Next week, Cordwainer Smith! Terrific.
Wim came up to me as we were all leaving. “Did you say you hadn’t read The Dream Master?” he asked.
“That’s right,” I said.
“I could lend you that, if you don’t want to wait for it to come. If you like, I could meet you here with it on Saturday.”
So I’m meeting Wim in the library at half past eleven on Saturday for him to lend it to me.
Nobody who offers to lend me Zelazny could be as black as he’s been painted.
THURSDAY 10TH JANUARY 1980
In hospital, in bed, in traction, in terrible pain, excuse appalling handwriting. This had better help.
FRIDAY 11TH JANUARY 1980
I feel kidnapped. I came to the hospital yesterday morning for an outpatient appointment. The doctor, Dr. Abdul, looked at my x-rays for five minutes, poked at my leg for two minutes, and said I needed a week in traction. He told his assistant to make a date for it, found there was a bed available right now, telephoned Daniel and the school, and the next thing I knew here I was on the rack. It really feels like being on the rack. It’s hard to do anything. Writing is very hard. I’m doing it forwards, because backwards is just too difficult, even with all the practice I get. I keep pouring water on myself when I drink. Even reading is hard. My leg is held out on this thing, elevated on white metal bars, strapped in place, stretched agonisingly so it hurts like hell every second, and the rest of me is forced flat. I can hardly move at all. I have read all three books I had in my bag, one of them twice. (Clement’s Mission of Gravity.) I should have brought more, but I only had three because I know about hospital waiting times.
Pain, pain, more pain, and the indignity of bedpans. I have to press a button for a nurse when I want a drink or a bedpan, and sometimes they don’t come for ages, but if I count on that and call early, they seem to come right away. To add insult to injury there’s a television at the end of the ward. It’s unavoidable, and even more unbearable than usual as it’s constantly tuned to ITV, so there are adverts. I wonder if hell is like this? I’d definitely prefer lakes of sulphur and at least being able to swim about in them.
All the other patients have visitors between two and three, or six and seven, which are visiting hours. This is the second day I’ve watched them all troop in with flowers and grapes and odd expressions. I watch them compulsively, as well as I can watch anyone from this angle. I’m not expecting anyone, and indeed, I don’t get anyone. Daniel could come. It’s not all that far, and he knows I’m here. I don’t expect they’ll let him though.
I won’t be able to meet Wim tomorrow and he’ll think I didn’t show because I have heard bad things about him.
A woman at the end of the ward has started to scream, short staccato cutoff screams. They’re putting screens around her bed so the rest of us can’t see what they’re doing to her. This is definitely much worse than the way most people describe hell.
SATURDAY 12TH JANUARY 1980
Still on the rack.
Miss Carroll came in towards the end of visiting time last night with a pile of light paperbacks. They’re from the school library and therefore not ordinarily terribly exciting, but right now they seemed like manna. She couldn’t stay long. Nobody told her I was here, but when she hadn’t seen me she went to find out what had happened. She came as soon as she knew. I almost cried when she told me that. I had no idea how hard it is to blow my nose in this position. She promised to tell Greg where I was, and he can tell Wim and the others. She’s coming back tonight with more books.
Dear God, if you are there and care and can bless people, please bless Alison Carroll with your very best blessing.
She brought me three books by Piers Anthony, the first books in two different series. I think she chose them because they’re at the beginning of the alphabet and she was in a hurry. I hadn’t read them, because, frankly, they looked like crap. I’m beyond the stage of reading the whole library in alphabetical order, though I’m glad to have done it once. I’m enjoying these anyway. So far I’ve read Vicinity Cluster, and Chaining the Lady, and I’m about to start A Spell for Chameleon which is fantasy. I was right, they are crap really, but they hold my attention and don’t require all my brain, which when half of my brain is sending me messages like “Ow, Ow, Ow” or “Remove leg from rack soonest,” is actually an advantage. I had weird “hosts” universe dreams last night, about transferring into alien bodies. All of them had bad legs, though; even when I was in a ballerina’s body she had to dance with a walking stick. I suppose that was the pain coming through even when I was asleep. Last night I read myself to sleep and then they woke me up to give me a sleeping pill.