Sleeper – Part five
Final part of my memoir, which tells the story of my last hospital admission under section
I stand in the porch surveying the shrubs that line the street. They have been transformed from their usual clumps into elegant topiary and nod in the evening breeze. I realise now that the night-time guerrilla gardeners are on my side and have been at work, preparing the street for the news and I imagine the flower petals that will carpet the way from the Tube station in due course, providing a route for the pilgrims. An ordinary London street with an extraordinary resident.
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Earlier in the day my neighbour had found my front door ajar. She had called the police to check on me. Now she called an ambulance and a two-woman crew accompanied by two policemen arrived at my gate to persuade me to leave with them. I vigorously resisted this, telling them not to worry and that I would make my own way to the hospital on Monday. I tried to break in using my Oyster card on the lock, to no avail. I changed my mind once I saw the flexing of blue latex gloves. My neighbour offered me shoes and I left under the arm of one of the ambulance crew.
At Charing Cross Hospital I was ushered into a side room, where I waited alone, for what seemed like hours, still believing I had disciples across the globe awaiting my call. It is as if I am in the Truman Show, visible to the world and I rehearse my address to this world-wide audience via an invisible webcam. Mid-flow Hamid Hussein and his colleagues appear, asking a series of questions regarding compliance with my medication, then, without much of an explanation, they leave.
Three weeks after these events a postcard arrived from Transport for London’s Lost Property Office: a bag containing CDs, books, a purse, sundry papers and a drawstring bag with red shoes had been handed in and was waiting to be reclaimed.