They said to get to the ward by 7pm, but every time I've been there for a screening some sort of train fuck up or my own subconscious vendetta against punctuality has served to get me there just in the nick of time. Nick warned me that showing up anything less than very early would spell death. I'd wind up with the last bed, standing near the toilets or trepanning station, and my experience would be forever marred with the smell of medically induced shits. Lucky for me I started work early, and so left early, and so arrived at the ward just before 6pm. Winner.

When I got into the actual room I found two things. The First Man, hence forth to be known as Early Doors, who'd apparently gotten there SO early that he was already in his pyjamas, and also I discovered that the beds were already assigned to the other 8 patients and that mine was in the middle; near the toilets but mercifully one bed away. Let that guy deal with the hard stool. I was a little worried that Early Doors would try to bond with me, building on our shared love of arriving ridiculously early, but after a few cursory words he returned to his laptop. Good man.

There's not a great deal to do in the ward beyond what you can provide yourself. I mean there's a sort of entertainment room apparently, where they have an Xbox, some jigsaws and a copy of Take a Break! from 1992. I dunno, I never went in there. An Irish nurse gave me the sparsest tour in recorded history. Here's the room, here's the exit, here's some food. Done. Chips. Laters. Doesn't matter to me. I've no intention of ever hitting the Rec Room or the bloody communal internet bay. I've got my 12" lappy and the Wi-Fi password. I'm golden.

Having Nick go through this system twice already proved invaluable. He gave me the full low down on how to prepare for life in The Institute. "Fill your hard drive with TV" came the first commandment, and that I did. Two full series of Dexter, one of Burn Notice and several new episodes of things like South Park, Boardwalk Empire and The Walking Dead, just for variety. On top of that I recently discovered a website from which to download comics [yes, I read comics... anyone surprised?] and after whipping through the selection and filling my pants with love, I downloaded the entirety of the last year's issues; a shit ton of Spider-Man, some Iron Man action, The Boys and also X-Men. I haven't read any comics since I moved to London in 2009, so there is A LOT of catching up to do, especially considering that my standing order at Forbidden Planet in Nottingham was 23 books a month. I wouldn't be short of something to do, is what I'm getting at.

The mutual isolation implemented by myself and Early Doors carried over nicely, so the new inmates [including Bubbles, Shooter McGavin and Ring Back] kept mostly to themselves. Except for one guy. He was older than the rest of us, probably about 36 or so, and was of Polish or other Eastern European extraction. I christened him Ivan Drago, and my God did he enjoy talking. Talking mostly, as it turned out, about the Nexus2 mobile phone. Fuck me he was happy with that phone. He brought it up at every available opportunity. Sometimes he created opportunities himself to bring it up, when no one was talking at all, he'd suddenly lunge conversationally towards Bubbles and demand to know what he thought the best phone on the market was, and then aggressively steered the dialogue and loaded the question to force Bubbles to say he thought it was the iPhone 4, only to CRUSH HIM before he'd even finished pronouncing the ‘ne’.

For the most part I tuned Drago out, sticking my earphones in and wiling away the hours with some Dexter or Family Guy. Eventually though I started to get video eyes and my caffeine withdrawal headache threatened to split my face apart from the inside. I had to shut my eyes, but there was no way to block out his incessant rambling about the incredible features of the Nexus2. I tweeted about him, referring to him only as Ivan Drago and mentioning his inane phone chatter. Almost immediately Nick tweeted back with the guy's real name and a rough description. They had met!

The medical trial circuit is by no means a small one, and there are often several different trials going on at any one time. But Nick had been sectioned with this Slavic mad-man before. It seems Drago is a veteran of the system, doing as many trials as he can eat in order to pay off a mountainous Visa bill. Interesting backstory no doubt, but even armed with Drago's Secret Origin I was unable to drown him out. There was no weakness in his history for me to exploit, and I knew that engaging him in anyway would be the end of me. That's what happened to Bubbles and now he was sitting on the man's bed, discussing why the iPhone 4's app store was inferior in comparison to the Nexus2.

Eventually he settled down, and once it started to get late and a couple of the others switched their lights off, I knew I was safe. I'd been at work all day and wanted nothing more than to sleep, but there's no way I could do it knowing this crowd of desperate strangers were lurking about the halls. The first to pull his curtain across was the bedmate to my right, Shooter McGavin, a young looking chap who wouldn't have looked out of place menacing an elderly couple outside a village chapel, but who spent most of his time speaking on the phone about increasingly professional and complex sounding business deals. I discovered later that he works at a Golf Shop at some prestigious country club, and is apparently quite high up on the chain considering the number of subordinates calling for his advice. Never judge a book I guess.

