10 NOVEMBER 2001, Page 40

Second opinion

I ARRIVED on my ward last week just in time to hear a woman on the television shriek, 'It's disgusting!"

I agreed with her completely, of course, though, needless to say, I never found out what it was that had disgusted her. Since everything these days disgusts me, however, I think it follows in strict logic that I was in full agreement with her.

Disgust, I have noticed as I grow older, is a pleasure that never palls. I spend many happy hours discussing my disgust and its objects with my friends, who are all of like mind. How terrible it must be to live in Switzerland, where everything is perfect and nothing is disgusting. What on earth do the Swiss find to talk about? Remove disgust from my conversation, and I should fall silent.

Watching television from adjacent beds in the ward were two young people, the first of whom had metal studs in his lips, ears, eyebrows and tongue. His face was like a small hardware store. His arms were tattooed with pseudo-Maori and Japanese designs, as if he hoped to be mummified after death and exhibited in the Museum of Mankind.

He was in hospital because he was suffering from some of the less desired effects of what are popularly known as recreational drugs. Before passing out under their influence, he had managed — also under their influence, he said — to beat his girlfriend so badly that she ended up in our intensive care unit.

I wanted to find out whether he was what I call a recreational beater of girlfriends.

'I've only ever done it once before, doctor,' he said.

'When was that?'

'I was out of my skull on drugs at the time, doctor. It wasn't really me talking, it was the drugs.'

This, I suppose, is the 21st-century equivalent of spirit possession.

'Doctor, I think I need help with my temper.'

'How about not taking drugs?'

'That's easier said than done.'

In the bed next to his was a young woman with lime-green hair and a black eye. She also had a ring through her nose — I dare say that, had I asked, she would have told me she was easily led. That would probably have explained why she had LOVE and HATE tattooed on her knuckles.

I interviewed her in my room. She had been sexually abused as a child in the normal fashion — that is to say, by her mother's boyfriend — and ever since puberty she had consorted with jealous, drunken, drug-taking, violent criminal men. She was in hospital because she'd taken an overdose of sleepers. This was after Leroy (her third boyfriend of that name) had half-strangled her.

I asked whether Leroy half-strangled her often.

'No, only once before. That was a long time ago.'

'How long?'

'I don't know.'

'Go on, have a guess.'

She looked for inspiration at the reproduction on my wall: the portrait of Giovanna Tornabuoni by Domenico Ghirlandaio. It jogged her memory.

'About a month.'

'He sounds dangerous to me,' I said.

'Our relationship's always been violent,' she said, as if in complete contradiction to my remark.

'Why do you stay with him?'

`Leroy's the best thing that ever happened to me.'

'You mean the second best,' I said. 'What do you mean?' she asked.

'I saw you exchanging telephone num bers with the man in the bed next to yours.'

Theodore Dahymple