The door opened slightly and a head appeared. “Have you a cigarette, mister?” came the faraway familiar voice of a small farmer. The alcoholics handed over cigarettes to the chemically mad. Then, as if they were under the power of some medium, the drinkers, like austere feminists, began to bare their souls.

Jack was welcomed to the meeting.

“My name is Jack,” he said when his turn to speak came round. He could not bring himself to say he was an alcoholic. Instead he said: “I hope in time to have the courage to say I am an alcoholic.” The little group shook their heads knowingly. He reminded them of themselves. They all knew that defence, that dependence on self which was an even stronger addiction than drink. The self, which was governed by the will, would not negate its own existence.

“It’s a life sentence,” said the final speaker. “You don’t cease to be an alcoholic. Never. It’s in the genes. The same flawed cell will burn brightly again the next time you take a drink, if there ever is a next time.”

They stood with heads bowed for the serenity prayer. Someone opened a window. Fag smoke blew outwards like incense from a ritual.

The nurses moved lightly in their own sure personalities between people lost in spasms of loneliness.

An identity was affirmed. The nurse moved on. The patient, feeling pure because of the sympathy, looked after the disappearing nurse, or irked by the return of some reality, didn’t.

Jack was happy on Librium.

Then came another responsibility. That all that happened in the hospital, even as it happened, had to be written down. Now his time there was running out Jack was visited by an obsession that he must become the chronicler of those who were his companions.

It was a time that must be remembered. Because of this obsession, he sat in the unused office for Male Admissions those last few days feverishly writing. He answered the telephone, gave precise directions to those in the outside world, then resumed his task. From now on, everything was going to happen for a first time.

It was present times he was addicted to. The notebook stayed with him throughout the day. It was there beside him while he slept, it was there first thing in the morning.