Bleary eyed

When I visited my local hospital early this morning, it was empty of patients, and almost empty of staff. Outside, a food vendor played blaring Esan music from a portable stereo fixed to his cart. The noise attracted a small group of young males, who gathered around to talk.

The hospital was one of the few places around which was still lit up, though I could see only three staff inside: two nurses, and an orderly, who was asleep.

Normally, patients see the doctor in narrow consulting rooms which resemble a broom closet. There is room in there for a table, chair, bed, and not much else. They branch off at an angle from the main waiting room. Each has a wooden sliding door, with its own little window.

As I walked in I could see the light in each of these rooms was off, which suggested the doctor had gone home for the night. Normally he sits in there waiting for patients, but there were none in the waiting room, except for me.

I was unable to sleep, and had run out of sleeping pills. As I tossed in my bed restlessly, I knew a visit to the doctor to get more pills was inevitable; but also knew that if I left my visit too late, then the doctor will have gone home for the night, and I would have to hike back to see a doctor on the other side of the market.

My market is blessed with at least two small hospitals. I heard a woman in the lift the other day giving someone directions to a third, so maybe there are more. My hospital of first preference is less expensive, and gives more powerful sleeping pills.

At 4.30am, I decided I had better leave home for the hospital while the doctor was still working his shift. From experience, I know he leaves work around 5am or 6am. When I walked in, and saw the consulting rooms were in darkness, I thought I had still timed my visit too late. But no.

'Yes, he's in,' a nurse told me, before asking me why I had come.

'The usual reason - I cannot sleep,' I replied. Thankfully, the nurse had not seen me before, so did not know how embarrassingly regular my visits had become.

After asking me to write down my name, she took me through the obligatory blood pressure test, and weight check, which every patient is asked to perform. Then I was told to wait.

I do not have a weighing machine at home, but I visit the hospital so often to get sleeping pills that I do not need one. As I stood on the digital scales, I noticed my weight had crept up a fraction since last time.

The door to each of the consulting rooms was closed. While I was waiting in the eerie silence of a slumbering hospital, someone turned on a light in one consulting room. Ah...action.

Earlier, I watched as the nurse give my name to the orderly, who fetched my file. Then she called someone on the phone. She was telling him to wake the doctor.

As I was ushered in to his room, the doctor looked up blearily. He must have entered it from the other side, as he did not walk past me. He was aged in his 30s, wearing glasses, and puffy-eyed.

'You look like you have been asleep,' I said. In the West, I would not dare say such a thing to a doctor, as professional ethics presumably forbid them from sleeping on the job. However, the atmosphere is more casual here, especially at 5am when there is nobody else around.

He didn't have to question me, as the nurse had already told him why I came. 'I'll just give you what you were prescribed last time,' he said.

We barely exchanged another word, as he started writing out the script even before I could answer.

At that awful hour of the morning, we can dispense with the worthy doctor-patient talk about tackling the causes of my complaint, and the danger of relying on sleeping pills. We both needed rest, and this was the quickest way to go about it.

It was another hour before I did get to sleep. I have narrowed the cause of my sleeplessness down to the following factors, though the order of importance varies according to whatever theories I have come up with on a given night.

1. mattress is too hard, and refuses to yield or support my body.

2. pillow is too hard, and does likewise.

3. I need alcohol to sleep.

4. I drink too much coffee.

5. I think too much - or, as Maiyuu says, I won't let my brain go.

Guys were still gathered around the foodcart talking as I left to walk home. In this town that never sleeps, those young men were not worried about getting rest - why should I?

Brave words. They are probably like most Thais, who can sleep anywhere, at any time. I am not so lucky.