An Archway, A Bridge, An Altar

'We keep our title, human,


word like an archway, a bridge, an altar'


Denise Levertov ('Vocation')


Coming to, as the sedatives, wear off, I watch the ceiling pass by above me, a brightly lit path. Being prostrate, trundled along hospital corridors in the conscious aftermath of some quite brutal orthopaedic surgery, I find a strange disorientation; life viewed from another bodily perspective.


And so to the ward bay. Prone, vulnerable, two nurses prepare themselves physically before heaving my body onto the bed, trying to minimise the inevitable shout of pain sensors. It is early evening, five o'clock, and I am last out of theatre.  Three sets of eyes watch me and wait for the moment to open up out of this immediate, post-surgical vulnerability, a moment to offer greeting.


I share the bay with three men recovering from knee replacements: Abdul, a quiet seventy year old  man, a former metal worker, originally from Sylhet,   Darnall resident since the 70s; Richard, a considerate former electrical engineer from Dronfield, in his late fifties, having been forced to retire early through an arthritic condition; and Colin, a cantankerous and irrepressible man, with thin bony limbs curled over from lifelong arthritis.  For three days we share this bay.


Night sets in, main lights are switched off and we give ourselves over to pain relief-assisted sleep.  Four men on our backs, we tolerate each others heavy snores, occasionally marked by large, semi-apnoeic sucks of air, which reverberate around the bay.


Five am and the night shift nurse arrives to nudge us into consciousness, enough to offer an arm for the five times daily blood pressure checks, and the administering of the first drugs of the day.  As the shift is changing over, with a brusque cheeriness, we are offered a cup of tea.  Then begins a day of structured regularity, marked by meals, meds and more blood pressure tests. Four men together, we are woven together by these rituals of care and convalescence.


So we watch each others daily progress. Abdul and Richard, a day ahead of me, begin to make their hesitant steps on crutches.  We notice and seem to know when to mark or pass over the grimaces and sharp intakes of breath.  The first cautious move from my bed to the chair is welcomed and remarked upon.  In turn, I mark with encouragement their progress from shuffles to more fluid paces. 


Colin keeps us occupied by his insistent demands to be accompanied outside for a cigarette. Staffing levels of course cannot allow this.  Eventually, with boisterous bravado and braggadocio, he sets off,  his arthritically twisted hands grasping onto the handles of his adapted mobility frame.  We are hias brother invalids for this passage of three days convalescence, so we work at placating, jollying and recognising the jocular irascibility that marks out his determination to live life unconstrained by his disability.
Meal times are an opportunity to be companions, bread-sharers.  My ascetically healthy choice of diet refuses to separate me out from this fundamental sharing of food.  Abdul quietly tolerates a predominantly European cuisine, though confides that he can't wait for proper home food. Three times a day, the priestly ministrants arrive, trundling a medicine cabinet.  Each in turn, we submit ourselves to the intake of pain relief tablets and thick and gluey constipation relief fluid, the inevitable result of surgery and serious analgesics.  This  ritual again weaves us together in a secular rite at this pharmaceutical altar.
Three of us receive regular visitors.  Abdul trumps us all with his family gathering in a semi-circle of chairs.  His extended family visitors kindly share out with the rest of us their greetings as they arrive and depart. Colin finally receives a visit from those responsible for his social care needs, without which he won't be allowed out to the home he craves as much as his cigarettes.
Day three and departure day arrives for three of us. First Abdul is transformed into his daily clothes, strange vestments of normality after three days of pyjamas.  Then Richard is similarly transformed.  As the moment for leaving comes for each in turn,  I find myself quite undone.  We share a formal handshake and  conventional words of well-wishing. Yet the depth of eye-contact, the warmth in our voices, the way we are all struggling to control our voices, marks some deep level of contact, of connection we have made over the course of these three days. 
I find myself feeling fresh, cleaned out, ready for new ways of daily living, marked out by deep connections formed by shared vulnerability, simple kind words.  These seem to me a new vocation, the daily archway, the bridge, the way to keep the title...human.