Lost in Hotel California

I had a rather different experience of being lost when I was at the Madonna.

On my second day I bravely wandered into the lift en-route to the bar on the ground floor. As I have mentioned in previous dispatches, the Italians have an extremely sensible and practical approach to things and to life in general so having a bar next to the main entry of the hospital is in keeping with this tradition. Rare in global terms probably but that’s of absolutely no concern to people who do things because it’s the right and sensible and honourable thing to do.

Anyhow having spent a pleasant stretch with a cappuccino and cornetto, a catch up on social media, emails and Whatsapp messages and a chapter’s worth of my current reading material I set off to return to my ward. Easier said than done. Now I have had a lifetime of retrieving my car from some pretty large and complex parking stations (the one in the basement of Melbourne Central that traverses underground between Bourke, Lonsdale and La Trobe streets comes to mind!) so I am not unaccustomed to taking careful note of the car’s location and in registering key “bookmarks” along the exit route so that they can be retraced on return and I was confident that I would easily return to my ward at the Madonna. I was about 95% certain that I was on the top floor as I was elevated and could see the roof above me. The top floor was piano quattro so when I entered the lift I took it in that direction. I vividly recall the scenery en-route from my ward to the lift – another ward, a right hand turn, seats along a foyer wall, turn left to two lifts. Alighting from the lift I saw none of these. There was a rehabilitation room full of equipment, a queue of expectant workers-out and then, right where my ward was previously located, a computer room – which served as the hospital’s brain.

Thinking that I was momentarily disorientated I retraced my steps – all the way down to the bar and all the way up again. Same bloody result! I repeated the exercise two more times and every time came up with the same result.

I thought that MAYBE I might have slipped a cog and that I had retraced my steps to the wrong piano so I tried the floor immediately below, piano tre. It was the only other floor with the necessary elevation for me to see the rolling hills from my bed window. Trouble. Piano tre was completely isolated from the outside world. Lifts would NOT go there, the stairwell’s thick steel fire doors to piano tre were deadlocked and impassable. None of this was evident when I first ventured out. My ward was obviously NOT on piano tre and I simply found it impossible to find it on piano quattro.

In desperation (because we men HATE making mugs of ourselves – excuse me madam but I have been here two days, haven’t left the building and now I can’t find my bed – I sought assistance from the receptionist. Men simply DON’T do that – expose themselves to complete strangers and look like a bloody idiot in the process. It’s akin to flashing the ladies when your penis is cold and shrunken. You just feel as though everybody wonders what the hell you are trying to achieve! They are stunned with amazement and maybe amusement but not with shock and horror or admiration.

Anyhow I struck the ONLY person in the large hospital who had absolutely no Inglese and my Italiano is getting better and I can usually cope with most situations but this was one of those occasions when it was like talking to a brick wall – or, as my wife often says, like talking to me about something that I have absolutely no interest in. (Amazing because nearly all of the very young staff in the hospital actually have pretty passable English – it’s part of the Italian school curriculum these days).

So I made it as easy as possible. I wrote my full name in block script in large letters and I gesticulated in explanation that I was a patient in this very establishment but that I had gone for a walk and was now lost. I wanted her to search her database on the terminal at her fingertips to find the location of my bed. She tapped away and came back with a blank stare. Maybe I had given the software system a bit too much credit for its search criteria (string recognition) capability but she came up with a blank! How could that be? She had successfully dispatched the healthy number of visitors that I had entertained and surely they found me courtesy of her search criteria. It is though I had suddenly vanished! So she asked me which piano I was on. I knew it couldn’t possibly be tre (it had proved impenetrable) so I said what I was confident about “Piano quattro” of course. She gave me directions but, bugger me dead! I ended up at the bloody computer room again!

So, what does a man do in this situation? Can’t find the room, receptionist has no idea, computer can’t find any trace. Well, what you do is dial a friend. So I rang Domenico my neighbour, dear friend and constant compagni at all social occasions and who had already made two visits to me in hospital.

Remember, I had not, at any stage, left the building so I had to be fairly close. I had a fairly clear recognition of most of the route but my bloody room was no longer where I had left it. So Domenico, who is a local, and whose advice on this is highly credible, and could be relied upon absolutely, said: “Mate. You are on piano tre. Take one of the two lifts around the corner from reception, make a right turn past the chairs lined up along the wall of the foyer, turn left and go as far as you can, last room on the left.” Precisely as I recollected! But I can’t access piano tre! The only way to get to my ward was if I was already there!

Then I began to wonder why it was that piano tre was in lock down. It could only possibly be if it was a repository for one of the following;

1. Bandidos and undesirables (such as spies and others who had to disappear)
2. The seriously infected with a highly transmissible disease or
3. The criminally insane

Now, despite the eerie fact that my name had vanished from the register, there was no sign of any weapons being carried by blokes in dark blue uniforms and baseball caps so that should rule out the first possibility.

None of the medical attendants were wearing face masks or plastic bags over their shoes so that pretty well rules out the second.

That only leaves the third and there has been plenty of evidence that there might be some doubtful characters here.

There is the youngish lass in the next ward who is convinced that she is an elephant and there is my ward compagno who spoke to his family on the farm this morning. Spoke to his very attractive and super helpful wife, his fifty year old sons, grandchildren and great grandchildren and then got someone on a moped to race around the paddocks while he spoke to the dogs, the sheep, the cows and then the geese.

Now it makes perfect sense that I got into the act by virtue of my night in the zoo - Velletri emergency. They either figured guilt by association or that I had demonstrated an ability to co-habitate with the intellectually impaired and mentally detached.

Anyhow I eventually, purely by chance, made it up to what they no doubt call "the cage".

Everything is right with the world.

[Out of consideration for those who will find it disturbing or difficult to sleep soundly tonight I guess I should add a few words by way of clarification. The doctors assure me that the wards on piano tre are isolated for nominated periods each day PURELY to give them a better than even chance to treat their patients without having to compete with a house full of visitors. It’s actually the visitors who are locked out rather than the patients being locked in! During visiting hours the lifts and stairwell fire doors are placed in “libero” mode and everyone can come or go. I learned to cope with the isolation for the rest of my stay. I simply spent all the non visiting hours in the bar! I haven’t noticed that it interfered particularly with either my treatment or my recovery.]