Level 7

My case history is quite simple. After writing that last entry in my diary I went on duty in the Operations Room. I had not been there long before my stomach started to feel bad. Soon the unpleasant sensations became quite a fierce pain, and I decided I should have to do something about it. Such a thing had never happened to me before.

I pushed the red button and asked for help and instructions. They worked fast. Five minutes later X-117 came into take my place and the loudspeaker told me to go to my room until they came to escort me to the hospital. I hardly had time to stretch out on my bed before two nurses arrived (despite my pains I noticed that one of them wore an ‘m’ and the other did not) and helped me across to the ward. Within a quarter of an hour of having sent my S.O.S., I was tucked up in a hospital bed.

There was nothing unusual about the ward. It was small, of course, like most of the rooms here, with only five beds beside mine, all of them empty. So I had the lady doctor, M-227m, all to myself. She took my temperature, looked at my tongue, poked me, asked me a couple of questions, and finally told me I had upset my stomach by eating something unsuitable.

I might have guessed: the chocolate. When I told her I had eaten some she laughed and said: “That’s it. I’m glad there’s nothing wrong with the food you ought to have been eating.” It was not that the chocolate was bad, she explained; but my stomach had grown unused to tackling that sort of food. “You’re already a Level 7 man,” she said. “You can’t digest that kind of thing any more.” Then she added: “By the way, where did you get your chocolate? I wouldn’t mind a piece myself—a very small piece, of course.”

When I told her that it had been my wedding feast and that it was all gone, she had a good laugh and said: “So you’re suffering from marriage pains! Serves you right! I suppose your bride will be arriving any moment now—she ate some too, didn’t she?”

But P did not appear. Her digestion must be better than mine. What’s more, she gave me the bigger piece of chocolate.

The doctor found me some pills which purged my stomach and after that the pains soon wore off. I felt a bit weak and dizzy, though, and still do.

I was quite sorry to leave the ward this afternoon. It may sound odd, but I really enjoyed being there. The whole business was so comical: a stomach upset by a chocolate toast after a wedding ceremony, and then a ‘honeymoon’ spent in a hospital bed.

I enjoyed the pain too. This may sound downright perverse, but it is true. I enjoyed it because it broke the deadening routine. It made me feel that I was still alive, alive to sensations which were felt by people up there on the surface.

More than that, the pain proved my identity to me in a way that my symbol, X-127m, cannot do. Somebody once said: “I think, therefore I am.” But it seems to me that thinking makes you forget your own personality, it dissolves your individuality in the impersonal universe of spirit. But feeling, feeling an acute pain, tells you that you are. It makes you aware of yourself as nothing else does. There is nothing universal about the feeling of pain; it is the most private of experiences.

Though I am still weak, my state of physical emptiness is a good one and conducive to meditation. Those pills seem to have purged my mind as well as my body. My depression has gone, I feel much more cheerful. I don’t even want to discuss myths with R-747. For the time being, my addiction to that spiritual drug is cured.

This is the first occasion on which I have felt really grateful to P. But for her persistent efforts to get me to marry her, and but for her piece of chocolate, I should still be going round in my black mood.

The pangs of marriage certainly did me good. I only hope it will not be undone by marriage’s other aspects.

MAY 12

I am quite well now. And a proper married man too.

P seemed quite worried about my stomach trouble when we met again yesterday. This was perfectly natural in a newly-wedded woman, and it prompted me to ask her why she had not visited me in the hospital. She said she had been told no visitors were allowed. Apparently the rule is quite inflexible.

I wonder why this should be. I suppose it is considered better to hide sick people away, not only for reasons of hygiene, but to preserve the morale of their healthy friends. It is always depressing to visit a person in the hospital, and if you do not see for yourself how ill a patient is you are more likely to assume that no news (or the vague information which doctors begrudgingly allow you) is good news.

Incidentally P had a touch of indigestion herself, as might have been expected, but it was not enough to stop her working.

I find her more pleasant now. In conversation her tongue is not so sharp. Indeed she talks less altogether.