I see it in your eyes; you'll be alright

Hospitals, eh? The only place on earth where you can go in feeling fine and come out feeling like death warmed up. And don't get me started on what the patients feel.

Okay, my friend whom we shall call T went in feeling nothing at all, due to a collision between his head and a steel cable, and now he doesn't really know how he feels, or where he is, or (quite possibly) who I am, but he can register your presence and respond to conversation with nods.

I ate with his parents in a canteen overlooking the hospital's helipad. I remarked that was presumably where T came in. His father explained that, actually, no, having built this superduper helipad they realised the updraft bouncing back up from the helicopter's downdraft would blow out the windows of the buildings surrounding it on three sides. The helicopter apparently had to put down in a field a mile away. But I must say, the helipad looks very smart.

I gave T a holding cross from Best Beloved to, well, hold, which he kept trying to eat. His mother thinks he thinks it's a biscuit. This makes me think I was recognised; I was associated with all the meals he's got off me over the years. When your only food for over a week has been liquid gunge squirted down your nose, you're probably in the mood for something a bit more solid. He kept tapping it on the table. I think he knows he's in the navy but he's got bogged down as to which century.

I've known him, or at least of him, since he was 9, though he once confessed his own memories of me only start at 14. Well, there's gratitude.

I'm lighthearted and flippant. Don't be fooled. I got the title for this post from Athlete's 'Wires'. I know, that one's about the singer's premature baby in an incubator, but I share the emotions.

There have been ups and downs but overall ups. Yesterday he came out of Intensive Care; he's now just Highly Dependent. Today he was out of bed for the first time since the bump. Tomorrow they may well take him around on a wheelchair. He tries to speak, and even though the tubes turn it into a very quiet whisper it sounds like it would make sense if you could hear it. He tries to pull the tubes out; I have to remind him that officers obey orders and the doctor says to leave them in.

My immediate friends reading this know who T is; I haven't dared mention it to my wider audience until today. But I see it in T's eyes; he'll be all right.