LLoyd 2.3
Hospital
2.3 Hospital
Lloyd woke up in a hospital bed. A sterile, desolate ward. He felt lonely and confused. His head and ribs throbbed with rich blood, like Viagra was coursing through his veins. He experienced a horrible sick feeling in his stomach when he remembered Mike Barnes. The sensation of the pain became more acute once his brain woke up. The excruciating flashback of catching his wife like that made him retch. He was sure the whole thing was an hallucination but he decided to block it out and ponder for a few seconds how he’d got to be here and who had delivered him.
Left left, right right.
Righ right, left left.
Right right. Left left.
Left left, right right…
His overwrought brain wanted a counterbalance. It was tilting and righting itself over and over again like some antiquated grandfather clock made out of squirrel meat and congealed lingonberry milkshake granules.
He had little mantra’s he liked to repeat in his head that he clenched his requisite fists in time to; an improvised way of managing his OCD whenever his mind went spas.
Aged 15 a Hare Krishna had given Lloyd a book on consciousness for free in the high-street. It had been partially ruined by the rain; but reading it, he soon realized the Hare Krishna’s had a similar rhythm in mantra to the ones he’d made up in his head
Hare Krishna Hare Krishna.
Krishna Krishna Hare Hare
Hare Rama Hare Rama.
Rama Rama. Hare Hare.
Adrenaline and endorphins were long gone now. They had been replaced by a lack of saliva and strong tangs of stomach acid in the mouth. He experienced the same psychological anxiety as a teenager when he woke up on a Monday morning before school, knowing he’d be the loneliest kid in the playground.
He wiped the drool from the side of his mouth.
He could hear a vibrating and thought he was about to fade away; God unravelling him from his mortal coil, perhaps. He stuck his arm out in the direction of the noise and picked up a skittery plastic brick.
“Hwr u? I dnno wht yu’ve dne you litle star but Mike Barnes jst cal’d in to get al his dets up to date, you’ve mad me n jack very proud!! Well done!”
Said a text
Sharon. Reactionary as ever. The knock on the head had brought about an existential clarity. He felt very clearly that he was God and she was the Devil in much the same way that black was black and white was white. He put the phone in a glass of water next to the bed and shut his eyes.
A nurse came in and told him that he had suffered a concussion and badly bruised ribs; his eye had needed stitches. She didn’t see how he couldn’t be out after 24 hours all going well but could not guarantee it; then Jess came in behind her and Lloyd had a sickening flash back of her and the God-botherer bumming each other senseless. The look of dread on her face was enough to convince him the incident had actually happened.
“I don’t want to see you” he said drowsily as she sat down in a sad, grey plastic chair. He could see tears welling up in her eyes but he wasn’t reciprocally upset. He was angry and glad of it.
“I can understand that, but if you would just let me explain” she rebuked “I’ve been seeing a lot of Alex at church, we’ve been rehearsing all the time with the play and…..”
Thinking.
Thinking that Alex had the audacity to ask him if he wanted to get involved with the thing when he was banging his wife.
Warped.
Warped how he was that much of a narcissist, he thought he could get away with all this right under his nose.
“NOTHING you can say can make this situation acceptable, you do know that don’t you?” Cracked voice aside he sounded positively vitriolic.
“Excuse me??” she said, taken aback by his strained, authoritative bellow. She wanted to shout back louder but it wasn’t conducive to the situation.
She was uneasy — wanted to leave the room — but had planned everything she wanted to say so meticulously.
“Lloyd…” she countered “…What’s got into you…and what the hell happened to you anyway? Have you been……” she got closer and made a move to touch his head. As her fingers were about to make contact with his temple he violently slapped them away.
“It’s none of your fucking business what I’ve been up to” He blurted, possessed by potty-mouthed goblins, “and I’ll tell you another thing, I don’t want to see you in the house when I get back home. It’s my house and I want you gone, do you understand?”
Defeated, she gulped feverishly.
“Yes, I understand Lloyd, but…”
“Now GO!”…….
