But First, I Shall Have Tea

12:23 PM
An eternity has passed.

12:24 PM
That is to say, three days have passed. And they were, as I predicted, an eternity long.

12:30 PM
Here's the bus to take me back to town and away from the hospital and my miserable roommate.

12:32 PM
She wasn't sorry to see me go. Ha, well, I saw the next woman they were wheeling in to take up my bedspace. My roommate will be screaming for me to come back.

12:37 PM
I hate buses. And people who bring their horrible little yappy dogs onto the bus with them.

12:38 PM
And the horrible little yappy dogs, for that matter. Why to people like tiny dogs that yip all the time? Cats are quiet and all they do is sleep and occasionally eat bits of furniture when they're not entertained properly.

12:38 and a few seconds PM
Oh my god, my cats. Who's been looking after them?! I've been in a coma for over four months; what will have happened to them? I can't believe I forgot about this.

12:38 PM
Well I didn't actually forget. I was indefinitely unconscious. But they won't understand. They're cats. All they understand is tuna and cuddling.

12:40 PM
Perhaps Macy took them home; she knew I had cats. She's looked after them for me before.

12:42 PM
Which brings up a whole new host of worries.

12:43 PM
This bus is taking forever.

12:50 PM
I'm going to gut that little dog.

1:54 PM
Here! My bus stop at last--only a few more minutes of walking and I can sort everything out...

2:00 PM
My rooms are empty. I have opened the door to room number 316, with my key, in my apartment building. I'm sure I'm in the right place, otherwise the key would not have worked. Which does not make sense. My rent was paid to the end of the year, and, if I'm not very much mistaken, the end of the year has not come. So where has my stuff gone? WHAT HAVE THEY DONE WITH MY CATS?

2:07 PM
I've cornered the landlord. We'll see what he has to say about this.
"What have you done with my things?" I hope that sounded outraged enough. That's right, cower in fear. This is going to take a lot of explanation on his part.
"Well, Ms. Evans...we, we thought you were dead, so we... canceled your claim on the apartment. It's been rented out to a nice young couple, they're moving in next week, actually..." I would have a heart attack right now, but it would mean that I'd have to go back to the hospital. "I am NOT dead. I paid for that apartment! You had no right to give it to someone else! What did you do with my cats?! My things?"

2:09 PM
He's gone and ducked behind the counter in the lobby. Probably a good move on his part, but I am not pleased. I shall just have to follow him.
"My cats?" No need for complete sentences now; I think I've tapped into the primeval form of communication. Few words, much emotion. In this case, rage. Ug make fire, Ug set you on fire!
My, he's having trouble getting his words out. "We sold them to the pound, Ms. Evans--but, but!" He's holding his hands out at me, which I hardly think will stop me--"We put all your stuff in storage until we could find the next of kin! It's all here, we have all of your things!"
"You cold slimy excuse for a human! That's like saying, 'I'm terribly sorry, but I've killed your children. But don't worry, I didn't break your furniture!' What pound?!" I cannot believe this. "When did you sell them?"

3:00PM
At the pound. This is the most depressing place I've ever been. Apparently my landlord dished out my cats for a dollar apiece and called it good. The pound people--and all of them look as if they need a good dose of either Zoloft or cyanide, depending on which would be kinder--are checking to see if they have any of my cats left.

3:02 PM
Two cats. Out of nine, there are two left: Zeppelin, who doesn't have enough intelligence to fill a quarter teaspoon, bless his heart (he's the one who got stuck in the lampshade whilst trying to catch a moth), and the others were shipped down south to a bigger pound.

4:26 PM
I have the landlord cornered again. He's nailed the gate to get behind the desk shut, and I confess I haven't the heart--no, literally, being over sixty really does weaken the old ticker--to haul myself over the counter to strangle him. I'll have to content myself with my vivid imagination and a list of demands that I will expect him to fulfill. And he WILL fulfill them.

4:30 PM
There are no other apartments available. What, one wonders, is the point of surviving an entire library collapsing in burning shambles on top of oneself just to get back and find out your apartment has been rented out and you have no where to live? Answer me that, you prick.

4:31 PM
He has no answer. Very well. I shall just have to move into the library. I haven't been back since I've been in the coma, but I know it's been patched up a bit. It's closed, though; I suppose they realized the futility of letting the place just be run by Macy. Although really, she does a better job than most people would; at least she's properly respectful of the books. Keeps them in line. Scares off people who want to check out books and leave gaping holes on the shelves. Scares of regular people, for that matter.

