Eric Ogilvy had plenty of time to think. He couldn’t go anywhere. He had driven his car under the tray of a truck and had been in a coma for some days aferwards. Weeks later, he was mending slowly and looking forward to the day when he could leave hospital. He had always been a keen reader but reading now gave him a headache. His wife had hired a television set to keep him amused. It didn’t. Television was banal and its dramas highly predictable. Predictable to him anyway and, at home, this had been a source of annoyance to his wife because he could never resist telling her what would happen next. That he was always right only made things worse. He might have found some interest in watching the changing scene outside except that the hospital was old and its windows were set high. When looking up through them, he could only see the underside of the eaves. Even a patch of sky with some passing clouds would have been welcome. For the moment, he was a prisoner waiting for visitors to come and, when they came, waiting and praying for them to leave. The hospital drugs sometimes clouded his thinking but and other times it could range free and remember. There was nothing else to do.
It was mostly books that he remembered. He had been a keen reader from an early age and loved books. His parents had set the lead in this. Although neither had attended high school, books had flowed through their house at flood. The classics of English literature, the best of the current best- sellers, and masses of non-fiction. Quality had been very important to them. They were well read and by this means well educated. And much of the flow he had read himself.
But, making concession to his age, his parents had let him take a weekly boys’ paper ‘Adventures’ feeling that it could do no harm. It was a cornucopia of formula stories all of which he had followed avidly. The professional football team, the Tilford Tigers, had been his favourite. They had a tame tiger as mascot and their captain, Frank Fulton, had solved personal problems for players who then invariably scored the winning points on Saturday. Their Australian aboriginal goalkeeper was called Johnny Dreamtime. Eric had followed their fortunes from the bottom of the Third Division through the Second Division to the First and a victorious Cup Final at Wembly. There was Ironfist Ericson, test pilot, boxer, and all-round athlete who always won against near-impossible odds. There were the public school antics of Bramwell Topp, known as Copper Topp, and his sidekick ‘Swannie’ Rivers. Camshaft Corbett youthful racing car designer and driver who was forever thwarting the evil machinations of rival teams. And not to be forgotten was the was the boy detective and genius Wilton Pride. Pride’s cases generally involved such cliché characters as dock-land thugs, elderly and irrascible rich recluses, and inscrutable Chinese. The hiding places of unseen watchers yielded apple skins pealed by left-handed men and cigarette butts that had not been dampened by a recent shower. Every week, for years on end, the creators of these characters had managed to churn out a new and exciting adventure. The fecundity of their imaginations was simply amazing.
Some books stood out. One of these had been lent to him at University by his then-current flame Janice Pickering. It had impressed her by its apparent insight. The writer was a German philosopher whose name Eric had long since forgotten. This man contended that nothing actually existed outside our range of immediate apprehension. It seemed that if we saw someone walking down the street, they existed only because we could see them. Once they turned a corner, they ceased to exist because there was nothingness beyond that corner. Nothingness until we ourselves turned that same corner and the new vista became a temporary part of reality. Reality and dreams, he claimed, were essentially the same thing although he was at some pains to insist that reality was not an illusion. At the time, Eric had wondered why this man would undertake the labour of writing a book for readers who did not actually exist and had felt that it surely put the honesty of the man’s belief in question. But some very learned men took him seriously, it would be difficult to prove his contentions wrong, and the book had been required reading for the course that Janice was taking.
Eric still found these ideas intriguing but implausable. How could everyone have their own private reality? That would surely sow the seeds of chaos. He could see disagreement over the weather for a start. There could only be one reality and, if it had to be created, his ego insisted that it must be by him. He was not prepared to be the figment of someone else’s imagination. So then, all those copies of ‘Adventures’ and every one of their stories had to be of his own imagining. He might as well add the whole field of literature and all of history while he was at it. It was a nice idea but he could see a major flaw.