It was all very novel.
He started to drift back off to sleep with hints of a dumb smile on his face.
Then the dreams came like movie trailers.
In the first he was a young kid again. Sat on his doorstep eating sandwiches watching the other kids play in the street. He tried to get up from the cold slab but his bottom was firmly glued to it. The more he struggled the more rigid his body became until he couldn’t move. It became all the more harrowing when a football was kicked into his garden, landing within five meters of him. The kids were shouting and cursing frantically to kick it back, unable to appreciate his physical incapability.
Then he was a teenager looking out of his bedroom window on a cold winter’s night; looking down the end of the road, longingly watching three young lovers kiss beneath a streetlamp. He wanted to be that guy, go down there and take his place but the windows had bars, his bedroom door was locked and whenever he moved he was treading water.
Finally he was his present self; alone in a hospital with no-one there to talk to. Empty, like an unmanned prison. Fog everywhere.
When he started coming too again his physical self felt markedly better. It was probably about three in the morning but the pain in his head was starting to abate.
He couldn’t see, but he could feel presence…A barely audible breath; a discreet rustling of bedclothes. He awkwardly turned his head before a gruff voice addressed him.
“I’ve been waiting for ages for you! It’s so boring in here”
To his left, lying in an adjacent bed, propped up by a mound of pillows was a leprechaun. He had tousled greying hair down past his shoulders, a manicured beard and a hint of crow’s feet around the eyes.
Grinning.
He had a tan. Not a chav-tan; only leprechauns that hung around the town centre had Chav-tans.
The most pronounced things about him were the eye-catching tattoos down his arm; an albatross (like the one Lloyd kept in his pocket) intertwined between a large blue elephants arms.
Ganesha, Hindu God of Happiness and wisdom.
It felt less miserable in the ward now he had someone to share it with that might not be a moron. Perhaps no-one was a moron any more since time had folded in on itself.
“Hello” replied Lloyd, smiling back without ease.
“What you in for” said the thing
“Err, well. I got attacked?”
“Really? That’s horrible”
His accent was not Irish but Lahhhndan sounding.
“And you?” said Lloyd, hazy.
“Me? I just got me appendix taken out”
“mmmgff?” replied LLoyd
“Yes I’m glad the little buggers gone, I fink he was trying to kill me… never experienced quite so much pain without knowing what the problem was or having any kind of idea what to do about it!”
He?
Lloyd pictured an appendix with a knob.
“You on the other hand… you don’t look so good my friend”
“Well”, replied Lloyd looking down at his hands, “It’s hard to…..”
He swallowed and took moments to think.
… Jess… smell of sex in room. Papa Shango. Pato Banton.
His nose twitched.
He’d went to hospital once as a kid. They’d reattached tendons in two fingers after he’d cut his hand on chicken wire. They’d put him under a local anesthetic for a few hours to operate.
Them
He’d saw them put a needle in a catheter — no time to catch a breath — wanting to cough before things went black and void — waking seconds later, except it wasn’t seconds later — hours had passed and his hand was suddenly bandaged, proving definitively that
All >>>>>>>>>>
Time<<<<<<<<
Was
Relative.>>>>>
So…
What was the point in worrying?
Why take life seriously if timelines changed and bent when you were asleep. Why fear?
“I’m not sure how I feel at the moment” said Lloyd, finally.
He was sure if he could feel pain properly it would hurt to frown.
He made an effort to reach over the bedside table without being overwhelmed, brought the kind glass of water to his mouth and sipped; deceased phone brushing his lip.
The leprechaun was always busy when Lloyd looked over; reading a copy of Nuts, playing with his nipples or flicking through TV channels.
Lloyd passed out again, whenever.
Oh yeah, you can my book LLoyd on Amazon for £1.80 GBP or $2.99 USD
An absolute steal. Should be charging more really.
Anyway, Just type ‘Scott Lundrigan’ into the Search Engine… Or ‘Lloyd’.
Cheers.
Bye.
