'Go with the flow' by Tak Chiu Chessell

Go with the flow
(The making of the perfect citizen in a long-stay hospital)

Tell the doctor your name and address. Confide in him your struggle with life, your low mood and the voices in your head. Kiss your wife good-bye. Follow the nurse to the ward that you share with twenty-nine other people. Swap your designer T-shirt and jeans with the hospital clothes. Stuff your personal possessions: cigarettes, tooth brush and shaver into the flimsy cupboard beside your bed. Rest on the bed assigned to you, a single bed with white bedsheets which give out a pungent smell of bleach and Dettol. 

Take the medication in front of the nurse when it is given, but don’t complain about its side-effect of giving you the shakes. Eat the food put in front of you, even though it sometimes reminds you of primary school dinners. Let the non-stop ward music float over your head, for once the music gets absorbed into your DNA, you will not even notice it’s being played. Learn to stroll up and down the hospital corridor with your fellow patients -- that’s one way of showing you are breathing and alive. If bored, relax in the hospital garden, sit under the ancient fir trees, roll up a joint, lose yourself in bird songs and say hello to nosy squirrels. At bedtime, count sheep to distract yourself from your fellow patients’ horse-like snoring. 

To survive, you must go with the flow, make no demands, make no protest, make no complaint; in fact, if you can help it, make no noise at all.  If you want privacy, just pull the grey curtains around your bed, then you can have one-to-one communion with yourself and God.

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Tak Chiu grew up in Hong Kong and currently lives in Surrey with her husband.  Since retirement from social care, she has spent her time travelling, reading and writing.  Some of her inspirations come from her experience of working in the care sector.  Her work has appeared in National Flash Fiction Day's FlashFlood 2023 and Obsessed With Pipework.