More from the ICU

Ward boys wake me up. Sponge, they say. They sit me up. Take off my hospital-issue pajama top. Run a wet towel over me. I'm shivering. They start to pull off my pants. I snarl at them: I'm cold; put the bleeping shirt on. They do. They finish the sponge.

I doze.

To be woken up again. Bed tea. I ask for coffee, Without sugar.

I doze.

The coffee come in. I am woken to drink it. Where's breakfast? Oh, an hour from now. Fugh.

I doze.

Breakfast. It's stuff I'm not used to. Fried things that aren't eggs. Yugh. May I have some bread? Would I like cornflakes, they ask. Yes please, I say. Fried-things-that-are-not-eggs are taken away.

I doze.

I sense someone is around. Open eyes. Manisha. I whine about the breakfast. The cornflakes arrive. In hot milk. WTF, I say. Which idjut dunks cornflakes in hot milk? Manisha clucks. The offending cornflakes are removed. She chats for a bit. The cornflakes come back. The same cornflakes. Which had been left somewhere to cool down (and get soggy). Manisha goes off to grumble on my behalf. But I'm whipped by now. I eat the bloody thing. Manisha says if I'm complaining about the food, I must be okay.

I sleep.

5am sponge bath. 6 am 'bed tea.' WTF is this with the bed tea? I'm in the fugging ICU. I'm not exactly going to leap up to have a brisk fugging shower and then slip into my fugging dressing gown and stroll out to the fugging patio for breakfast afterwards, am I? Then somewhere between 7am and 8am, breakfast. One is supposed to be resting. But the hospital wakes you up every hour just so you, who are basically half-dead, can accommodate their routines and sucks to you if it means that you get disturbed every hour in the process as long as they can make little check marks in the little boxes on their lists. Bah.