Bussed 2

Scene 2

Wakes up by hearing a young woman screaming.

He recognizes her voice but can't picture her; no visuals? wait for more intel.

Then realizes he's in a hospital bed with plaster mostly over every limb and also most parts of his face. What has he just survived?

now he's in some pain. He tries to move but is hampered by the plaster over most parts that seem to not work because of it. Is he being supported and healed or coercively constrained? But isn't he meant to know? What? How?

He recognises pain and sees a light in his eyes burning or soothing? he tries to blink but can’t. he realizes that he's had his eyes open for some time; How long have they been trying to wake him up?

Well, at least he has his own room, and can see windows at the top of the wall that meets the ceiling through which he can register that its seems pitch black and at night., or is that just night receding and it could be dawn or dusk...or just night, or was it the effect of cheap threadbare curtains from a private hospital that was distorting his view?

He tries to take off the bandages off his face but is immediately aware of pain as a nurse who appears from somewhere tries to stop him, she's generic and non-suspicious looking. Or was he just getting selective sight?

"You've been in a terrible accident" she says and then injects him with some pain relieving, which is instantly effective, yet after a short time the pain returns and is even more intense than before. He’s being poisoned? It's certainly not morphine, he knows morphine. How? Why is he thinking this way? Is this meant to shine a light on what is going on? Of course, he thought everyone’s a comedian including himself?

He wakes up after a series of dreams about a young girl called......no, he's forgotten. in fact every time he thinks of her he seems to losing more and more information about her; a trigger word that someone has used on him, or he'd used himself?

More shouts and screams he first thought was bloody bone wards. He couldn't remember what they were called. Thank goodness he was not just losing his senses alone when he is closing up shop for self-communication today. Put a lid on it. So, it's catchy, he's in a psych ward.

Days last 7 hours and night lasts the rest, but curfew starts at 8pm.

He wakes up with pain in his shoulder, lunges at the plaster around it, tears and pulls for the next 3 hours and removes the plaster afflicting that part, and he discovers nothing. Nothing? Where's the wound?

"Fish Pie tonight" says the nurse with too much enthusiasm for his liking ...too much dentistry he thought.

He wakes up bursting through a series of doors and he breaks down an emergency door hoping not to find another ward but instead he didn't want to find a landscape of ice and snow with a horizontal blizzard hurling clumps in his direction. His hospital garment tore into him, and he suddenly felt he was lapsing into hyperthermia.

He's being dragged back to his bed by an orderly, hitting his ear on the side of the bed. It bleeds profusely.

He wakes up unable to open his eyes. Well, that's new he thought. No, that's not his sense of humour, that's something else he then bursts through some doors and he's suddenly freezing, and then he decides to escape by letting himself freeze to death. Why? Is this a test? Why does he always make life so difficult? He holds back on the humour. You mean he's a prisoner twice over?

Shouts of gunfire followed by begging and then a final series of shots. It's so bloody cold!

Then a blip and a distinctive voice.

He decides this time not to call for pain relief, but in seconds he feels the familiar nip of a needle doing exactly that. His body relaxes but his face tightens.

he's stabbing and orderly and then he's dragged into the night and then fear frostbite shoved on his bed and tied down...these tricks are basically child's play, I can see through his facade, and then he caught a glimpse of his toes that looked blackened...this is , oh shit I know what this is, and the harder he tried the further away he got from articulating what he knew, he knew but knew he couldn't remember....but he knew what handcuffs looked like because he could feel them on him. It must be night, he thought or, visual impairment had relocated and compensated.

Running to the light in the middle of the night, but it wasn't a light, it was just more snow until he's tripped up hurt his arms as he fell. Wait that is no injury that's some stitches that can be unpicked to find the small space that isn't so cold.

It occurred to him that he'd told someone else, wait he'd taught someone else to escape??? Claustrophobia will be next, and it really followed his own instructions.

Dragged on the floor and tied down unceremoniously. No, that's not meant to happen. Someone is bastardising his dream!!

More doors after the stitches, why the stitches?

Concrete floor, the wafting acrid and sweet smell of cigarettes?

Dazzled, on the bed, injection, freezing temperatures suddenly he emerges from the night blizzard with low but full sunlight that he can't pierce or make dimensionalised.. and then the vertigo    Yup that comes with the acclimatization.

He makes a breakthrough; he can see a street and cars and road signs. Next? Find where it is damn it!

When he finally peels-off all the plaster he feels a sense of achievement especially now he's strapped to the bed, and someone is pulling away to see how his face is. Okay, everyone has scars, when in a burnt out. What was it! Let me see, he asks, they leave, and its curfew.

"Here are your older sisters come to visit you."

"Don't recognise you" he bluntly scoffs even though he knew one of them to be a nurse, and of course she knew that tacitly too.

The younger whispered to him 'I'll put flowers on your grave until you emerge, and at 11 every day, no doubt we'll catch-up soon.'

The older sister parts saying very little, a bit diminutive, but said 'You've always driving me crazy and before they left the older one remarked.

