How To Do Stuff Well

21. How to Get Well

Annabella's in hospital. She was feeling very sorry for herself but she's a bit better now, thank you very much. She had an operation that hadn't hurt at the time but was now making her head hurt like buggery. It's terrible that things like that happen to people, but what can you do? Sends her good wishes? Ha – the only thing that's going to help poor Annabella right now is a morphine drip and complete bed rest.

She fell down and hit her head on something very sharp, you see. By fell down I mean that she fell down the front of a building from the second-floor balcony. And by hit her head, I mean that the railing went into her cheek and out of her posterior fontanelle and on the way through it shoved aside some very important soft stuff. But look on the bright side, it didn't rip her head right off her neck, and she doesn't seem any worse off from the experience. Apart from having a nagging headache that even the morphine can't touch. Oh, and she also feels like crying most of the time.

Pulling her off the railing would have been a tad dangerous, what with it going through her brain and all of that, so they didn't do that. The medics shot her full of happy juice, strapped her to a cunningly slanted board that kept her stable while the firemen sawed off the piece of railing that had impaled her skull. They did a really good job of it actually.

Then, at the hospital, came the tricky bit. The best brain surgeon in the hospital – a nice old gentleman call Mr. Walsh – came in on his day off and got the railing out. At the most prosaic level, it involved pulling the thumb out of the pie without too much of the plum-filling coming out too. On a more eloquent level, it was a, rather delicate, fifteen-hour operation that involved periods where Annabella had to be fully awake and chatting to the surgeon as they were sliding the metal shaft carefully out to make sure that the mechanics of it didn't destroy more brain tissue than it already had.

Then there came the recovery. Annabella's cool with it all actually. She'd always believed in insurance and so had got herself a really good health care policy that paid for the best treatment and rehabilitation money could buy. Plus, I sent her a super-nice card that said 'Get Well Soon' on the front in a pretty nice font. The flowers (on the card) were really nice too. Cost me a couple of quid that card did so I hope she appreciated it.

I hope she gets well soon. I'm missing her cooking. Beans on toast is fine but it loses its zing after a while. Similarly jacket potatoes, no matter how much butter you put on them.

Right, got to go now, there's a really good documentary on BBC Two that starts ... now actua