In the blues again

It was 1am and I was driving home from work when I decided to take a different route. I had tanked up on coffee on the last hour of my shift and didn't feel like heading straight home. I had been stuck in the minors department for 8 hours and I felt that all I was able to say was "Keep your foot/ankle/hand elevated, take plenty of painkillers, ice-packs mmmhghtswhh garr....."

I've gotta say again, men are the biggest wimps. The things that they come to the hospital with makes me want to drop my head in my hands and weep. "Oooh, doc, it's a very deep cut. I nearly passed out when I saw how deep it was. "

For God's sake, it's a freaking scratch. You didn't even need a plaster on it. I bet you it stopped bleeding before you got in the car to come to hospital, you wuss. Perhaps I should do what one of my old consultants did when another time-waster turned up with a non-problem. He frogmarched them out of the department, pointed to the sign above the door and asked, "What does that say?"

"Uh, Accident & Emergency?"

"Exactly. Now is your problem either an accident or an emergency? No? Then, bugger off."

Of course, I am not a consultant and am in no position to be frogmarching anybody anywhere, much less to tell them to bugger off. Knowing my luck, that person would come back with septicaemia after I tell them to take their scratched finger elsewhere.

I'm sorry if I have run out of sympathy pills but today I am numb to anybody's worries but my own. Today, tomorrow, yesterday. Yes, perhaps half of my problems are, as my infuriatingly always-correct housemate would say, self-inflicted, but that does not make things any easier to bear. Worse, in fact. Not only did I bring this onto myself, but I have come to the realisation that I am in fact, average. And on some days, below than average. Ok, I never thought I was ever Brain, but at least I thought I was smarter than Pinky. Now, even that one demented belief is being eaten away. Pinky at least was endearing and charmingly persistent, but I have neither to recommend me.

So, actually, it wasn't only the coffee that kept me awake and driving around deserted roads so late at night. Or made me park on a dead-end road and stare at the city lights across the river. It was perhaps, my one small move to break out of the average, the routine. That I was more than an automaton that has no social life outside of work. Miserable git.

I did discover one thing though. A fox, that had just crossed the road in front of my car and turned to look at me. I hadn't seen anything that beautiful in a while. A real fox, not three miles from the city centre.

Perhaps it was lost as well?