More than fifty years ago while studying as an exchange student at a French university, I suffered a serious head injury in a motorcycle accident. After a long time being sedated to quell my brain swelling, I awoke at night in “Salle 18” or ward eighteen. More than a month later I was allowed to leave my place in Deez-Wheat.

This old 19th century’s hospital’s salles were separated by ceiling-tracked sheets. The children’s ward was just down the way. Deez-Wheat had been a ward for consumption patients for many, many decades before sulfa drugs eliminated that deadly scourge.

Life on the wards varied but the cure rate and the hospital’s overall discharge rate exceeded 95+%. My ward’s rates were lower. Those who stayed to convalesce more than a week might sit quietly in rocking chairs all day with only their thoughts for company because nurses and orderlies discouraged conversation and noise.

How did I know Salle 18 had treated TB patients long ago?
A faded “spitting prohibited” warning notice was on the wall.

When you are forced to remain in a place like that for weeks on end with no discernable improvement or progress towards being discharged and with many other patients coming and leaving, you seem to be lost to all the world. I was warned by one older, gravelly voiced Salle 18 patient in coarse French to avoid feeling that I belonged to the place. His reasoning made sense: since half a world away from family with loved ones no longer seeming to care, you could easily fall into the trap to feel a close kinship and sympathy with all the lonely shadows among whom you dwelled.

These are a few of the memories I have upon awakening from my fortnight long, drug stupor with a huge headache in what passed for an ICU at the end of a big hall.

One last note: in-patient physical and occupational therapy was still way off in the future. That coupled with my enforced bed rest is why I had my fall.

– Marlow

—————-

French hospital ward bed in a former TB sanitarium

Hell, where am I?
What is this darkness?
Hell, where am I?
I’ve been here for how long?
When, if ever, am I ever gonna go home?

They told me I was gone for fourteen days
I coulda been gone for more
Out of it in intensive care Salle 18
Lyin’ still under dirty sheets
I was gone for all those days
But I, was not all alone
I made friends with a few people
In Salle 18’s deathly danger zone

In my dreams did a lonely life unfold
I saw it repeat every day
Saw it until my mind almost did explode
Since I felt so far gone away

Faded Polaroid shows I lost a lot of weight there
And I, I’m sure I needed some rest
Sleeping didn’t come very easy
With folks a-moaning and tubes sticking outta their chests
Shoulda heard those down the way Salle 16 children
Some just a few years old
Crying for their mommas and just one of their play things
Especially the ones the orderlies stole

Saw many lonely lives unfold
I saw and heard it every day
Saw a few whose lives did implode
When they could take no more loneliness and pain

I wanted to get out of there
I wanted to get out of there
I had to get outta of there
I had to get outta of there
They din’t let me out of there
They din’t let me out of there

Missed that year’s Thanksgiving
Don’t recall much about Christmas or New Years, too
Those pills sure were powerful
Made my darkness complete allowing no sun of life to show through

Saw many lonely lives unfold
I saw and heard it every day
Saw a few whose lives did implode
When they could take no more loneliness and pain

It was time to go they said
Donned my cap and got my long coat still blood-stained red
Then I, I ran towards the exit hall
I felt myself stumbling
And onto Salle 18’s floor I did fall
I guess I couldn’t yet walk
Said to myself this is very bad
All I could do was listen to the French nurses talk
Heard orderlies comin’ for me
It wasn’t my time to be set free

So, my lonely Salle 18 life once more did unfold
Just wanted them to leave me alone
I didn’t want to be there
Didn’t want them to poke, prod or touch me
Didn’t want my lonely mind to explode

​Copyright © 2019 From My Isle Seat