Storm in a teacup: memoirs of a tea lady. Chapter 14

I met my future husband-to-be at Royal Perth Hospital where I   had already been working for a number of years, pushing my tea- trolley from ward-to-ward, morning, noon and night. Dishing out endless cups of tea to all those sick people was a huge responsibility that I saw as a privilege.

            Early one morning while doing the breakfast teas on the orthopedics’ ward, I spied a new patient in a hospital bed but the poor man’s entire head and body were encased in a white plaster cast, and his limbs were strung up and pillows were propping up his head.  All I could see were his twinkly eyes, smooth mouth and the pink tips of his fingers and toes.

            “Tea?” I asked.

            “Yes please,’ he uttered as if from far away, which I suppose he was.

            “Sugar?”  

            “Yes.”

            “Milk?”

            I made him a cup of sweet milky tea with a straw which I inserted into the hole where his mouth would be. He slurped up the tea. He wiggled the tips of his fingers as if to say, “Good.”

            As I stood there steadying the straw for him, our eyes met. It was love at first sight.

 I discovered from one of the nurses that he’d been in a terrible accident; that he’d fallen asleep on a mountain path and how a runaway steamroller had rolled straight over the top of him.

Next day, I read his bedside notes.  My plaster-man’s name was Edward— “Teddy”—Oxwell— and he was twenty-five years old.  And his vital signs were” Pulse rate 72, Blood Pressure 110/60, Respirations 18 and he weigh 72 kilograms. How could I resist him?  I loved him. I loved every broken bone in his crushed body.

I knew Mother would adore Teddy, so I asked my plaster-man to marry me and in his own funny plaster-man way, he nodded a slow but definitive yes.