Day 2: Back in the UK

Throughout the interminable flight back to the UK, I watched film after film after film. Anything to keep my mind off the "what if's", the hoping that I would get back in time. We landed pretty smoothly and my brother was there to meet us.
He did an amazing job at preparing me, regaling me with funny stories about the hospital combined with snip bits of vital information. Dad had had a blood clot stroke, would probably have to stay in hospital for many weeks. I was not to be alarmed when I saw him - he would be pale and seem very fragile. Then my brother would tell me about the nurses and how my dad was flirting with the pretty ones, the hospital with its fantastic view, the volunteer 'reader' trying to shout out a poem to a stone-deaf patient, how my dad was suspicious of the nurses taking his DNA when they were swabbing out his mouth...
We drove straight to the hospital and my brother led us to the specialist ward. It was past visiting hours and there was a quiet calm about the hospital and the ward. A smell of disinfectant, some nurses lounging about, patients at rest trying to recover. My brother steamed into the last bay breezily greeting my dad, and then I followed in after. We were both so happy to see each other! A huge relief swept over me. My dad got very emotional then and we both started crying. He was much more paler than before and the left side of his face was droopy and expressionless. My brother manoevered him like a child into a more straight lying position.
But mentally, he was more lucid than ever. He recounted how good my mum and brother had been, but now he felt 'safe'. He told me that he'd been for a brain scan and as he went into the 'tunnel' he felt like he was dead, as if in a coffin, and then how he'd been left in the accident and emergency ward with all the terribly injured people and he was so scared because nobody was taking him back to the ward and were ignoring him. He told me that some of the nurses were 'rude'. "They're trying to make you better," my brother said, "try to be nice to them."
It was time to go. I think we both felt so much better for having seen each other.