Anniversary

Eric Sinclair

The Rica Hotel is an unlikely setting for a life-changing experience.

It is a modern building set within commercial warehousing and light industry, close to Oslo's Gardermoen Airport. I checked in on 16 July 2004 with the help of my son, lain, then working at the nearby Miklagaard Golf Course.

Next day, we strolled round Oslo and climbed to the Olympic ski jump to view the city, its harbour and nearby islands. We sat in a harbour-side restaurant enjoying a drink, some over- priced food, renewed family bonding. Later, Iain dropped me off and we agreed to meet in the morning for golf. As he left, I cursed myself for forgetting to get a note of his new mobile phone number. Too bad, I'd get it tomorrow.

I made a mental note to give Jo a call in the morning - our wedding anniversary - and laid my mobile phone on the bed-side table. It was about 10 p.m. but the Norwegian summer sun was still bright outside as I closed the curtains.

So ended the last normal day of my life.

I awoke around 7 a.m. and tried to sit up; however, an invisible, powerful vice seemed to be pinning me to the bed. My face felt oddly tight and my left arm as though an electrical current was silently surging through it. With growing fright and disbelief I tried to roll over. My heart was racing. A lurch to the left found me precariously close to the edge of the bed. I gazed around. Everything seemed as it had been - television, suitcase, socks, leather rucksack, shoes. . ..

I slid off the bed on to the carpet with the thud of a dead weight and tentatively explored my loss of power. My heart was beating hard. I lay heavily - unusually heavily - on my left side. I realised that I could not move my left leg, or my left arm. One side of my face felt tight and numb, as if anaesthetised.

Comprehensive destruction seemed to have been wreaked on my body.

I felt an almost irresistible desire to shut my eyes and reawaken in a sane world where this awful event had not happened. When I next consciously examined my predicament, nothing had changed. I appeared to be still alive. My body still seemed powerless and weak. I tried to struggle upright, but could not stir.

My head was close to the bed-side table. I remembered the mobile phone - I could phone Jo - not the anniversary greeting I'd intended, but contact with an English speaker who could share my predicament. I tried my voice, whispering "hello" to the empty room with a strange, weak, detached sound. It took a few seconds for the phone to come fully to life, for me to press "Home" and connect with the familiar UK ringing sound. It was only when Jo's sleepy voice answered that I realised the enormity of what I was doing to her. Norway was an hour ahead of UK time. She was still in bed. I imagined our bedroom with its coombed ceilings, early morning light and drawn curtains. "Jo!" I slurred, "Something awful has happened to my body. Can you contact Iain and ask him to come to the hotel."

Could I wait that long? I rang off. Perhaps I could call an ambulance. I just wanted some qualified person to tell me what was wrong. I keyed in 112. A Norwegian voice crackled at the other end. I croaked, "Doctor. I need a doctor. Room 103. Rica Hotel. Gardermoen."

A few moments later, I appeared to awaken from sleep - the hotel receptionist was standing beside me, seeming impossibly tall and far away.

She said, "The ambulance will soon be here."

So things were happening. Somewhere a system was springing into action. I lay back on the carpet, feeling weak, ill, tired and no longer in control. A great wave of regret engulfed me. I thought of our home in Glen Dye, of Jo, wakened so crudely. Though I wanted to tell her everything was okay, I was convinced that I was dying, that my face on a rough Norwegian hotel carpet would be my final living sensation. I was confronting death, and was not proud of the fear and regret I felt.

Two green-uniformed paramedics stood over me. They were asking questions, but I seemed able only to weep. It didn't seem to matter. They were gently sliding me on to a stretcher. Iain was in the room. Like the receptionist, he seemed pale, tall and far away. I wept again.

The paramedics slid me on to a trolley, and pushed me across the room. I am six feet tall and could not accept viewing the world from two feet and watching events from a prone position. The trolley was in the corridor, accompanied by an army of marching feet. We rolled and marched into the crowded dining area, adjacent to the main reception. I was aware of the curious gaze of family groups sitting at tables. Bright Nordic sunshine. A waiting ambulance. Iain and a paramedic scrambled in to the back beside me.

The motion of the ambulance made me nauseous and it was hard to concentrate on what the paramedic was saying. Something about blood oxygen. A mask was over my mouth and nose. The swaying ambulance and the fact that I was tied down into a lying position reminded me that, however much I might like to be viewing events from the outside, I was very much involved. "I know what this is," said the paramedic. But he either did not know the English word, or else felt it was such a dread disease that he should not mention it aloud. The word "stroke" hovered in my mind but I could not absorb this in any meaningful way.

Sadness, bereavement and horror engulfed me again. As the ambulance rolled bumpily into Oslo, I wept unrestrained heaving sobs that I could not bring under control.