The Stone Bee
an excerpt

When I first arrived here I thought it was so quiet. The quietest place on earth, a place of death, illness, decay. But now, now it is a whirring blurring place, humming and thrumming and strumming with machines and people. It doesn’t carry death through its corridors, this place, it carries life, pumping it through the arteries, seeping it into veins.

It gives me hope, lets me think that maybe one day I too will be alive. I too will have that chance, that opportunity to sip from the cup of vitality. I can hear life outside, hear it passing me by.

I hear everything.

I know the names of all the doctors and nurses on the station just beyond the limits of my room. I know exactly what diseases the patients on the corridor have, what surgeries they have to undergo, the pain medication they need, the demands they make on the staff.

I have to say, all I wish is that I knew more about the doctors and nurses. I hardly ever hear about them. It’s not like “ER” at all. Human interest, that’s what I need. I want to know what’s happening in the world, too. Occasionally, late at night, when it gets very quiet because people are sleeping and there are no visitors, I catch the occasional snatch of TV, late night news or something, from the waiting room where the television must blare out to nobody long into the night. What I wouldn’t give to be able to walk out and collect the news from that television, gather it up like a mother and child.

I found out how long I’ve been here, the other day. They brought round a group of student doctors, started telling them about me. I don’t like the fact that I’m some sort of scientific curiosity, don’t like the feeling of people I don’t know staring at me, analysing my body for a sign that I’m in here. Which I am, obviously.

The doctor who usually comes in, she must have been leading them because she picked up the chart and started handing it round, I could hear the clicks as the chart passed from hand to hand and bounced from clipboard to clipboard before eventually being returned to the end of the bed with a definitive crash.

You’d think they’d be more respectful in the room of a coma patient.