Voice Off. Human society so orders itself according to the lowest common denominator or to the greatest good. The powerful in that society decide what is the greatest good.
He awakes curled on his side. A brown fibreglass chair is between his bed and the Asian's. He has recognised the ward. How do I know the chair is fibreglass, he asks himself, looks inside his mind. He has no memory or anything before yesterday. Sighing he straightens his body, pushes his head further up the pillow.
The nurses are chattering in their quarters. He hears the clink of the white cups. A dim grey light glows through the green and white flower-patterned curtains. A small tufty-haired old man is nervously collecting his towel and toilet bag. The old man's own haste appears to be confusing him. He has to lay down his toilet bag and towel to put on his dressing gown. He cannot then find his slippers, goes jerkily onto his hands and knees to look under the bed. Then, having got them on, the old man drops his toilet bag, breaking something glass within. Clutching his toilet bag and towel to his stomach the old man makes jaw wobbling for the bathroom.
The thought of water running brings to mind the man's own bladder. Reaching an arm out from under the bedclothes he takes the flask, removes the wad of paper from its neck and slides it down the bed.
Having returned the hot flask to the bedside locker he looks to the two beds on either side of him. The Scotsman and the Asian still sleep. Across the ward the feeble patient, who yesterday smiled at him, raises a thin white hand in salutation. The two night nurses come bursting into the ward pulling curtains apart and letting the thin blue light of day into the long ward. Some patients grunt angrily at this sudden disruption of their dreams, and they dig back into sleep. Others weakly stir and are helped to sit up by the two nurses.
The waking of men precedes the two chirruping nurses down the ward. Patients grab towels and dressing gowns and make for the bathroom. Despite their urgency none of the patients moves quickly. Some walk on stealthy tiptoe, cagey of arousing the slumbering pain within; others try to deceive their pain with flatfooted slothfulness; while the convalescent move with unbelieving caution, unable yet to credit the complete absence of pain.
The nurses pause to minister to those fully awake and confined to bed. The man watches this activity and examines himself. He is calmer than yesterday, cooler. The heartbeat is no longer hammering away at him. Maybe because he now has a past, if only of half a day? Did he dream last night? No, he was awake, then asleep, then awake again. All was here. Now he feels rested, refreshed.
The blonde nurse reaches him, opens the window curtains between his and the Asian’s bed. The large mound of the Asian, after a mumble acknowledging that it is day, presses itself back into sleep.
"Sleep well?" the nurse asks the man.
'Thank you," he struggles up the bed. She pulls pillows off a chair, piles them behind him.
"Sleep of the exhausted by the look of it." The other nurse has joined them, helps the blonde nurse to straighten the bed around him.
"Be back in a minute to take your temperature," she trots off with his flask of yellow urine.
"Home today Mr MacMaster?" the blonde nurse greets the Scotsman, "Sorry to be leaving us?"
"Not a bit," he grins, "My daughter's collecting me at twelve." The phone rings.
'Take care," the nurse hurries off.
"Morning," Mr MacMaster says to the man.
"Morning," the man responds.
While he is having his temperature, pulse and blood pressure taken, two cleaners in long blue coats come into the ward, plug in a suction cleaner and a circular floor polisher. The man has seen neither done before. He watches fascinated the pattern of glistening arcs the polisher makes. The cleaners answer with long faces the patients' greetings.
"Sleep seems to have done you good," the blonde nurse makes her crosses on his chart. "Any luck with the..?" she taps her temple.
"Just yesterday," he tells her.
"Be a cup of tea along in a minute," she leaves to take the temperature of the sullen Asian.
The walking patients are now emerging freshly shaven from the bathroom. One has white soap bubbles in his fluffy ears. Some have wet hair. On reaching their beds they either loop their towels through the rails on their bedside lockers, or they drape them over the bottom of their beds. Rearranging their few possessions some take up books, some sit on or beside their beds, some walk over to talk with other patients; and two take packets of cigarettes into the telly room.
A new nurse brings round the tea. The man is pleased to be able to tell her that he takes no sugar. His fear is not so great this day; he has a yesterday to build upon. The ritual of the tea gives him satisfaction and he dislikes the Asian for again grumbling about the quality of the tea.
A small bent man comes pushing a tent-sided trolley into the ward. The tent's sides are wooden racks into which are slotted newspapers and magazines. Newspapers are also stacked on the low flat base. Patients ask for certain of the papers: money rapidly changes hands. The man has no memory of this civilian transaction. The grubby newspaperman stops his squeaking trolley at the end of the bed, sees to the vacant old man opposite. Nervousness at this novelty rises within the man.
"Paper?" the newspaperman addresses him. He has a quick and furtive manner.
"I haven't any money," the man says, relieved to have so easily warded off this complication.
"That’s alright," Mr MacMaster says: he has just returned from the bathroom, "I’ll get it. What d'you want?"
The man looks fearfully at him,
"I don't know."
"Tell you what," Mr MacMaster takes a brown wallet from his locker, "I'll lend you a quid, you get a couple of papers, see which you like. How about the Mirror and the Guardian? Or d’you reckon..." But the impatient newspaperman has already taken the two papers off his trolley.
"Yea, that'll do," Mr MacMaster hands the coin to the newspaperman, who from a heavy pocket counts the change onto the newspapers on the bed. Mr MacMaster buys a Mirror for himself.
"Friend of mine," Mr MacMaster says, puffing around his words and getting into bed, "lost his memory once. Car crash. Didn't know his own wife when he came round. Been married twenty years. Had three teenage kids. But it all came back. Yours will too. Wait and see. When you get some money, pay that quid to the nurses. They got a fund here. You give it them."
"Thank you."
Mr MacMaster brusquely waves away the thanks, opens his paper.
The man pulls the smooth newspapers up the bed. Scooping up the change he examines the size, shape and colour of the coins. None are familiar. He unfolds the smaller of the two newspapers, reads its front page, studies the large photograph of a man said to be arriving at Heathrow yesterday.
"Ring any bells?" Mr MacMaster has been watching him.
"Vaguely," the man opens the paper, glances over the heavy print within, more big headlines, more photographs, "Nothing specific though."
"If you use words like specific," Mr MacMaster laughs," better try the Guardian. If that's no use, get the Sun and Telegraph tomorrow."
"Sun and Telegraph," the man soberly nods, returns to his reading. He reads every item, even the advertisements and the cartoon strips. All in the newspapers is new, and yet it is also familiar in that not one item surprises him. The hysterical headlines, the stories of hostages, of bombs, murders, crashes, famines... All is as before. Before? He becomes aware that the day nurses have arrived, lays aside the newspaper when his breakfast is placed in front of him. And that too is familiarly new. He samples and enjoys the cereal and the yellow fruit juice, but a wet yellow-grey lump called scrambled egg he discovers to be, in texture and taste, both unpalatable and indigestible.
Voice Off. The greater the unlikelihood of something happening the more significant will be its effect.
