Scum

Today has not been a very good day. Around about 9 a.m. I started to wonder where the newest member of our team had got to. She's normally in before 8 a.m. But there were problems on the Tube so I didn't worry too much and let it slip from my mind.

Ten minutes later she calls. "I'm in a hospital and I don't know what has happened to me" she says rather less lucidly than I liked. I heard her doctor tell her to say she wasn't coming to work and then she hung up.

I texted her (forgetting the no mobile rule in hospitals) saying she should call me if she needed anything. Half an hour later I got a call from a doctor who still wouldn't tell me what had happened to her but asked me to come in to see her.

She was at the Central Middlesex Hospital, so I got permission to leave work from my boss, after borrowing money off him for the journey (poverty... not great...). I had to get to Harlesden, which seemed to take an age, and spent the time worrying about what state she'd be in when I got there.

I found the hospital easily but finding her was more difficult. No one seemed to know where the department I needed was (I spoke to 5 different members of staff who were either not very knowledgeable but pleasant or extremely rude and tried to ignore me [one even turned her back on me, purposely, before I even got to ask her... bitch, she gave me a look like "Fuck you" while she did it to.]). I finally wandered, unhindered, through the wards until I found her.

She had been attacked. Someone had punched her in the face outside her house last night knocking her unconscious. They didn't do anything else other than punching. No theft. No assault. Just a random act of violence. She'd woken up in the hospital scared and confused. Being French Canadian she hasn't got too many contacts over here so I, as her trainer, was the first person she mentioned to the doctors to call.

Bless her, I stayed with her for a few hours talking to her, which was easy as her short term memory is so bad that we managed to have the same conversation 5 or 6 times (think Dory from Finding Nemo). I hope she is alright, I've told her to call me if she needs anything (except money or a place to stay... those are beyond my powers).

See... this is why I really hate human beings. Nasty creatures the lot of them. Why would you just punch a stranger for no reason, hard enough to knock them unconscious? Unless of course it was that nurse who gave me that look. Now violence against her I could easily understand.