Sinister: Am I Still Ill?

[Madeleine McNeil]

Do you know, I solved all the problems of the NHS yesterday? Well, in my 
head, that is, whilst lying on a trolley coughing and hoping someone would 
notice me. The woman on the next trolley had pneumonia and the man over the 
way had had some nasty reaction to Prozac. Elsie, in the bay around the 
corner, had fallen of the toilet and was having difficulty making herself 
understood to the South African woman with the joint degree in physiotherapy 
and condescention.

So, the problems with the NHS are: too much gossiping and not enough 
organisation. Oh, and stupid people like me, of course, who go to the 
doctor's surgery for some antibiotics and a quick go on the nebuliser for a 
nasty cold, and end up being sent to the hospital across town for a chest 
X-ray to make sure there's no clot on my lungs.

I had meant to go to the doctor, and leave in plenty of time to make it to 
my lecture at 11 o'clock and then work at 3 o'clock. Little did I know I 
would be begging the consultant to let me out of the hospital at 11 o'clock 
AT NIGHT.

I had an X ray done at 4 o'clock, seven hours before I was finally released. 
I kept asking if they were going to admit me overnight(because if they were 
I had to start working on my escape plan) and they kept saying they had to 
review my X ray. When the doctor finally looked at it, it took him no more 
than three minutes. He realised that I was not going to die and promptly 
(kind of....) let me out.

I feel bad for moaning about the NHS, as they are over worked and under paid 
and have to put up with ungrateful time wasters like me. But all I wanted to 
do was go home...... And, much to my shame, I kept having to run off and 
have a little cry in the patient toilets that had no locks on the doors. AND 
the only books I had to entertain me were an Anthology of Critial Theory 
(there's only so much cheering up that Freud and Marx can offer a girl) and 
White Noise by Don Delillo (also, nothing much there to make a poor girl 
smile, unless it's in a bitter, ironic type way at the misery of life and 
the fear of death). AND I couldn't smoke fags, but that has kick started my 
giving up smoking regime, and I am now proud to say that I haven't had a 
cigarette since 3.30 pm  on Sunday. I have, instead, taken to sniffing my 
smoky clothes and sniffing the two Silk Cut that I have hidden under the 
bed.

Posts from now on will be filled with bitterness and rage and nicotine 
craving like never before. I've been smoking since I was a wee slip of a 
thing, 14 years old, and I used to smoke Embassy No 1 with my first 
boyfriend. We'd hide on Loughborough University Campus on our way home from 
school and furtively smoke and make out. Every good (and bad) thing in my 
life involved smoking. I'm not just Madeleine, I'm Madeleine who smokes 
fags.

I think I'll go and listen to Hefner's Hymn For the Cigarettes and cry 
myself to sleep, to dream.

Love and Nicorette

Madeleine
xxxx



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