Some staff were nice; some were horrid. One day I was sitting next to Dad behind a screen when an officious nurse breezed in.
'You'll have to leave,' she said.
'Why?' I asked.
'Because I need to examine the patient,' she replied in a cold voice.
I walked onto the corridor. I'd been crying a lot anyway, whenever Dad was asleep and he couldn't see me I would be silently shaking and blowing my nose constantly. He was in so much pain. With the nasty way the nurse had spoken I found more tears were now flowing silently down my cheeks.
A male nurse was passing: 'Are you okay?' he asked.
'It's that nurse in there. She's so rude,' I said.
He nodded, knowingly.
By the time she came out I'd dried my tears and was ready.
'So what did you learn from your examination of my father?' I asked in a forthright tone.
'Oh. Uh. Um,' she floundered. 'Yes, he's okay.'
'And that is your professional assessment is it?'
'Yes.'
'And so now I can go back in?'
'Yes.'
I marched back in.
None of the other nurses had any problem with me staying and my father said he preferred me to.
Another night, the same sympathetic male nurse I'd met in the corridor, was examining Dad and he said:
'You can see with some of the patients how loved they are. We can tell that they are important people in their families. Some patients hardly see anyone. But your Dad - we never see him alone.'
'Yes, he might just look like an old man,' I replied (he was sleeping as we talked), 'but he used to jump out of 'planes. He was a German paratrooper in the war.'
'God. Really?'
'Yes.'
One day in 1939, my Dad was at the lake in the German-speaking part of Czechoslovakia, where his Dad was a boatman. He was about to launch himself in from the diving board, when a voice on the radio tannoy declared that Germany was now at war with Great Britain. He simply dived in, thinking nothing of it. He was 14. A year later he enlisted, volunteering early, lying about his age, eager to get away from the boredom of rural life and see a bit of the world. In 1942, he was caught by the Americans and brought to Britain.
'Yes,' the nurse was saying, 'I could never jump out of 'planes. I'd be far too scared. They made that generation differently, didn't they?'
'Yes, they did,' I agreed. 'And he also brought us up when my mother ran off. So he was like a mother to me.'
There was also a lovely female staff nurse. One day around 6am she came in and found me dozing on a couple of cushions I'd pilfered from the settee in the visitors' room.
'I'm not supposed to do this, so don't tell anyone, but can I get you a tea or a coffee and some toast?' she asked.
'God, a cup of tea would be brilliant,' I said gratefully. I felt like death warmed up.
'And would you like white or brown toast?'
'White please.'
'And jam or marmalade?'
'Jam please.'
Five minutes later she brought it all in on a tray. She was a senior nurse but she was willing to wait on me. I was so impressed (she also did her share of the dirty work, I observed later, including dealing with commodes).
Chrisopher tried to make out the staff didn't like me and were even afraid of me.
'Rubbish,' I said. 'You don't get given tea and toast. Anyway, I'm as polite as anything to them.
'Come on, you do order them about a bit.'
'I do not!' I said. 'Every time I ask them to come and see Dad, when he needs them, I always say: "Excuse me, but when you've got a minute, could you please come and see my Dad as he's in terrible pain." What's wrong with that?'
Dad needed an advocate who didn't pussy-foot around. (two years earlier, Adrian's Dad would have lived if there had been someone assertive to tell the hospital staff what they should be doing, but we were in Spain and with no-one in the family willing to do a bit of 'ordering' he was left to die on a trolley in the hospital corridor)
Pressing the 'emergency' button next to the bed served no purpose whatsoever, because it was never responded to.
Most nights were spent with Dad in anguish and pain; he had trouble breathing, pains all over his body, a raging headache, was so thirsty I had to dab his lips every 15 minutes and the paracetamol and ibuprofen didn't touch him and they wouldn't give him anything stronger.
To see the end result of all the work on the casa, take a look at the house now:
http://www.homeaway.co.uk/p86636
And also another of our completed projects:
http://www.homeaway.co.uk/p475271