IT wasn’t a scream. Not even a yell. It was a bellow – a bellow of loss, pain, horror and ultimately murderous rage. The bellow exited as a fine old four-letter English swear word of infinite meaning beginning with F. The French use it, too, but it loses its force somehow and becomes merely cheeky.
I had watched as Benoit, the physio, grabbed the table in front of my chair with a careless tug, not even seeing my precious mobile phone, which now had hit the floor after flying in an arc through the air.
As if in slow motion, a piece from it went shooting under the bed. There was no pause between landing and bellow.
I fixed Benoit with a look that made him recoil even as he scrambled for the piece. I wanted to harm him; to batter him with my crutch; to….well never mind. Shocking, I know, but I did.
The broken piece was the touch Home button – the portal to all on an iPhone. Previously dropped by a nurse it had been patched up by a hospital technician.
Perhaps there are those of you still fortunate enough not to have your lives ruled by mobiles and computers, who still work by memory, address books, diaries, photo albums, hand-written memos. Lucky bloody you (said bitterly and enviously.)
‘That’s my life you’ve just destroyed,’ I yelled at him as he tried to phone a technician. ‘Gone. All gone. And I can’t even get outta here.’
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Deb, a visiting friend, was shell-shocked, but gamely trying – to no avail – to push the piece back in.
‘Leave it,’ I shrieked. ‘You’ll make it worse..’ As if.
Benoit did a runner, returning with the technician, who basically said, ‘No chance. It’s done, finished. You need a new one.’ He walked away, absolving himself of further responsibility. So did the physio but at the last moment stuck his head back in to say meekly, ‘Sorry.’ I flung him the Cook stare of utter disgust from which he should have turned to dust. He moved rapidly down the corridor instead. Even my powers have drained away.
We stared at the lifeless phone lying on the bed. Another poor, casualty left in Room 326. Battered, bruised, a victim of an unintended fall and crash. I felt a strange kinship to this once lively soul – er, machine.
I realised I had not memorised even one of the numbers in it, including my son’s. Remember when one automatically did so on hearing a number or wrote it in an always available address book? Do those brain cells still exist or have they been taken to the magic Cloud, now the repository of all one’s knowledge if one can remember the password?
Without it I have no piggyback access via gigabytes to wifi as the hospital’s is private – just silence.
My breathing came harsh and shallow as panic set in. No access to emails, twitter, what’s app, newspapers, the world’s television, breaking news, weather, photos and on and on and on.
Deb looked at me, probably wondering when she could risk speaking again. My eyes flashed ‘not ready’ and my slumped shoulders signalled my utter despair.
So, we sat gazing at it like tongue-tied mourners at a wake. We were still mourning as the ping of an email was heard and the screen lit up. I quickly checked my Mac and the whorl showed me that, miracle of miracles, I was still connected. All still lived behind the blank façade but could no longer be reached at the press of a button.
I had no phone but I had contact.
For many technical reasons involving back-ups and wifi I cannot simply send for a new phone and let old and new phones talk to each other as Apple products do.
As, before this happened, the battery was draining in minutes, I couldn’t risk unplugging it either. So, I have taken to nursing it like a new-born pup, snarling at anyone who threatens to get too close. I even take it to bed with me, plus the lead and connection for the computer.
Thankfully the staff have finally accepted the importance of all this in my life but it’s obvious they’ll never understand it. As one said to me: ‘Sometimes life is easier not knowing what is happening in the world.’
The sad thing is I know she’s right. My regular check on the papers shows me that as I descend afterwards into abject misery if my day hasn’t been good.
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Perhaps we all suffer from too much information; our brains from total sensory overload and for our mental health we really don’t need to read of or see the cruel, loathsome world we’ve created.
But if we don’t know of it how can we attempt to change it? Knowledge is power; words and images the means to knowledge – good and, as we increasingly see, evil.
No, I couldn’t give up knowledge for peace of mind, however tempting – briefly – the prospect. Try to take my coddled remains of a phone off me in the night, you’ll soon find out how much. I bite. And bellow.
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