sickypoos part 2

"West Byfleet? Did you catch the name at all?" She wasn't only looking at me now but her hands had relaxed away from the keyboard as if she knew it would be ages before any useful information came from me again. I grabbed at any memory I could.
"I think it was a Doctor Winston, or was it Doctor Churchill? No, I think it was a German Lady," I winced towards the screen as if she could just type in "GERMAN LADY" and it would find the name. I was losing the will to live, Winston, Churchill, Germans? I was turning into Basil Fawlty. I prayed that some tall surgeon would see me from the corridor and come running in with a blanket shouting, "My god woman! Can't you see this man is in agony? Enough of your inquisition Frau Ballbanger, I'm taking him away to be pampered by the NHS," but instead I looked into her eyes as the pain got worse and I clutched my throbbing abdomen and she just stared at me, not willing to even attempt using the German information to help. I tried another tack, "Do you know the doctors at West Byfleet at all?"
"No."
I had run out of tacks.
"Look, I don't remember the name, It was a general visit and my first, you have the clinics name and I would be happy to see anybody there in future so can't you just put me in the box marked 'anybodys'?" I grabbed my guts and winced yet again to emphasize the cost all this administrational chit-chat was having on my insides.
"What's the problem?"
She had to be kidding surely? Was she blind? Or, more likely, it was her way of saying, 'Look, Ian (Spelt I-a-n) you may think you're smart but this is MY window and YOUR pain, so let's just remember who's in charge here shall we?' If that was her intention then I got the point. The sarcastic look I was building on my face dropped. I decided against saying something like, "I seem to be suffering from a huge pain in the arse," or, "oh, nothing, I was just drawn to your window by your caring nature and powers of observation. Or even, "IT'S MY GUTS you stupid blind hag, now get me a doctor while my need is still greater than yours!!" Instead I just lowered my eyes and groaned, "Abdominal pain."
"Do you think you could provide a sample?"
Momentarily lost, I wondered if she wanted me to come round and kick her in the guts as if to say, "That should give you the general idea," until she whipped a plastic bottle from under the desk and indicated to the toilets to my left.
"I'll try," I said with some uncertainty and waddled across the room to the toilets, both unisex and both engaged.
Standing upright was a problem so I just leant against the door frame with an agonized look on my face. The door opened immediately without the warning of a flush and a woman looked at me with mild surprise. She had a plastic bottle in her hand like mine and it was a good half full with a visibly warm yellow liquid. I glanced at the sample and then straight back at her. I wasn't sure of the correct etiquette when presented with a strange lady's urine at close quarters but staring at it like a wine expert was probably frowned upon. I wondered if my bottle would be half full or whether I was just being optimistic.

Propped against an uncomfortable hand rail and unable to feel anything but agony south of my navel, I fumbled and checked and waited.
Nothing happened. I had no idea if I would be able to produce anything of value as the produce was coming from the epicenter of the pain and, for all I knew, I could be suffering from 'dry bladder syndrome' or 'concrete pissitis'. I tried to think of painless waterfalls and dripping taps. I suddenly developed a strange desire to whistle but it hurt too much so I just waited and tried to let go.
It occurred to me how much easier this must be for men than women.
There have always been negatives about being a male when it comes to taking a leak. Having to do it in front of several complete strangers in a public toilet is one of them. It puzzles me that women are afforded all the privacy in public loos and yet they can easily sit down and go without really exposing anything of themselves and, if they're wearing a skirt, it looks no different to any other kind of sitting down. Whereas men, who have to 'get something out' are forced to do so while stood literally shoulder to shoulder with a total stranger who is doing the same. When you also consider that the appearance and comparative size of men's genitalia is a serious issue amongst us and that the vast majority of perverts are men, it seems crazy that the fairer sex get the cubicles and we get some rancid, communal metal trough covered in cigarette burns and spit.
Accuracy, however, is another story altogether and we are the masters. Admittedly it takes a little practice, as the mother of any young son will confirm. But when it comes to a situation where a measured amount of pee is needed in a thin'necked plastic bottle then us men have the laser guided system compared to the ladies' scatter gun. We can write our names in the snow if we want. Women may scoff at that particular skill but should they ever find themselves stranded on a mountain side and in need of a large 'S.O.S' to signal to any passing planes, then the best they can hope for is a cloud of steam. If they wanted to write anything they'd need a stencil and roller blades. We'd get marks out of ten from the pilot for handwriting.
Eventually a stinging feeling was followed by a yellow bead that emerged like a mouse from a skirting board, to see if the coast was clear, and then dropped away into the bottle. It was a start.
There was more to come and in no time I was in full flow and feeling relieved if only in mind. Now new problems arose. How much would they want? Would they want me to fill it or just need enough to dip a strip of litmus paper in? Would they be splitting it up and need enough for several departments? I had visions of the nurse returning with a look of disappointment and saying, "I'm sorry Mr. Watson but, because the sample was so small, all we can tell for sure is that you're not pregnant and you're a bit stingy with your fluids. Alternatively I could hand over a full bottle and, as she dipped under the weight, she might say, "We only asked for a sample, we're not looking to buy the whole thing!
These thoughts raced through my mind as I realized that I had no idea how much I normally produce. I'd never measured it in any way, usually it just disappears down an infinite U-bend and quantities are never discussed. There have been times when I've finished and genuinely believed that more just came out than the eight pints that went in but who actually knew?