“I surely wouldn’t have imagined the accident and imagined myself in here.” He smiled at the very idea of it. “This is just not my scene.”
It was all foolishness. Quite clearly, the world of wakefulness was far different from that of dreams. The wakeful world had a consistency and logic about it. Not so dreams. It was hard to make sense of them when you retold them to someone else. Dreams were impressionistic. The scenery changed at whim and they definitely consisted of what you could see with nothing around the corner. Detail and colour existed only when it was necessary for them to do so.
That had been brought home to him the previous afternoon. He had dozed off to find himself flying to a distant workplace in a car that he had once owned. When his will-power could no longer keep it aloft, he had come down in an unexpected town, a town that somehow managed to exist outside the awareness of even its immediate neighbours, its own inhabitants also unaware of their disconnection from the world.
In this place, he was now a teenager and on foot but these had been the least of his worries. He had needed to find a toilet urgently. He could not hold on much longer. The obvious solution of asking for directions had not been allowed to occur to him. He had ducked into a quiet alley but as soon as he began to unzip a group of people had appeared as if from nowhere, leaned against a wall, and showed no inclination to move on. Variations of this frustrating scenario had occurred in a series of alleys but eventually the dream had appeared to relent and had delivered the usual uninviting edifice provided by civic authorities. It was a bleak concrete building inviting the custom of ‘LADIES’ at one end and another sign saying ‘MEN’ at the other. The difference between outside and inside could be possible nowhere but in dreams. He had found himself in a large white-tiled passage with a high vaulted ceiling and chandeliers reminiscent of the Moscow Underground. A urinal formed part of the right-hand wall and a line of several dozen cubicles made up the other.
His troubles were not over. The passage was a much-used thoroughfare with large numbers of men, women, and children strolling on both directions. There were several men using the urinal apparently without embarrassment and the women passing by seemed entirely uninterested but it would not do for him. Even in dreams his modesty was too ingrained. He had ducked into one of the cubicles.
Again, the outside belied the inside. The cubicle was as large as a large drawing room. In fact, it was a drawing room. There were extensive areas of glass on two sides, carpets, plush curtains, and a scattering of tables at which middle-aged women were playing Bridge. They ignored his presence.
But it was a toilet. The toilet pan stood unashamedly in the middle of the room, on a plinth, and it was unoccupied. Not that that helped. Not while there was a possible audience and it seemed that he would always find an audience. No matter how desperate his need became, his modesty was never going to allow him relief. It was then that he had woken to find that his pressing need was also present in real life. The dream had seemed so real while it was happening but could it be argued that it formed part of reality?
It was while he was mulling over this that his wife arrived. Visiting hours in the ward were flexible. When he first come out of the coma, he had had many visitors. Mostly from his lodge and very supportive but their numbers had gradually dwindled and those who did come seemed to have less and less to say as time went by. It was almost as though nothing of note was happening out in the world now that he was here. True, he himself had very little to add to any conversation and was not always entirely with them but that was only to be expected. Perhaps that was why they now seemed to have given him up. Just lately, his wife and their grandchildren, John and Lucy, had been his only visitors. Their daughter Joanne had a short time previously been through an acrimonious divorce and, after a bitter court battle, had gained custody of the children. But Joanne was now in a home suffering from a breakdown. They had undertaken to care for the children. Their greatest fear was that the exhusband would hear of the situation and re-apply for custody.
Today his wife was alone.
“Where are the kids?” he asked
“What kids?”His wife looked at him blankly.
“John and Lucy.”
“Who?” She looked, if it were possible, more blank.
“Our grandchildren or have you forgotten? Joanne’s two.” He was in no mood for a game.
“Joanne? And who might Joanne be?” She seemed to be genuinely perplexed.
“Our daughter of course. Who else would I be talking about?” She was immediately all concern.
“My poor sweetheart. We don’t have a daughter. We don’t have any children. You know that….You
DO, don’t you?”
