The Pavement Bookworm by Philani Dladla

Author:Philani Dladla
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Jacana Media
Published: 2015-11-08T05:00:00+00:00

When I arrived at the hospital I was still drunk and confused but I could answer their questions much better than when they took me from the pub. I can’t remember the name of the nurse who interviewed me and filled out some documents, but she was sweet and beautiful. She asked me questions like my name, how old I am, where I’m from and if I knew where I was and where I lived. I didn’t tell her that I was homeless because I was embarrassed. She asked me more and more questions and it felt like I was being interrogated by an attractive police officer. Later I was seen by the doctors. I was lucky because they didn’t steal my bag of books at the pub and the porter helped wheel my bag and me to a ward on the fifth floor. Being hospitalised was no fun business, especially being woken very early in the morning, although it was a luxury for me to sleep indoors with warm blankets instead of under the bridge with only one blanket on cold concrete.

I complained but the nurses told me that I was in hospital not in a hotel. The nurses were rude and rough. In the morning I was sick with drug cravings, the stomach cramps were killing me and I was weak from vomiting after every meal. I needed drugs and thought that I would die. I ended up telling the doctor the truth, thinking that he would give me something to calm my cravings, but all he did was put me on a drip which he said would clean all the drugs from my system and ordered some medication that the nurses would give me after lunch.

The first few days in hospital were very hard, as I felt like everybody was against me. No, I felt like they hated me. It felt like I was in prison where the doctors were prison wardens and the nurses were prison guards. I tried escaping but I was too weak and the hospital security was able to stop me before I could make it to the main reception. I told the doctors that I needed drugs but they didn’t care about that. They told me that I was in hospital and that their job was to save lives, not to destroy them. They told me that drugs are killers, as if I didn’t know. When I started fighting and shouting and calling the nurses and doctors all sorts of names they put me in restraints and I was treated like a real prisoner in hospital. For two days I was cuffed until I calmed down.

As the drug cravings wore off I began to cooperate and things became easier. I realised that the nurses and doctors were not as bad and evil as I had thought and I started appreciating them. It was clear they were just trying to help me not harm me. I was moved to the psychiatry ward. I tried refusing, telling the doctor that I wasn’t crazy.

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