'How do you get out of here’ laughing without restraint.

Warm or cold said one of the doctors, they politely laughed.

'Uber frau' or 'women drivers' said the younger sister.

Exactly, the doctor blushed, reassured that his joke didn't fall flat, but the patient didn't enjoy his uneasiness anyway. So he continued to study the Doctor's disposition that seemed so betrayed by his off piste remark. Even in a state of self-conscious reddening, he still didn't realise that he expected those present to make him suffer, just as he would have done if someone else had failed a basic test of social interaction- don't make jokes, and certainly don't lose control over them. He should make this Doctor suffer, let him sweat and let him melt much as that bastard who'd treated me, the patient, the burn victim! No time for light relief, try this without any pain relief.... just as he was not going to give that Doctor any social pain relief, so he'd know what it was like to be cocooned for days totally dependent on the likes of 'Bad Doctor choke on it!'

-Can I see myself yet? Can we fetch the mirror?

-We haven't completed your surgery yet.

-Don't I get to choose?

-He just caught a reflection of himself in the glass reinforced door and the bad doctor choke on it said

-You won't recognise yourself at first

-Oh my God, you're right, I don't, what the hell, is this what's left?

-Don't tear at your bandages either, Your sisters recognised you, and yet you didn't recognise them

- 'MY 'SISTER'S'!!? They weren't were they? They were shrinks come to check out my fragile mental state?

-Oh Sir, you are not in a fragile state, your sisters attested to that ! They said you were recovering

-Believe it or not, I don't want to believe you.

-Don't we all know about it !!?!! Your face has been augmented, so be grateful for your wealthy patron, whoever it may be!

-Your face? Who you were, who you are is who you can now be as to who you will become again as well as who you could be...

-And I should be grateful?

-So, stop breaking the doors when you go on walkabout and for god's sake, don't leave the external doors open, It is bloody freezing out there!!

-I've got a reconstructed face, and you're are worried about a 'door fetish?

-This is the South pole here! Off books to fast track ER in blighty!!? There are 4 maternity wards relying on someone not distorting the temperature here!

-Why is it day and night and not 24 hours of daylight or 24 hours of night then?

-Because we artificially adapt to reassure all patients!

-And the signs for Prague outside of outside?

-Well that's why you are here! your senses are returning to you! All the doctors seemed convinced and supportive!

-Did you like the Czech or the Swiss? Some of us were running a book on it ! You owe me lunch you scoundrels!!

-As for the stock room? Why did you just try and dig a nest with the carpet? But outdoors? There's no settlement for 1000 square miles, and what with the blizzards... Don't be a pied piper to the other wards thank you very much!

-I've only just got used to the surroundings of my bed

-You've been here for 17 months, and once we'd located your sisters, it took a couple of months to get them here

-Are they outside?

-They came to your bedside 6 months ago!

-And the beatings?

-You walloped Toby whilst under anaesthetic. We had to restrain you!

-Well, he shouldn't have got in my way!!

-No wonder you kept repeating 'This one goes up to 11?' ...and try not to smile, or the bandages will wrinkle, ok?

-You're making remarkable progress, and soon you'll have outgrown this burns unit

-Any more platitudes?

-It's called medicine beyond all frontiers, not medicine without frontiers for a reason: we treat people who can't be treated and are thought to be beyond our current knowledge of medicine! That's us, and that's why we chose you and not the other way round! But we are slightly different from the cliches and the hacks, 'WE'RE PROFESSIONALS' aren't we?

-At that moment, the patient immediately loses consciousness, and will only regain it, based upon the discretion of the doctors (Maybe an hour, day, year, decade etc)

-Organ transplants seem to have knitted together, and how much did we get for his own organs?

-I'm more concerned that it's the minister's wife who may be onto us?

-Does his Prime Minister still want them?

-His wife also has requested his kidneys

-Those as government ministers will always be served for Prime ministers,.....it's the law of the mongrel!

-Imagine what a scandal!

-Just too much of a scandal!!?!

People want to make their top people accountable but at arms length, and only little by little, rip off by rip off, but don't burden them with a moral compass when something is beyond their...... that's our job, to take decisions and to destroy lives only sometimes for the greater good! That requires the very best and the most disciplined

-We should sell them to all those who can afford them and not ministerial body organs to the Prime ministers and chosen few!

-On ebay?

-Let's be clear, we make or break governments by making one or two of them into organ mules without their knowledge, and said wife who is becoming suspicious requires our attention.....she'll not know who she is too ! and this pays for the secret court of the first judiciary.

-We are doing valuable meaningful work even if this government must become 'U-turns and ebay aren't working'!!

-This really is the best MI6 dark site by miles!

-I don't like irony or sarcasm or wry witticisms, do you understand ?Especially when the patient is active

-Absolutely ma'am!

-Now show me those who have not given birth to children of 'our Lord and master' but have failed the trial!

-3 Last night!

-He so wants to not be the only one, but I believe he doesn't want company, he wants a rival!