With Shooter's curtain pulled I gained confidence to pull my own, since he's effectively cut me off from his turf I was justified in doing the same to everyone else. While considering the social ramifications of my succession, Ring Back finally got off the phone to his baby mama and dragged the bars of his cell across. That was it, I was gone. Curtain closed, laptop sheathed and, as per the rules, phone switched off, I had a go at sleep. Except it was really REALLY warm in there and the duvet was fashioned entirely from Gortex® and lava. Not the best night's kip I've ever had. Although not the worst either.

TRAINING DAY ONE:

I was shuffled awake by an overly cheerful nurse. One of my eyes opened... what time was it? 6am.

Boss. I'd managed a sound 5 or so hours sleep in my polythene hotbox, and was now being asked to submit to a barrage of tests. Fair enough. This is why I'm here. Rubbing my eyes I scanned the room to see everyone doing about the same thing. Except for Early Doors who'd probably gone to wake the nurses up when he'd got bored on his own. He was fresh as a fucking daisy and was happily reading a book about Iraq with a vague metaphorical name, like ‘Eminence of Dust’.

First was the sitting ECG, which involves sitting on the edge of the bed with your feet on the floor for five minutes, then having your blood pressure measured with that inflatable armband deal. Blood Pressure Bill's results were troubling, and required three nurses to jot things down and look pensive before they could carry on. Next up was the Body Temp, which is your standard thermometer action. No blood today, or urine, so before the training kicked in I nipped off for a piss and a quick bleed. When in Rome.

The ‘Training’ kicked off with a lung capacity test, wherein we were instructed to hold a sort of large blue plastic test tube shaped apparatus out in front of us horizontally, audibly breath out for five second to empty our lungs, and then breath in hard with the mouth piece in our... mouths. A small plastic wheel shot up the tube and where ever it landed on the scale, from 1 to 150 odd, was your capacity. They let us have a few goes to get used to the technique and then we did three for real. 90 each time. Sounds shit, but they're looking for consistency. A 90, a 75 and a 10 are gonna get you back on the bus home, whereas my steady lunged 90, 90, 90 kept me safely in the game.

Then the inhalers themselves. We all know the standard puffer, used by nerds in 80's films when they get nervous since the dawn of time. If you don't know roughly how this thing operates then you've not seen The Goonies enough. Kids stuff. The new inhaler, known as the Symbicort Inhaler System [I added the SYSTEM to make it sound more Japanese and faceless] is shaped kind of like a thick stubby cigar and rather than being held aloft and pressed down to release the lung opening drugs, it's simply twisted at the end. You blow out, you breath in. Job done. It's actually a very good device. Smaller, more compact, and it's not a weird L shape like the old kind so it won't jab you in the thigh should it shift position in your jeans while you're running for the bus. We did three practice tries with each form of inhaler, before being dosed with both, and then told to stay in bed for 2 hours, but sat up. Easy. I had plenty more Dexter to chop through.

That was pretty much the lot. After the 2 hours was up they said we could have breakfast [Cereal and brown toast ] and then leave if we liked. We were to be back by 9pm that night for a further stay over, but the rest of the day was ours. Mint. I fucked off home and got a McMuffin along the way.

TRAINING DAY TWO:

Having returned to The Institute at 9pm as instructed, I settled in to my bed [unmade mark you! What's this army of cleaners for exactly?] and cracked on with some Dexter and Burn Notice while enjoying a mighty fine Steak & Cheese Subway I'd got on the way in. A young research assistant by the name of Harriet popped in to dick around with the machinery and chided me for eating in the ward, but then smiled and said she'd seen nothing. Bonza.

Learning from the previous night's restless pseudo-sleep in the rubberised slow cooker, I'd hunted around for the AC Controls and managed to get at them before anyone else turned up [except Early Doors, who predictably was already there and finishing a 1,000 piece jigsaw of the sky] and switched the room temp down from 26 to 22. My hope was that anyone who was too cold would assume the controls were out of bounds or set low for scientific purpose, and therefore not dare to change them.

Woken at 6am once more and exposed to another round of the same tests. ECG, temperature, lung capacity and finally another double dosing. It was all over by around 9.20am and we were released without charge. I didn't stick around for the toast this time, instead heading home to eat a pub-based breakfast with James before sheening to work for the afternoon. I was tired and a little disheveled, but beyond that the Training Days had been a piece of piss. No urine, no blood letting and no subject interaction.

This was gonna be the easiest money I ever made...

Equilibrium III: Diary of the Dosed - Brought to you by Gazz Wood -