hiding to stalk a mouse for hours.
She kept the conversation minimal to check off her chart. Did I have a bowel movement? She took my pulse and blood pressure. She sniffed the air for a moment to make me feel guilty. The last step was to lower the railing on the bed. It was so silly. Someone in the hospital administration had thought that raising and lowering were a special touch, kind of like wakeup and turn down service in a fancy hotel moves the remote control from the bedside stand to the coffee table.
To get to the railing on the other side of the bed, she had to lean over. It meant that she was coming into my personal space. I was laying there with the blankets kicked off, because I was hot. I was wearing a pajama. Hospitals always make you were gowns that leave your butt waving in the air. It's never about better access for doctors to your body. It's always about giving you a uniform, so that you accept that you are the sick person, or at least, so that you are humiliated. In either case, it's to make you pliable to follow the doctor's orders, no matter how much of a quack he is.
They never allow you to lie in a hospital bed in a sharp suit with a tie. No, that would deem too much respect. I tried it once. The old head nurse then got agitated. She would not calm down until I slipped into a pajama. A pajama was a half way compromise between the humiliation gown and a dress suit.
So, I was going to give the nurse a little respect and privacy by turning my head away, when she had to lean over so close to my light gray and white striped pajama pants. However, I caught a glimpse in the corner of my eyes of her fabric between the buttons bulging up. Each space between a button the front down her body lifted into a half circle. All the way from the top to the bottom of her medical jacket, I could see underneath.
Underneath, I saw her bare skin. Her belly was flat and taut. Her breasts were in a snuggly fitting light blue lace bra. Her panties were tight, dark blue lace ones. I saw the top of her thighs. I saw a little bare skin of her inside boob. My eyes scanned up and down, trying to take in as much detail as I had. Her skin was young. She was perhaps in her mid-twenties.
I had an immediate reaction. The loose fabric of my cotton pajama pants had ripples in them. My cock tried to camouflage as a thick ripple. She knew. She sniffed with disdain. Yet, she didn't say anything. It only confirmed her view as me as a subhuman dirty old man. I could tell in her eyes that I was beyond remedy and normal human connection.
I can't blame her. With my neck stiff, I watched people through the corners of my eyes. That always exposed a lot of white of my eye that gave me a scared and horrified look, even though I was merely looking at someone.
The doctor came in. He was wearing a suit and tie. The white medical coat flapped over the dress without being buttoned. He had a little brown beard over his lip, which tried to give him a refined look with his designer glasses. The nurse stepped back and raised her chest in attention with her hands clutched together.
"File," barked the doctor without looking at the nurse. The nurse handed him my file with the elbow straight from a distance. The doctor took one short look and threw it on the floor with a thundering voice. "This is shit -- absolute shit," he yelled at the nurse with spit flying from his mouth ripped wide open. "Pick that up," he added more quietly.
Then he turned to me with forced composure. His lips were pointed almost whistling, when he addressed me. "I apologize for the incompetence of my staff. I will take personally care that you will receive a high standard of care. As punishment, the nurse will be scrubbing all the toilets."
"Excuse me," said the nurse weakly. "We have a janitor. And, I have a big patient load."
The doctor looked the nurse up and down. It wasn't an ogling look. It was more a look of restraint anger. Then with a sharp voice, he turned to me, "do you think that she looks hot, attractive?" I feared a trick question and reluctantly nodded, "yes, she is quite a looker." The doctor had been impatient for me to finish my slow response. He spoke on with passion. "Yes, her looks got her through nursing school. However, that ends now. Now, she has to actually proof herself. Her looks mean nothing here. It's back to basics for her."
The nurse had a pale shocked face. Yet, there was a hint of defeat, like this wasn't the first time, like she had to endure those outbursts over and over. There were no tears. It was lifeless defeat.
"Show our patient what you know. What is amoxicillin indicated for?"
"Bacterial infections like pneumonia, bronchitis..."
"That's enough. You got lucky."
The nurse was slightly shaking. The doctor was staring at the chart and calming down. I had seen a lot during my hospital visits: drunken doctors that threw up in front of me, doctors blatantly ordering the wrong medication and forging the charts, immature nurses that played tricks on each other with patient poo. If you stay a little longer than a polite half hour visit during visitation hours, there is a lot that goes on in hospitals. This was new to me.
The doctor called for the head nurse. The head nurse was a forty year old short, big belly lady with a bossy face. She wore blue scrubs. She sent the nurse away. The doctor left. She looked over the room. I asked her, why the young nurse was dressed so provocatively. The head nurse bluntly replied that everyone in the hospital was allowed to wear their personal clothes, except for the young nurse. She had dressed inappropriately and was now required to wear the official uniform. I protested that the official uniform was surely a little tighter, kind of like the sexy stewardess uniforms from the 70's. The head nurse ignored me and left the room.
I spent the afternoon trying to swat a fly. See, when you are as handicapped as I am, there is no chance of me ever getting the fly. My hand moves slowly as molasses as the joints creek and my ligaments scream in pain. However, it is good exercise. It keeps me moving. It's a lot more entertaining than the physical therapy of raising and lowering my arm fifty times. At least it keeps me from turning on the TV and dulling my mind with that trash. So, I slowly shuffled around the hospital room all day chasing the fly. I named her 'Daisy.' I don't know why. If you spend a couple hours chasing the same fly, it just gets personal.
By the time that the young nurse came back for the evening check-in, I was lying in bed. Outside was the half-light of dawn telling me that another day of my life had passed. I was still panting from the fly chase. My chest is rigid. So, getting air is not that easy. My belly was pumping up and down. Because my body is so frail and thin, when my belly pops out for an inhale, it's like a balloon rising. I was slightly sweaty. My clothes were a tumbled mess. My long combed hair was trailing down my face.
