Читать книгу It’s Not What You Think and Memoirs of a Fruitcake 2-in-1 Collection - Chris Evans - Страница 29

10 Walking through crunchy snow

9 Anything that dangles

8 Trinkets

7 The lighting in department stores—it makes my eyes sting

6 The recurring dream where my head keeps falling off

5 People who don’t like animals

4 My friend who doesn’t ‘get’ music

3 My own heartbeat

2 Anyone else’s heartbeat

1 Hospitals

I was screaming and begging for the surgeon to stop what he was doing, pleading with him to relent. I had been transferred to the operating theatre where I was now being worked upon. Things are never as simple as you want them to be, are they?

It transpired that as a result of my injury my fingers needed to be rebroken as they had originally been broken ‘the wrong way’. I was informed of this shocking development soon after I was admitted to the accident and emergency department. I was told it would be impossible for my fingers to be set in their current state, not an uncommon occurrence apparently. Maybe not uncommon to the medical profession but it was ‘news just in’ to me—as was the local anaesthetic that had since been hastily administered.

The anaesthetic needed to numb the affected area had to be injected directly into the bones of my right hand. I cannot describe how painful this was and there was not one but four syringes in total! For some reason two of the syringes also had to be left in the bone during the next part of the process, which meant they were left dangling out of my skin and were currently swaying up and down like over-laden branches on an apple tree.

Everything in place, it was now the surgeon’s job to do the re-breaking. This basically consisted of him taking up a black rubber hammer and smashing it down on to my hand for all he was worth.

‘I’m going to hit you as hard as I can to hopefully get this done first time without having to rain subsequent needless blows down upon you. What I am trying to do can actually be achieved with just one accurate “adjustment”.’

Excuse me, but since when has hitting someone with a hammer been referred to as an adjustment? This gentleman’s little speech though well- meaning was doing nothing to allay my anxiety—not that he had finished yet.

‘Now, young man, the anaesthetic should have taken effect but there is still a chance you might feel something.’

Feel something! He wasn’t kidding, I felt every ‘bloody’ thing. It was as if I’d never been near a syringe in my life. Whatever had been in those things, they needed to triple the dose, at least.

After ‘more than one’ concerted attempt to ‘adjust’ my mashed-up digits, during which the attending nurses had grimaced and flinched with every whack, the action finally came to a halt: the surgeon had indeed ceased to hammer me. After wiping his brow and nodding his head decisively in a ‘job well done’ kind of way, he retreated to wherever it is surgeons go after benevolently bashing up the hands of little boys.

The trauma abating, my central nervous system had instructed me that it was now safe to downgrade my screaming to something less harrowing, a little less cowardly. Accordingly I did so—firstly to a respectable sobbing before fading seamlessly to a feeble whimper.

After a few minutes, and several sympathetic smiles from a couple of foxy nurses, which I happily acknowledged with the raising of a conciliatory ‘Don’t-worry-I’ll-be-alright’ Ferris Bueller-type eyebrow, milking the situation for all it was worth, I began to compose myself on the way back to regaining full heroic status. But once again all was not as I thought.

The surgeon returned.

‘I’m sorry but that doesn’t appear to have worked, we’re going to have to go again.’

Ex-squeeze me? Baking powder?

‘What did he just say?’

‘We’re going to have to go again!’

Surely I was hearing things, he couldn’t have just said what I thought he’d said. But yes, alas, it was true.

‘The local anaesthetic was not strong enough,’ he went on. I could have told him that for free!

‘The reason we went with the local at first is because its use does not require us to have prior written permission from a guardian as it is of little risk.’

‘Or effectiveness,’ I wanted to add but thought better of it.

‘We will now have to give you a general anaesthetic, which means putting you under. Of course for this we will need someone to come in and sign the consent forms.’

He smiled a half smile—at least he tried. He then turned to walk away but there was something else. He came back and gestured. I drew closer, he had a secret to share with me.

‘Oh by the way,’ he whispered, ‘I presume we are all sticking to your story on the accident report of how you fell on to your hand in the playground and not the fact that you more likely punched some other boy in a bout of fisticuffs. That’s the usual way a person comes to sustain this type of injury.’

Suddenly I began to warm to this guy. Not only had he just used the phrase ‘fisticuffs’—a phrase I’d never heard in real life before—but he was letting me know the score here, the way the land lay. Alright, he may have already put me through a miniature hell, and was about to ‘go again’ in his words, but I couldn’t help feeling that he was offering to cut me a deal. The less fuss I made over the last failed ‘rebreaking’ attempt when my mum came in, the less she needed to know about the ‘more accurate’ reason for the injury.

‘Er…yes, thank you,’ I replied, happy to comply.

I had been well and truly rumbled by the doc and although he was poised to set about hitting me with that bloody hammer again, I had to admit—he was one of the good guys.