and you folks know how flighty and fickle that item can be. Inadvertently, I stroked a wee bit of nitro into my right eye. Instant manic pain! I gave out an animal screech and fell over backward! The boss came a – runnin’! And escorted me out of the mine and back to surface.
At first telling, the big boss man refused to believe my story but I tell you true, the pain was excruciating and overriding any booze and drugs I may have had in my system at the time. It was a sorely distressful experience and occurrence. I was sent home.
The top of the following day and braced by a pint of low – cost whiskey, I told the man, in bold and fearless tones, that I would not be going underground that gloomy morning. For strange and unspoken reasons, he was still not convinced I wasn’t a treacherous and lying dog. The bastard. But the boss men brought their heads together and came up with the brilliant idea of giving me a broom to work with and that plan and purpose went over real well with me.
I was to keep the dry clean. The dry was the area on surface where the miners went to shower and change before and after each shift.
Puttered and muttered for an hour. Then I yelled out, “fuck it!” flung the broom into an open corner and went reeling off in the direction of the camp and the cook and the bottle of excellent vodka he owed me.
As I was leaving the cookhouse, stinko and shot, the safety man came along in his ranger – scout and tried to persuade me of the prudence of catching a ride into town with him, to see a doctor. I refused. I said no.
As it was, a searing ailment and misery was smashing and crashing and tearing thru my head and I would have shouted solemn testimony, of how a large and homicidal black rat was inside my head, chewing its way past the convolutions of the cerebral cortex, into the cerebral hemisphere, thru the thalamus, on its merry and merciless way via the cerebellum, towards the midbrain and there to establish residency, the result of which would have made me a vegetable for the rest of my harrowing life. I felt it easily possible for my right eye to explode, ‘blam!’ red and purple and blue veins and blood, ‘splat!’ directly onto the safetyman’s white shirt.
I was having trouble maintaining. I was teetering and teetering and having difficulty balancing and I nearly fell on my face. I waved my ½ empty bottle of vodka back and forth and up and down and gurgled and gagged and explained about having my own doctor, right then and there, in that bottle. “Not to worry about this freewheelin’, good – timin’ young man, thank – you very much.”
All is well.
G.B.T.
Stanton – The Party.
So much for bad foolishness. The morning after found me in Stanton Y.K. Hospital. There I was, perched high atop one of those stainless and sterile tables, like a prize and curious bird, while the good doctor was on the move, frantic and fraught and quite possibly wired. The man was fast enough to have passed as a strange mixture of speed and steroids. Not my problem.
Somehow, the man was able and managed to dispense a fair sized dollop of fiery anesthetic into my right eye. Immediate relief! I could breathe again and that confrontation was over. Then the silly bugger took to ranting and raving on about how 5 yrs. ago it was common for people suffering the same affliction to go blind and I should be more careful down in the mine and I was a fool for drinking so much and I had best change my ways. ‘Wonderful advice,’ thought I
See, I may have appeared a bit coarse, for wearing shiny blue jeans and having a 3-day beard and reeking of stale booze. Still half – lit as a matter of fact and looking like the ace of spades. So, the boorish little fellow hadn’t much use for me but that also was not my problem.
Anyway, I nodded indifferently. Hell, I believed but for the most part I largely ignored his tirade and instead could only wonder why the people in control of potions, the magical kinds which take the pain away, didn’t stock and sell them in large bottles, in the government liquor store, directly next to the rye whiskey. Those specific and special remedies and restorations sure would come in handy, those mornings I’d come awake beetle – eyed and bleary. Five days convalescence.
Hospitals are places of reverence to me and stations of respect. Even back in ’76, I had been thru enough of them to regard them with thoughtful appreciation. Broken bones and stitches mainly, a brief and hostile spell or 2 brought on by alcohol poisoning, once or twice a trumped – up case of pure loneliness, now and then an unpleasant vehicular accident, which had necessitated an uncomfortable operation, every 5 yrs. or so, all in all, a spectacular and sensational list of injuries. Today my face bears an uncanny resemblance to a baseball that has been whacked over the wall too many times. Today my mug will put a big man off or at least give him reason to pause and think before trying and testing me.
When you are down and out and walking the streets of a deserted city, a sojourn in a hospital isn’t such a bad notion. I would suggest and endorse and recommend the concept. As long as a man isn’t truly sick, an intermittent stay in a hospital is usually therapeutic and curative. To release the fears… to collect yourself. Hospitals care and take care of you. The idea of a pleasant intermission, during an angry flight and safari is always welcome. A hospital won’t intentionally harm you, you have no worldly cares, if you lay back and let them go, watch T.V., cut - up with the other patients and get stoned every 4 hrs. on good dope.
Also, when I have been gravely ill and knackered, the law couldn’t touch me, as I have always known and appreciated full well. Times were, when I was laid – up and ailing and it was all I could do to raise a weak and detractive smile at a lawman and maybe give the chump a feeble wave, as he was leaving my semi - private room. Which is a frustrating and bitter pill for any copper to have to swallow. An opportune sanctuary, such as a hospital has to offer, is hard to come by and other than the indisposed people who often inhabit such places and tended to bother me some, I am always prepared to do a short stay in a hospital. When I need to think and find my place on this pretty planet once more. To release my demons…
Stanton nurses were ladies so fine. Special. Unique. Closer to God. Yes.
Except for Dietrich. Dietrich was the head nurse in ’76, in Stanton Y.K. Hospital. She was the boss. She had a head on her like a bastard pig and she was hard to look at. No comedy in her world. Dietrich had a homely face and deep and timeless eyes and I easily pictured her in ’42, in charge of one of those special camps, chief of experimentation and comfortable in her chosen profession.
Dietrich had brass balls in ’76. Her shift was a well – oiled machine, with every move called and calculated and no faults or slips. Her nurses were on strings and she was the master puppeteer. On her tour of duty, no one dared die without her permission. Dietrich was some kind of horrible authority and absolutely necessary to Stanton Y.K. Hospital, in 1976.
Dietrich hated me. Which was largely due to the fact, as mentioned, when I did check into her hospital, I was real close to being an authentic crackers and crazy person. Because of my rough and unrefined condition and introduction into her methodical world, she seemed to be forever casting a suspicious eye in my direction.
When I was admitted to Stanton, half – smashed, I could tell, straight off, Dietrich had wished for nothing finer, than for her to have been allowed to run a full – scale research examination over my entire body and in my own amoral way, I too would have enjoyed an odd and unusual session with her. Like…
Strip her down, naked, except for her white cap, her white nylons and her white shoes. Bind her securely and facedown on a white sheet, on a white bed, in a white room. Then, go at her with a length of studded white leather belt and administer a sound and solid drubbing about her ribs and shoulders. Lambaste and pummel her into submission. She could have taken it. She
