By Johnny Sandelson
I’m now in my hospital pyjamas, mauve and nylon, held up by an elastic cord. These are so aesthetically appalling that for the first few days of my stay I refused to wear them. I stayed dressed in my jeans and t-shirt, ready to leave at a moments notice. I sat perched for exit on the side of my squeaky plastic mattress.
Each day, the cleaners would arrive, and deposit a new set of PJs, and look disappointedly at the empty laundry bin. The mounting pile of mauve nylon represented a physical marker of my internship, these were to become my ‘lines on the wall.’
To remind you, I’m not unwell. I have normal and regular readings of my temperature, blood pressure and pulse readingstaken thoughout the day. However, I also have my daily swab tests informing me that I retain some traces of this virus somewhere in my body. A healthy middle-aged body might retain these little organisms for up to forty days. After the daily appointment with the ward doctor, and I promise you that this is true, I was prescribed my usual jug of warm water.
Charles, my roommate, is a man who would look good in anything. I imagine he could model an M&S menswear catalogue and not look terrible. So, when I moved in with him, and remember he has been here a week longer than me, and he is standing tall in mauve, I accept the attire of this ‘old timer.’
I look out onto ‘The core’, the ward’s bureaucratic heart. There are about fifteen desks, and screens, and at various times between five and fifteen nurses and doctors. Occasionally they are joined by the utility guys laundry/ bins/food trolley, and very occasionally some business administrators.
They all wear blue trousers, white t- shirts, goggles and masks. When they visit, they dress up in their special outfits, but for now they are just highly professional world class medics in their calm workspace.
Imagine this then, in front of this highly orchestrated, gold standard group of medical workers , in a pristine white sanitised hospital workspace, they all pause abruptly as they hear a noise.They see this tall, slightly obese, unkempt, unravelled, unshaven middle-aged Caucasian man in his mauve nylon pjs, banging on the glass of his cell 31a.
I remind myself of a scene in The Graduate, where a young Dustin Hoffman is banging on the glass, two arms outreached and in desperation and anguish he demands that the congregation hears him......
How did it get to this, what led to this my breaking point?
Well, it’s Day 8 of my enforced captivity. Earlier today as my tests came back on rote as ‘Covid-19 positive’, and as you know this guarantees me at least another 48 hours of my stay. We used to receive that news at night, now we get it in the morning. It makes for a bad start to the day. This dose of bad news must have contributed to my state of mind.
Ever since my arrival, I’ve been trying to get supplies into the hospital. Bernd, a kind manager at Raffles hotel, assembled some provisions for me, but this was rejected by the ground floor Reception on two occasions last week. The Ministry of Health is naturally concerned about a contaminate invading the cleanest, most disinfected building in Asia.
After long, tortuous negotiations with the nurses and sisters, it was agreed that this particular set of circumstances was unprecedented. They recognised that their Modus Operandi hadn’t been designed for entirely healthy Western patients to be shut up for weeks on end. They were prepared to allow ‘a single delivery’. I understood that this flexibility is rare, I was suitably grateful, culturally it’s unusual for such “flex” to appear in their rulebook.
So I’m elated and uplifted that on Sunday the medical authorities gave me the green light for this special delivery. It was a sign to me that I still possessed my negotiating skills to finesse events, that I wasn’t just a barcode and number on my wrist band, but I still possessed methods to shape my world.
Yet if I’m honest, and for all the chat, it was quite a humble achievement, I was to be allowed my package which included TCMF. For those of you in the hotel trade you’ll know this to be Tea and Coffee Making Facilities. I was raiding the dry section of their minibar. Basically, the Nespresso machine, a kettle, tea bags, capsules, and because of my particular manner, I requested tea cups and saucers. Finally, for reasons of science, not vanity ,we requested a hairdryer, more on that in the next episode.
I have had enough of cardboard cups. For those of you who don’t know I am chairman of a company called Thomas Goode & Co.
This company has been making fine teacups, amongst other tableware, for almost 200 years , we have been graced by Royal Warrants since Queen Victoria started purchasing Bone China from us in the 1850s. We manufacture in Stoke on Trent, and sell our wares to all parts of the world. To provide geographical relevance, where there is Covid-19, there are likely to be Thomas Goode teacups.
Anyway, mostly because I religiously start every day with a cup of tea in the morning, I requested crockery to avoid any more cardboard cups.
I also wanted some dignity. I could suffer the nylon, the strip lighting, but allow me a few luxuries to comfort me through this ordeal. Grace me with these items, and it’ll help me believe that I’m more than just a number. (Case number 154 Singapore Ministry of Health - if you’re bored, Google it).
So when they granted me this green light for delivery of my provisions, I was ecstatic. You now understand that for me It was more than the receipt of these few items, it was a sense of being ‘of humanity’. It was affirmation of my skills of persuasion to make the authorities relax their rules.
It also involved caressing the relationship with Raffles hotel management. In order not to exhaust the goodwill of Bernd, my friendly German-born manager at Raffles, I had to keep encouraging him to keep the faith, to make him believe that this delivery, which had now been twice rejected by the Ministry of Health, and involved the complicated logistical nightmare of a hotel car travelling across town.
I could tell on the phone that he was keen to help, but I could also tell by his Frankfurt upbringing that he was increasingly reluctant to test any authority guidelines.
incidentally from the perspective of his limousine driver, this journey to the dark lobby of the Hospital of Infectious Diseases, must be a courier request from hell.
Finally, it involved the nurses form Ward 7e getting a call from the lobby of the hospital, then sending down busy staff to collect my goods.
So my breaking point came through a mid-afternoon text message from Raffles, ‘I’m affraid Mr Sandelson that the goods have yet again returned to the hotel, I’m afraid nobody was aware of them.’
That is when my facade of polite, charming,erudite man cracked.
I think of myself as a reasonably competent man in the peak of my life, however, I was now belittled by my circumstances. I had simply lost my ability to source a simple delivery from across a city. Notably I was 7000 miles away from my family, friends and business In London. How could I protect or comfort my family when I couldn’t even arrange a simple delivery? I was wearing nylon pyjamas, in times of unprecedented global chaos, imprisoned behind a glass wall. I have a number, but not a name.
I retreat to my bedside, sitting on my plastic mattress in despair. The bedside phone rings. very politely they ask, ‘Mr Sandelson ,do you have a sore throat?’ ‘No,’ I reply. ‘Chest pains? Perhaps you Would you like us to organise a visit from the hospital psychiatrist?”