4:50 PM
The landlord kindly agreed to move all of my things to the library in his hauling van.

4:51 PM
After I threatened to slice him up into bits, put him through a meat grinder, and feed him to my two remaining cats, since I will be too poor to buy cat food for them. Young men like him need a bit of encouragement.

5:00 PM
Ahh, to be in the library at last, to return to my true calling! It's a mess in here. And did Mr. Landlord deign to stay and help the little old lady organize her belongings in the worker's lobby? I think not.

5:01 PM
I shall plot his demise from afar. I shall scheme devilish strategies to make his life a misery. I shall concoct a plan to make him rue the day he was born. No, rue the day that he was conceived! Rue the day his parents met one another! He shall be rueful for everything once I am done with him!

5:09 PM
But first, I shall have tea.

Three Days is an Eternity

2:09 PM
I hate hospitals.

2:15 PM
Loath them. Abhor them. Despise them. Deprecate. Detest, disdain, deride, disparage, disfavor.

2:17 PM
So many words. So little time. I wonder if anyone has noticed quite how many synonyms of 'hate' start with the letter 'D'? I bet you if I used a thesaurus I could have a much longer list.

2:20 PM
Hospitals, apparently, do not have thesauruses. Just cheeky little nurses padding about asking me if I need anything and then refusing to give me what I ask for.

2:22 PM
I think a thesaurus is a perfectly reasonable request. It's a shocking lack that this hospital doesn't even have the most rudimentary of libraries. One of the nurses had to lend me her own personal copy of a book to occupy the dry, empty hours with.

3:00 PM
On top of everything else, the doctor is coming in a few minutes to "check up" on me. There's nothing to check. I am not dead; I've gotten quite good at not being dead, thank-you-so-very much, so if you please I think it's time to be discharged now.

3:07 PM
Here he is now.
"Miss Evans, how are we feeling today?" If there was a true and just god, He would have smote this nitwit where he stands on the basis that he's speaking to me as if I were three years old.
"I don't know how we are feeling today. I'm perfectly well, but I hope you're having a horrible day." That was a partial lie; I feel like I've been steamrollered to the bed. Everything else was true, though.
He's smiling at me. Humoring the spunky little old lady. "We do sound rather more robust than normal, don't we?" Smarmy, rich little twit.
"When are you going to discharge me?" Perhaps if I'm brisk and efficient with him, he'll stop using 'we' as his direct object and resort to being correct in his speech and say 'you.'
No such luck, he's gone off on a dumbed-down lecture of what a 'coma' is and why 'we' can't expect 'us' to recover in only a few short weeks... Why does he have to make recovering a group activity? Is this supposed to build my morale?

3:20 PM
If he keeps going on like this I'll darn well give him something to recover from.

3:34 PM
Better news than I expected; I must endure only three more days of being here, and then I'm free to go home.

3:36 PM
Three; a symbolic number. Everything comes in threes in stories. Except Noah's Arc, where groups of three would have been awkward and extraneous.

3:40 PM
I do get tired easily, but I think it might be a survival mechanism; all these white, surgical walls and the ugly, puce green and pink furniture are encroaching on me, and I'm hooked up to so many IVs that I certainly can't make a break for it; so my body shuts down in pure self preservation.

12:13 AM
And it wakes back up at the most cursed inconvenient times; nothing good is on television at this time of night and I've only got one book--Pride and Prejudice--and I've read it four times already since I woke up from my coma.

12:15 AM
I'm getting a bit prejudiced against it.

12:17 AM
Hahahaha.

1:30 AM
One would think that at my age, sleeping wouldn't be difficult. After all, isn't that one of the things old people are famous for doing? Sleeping? Falling into peaceful dozes not only at night but also in the early afternoon?

1:32 AM
Clearly such peace and tranquility is not for the likes of me. However, I have just figured out how to adjust the bed with the little automagical button. It can make the bed sit up...like so...and then lie flat...like so...

1:40 AM
This is more fun than I think I'd normally find it. I shall stop now before my roommate wakes up and howls for the nurses to complain about me. She is a most unforgiving sick person; I can't move for having her complain that I'm bothering her in some obscure fashion.

1:42 AM
Pitched an absolute fit when she overheard me asking a nurse if I could keep my cats in the room with me.

1:50 AM
In here, three days is going to be an eternity.