Hospital bed

Julia Worley

Julia Worley is a musician, poet, and visual artist living with a severe cardiomyopathy. Born in Portsmouth, UK, she moved to Buenos Aires, Argentina, having received a Fine Art degree in 2005. There she played in noise band Klub der Klang, postpunk trio Las Kellies, and cumbia collective Betty Confetti y Su Conjunto Tropical, releasing albums, working with producers such as Dennis Bovell, and touring Europe. She returned to the UK as a Disabled person in 2019 to reconnect with her roots. In Bristol, she developed her apocalyptic folk project, Betty Blight, which she had started in response to turbulent global politics. She released two EPs, and then two albums in 2025 with collaborators Diente de Madera and The Scruffy Pooks. In 2026 she released her debut solo album, “Wench, Witch or Motherly” with Undergrowth Collective, writing and recording songs on guitar, voice, and shruti box, creating artwork and concrete sound collages. She is currently working on building noise instruments for her next album to reflect the experiences of living with a potentially fatal chronic illness.

instagram @ladybettyblight
https://bettyblightfolk.wordpress.com/

Hospital Bed

Again, I am trying to record something, convey a centimetre of a mile of feelings while being in this place that has numbed and relaxed me into submission. The normalization of a regime. How I feel about being in so much danger, and yet held by a perpetually shifting hospital bed, rotating staff, rhythmic dinner time bells, and bright blue curtains. Held by words of love from friends and family, comforted by addictive games and TV comedies, soothed by stodgy and sugary food.

“Julia,” they say, “this sounds very scary.” And yes, when at home in my bedroom, the tremors and shocks running through me felt like (were!) a premonition of death. The anchored chain, once dropped over the side, would clunk violently into the sea, to pull me down with it into the depths, unstoppable. But how deep was this channel, how far down was the bottom? When would the falling stop? What would stop it? Was this my moment? No, it couldn’t be. I demand more warning.

This hospital bed holds me, sticky metal nipples connect readings of my heart’s electrical activities to the ward’s control desk, nipple clamps leading to Jamaican cables – red, yellow, green, to a console reading of jagged lines. Every few hours, a nurse wheels a pole towards me, topped by a machine whose cuff is placed on my upper arm, inflating to squeeze the current still, to give me a reading of the blood being sucked into my heart and pumped back out again. Every time, every single time I am found wanting, blood pressure too low, “Let’s try again,” and “Drink more water,” and we cheat a bit with a smaller cuff placed on my forearm, just so they’ll leave me be. A peg is placed on my forefinger, and a cone-shaped thermometer goes into my ear. “Are you in any pain?” Have you opened your bowel?”

This happens at 5.30 in the morning and carries on till nighttime. I am held. I am fastened in. I am monitored.

Julia, you could die in an instant. That must be very scary. I numb with my phone game and secretly trust that it is not quite time. “God, please give me at least until my next gig, my next workshop, the summer, the festival I’ve got tickets for.”

Tonight I will take my first dose of a medicine that will calm my shattered heart, keep me safe for a month before they come at it with a laser beam and clear some of the wreckage. This new pill could make things worse. But secretly I know that all will be fine. I will have safe, solid ground beneath me, my heart will resist the urge to shiver, I will get to my gig, my workshop, the festival. The doctors will burn a tiny part of my heart and I will get back on my bike and zoom around to sing and make friends and ask, “Will you help me when I am really ill?”

My heart rests in this hospital bed, with its perpetually clean sheets and its raised back. This bed holds me, and I am safe.