He did not deign to give that an answer. She was treating him like an idiot. It was true that his mind had had the odd lapses but this was ridiculous and insulting. Fancy expecting him to believe that. She must think he was really off his nut. A hostile and embarrassing silence had developed between them, mostly of his making, and she had appeared glad to leave.
She did not come the next day nor the day after and Eric asked one of the nurses attending him if she could contact his wife and find out what the problem was. A simple enough request but it seemed to disconcert her. She promised to do what she could but it was almost as if he was asking for something impossible and that the promise was merely designed to keep him happy.
Originally, he had been in a ward with five other men and had grown to like it. There was always something going on. But he had woken one morning some weeks back to find himself in a two-bed ward. They had shifted him overnight and would give no proper explanation. That seemed to be standard procedure in this hospital. They told you nothing. Over the following weeks, he had grown quite friendly with Rex in the other bed. Rex, although terminally ill, had accepted his fate and could even joke about it. They had got on well together.
Then one morning, he had found himself alone in a private room. It appeared that Rex must have died and that he, Eric, had been moved out to make things easier for him. He had enquired after Rex of this same nurse and had been met with a blank stare. When he had been insistent, she had blandly assured him, as if to a stupid child, that there had been no Rex. How could there be? This was single-bed room, wasn’t it? The same one that he’d been in since his accident. He must have imagined this person Rex but not to worry his head over it. He was coming along nicely. Like his wife, she clearly took him for an idiot.
The days continued to pass with no sign of his wife. He was constantly assured that she was being contacted but it was quite evident that they were doing nothing. There were no other visitors. The days stretched long and gray. In desperation, he tried to fill his waking hours with television. It proved to be worse than ever, a succession of re-runs. He could recite the dialogue along with the actors. But then, one day the set produced only snow. Again the staff made promises and did nothing. Each day became exactly like the one before with its unchanging hospital routine.
Doctor’s visits now took on a great importance but these suddenly stopped without explanation. What was going on? He was sure that he must be now well enough to get up to shower or go to the toilet, to meet other patients. He needed contact with others, mental stimulation. But it was not to be and, as usual, nobody would tell him why. Meals and cups of tea became the high points of his day and his opiates something eagerly looked forward to. An errant blowfly, that found its way into the room and buzzed about importantly, now provided a welcome diversion. Anything to fill the blank spaces.
Gradually, he began to accept that his head injuries must have affected his mental probity. He was no longer sure just how long he had been there. The hospital staff began to look increasingly alike and even to sound alike. Finally, there seemed to be just the one nurse who doubled as the tea lady. She was an older woman, a little gone to seed, and much less authoritarian than the norm. The nurse would be on duty throughout the day and yet if he should ring for a bedpan or bottle in the middle of the night she would be the one who appeared. That was clearly impossible. There was a world outside the hospital walls and even hospital staff must have family, loved ones, and a private life on the outside. This nurse, however, appears to have none of these. From necessity, his own world for the moment consisted of just one room. Hers’ appeared to be just as circumscribed. Surely his eyes were deceiving him. Either that or his imagination was playing him false.
“Which one are you?” he began to ask whenever she appeared but, apart from an indulgant smile, he could get no answer. In fact, it became difficult to get any response from her. There came to be less and less interaction between them. In the end, he began to have a strong suspicion that she was not human, an automaton, a humanoid nursing robot.
But even under these circumstances, he was better off than he knew. The day arrived when she did not appear in spite of his constant ringing. Finally, it became clear that he would have to shift for himself. It needed a herculean effort just to get out of bed and he leaned for some time on the bed-end feeling weak and dizzy. It was sheer will-power that took him to the door.
She could not answer his call and neither could anyone else. His universe, once boundless, had been shrinking toward non-existence and reality had folded in on itself to become one room, two people, and some simulated hospital noise. And now at last she too was gone. That left just Eric and the confines of the room. Beyond the door there was nothing at all.