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I shouldn't find comfort here. White fluorescent lights and beige hallways stretching on for eternity, twisting turns that disorientate the confused and confuse the panicked. Within all this chaos there is order. Familiarity. Routine. I know where to go. I've been here so much. Outpatients. How many years can you be an outpatient before they check you back in. Surely six is enough.
For once though, I don't walk in the side door by the cafe where the croissants went up by £1.50 last month. Instead I shuffle into the emergency department, a brand of disorder I haven't quite become accustomed to yet. It's mechanical the way I describe the pain and symptoms to the triage nurse, a stabbing pain in the back of my calf that has led to numbness in my back again.
“First name?” she saks barley taking her eyes off her screen as she types away furiously, chewing aggressively on spearmint gum.
“Remus.”
'Sirname?’
“Lupin”
The nurse looks up at me, head tilted to the side.
“Have we met?” I shrug.
“Maybe” we have, she was assisting with my hip x-ray two months ago.
Her name is Mary.
“Your address is still 180 Alywen road, correct” I nod and fall back into the familiar pantomime of recalling details I'd rather forget.
The chairs in the emergency waiting room are somehow worse than the ones in the outpatients, old, ugly and putrid yellow, with armrests that have plastic flagging off after scores of children with bandaged limbs picked at them with that hand that was not occupied swiping on their mothers old phones. I was probably one of those kids. The tv in the corner plays channel 7, some sort of pop culture news like “ this old man adopted 500 parrots and died,” or "remember this kid from that one video you saw when you were seven, well she's dead,” and “what do you think Corey Worthington's up too this tuesday, Diane.”
“Lupin.” I look up from where I had begun to pick at the plastic of the chair, to see a younger male nurse standing at the doors leading to the maze of blue papery curtains and green doors with windows that look as if they have been covered in clear contact scraps from some overachieving year sevens school books. He beckons me over, running a hand through his dishevelled hair as he holds the door open for me to hobble through, each step sending shocks of numbing pain up the left of my spine. I mutter a thanks as he leads me towards the closest free cardboard box of a bed.
It's the same as always now, with the white walls that are interrupted by a stripe of red, overwhelmed with sockets, plugs and cords leading to machines beeping away by the bed. I stared up at the ceiling as the nurse wrapped the deep blue blood pressure arm squisher thing around by arm, his voice blending harmoniously with the cacophony of crying children and murmured conversations. The lady in the next booth is talking to some guy, maybe her boyfriend, maybe a doctor, about what music she wants to play, and a kid on my other side is watching bluey, headphones off, volume on full blast. I collapse back against the shitty hospital pillow and the dusty blue paperlike sheets that always slide halfway off the chair, as the nurse leaves, the bright smile not quite managing to hide the heavy set bags under his bloodshot eyes.
“Dr Pomfrey will be here soon.” He's too happy, too young. He looks around my age, maybe a bit older but probably not. Must be training or something and the reality of dealing with entitled injured people and their even more entitled carers hasn't quite hit him yet. I mutter my thanks again as I turn my face to the pillow, the smell of bleach and eucalyptus detergent overwhelming my brain and causing the pounding of my skull to beat in time with the theme tune of Bluey drifting through the curtains.
Soon, of course, is an objective measurement of time. It can mean a minute or an hour, depending on who asked. In the children's hospital it used to mean about 45 minutes. Now in the hospital for every single person ever it often felt more like 4. So I lay there twisting to try to find a position that doesn't aggravate the numbness in my spine. After an hour the positive nurse returns armed with a backbrace that doesn't quite fit and strict orders to keep me flat on my back. And then he's gone again and all I can do is stare at the tiny holes in the ceiling.
There's rustling from the floor and the drapes sway with an unseen force. Rubber squeaks against the linoleum floor and one small hand reaches up and grabs onto the bar next to my head.
“Hi.” The kid's other hand appears in one of the temporary casts with screws positioned in their elbow, that jut out and make their arm look fake. “My mum's asleep.”
“Cool”
“My ipad died.” I hum a noise of acknowledgement as the kid babbles on, “mum said she wouls charge it but she's asleep and i really want to watch my ipad, do you have an ipad because I dont think you can watch it because your neck is in that cage thing so you should give me your ipad.” I don't think the kid has taken a breath for the last minute. I wanna sleep. I close my eyes. The kid lets out a quiet “ohhhhhh” and I hear the squeaking of their shoes and the rustling of the curtain and a small whispered “sorry mister.”
That kid is lucky. The screws in his arm mean the hospital did its job, they set it properly, they didn't just chuck a cast on and call it a day because their a kid and kids are tough they can get over anything with nothing more than some plaster and a few cloth wraps, never-mind the consequences, never-mind rehabilitation, never-mind the nerves, the muscles, the mistakes that that kid could make.