For whom it is reserved
The blackness, of darkness, forever"
- Portishead
So, I've had a heck of a 12 hours.
First I fell out of bed – it was inevitable, my bed is 8 feet off the ground, in a little loft. To be accurate, I fell off the top of the ladder up to my bed. And to give myself a bit of credit, I didn't actually fall – I jumped. The thing was, I was getting up for the loo, with some urgency, and wasn't actually awake yet. I stepped onto the ladder and in some quasi-dream reality I inhabited, I was already on the bottom step. Or perhaps the second to the bottom, sometimes I make that mistake, and hop off slightly early, and get a bit jarred. In this case, I hopped off seven feet early – and got body-slammed by the floor, full on my right side. That'll wake the neighbors up in the morning (2am, actually), eh? After laying there stunned for a bit, I began to feel myself up and didn't seem to find anything obviously smashed. I got up, went to the bathroom, and washed and bandaged an abraded elbow and finger.
Then I went back to bed . . . and lay there unable to sleep for 3 long hours, due to the discomfort in my upper right arm – specifically, my inability to move it in almost any direction with exquisite shooting pain. It didn't feel tender to the touch, but the pain and the lack of mobility made me fear the worst: a cracked humerus (upper arm bone). I hobbled back down the ladder one-handed – rather more likely to fall off than ever – put on some more clothes (I couldn't take off the top I had on), shod myself (and tying my laces was the most painful thing I've done in memory) and headed off into the night.
I can walk to my local casualty ward. How cool is that? Okay, perhaps not that cool.
I woke up the admitting nurse and checked myself in. Had the place to myself; and they still made me wait. Eventually a nice nurse asked some questions and put my arm in a sling. Not too long after that a nice bleary-eyed resident asked a couple of questions – then felt me up professionally. He first noted that a collision on that spot usually results in a broken clavicle. (Ouch!) But he then assured me that all the relevant bones seemed to be in place, and in the right number of pieces; and that I just had a muscle injury. Big relief. He gave me anti-imflammatory analgesics and sent me on my merry way. I was able to sleep for a couple of hours after that.
Little did I know the pain that was awaiting me on my arrival at work. The day before, I had sort of conspicuously slagged off Dan Brown by suggesting that his readers (all the countless millions of them, presumably) are illiterate (in an e-mail correspondence). Now, this is probably the case. But this morning checking my inbox, it suddenly was revealed to me that the person with whom I had been corresponding was Dan Brown's editor at Random House. No wonder I never get anywhere in the publishing industry. Oops.
In my dream, she came to me and told me my problem is that I want to be accepted but I don't want to give myself.
