NUMBER 28 WILL YOU PLEASE COME IN !! [OF BEING PLASTERED THEN NOT]

The woman with card number twenty-eight, (who had been busily organising everyone in the waiting area) told the man in National Health Service tunic, who had arrived with a wheel chair for her that she did not need it; she could walk into the plaster room she said.  This tall portly man sternly regarded the woman. He firmly told her that if she did not sit in the chair she would have to wait an hour till her turn came round again! Deflation was fast, she fell silent and followed his instructions.   

I knew it was my turn to go in to the plaster room when an empty wheelchair seat silently appeared in front of me together with the same rotund chauffeur.  
I smiled up at him, he was impassive. I hobbled myself into position and sat. I was pushed to the far end of the plaster room, passing by two patients on trolleys;  one patient sported a bare leg waiting to be 'done' and the other was having a blood red plaster applied to a lower leg.  

Number twenty-eight's purple clog with big toe brace sat on a table facing me. This incongruous footless  form sat there, it looked like a portable male urinal [without the handle].  
 

I could not find a picture depicting the shape in royal purple.

Portly man sat down on a chair facing me and for the first time he addressed me. "Put your leg here," indicating just above his knee and on his green plastic apron.  He checked the bit of blue paper that had so far accompanied me everywhere this trip. A flexible tube was plugged into a cylinder and a wheel was slotted into a head placed at the end of the tube. The high pitched sound of the  grinding wheel was nothing in comparison to the vibrations that went right through the bit of me I had been so carefully protecting all these weeks. My reflexes overpowered any control I might have had to stay still. Two shallow cuts about two and a half inches apart, ( about 7cms) were made over the top of my plaster clog, the centre piece was lifted and the remaining plaster fitting slipped off.  


I was wheeled back out, this time into a different part of the corridor.  Without a word, the chair and me were placed in specific place to await the next stage.  As for the brakes- I had to trust to luck.

BURPING TO A HALT

Am I the only person who uses a mobility electric scooter in a store, which runs out of steam?  Just as I turned the corner by the stock cubes display the scooter burped to a stop.  That folks was the end of my uninhibited, independent,  browsing and shopping. 

A  rather good looking, young-ish, lively store assistant with laughing eyes arrived to help.  Oh dear…. the store had two of these scooters and the other was in use. Nothing for it but to disconnect the empty battery and pull me round, he holding the front basket which was loaded, with me continuing to steer the apparatus. 

Where did I want to go to next….honestly… no… I could browse and shop….. he was there to assist, etc. etc.  I couldn’t, I  just couldn’t  take my time, weaving in and out of aisles and corners, checking on things that caught my eye while reliant on a minder, however nice he was.  If I had been a good bit younger, I might have revelled in keeping his undivided attention.  But, as it was, there were three more items I definitely wanted to find and then, with this rickety steed, it was onward to the check out. 

Nobody batted an eyelid when I zoomed off up the aisles at the start of my shopping journey on the scooter.  An awful lot of people stared as the vehicle  was ignominiously pulled  into the ‘pit-stop’ by its basket with me astride its seat.