The third neighbour.

I barely noticed my neighbour the first night, just deduced her presence from the sighs and snores. The next day it was her occasional off colour remarks and scores of visitors that broke through my near consciousness. The racist comments about the staff got to me, as well as her inclinication to give out my medical history to her visitors when she thought I was asleep. In desperation I asked the nurse for a pen and scribbled a note, asking the shift coordinator to consider a room change. The next day was my severe pain day and as luck would have it, the woman was discharged.

As a reward for bad pain day I then got moved over to the window spot. Shortly after my new roommate arrived.

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I should note at this point that the room next to mine is very cheerful. There were two guys in there, who would listen to the rugby on their respective TVs and chat animatedly. I wanted to have a cool room.

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The second neighbour arrived with her husband and settled in to her spot. She was not pleased to be here. Her husband was not pleased that she was here. Together, they were not pleased. At first I thought it was charming bickering but it was not. This was not the private hospital she had signed up for, and therefore the room, bed, nurses, TV, food and service were all wrong. She was scathing.

In my head she looked like Margarrt Thatcher. Her voice was coldly imperious in her pleasant exchanges and harsh in her angry ones. I kept to myself, maintained a low profile and hoped like heck one of us would leave soon. On her last night my drip alarm woke her: "just get it" she snapped. Startled, I reached to silence the alarm and she directed "just get the phone X." She thought she was at home. At that point I got a little sad for her - she was quite disoriented, afraid and feeling lonely.

Neither of us were particularly sad when she departed to become a floater patient on another ward.

I had the room to myself for eight, hedonistic hours.

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My third neighbour introduced herself to me once she was conscious, around 4:30am. We've had raucous chats, enjoyed 'sunbathing' in our deck chairs during the mandatory post breakfast chair time, swapped dry mouth horror stories and talked about our gardens. I've been formally introduced to her very kind and caring husband and I suspect tomorrow, when she is capable of staying awake longer than ten minutes, we will enjoy some more chats.