Dinner at the Hospital

I was once asked to visit a person in hospital. I wouldn’t normally agree to do such a thing as I am allergic to both people and hospitals but in this case I made an exception. I had three reasons. One, nobody else was going to bother. Two, I worked just around the corner. And three, the person who needed visiting was my father.
I went straight after work one evening.
Hospitals are awful places. For a start there are always a dozen entrances with a multitude of signs, most directing you to places that are identified by completely alien words ending in –ology. I walked up to a likely looking desk and asked where I should go for the eye department, as my father was having an operation on his eye. The receptionist looked at me as if I was mad. I repeated my request slower, pointing at my eye as I did so. She looked oriental so I added a ‘hah’ at the end of my request as I had seen actors do in kung fu movies. It seemed to help. She asked if I meant the ophthalmology ward. Did I?
I was provided with a set of directions that probably exceeded those given to the first Apollo mission to the moon and set off, watching that I didn’t trip over any invalids on the way. It’s odd how they all lurch out of their rooms as I walk past, like extras from One Flew Overt the Cuckoos Nest, with exactly the same vacant expression and drool.
After a dozen rights, half a dozen lefts, a few stairs, and a walk down a corridor that had more than its fair share of the clinically deranged, I made it to the opthy-whatever-it-was ward.
There was a desk with a lit lamp, an open book, and nobody sitting behind it. Great. What was I supposed to do now? I made another kung fu sound to attract attention but it just echoed away into the distance.
I thought of looking in the book. It was a list of patients. I found my father’s name and his room number and then looked for it on the doors. Unfortunately, these all had names…of the consulting doctor. Great help. I decided to work my way down the corridor and to peek into every room until I found the right one. That was interesting.
Eventually, I found my father and went in. The only chair was tucked into the corner, behind the door. I sat there and tried to make the sort of conversation you make with a hospital patient. I checked my watch to see if I had stayed a reasonable period of time and could now leave but, unfortunately, only three and a half minutes had elapsed. Best stay a bit longer.
Just then, the door was flung open, which almost knocked me off my chair and into the stand holding the drip. As I picked myself up, the nurse who had entered said in a big cheery voice that all nurses get taught a nursing school: ‘Have you eaten yet? Do you want any dinner?’
For the life of me, I thought she was speaking to me. It never crossed my mind that it might have been my father she was addressing.
So I answered. ‘No thanks, but I’d love a coffee’.
The room went silent and the nurse let out a strained noise; the sort she probably reserved for the loonies I had passed on the way up. She then looked at my father who said that he hadn’t much appetite but a sandwich would be nice.
The nurse sidled out the door without straightening up the stand for the drip.
It was a few minutes later that she returned with a plate of sandwiches and – this reinforces everything you have ever read about the saintliness of nurses – a coffee for me. Outstanding. And, in my gratitude, I didn’t even point out that I usually have it without milk.