pre-op

I took this photo the day Leonard Cohen's death was announced and I was in hospital for surgery.
I fractured and broke my wrist in Iceland whilst on holiday. I fell off a snow-mobile onto a glacier. I landed hard and my hand drove into my wrist, fracturing it and breaking the wee nodule too.
I then went on a long series of progressively gloomy prognoses. First, I'd just badly banged it. Then, after an x-ray, I'd broken it. No, you need to come back so we can have another look; oh, yeah: you've fractured AND broken it and may have to have surgery on it. You do need surgery on it and we may have to chip away a piece of your hip and graft it to your wrist. We need to do it tomorrow...
So, this is my pre-op snap where the surgeon has marked my wrist for surgery. It all went so smoothly and - once again - I came out of the whole experience with nothing but gratitude and respect for our NHS and the over-worked nurses there.
The reason I post this now is I've just watched a film that brought back a really intense emotional memory from when I was there. It was the middle of the night and I was heavily bandaged and my body was all over the place withdrawing from the anaesthetic.
I was asleep in that half-light there is in hospital wards. I was lost in the corridors of some huge mansion. Each door I opened led to an unfurnished room. I tried and I tried and I turned the handles of more doors and still there was just the vast echo of empty spaces.
Down the corridor stirred a breeze, air that moved and seemed to whisper from the cornices and mantle-pieces there. It gathered itself into some kind of rhythm and tone. Was that my name? Yes, yes it was my name and I followed the whispering of my name out into the corridor to the lifting of my eyelids and there was the most patient and tender gaze of the nurse by my hospital bed awakening me softly to ask to take my blood pressure.
It was such an intense emotion and memory. Rarely have I felt so cared for. Now, when I look at the scar on my wrist, that is where my mind goes.