Damnation.

So I'm sitting, in the wee hours of Friday morning, in a lovely hospital triage waiting to be seen by the (friendly) nurse.

I know there'll be the questions, the temperature check, the blood pressure machine squeezy-thing and all the jazz. I'll manage some sort of polite smile and recount my day (and nights) exerts - the lack of solid food in me, the burning (and morbidly comforting) tang of bile in my mouth, my fingers tingling and that unstoppable shake (shake, shake, shake.)

Then I'll wait. And just wait. (Being me, my heads in my hands and I'm closingmy eyes, trying to think of distracting and nonsensical thoughts - penguins in a feild of daisies dancing the hokey pokey and subsitituting the words for the syllables of my name - just to cheer me up.)

But I can't imagine that forever. And so, in waiting (perhaps out of boredom or dehydration) I look around the shuffling, restless room. The sleepy faces, the frowning parents (that damned girl who can't stop crying and sniffling in her tissues.) The guy with some cuts on him. The pregnant woman who's just walked in. Her husband (and her) can't speak english all that well and he's struggling to tell the nurse what's going on. So he points at his wife and she knows straight away (clever lady, she knows.) So they go, walking past me, opening a few doors - shuffling away (to literally bring life into this world.)

I saw this - misery waiting for medicine, restless pain, impatient illness - and most importantly - however ill this may sound - I could not help but feel hopeful (about the next few days, the next few weeks, the next few years.) That unstable, queasy feeling (from the acid rising in my throat) was still there - but there was this - quiet resolution (gaining momentum in my mind).

I looked about and I felt awkwardly hopeful (that tommorow will be a new day, that I won't let myself be sick forever).