worrying, that from now on it was all recovery; and that he will be all right. What he will be like physically at the end of this process still remains to be seen - the physiotherapist who saw him today said we could expect three months - three months! - in the rehab centre and then that he won’t have a normal gait (her word) at the end of it all. I think it is probably too early to predict. It seems that a lot of it depends upon how well his brain heals on its own. But yesterday for the first time I felt something very near to happiness. I felt that this will be all right in the end. It will be a weird feeling and a massive change of life, to spend the next three months more or less apart, with me here in London at the home I consider Robert’s more than mine, and him in hospital, in a hospital learning to walk again. The poor, poor thing. I look at him lying in bed asleep (the physiotherapy tires him out terribly) and wonder if he actually comprehends what he is in for. I hope the two of us can weather this. I’m convinced that if he can, I can. He’s snoring the tiniest bit, lying on his back stretched out to the length of the bed in blue shorts and a green shirt, his hair is soft and shiny and falling nicely. His body is wonderful. He could be at home asleep.
M Y DIARY : S UNDAY 13 A UGUST
It’s cooler today. Dr Click [
Whurr
] came by at twelve o’clock. I am making good progress with my speech, apparently, but I must remember to practise. Apparently, some stroke survivors can’t even swallow: it can take six months to get them able to do this. In the middle of the morning Ish [
Kazuo Ishiguro
] visited. It was very nice to see him. He was quite frisky and admitted he was relieved to find I was still myself. [
As a child, he’d known a relative who’d suffered a severe left-side stroke, and had bad memories of profound neurological trauma.
] The truth is that the visitor’s assumption of the patient’s incapacity runs deep. And not just the visitor’s, either. For example, there’s a Mr Kemal, one of several Arabs here, down the hall. The nurses order him around as if he was stone deaf and/or mentally retarded. ‘Come on, Mr Kemal. Do you want some lunch,
lunch?
LUNCH ? A bit of fish, a piece of
chicken
, CHICKEN ? Why do people become nurses, I wonder?
Even the good nurses have no idea how much they can hurt, how much hurt they can cause by wrenching my left arm, which is still totally paralysed and helpless, at the wrong moment. There’s one nurse who causes pain every day. She is loud, brash and infuriating. I think she must be insecure. But the others, Colette, Julia, Linda, the Scottish lady and Mamie the West Indian, are all great, and I have become very fond of them.
Hospital food: pâté and cold toast, chicken Kiev, soggy vegetables, chips, salads, summer pudding.
I realize now when I think about it that I was last in hospital when I was (I think) about ten years old. I remember the whole experience of the anaesthetic, the surgeon counting 1, 2, 3 … and the fading from consciousness, and the big children’s ward that I was in, allthose years ago in Reading, and then being at home, lying in bed watching black-and-white TV with my leg in plaster, and the real fear that I would never walk again. And now - strange irony - I can’t walk at all.
S ARAH’S DIARY : M ONDAY 14 A UGUST
We’re getting into a real routine - I come in in the morning, go to work [
at the
New York Times’
London bureau
] in the afternoon, and come back in the evening. Tonight we watched a video of our wedding for the first time together. When we got to Robert’s speech, he did something I had never really seen him do before - he started to cry. I had been trying so hard to get him to talk about how he feels. But now he’s starting to talk about it more, and what he says is quite astonishing and quite encouraging, that he feels philosophical and ruminative, and that he’s regarding the whole next phase of his
M Y DIARY : S UNDAY 13 A UGUST
It’s cooler today. Dr Click [
Whurr
] came by at twelve o’clock. I am making good progress with my speech, apparently, but I must remember to practise. Apparently, some stroke survivors can’t even swallow: it can take six months to get them able to do this. In the middle of the morning Ish [
Kazuo Ishiguro
] visited. It was very nice to see him. He was quite frisky and admitted he was relieved to find I was still myself. [
As a child, he’d known a relative who’d suffered a severe left-side stroke, and had bad memories of profound neurological trauma.
] The truth is that the visitor’s assumption of the patient’s incapacity runs deep. And not just the visitor’s, either. For example, there’s a Mr Kemal, one of several Arabs here, down the hall. The nurses order him around as if he was stone deaf and/or mentally retarded. ‘Come on, Mr Kemal. Do you want some lunch,
lunch?
LUNCH ? A bit of fish, a piece of
chicken
, CHICKEN ? Why do people become nurses, I wonder?
Even the good nurses have no idea how much they can hurt, how much hurt they can cause by wrenching my left arm, which is still totally paralysed and helpless, at the wrong moment. There’s one nurse who causes pain every day. She is loud, brash and infuriating. I think she must be insecure. But the others, Colette, Julia, Linda, the Scottish lady and Mamie the West Indian, are all great, and I have become very fond of them.
Hospital food: pâté and cold toast, chicken Kiev, soggy vegetables, chips, salads, summer pudding.
I realize now when I think about it that I was last in hospital when I was (I think) about ten years old. I remember the whole experience of the anaesthetic, the surgeon counting 1, 2, 3 … and the fading from consciousness, and the big children’s ward that I was in, allthose years ago in Reading, and then being at home, lying in bed watching black-and-white TV with my leg in plaster, and the real fear that I would never walk again. And now - strange irony - I can’t walk at all.
S ARAH’S DIARY : M ONDAY 14 A UGUST
We’re getting into a real routine - I come in in the morning, go to work [
at the
New York Times’
London bureau
] in the afternoon, and come back in the evening. Tonight we watched a video of our wedding for the first time together. When we got to Robert’s speech, he did something I had never really seen him do before - he started to cry. I had been trying so hard to get him to talk about how he feels. But now he’s starting to talk about it more, and what he says is quite astonishing and quite encouraging, that he feels philosophical and ruminative, and that he’s regarding the whole next phase of his
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