Buddy story · A hard stretch
The fortnight one of us was in hospital
Carl was admitted for something entirely unrelated and Gus kept writing into the silence for eleven days without asking for anything back.
- Paired
- December 2024
- Cadence
- Tuesdays
- Status
- ongoing
What Carl remembers is that Gus never once asked how he was in a way that required an answer. The messages were about Dunfermline, the weather, a bad film, a neighbour's fence. Carl read them on a ward and replied to none of them until day twelve.
Gus says he had no strategy and was terrified of saying the wrong thing, so he said nothing of consequence, which turned out to be exactly right. Ada has since used this pairing as the example in facilitator training for what to do when somebody goes quiet: keep the door open, do not knock loudly, ask nothing.
Carl's medication was paused during the admission, on advice, and restarted afterwards on advice, and he found the restart harder than he expected. That is written up in his journal rather than here.
I had nothing useful to say so I told him about a fence dispute for eleven days. Apparently that was the correct answer.
Not one of them needed a reply. I have never been so grateful to be sent something so boring.