I decided that, assuming I made it that far, I would stop just over half way and, if I had any left, I would have to clamp the end and remove the bottle. Then I could let go again and whatever was left would be set free to swim with the dolphins in the usual manner. A momentary panic, as the certain knowledge that clamping would need to be deadly accurate and lightening fast or there would be a second of fanning stream like the kind used from hose pipes to rinse the suds off cars, came and went and my plan was formed. I would stagger out with my head held high and an amount of urine that said, "He came up with the goods and there's plenty to go round but he wasn't just 'bursting for a pee' after all.
I leant my back against the wall of the toilet and prepared to fall towards the door in my new style of walking that involved more of the skills of a unicyclist than a pedestrian when the reality of my situation hit me. I was almost certainly about to enter a world where time was only measured by the transparency of the inhabitants. You would sit and wait and become more and more invisible with every slow, unmarked hour that dragged by. My sample would grow cold and form a bronzed skin while me and my agony grew ever more acquainted and trolley after trolley of visibly injured morons was wheeled right past my nose.
I'm not a 'complainer'. I've worked with the public for long enough to know that acting like some foot-stomping brat was going to get me nowhere but the pain in my lower regions was making me wonder how long I'd be able to stay calm, nursing a bottle of cold urine, in the 'land of the ignored' before I started screaming that nobody was willing to 'take the piss' and calculating how much of my hard earned tax money I should have invested in Bupa.
I emerged from the toilet like Quazimodo being chucked out of his local- humpy and grumpy and ready to make the kind of noise that can't be ignored.
"How you feeling love? It was Sarah. I raised my eyes to meet hers and prepared to unload my woes on her caring shoulders when a nurse pushed in between us, whipped the sample from my hand and guided me to a waiting trolley that was parked a few feet away in the corridor that led from the waiting area to the hospital. With incredibly strong but careful hands she had me curled up in a ball of pain and out of the way in a flash, then she was gone.
"Err¦ well I'm not sure now but the pain's just as bad. I tried to smile and stared at Sarah's hips while she stroked my hair and we waited for something to happen.
Well now, this was a bit more like it, I thought to myself. I've been given 'priority' parking away from those zombies out there. This corridor was different, there was the noise of busy people all along it shuffling between rooms and getting things done. This was the 'business class' of pain and someone had deemed me worth the upgrade. Once again I started to feel anxious that I might be wasting somebody's time in a place where time was pain and I prayed I was seriously ill.
After a few minutes I was wheeled into a side room and parked opposite a large middle-aged man with an enormous round stomach that was covered in a paper sheet. He nodded his 'hello' and I winced back to show him just who was in the most pain when the nurse that wheeled me in turned and lifted the paper sheet.
That was the first, but not the last, time I feinted that night.
What can I say. I'm a feinter, deal with it. Show me blood and I'll show you the back of my eyeballs and the last thing I ate.
I'm not a hospital person. I've never been operated on, never had a broken bone. I've had stitches put in and removed from washing up broken glass as a teenager but that's about it and even that was an episode of panic attacks and vomiting interspersed with several forced and unwelcome naps. My brain has the kind of oversensitive circuit-breaker that puts a whole house into darkness every time someone opens the fridge and when that paper sheet was lifted it flipped ALL my switches.
I came round and instantly remembered only two things: not where I was or even who I was, but firstly that the man next to me had a large section of his stomach missing and looked almost exactly like Monty Python's 'Mister Creosote' after the 'waffer thin mint' and, secondly, that the bloated feeling of wind that had been accompanying my pain was now gone.
This should have been some relief at least.
It wasn't.
As I looked around me, and the details of myself and my situation filled themselves in, I was struck by a polite but disgusted look on the faces of Sarah, the nurse, and even Mister Creosote- and a terrible smell. I took on a look of embarrassed apology and hoped that eyeball-drying flatulence was a common and expected side effect of feinting.
"He hasn't eaten since last night. Sarah made my apology to break the atmosphere but it would have needed a wind tunnel and a skip filled with pot-pouri to shift it. She looked down at my face which was filled with the desperate hope that the smell could somehow have been explained away as coming from the exposed internal organs of Mister Creosote and guessed what I was thinking. She then mouthed the words "very loud and patted me sympathetically on the head.
Embarrassment flooded over me through my pain and I considered my wretchedness. I was covered in mud and maggots and blood and I already felt bad about the muddy smears my boots had made on the clean sheets but that was just for starters, that was just the visible layer of filth. I thought back to the last time I had a shower, it took me a while.
We hadn't been blessed with a lot of hot water in the rented house as there wasn't any heating as such just a back-boiler behind the open fire (hence the state of the Yellow pages) and, what with my lack of work commitments and a sweaty night of discomfort, I had to confess that my personal hygiene was at its lowest standard since my student days when the only thing that held my socks together was athlete's foot. I hadn't even changed my underpants that morning because touching my feet had been an impossible dream and now I found myself in three things I wanted to be out of: a hospital, agony, and a cloud of rancid gas with my name on it. Surely things couldn't get any worse?
"Right. A beautiful blonde young doctor in a crisp white blouse that gaped as she pulled a stethoscope from around her slender neck breezed into the room, paused as the smell hit her, and then approached my bedside. I smiled weakly and the man in me was at least thankful she hadn't been here earlier and hoped she'd assume someone else had farted and I could regain some dignity. "Just a few checks mister Watson.
I watched her holding the stethoscope and relaxed, it wouldn't be too bad, my chest may have to be bared but it was the cleanest part of me. I began to turn onto my back, thankful that I had a shirt on so there would be no need for lifting a tee shirt and freeing any 'odours' that may lie beneath when I was stopped by the doctor's hand on my hip.
I looked down at it, the stethoscope had been put down and now there was¦ a glove.
"If you could just unbuckle your belt for me that'd be lovely. You can stay on your side if 'face down' is too painful.
She smiled, I didn't.