Black Balled

Merry Christmas to one and all, or the one reader I have left, whatever you want. Been a bit chaotic as we have had a bit of a meltdown at work that ended up with me spending 43 out of the last 48 hours before Xmas day at work. This of course left the good lady wife in a bit of a mood as I abandoned her to the last minute preparations and the erstwhile charm of my father.

Just as I was leaving on Xmas eve after 27 straight hours in the office, the wife rung, “still there then?” she asked, this might seem quite an innocuous line of questioning but any married man will tell you that when the wife asks you a question she already clearly knows the answer to, this means you’re pretty much fucked, I mean I just answered my office phone, where the fuck else could I be?

Fortunately the boss had kindly told me to treat her to a meal anywhere she wants and don’t worry about the bill as the company would pick it up, this news defused the wife but I could still tell I wasn’t quite out of the woods yet, “you still going to make it to the hospital?” she asks with more than a subtle tone of expectant disappointment in her voice, fuck I thought as I remembered a semi inebriated promise post ‘works-do piss up’ to visit my 89 year old granddad at the hospital on Christmas eve.

Knowing anything else but an enthusiastic “yes” would result in two days of icy relations I bit the bullet, told her I would meet her there and with 4 hours sleep in three days trudged off to rendezvous with the wife outside Coleridge ward.

I get to the hospital before the missus but don’t know this so traipse in to see the old fella, his in a bit of a state to be honest, oxygen mask on and connected up to monitors here, there and everywhere. One of the machines is bleeping away like Frankie Boyle on Blue Peter and the old fella’s clawing away at the mask and gesticulating desperately for me to come closer .

His struggling for breath as he pulls away the mask and I try to get him to put it back on for his own good, but his desperately trying to tell me something, breathlessly he manages to get some words out but there almost totally inaudible, I desperately look for some nursing staff but they must have skeleton staff over Christmas and my frantic searching fails to find any qualified help.

I rush back to the old fella and try to calm him by letting him know a nurse will be along soon, but he continues to struggle for air and he looks terrible, he motions closer and this time I can just about make out what his trying to tell me, he whispers to me desperately, “Testicles are black”, and then he falls back on to his bed drained of energy.

I say to him, “Jim don’t worry” as I hold his hand, “There’s nothing wrong with you, a nurse will be along in a minute”, He looks at me, his eye’s filled with terror, “No, me testicles are black” I frantically search the ward again to no avail, and when I go back his gone an even whiter shade of pale and his tugging at his pyjama bottoms frantically, again he pleads, “testicles are black”.

I need to help him, I can’t stand to see him this state any longer, so I decide he needs to calm down and the only way this is going to happen is if understand there’s nothing wrong with his under carriage, so I pull the curtains around his bed and reluctantly pull away his pyjama bottoms and then start the task of examining an octogenarians balls for signs of blackening, just at this moment Karen and a staff nurse arrive, and as the nurse is pulling back the curtains and seconds before they spy me nestling an old mans ball sack in my hands the words she speak sends shivers down my spine, she jovially say’s “it’s ok Jim you can stop moaning now, Your test results are back”…..