Fire!

I finish my shift at Citizens Advice Bureau and head out into the wind whipped rain, my head down and all my thoughts on how behind I am on the script writing and then I notice that there is smoke all around me. I step up out of the underpass my heart racing, I can hardly see through the smoke…where’s the fire? I spin around…..it must be massive…..where are the sirens..where are the panicking crowds?
I can hardly see through the smoke….then the hackles on the back of my neck rise. There is no smell of fumes, noone else is fazed, noone else turning around and around scanning for a fire like a demented derivish. Just me. A woman walks past giving me a very wide berth. My sweaty forehead goes cold as I realise that there is no fire. There is just something terribly wrong with my eyes.

What has happened..? …I don’t know but I run for home and I refuse to look anywhere but straight ahead. I look at the road, just at the road..then at the pavement and then just at my door and then just at the phone. I don’t glance around afraid of what I won’t see. My hands are shaking and I have to practice my phone voice several times before calling the Eye Clinic and speaking to the Sister. She gets an emergency call half way through speaking to me and while she deals with it I realise I have to calm the hell down. My eyes are defogging a little and I am not in pain..just a dull ache in the back of my left eye. 'Come on,'I think to myself. 'You can deal with this. Your retinas are a mess anyway..this kind of thing is bound to happen. Don’t freak everyone out. Stiff Lip Upper and all that.' ' The Sister and I think it’s a bleed. Maybe even just the odema..there is no point of rushing to A and E. (Thank god as I have nomoney for cab fare and wouldn’t be able to see the cash point anyway..) I breathe and watch the clouds shift slowly inside and out.

So I am booked in for a check up on Wednesday. There is nothing else to be done until then but take some pain killers and rest my retinas. This is enormously frustrating as I want to work but the computer makes my headache worse so I give up and I do sleep and I dream of nothing. When I wake up my sight is clearer and I am so relieved I do a little jig around a martini.

By the way just so you don’t feel sorry for me (which will make me spit and is not the intention of this ridiculous post which was originally going to be a witty anecdote to the gloom of child battery of previous entries but just got trumped by events…you were right my darling Cuz. Enough already!), I am going to Toronto in Spring so there. The adventure continues even with the occasaional eye blips! More on that after Wednesday..