the black obelisk of doom

On our way down to Port Glasgow this afternoon and got a phonecall to say that my Dad had been admitted to Inverclyde Royal Hospital. He's been having pains in his chest and a lot of stomach reflux, and this morning, walking up the hill at the second hole of the golf course, it came on really painfully.
So they went to A&E and by the time I'd arrived they were admitting him as a precaution. They think it is just angina, but because he's had a triple heart bypass they wanted to keep him in to be sure.

The Inverclyde Royal is a foreboding tombstone of a hospital, and I hate going there. It never fills the soul with hope of a recovery. I was in there as a boy having got the mother of all black eyes playing football in the school playground with a tennis ball.

It was the first night I'd spent in hospital and I can still recall that eerie sense of the night passing in the low lit ward. Night, or sleep, never really seemed to come. I was on the 12th floor, so wondered if I was dreaming as I heard something hit the window again and again. I lifted my head off the pillow and looked over to see the guy diagonally across from me eating an orange and spitting the pips at the window. I looked at my clock: it was 2.25 am. Beside him was an eldery man who was in some kind of a delirium and muttered away all through the night. I heard the blowpipe sound come again and sure enough another pip hit the window. I put my head on the pillow and tried to make it through this strangely lit and surreal place.
In the morning the elderly man had to be awakened by the nurses and suddenly opened his eyes and started singing There's no business / like showbusiness!! ... Later on that morning I went to take a shower to find that he'd shat in it.
My strongest memory of that time, though, is getting a handmade Get Well Soon card from the hand of Sandra Ptolomey - an impossibly exotic Tasmanian girl who had recently joined my class (and would shortly be on her way again).

Even so, it's a place I don't like to go to. Dad was fine when I left and expects to get let home tomorrow morning. I'll be happy to hear and relieved that he has, and hope that I never have to ascend that hill and be confronted by this black obelisk of doom again.