Broken Dreams

Broken Dreams

Counting the tiles on the ceiling should be for madmen.  People who loop again and again to the same obsessive focal point.  ‘one, two, three…’ only to begin again.  Never ending, counting, counting on and on.

I can tell you there is some comfort in knowing the answers to safe questions.  It means not having to face what is uncertain.  As I laid on a hospital bed I counted… Sod all else to do. 

My life changed the day I broke my leg.  Well, I didn’t just break it, I snapped it in two.  Three hours in surgery and a leg that now has scrap value when I die made sure the plans I’d made left unfulfilled.  Four sodding hours laid on a cold floor waiting for an ambulance didn’t help, but I knew enough to stay still.  If I moved and trapped the artery I would be minus my left foot.  So there I was, helpless.  Like most people I hate not being in control of my life.  Suddenly I was as helpless as a new-born and just as independent.

I could see the hopelessness in the faces that comforted me.  There was simply nothing they could do.  Nobody said it, but everybody thought it ‘ I wish I could go back in time…I wish it hadn’t happened.   Well it did and now I’m counting tiles.  Nice tiles; perfectly square and white as snow.  I wanted to censure the fitter who left a slight imperfection in one corner.  Nobody could see it, but I had time to measure and measure again each and every tile.

Funny, when we crave for a moment of peace, we seldom get our wish.  I had an eternity yawning before me and I couldn’t fill as much as a moment.  ‘Sod it. I must have miscounted…let’s start again.’ Anything to block my mind returning to the scene. That night, that long, long night I should have been bowing and milking the applause of six hundred people.  My glory gone, I had to content with listening to the bloke in the bed opposite snore for England and the Commonwealth.  Still the tiles… must count again