By Johnny Sandelson
My story moves to 11am, Day 3 of total isolation. I receive a call to say that I am to be moved to another floor. I immediately feel this deep sense of fear. It’s not that I particularly love my 100 square feet of hospital cabin, with sealed windows and doors, it’s just that it has become my home.
Bizarre as it is to say, it has become an acceptable menace. I now completely understand the idea of Stockholm Syndrome. You become attached, and fall in love with the familiar, and at the same time you become fearful of the alternative.
And just to remind readers, so you don’t feel compassion for my ailments, I don’t have any, I’m not unwell. I feel completely physically fit, indeed given my new diet and “cube walking,” perhaps even healthier than I’ve been for a while.
So it is strange when a trolley arrives and I have to pack my case, and grab my suits , and then I’m encouraged to lie down on transit through the hospital to another floor.
I wonder if I should make a dash for escape, and become a fugitive, but if successful I’d be threatening to spread this disease in this deeply hospitable country. Singapore has offered me a bottomless pit of medical support, and I haven’t seen a whiff of a bill. Anyway why kid myself, I’m not a running away - for starters I can’t run.
So, my trolley lands me on the 7th floor and a slightly bigger room with another patient called Charles.
Let me explain some more personal history. I’m not entirely ill-equipped for being institutionalised. At a tender age I was sent away to boarding school. We shared dormitories of up to twelve boys, and were subject to a fairly brutal regime. Obviously, given this Stockholm Syndrome business, nostalgia has shaped me in adulthood to still remember the marvellous long summer nights bowling In the nets, the honour of being awarded my first x1 colours, and the deep friendships and risky dares. Yet
, there were bleak moments, some are so awful that they still can’t be published.
The rumours are true Edwardian public school system, created around the values of ‘Christian masculinity,’ training ‘men for empire,’ was also the same institution which hosted men of perversions. In a pre-Internet age, deviant men knew that if they wanted to be sated of their desire, they should head for posh prep schools, or the Church.
The other institution that I visited 13 years ago was a mental hospital for treating addictions. It turns out that I was unable to stop drinking on my own, and after a life-defining month in rehab, I entered the ‘world of recovery’. This is nothing I’ve ever written about, but given that ‘recovery’, is now so universally accepted as a cure, and it’s so enshrined in popular culture, it no longer carries any shame, indeed it’s mostly viewed as a badge of honour.
Regardless, that hospital, like this one, share similarities: kind staff, terrible food, wonderful doctors, and it also fostered friendships. Crucially for this story, this hospital comes with themantra of: ‘You can check in any time ......but you can never leave.’
(Incidentally, if any of you want to talk to me in private about your drinking or drug issues please write, I’m an amateur expert!)
So, I’m no stranger to institutions. Lights on at irregular hours, neon bars burning your eyes, beeping noises out of sight, strange eating hours, and in the case of my new roomie, being forced into close quarters with an unknown patient.
My family were soon more concerned for the well-being of Charles (for more from him find him on Instagram @charleslangip).
Singapore is a remarkably efficient state. It appears that even during a pandemic which is threatening the well-being of its population, it has time to do psychometric
testing to ensure two fellow quarantine guests are well paired. We are both middle aged bourgeois Caucasian men, entrepreneurs with high energy.
Charles is far smarter than me, and better-groomed, and fitter, and endlessly polite. I’m a bit more mouthy, New York ‘street’to his 6th arrondissement. But let’s face it, in a world of six billion people, we move in similar circles.
What are the odds of us sharing the same obscure favourite author, only a small group of readers in the world know of Robert Caro and his writings on Robert Moses, and LBJ, and Charles is a fellow addict. We talk of this, and other things. He has a growing following on Instagram and I’d highly recommend you his handle.
Logically, most people would say he has the the better view, his bed lies beside the large glass window facing cars, and buildings, and sky. I get the internal window overlooking the control room, the nerve center of the operation. I see the comings and goings, the nurses and doctors all in their ski goggles and face masks, but this activity is my preferred view.
I suddenly feel sad as I remember my usual Spring morning routine of sitting on a terrace in Westbourne Grove watching the world awake. Kids on their way to school, food deliveries ,mothers returning from dropping off their kids and meeting their divorce lawyers! I hear on the radio with frustration that 70,000 people are going to Cheltenham, yet I’m locked up- how many of them will Covid 19, Singapore style contact tracing would have afield day.
I love activity, especially amongst people I don’t know, or don’t feel the need to interact with , but for now I’m completely imprisoned , and I feel fairly despondent.
The reality is that there hasn’t been a breathe of fresh air for a week. The precious blossom will be arriving in my Notting Hill.It really is the simple things that make me content. Okay, it’s not that simple, I do also need an awful lot of luxuries, but for the moment an Americano and kedgeree on the terrace of 202, with cool fresh air and bright sun would tick all my boxes.
Poor Charles. Because of a back condition, I need to walk about one mile a day. The maximum length of the room is seven meters, so that involves me walking backwards and forwards for about 90 minutes a day. That must be tough for him to endure. I’m a kind roomie, so to keep his spirits up, I let him win at backgammon.
I dodged a test yesterday. Even though two consecutive negatives is the only way out of here, I just wanted 24 hours without being interfered with. I wanted a choice. Every day we are tested, and every day we are ruled positive. It’s actually possible to be tested negative, and then the following day to go positive again. How cruel is that? Anyway, today I’ll relent, I’ll be nasally shafted, and expect to be given the positive reading before bedtime.
One inmate had to stay for thirty days, I am on day 7, Charles is on day 12. I’ve become fond of him, I do worry what will happen when he’s released, who will I be paired with? No doubt the authorites will have a plan.
