You wouldn’t want to be Eric -
Oh no.
Eric was a policeman once, suffered a stroke;
His wife tried, but couldn’t cope,
And one day Eric arrived in hospital, covered in burns.
Look in her eyes now and see the hurt -
He stays quiet,
Says not a word,
But he must have known
It wasn’t the water-bottle that burst.
It’s all too unforgiving …
One-way,
No way,
Hearts shattered,
And now Eric sits in a chair, dribbling.
The visits are infrequent;
The children rarely come;
The geriatric ward is long,
And there’s a clock, silently ticking.
i was an utterly crap student nurse on a ‘geriatric’ ward once. This guy had had a stroke and been released from the ward to be looked after by his wife, but she couldn’t cope. For a start he was a huge bloke. One day he arrived back in the ward covered in burns, because his water bottle had ‘burst’ – but we all knew that she’d poured scalding water over him to get him back into hospital (from the pattern and nature of the burns). And the sad thing was that he must have known too, but said nothing.
A not untypical scenario, where the carer (usually the wife) manufactured an excuse to get the husband back into hospital.
