The Sound Of Breathing.

I have spent quite a bit of time in hospitals off late. I have been getting some acupuncture treatments, part of a regime of different things, a combination of drugs and painkillers and things to help with pain management. My osteoarthritis can be a bit of a pain, literally, in my home countries damp climate. No wonder the Romans did not bother invading us. They thought it too rainy in Northern Ireland and the people made poor slaves cause they were surly and always fighting...No change there.
           But it is not my own visits that prompted this train of thought. Some one I love and care about has been very ill and has been confined to a hospital bed. They are bearing up with great courage and dignity but it has been very hard for them. Not just the treatments but the time spent in wards and in the hospital bed. Every one helping, The Doctors and nurses do their best in the situation but their tasks are many so there has to be a degree of the impersonal about it. It is like they are holding up lights in dark hard places and the dark is always on the fringe. Hospitals are bright and even stark places and everything feels artificial.
            Time passes at a different rate. At least ones perceptions of it does. Hospital time. The illusion of drag when things are dull. Not enough time when things are scary. Life at the coal face. Have you ever sat with someone as they slept. Time in free-fall. I was listening to breathing apparatus. The sound of an air pump at the speed of a lung inflating and deflating, a chest rising and falling. A machine soundtrack that mimics the sound of a living breathing thing.
             What a truly terrifying thing an artificial man would be.