"Disorientated and Aggressive"

That is the paramedics’ comments from my hospital notes.

“Do you know where you are?” A question asked of me many times in the space of a couple of hours.

“In an ambulance” and “In a hospital” have been the answers.

This seemed to satisfy all concerned.

I’m also asked what year it is and the identity of our Prime Minister. For medical men I would expect them to be better informed.

After 48 hours I have eaten some truly dreadful food which has had the paradoxically reassuring effect of a school dinner, undergone a head CT, a load of neurological tests, some extensive monitoring of my heart and some blood work.

A boy in his early-twenties is admitted late at night and put in the bed next to me. His clothes are ripped and his face smashed. His mouth is so badly battered it looks as though he’s had some unsuccessful collagen and then had lip-stick applied by a clown. A ‘fight with his step-father’ he proudly informs staff with as much swagger as one can manage from a hospital bed.

I read from cover to cover the autobiography of the nasty guy who was in ‘Callan’ with Edward Woodward in the early eighties. My father used to let me stay up late to watch it. (This isn’t strictly true – he was just so drunk he’d forgotten I was there.) I come to the conclusion that said actor is ‘a cunt’ but there is nothing else to read.

I try and sleep. At three in the morning I hear the boy in the bed next to me quietly sobbing to himself.

The next morning, after further prodding, I am told I can go home, with instructions to return for an ECG. And to shower instead of bathe. And to avoid cooking with hot fat.

A friend of the boy – much the same age as him – comes to pick him up when they discharge him. His bravura was back in place and he thanked me for the cigarette I gave him that morning. God knows where he’s sleeping now.

I go to work the next day and almost instantly realise I shouldn’t have.

I can barely move. They don’t call it a ‘seizure’ for nothing. Everything hurts. My short-term memory is shot to shit and everything smells weird.

“It took four people to hold you down when it was happening. And you gave the paramedics hell. It was one of – well… No. THE most frightening thing I’ve ever seen” Informs a colleague who, unbeknownst to me, was on the same bus.

I have no memory of any of this, although am advised to get hold of the CCTV as it could prove to be a youTube sensation if I can also get hold of the audio of my comedy growling as it was happening.

On the up-side I always get a seat to myself on my bus home now. People seem wary of me for some reason.

It’s all been rather exciting to be honest, I think to myself as I get home late from work this evening after a night of pretending to be more important than I am in order to be wined and dined for free. The majority of the bumps, scrapes, cuts and bruises on my fists, knees and shins have all but healed and I’m feeling almost back to normal.

There is a letter from the Neurophysiology Department on the mat. No mention of results from the head CT, but they want me to go back in for an EEG.

Bugger.

At this rate, they may actually discover that I have a brain.