The consultant looked around, agitated, and bobbing his head, he counted us, calculating the time it would take as he probably had an eighteen-hole to tackle at three or a bike to cycle somewhere in tight Lycra with his arse lubed for the saddle; he certainly didn’t need to know anything about Tom’s tea. He sent a woman back, the lovely woman who spoke Portuguese to the air as she dusted, to settle Jane.

Michal wheeled over a commode to my cell. ‘Throw on hoody, miss, you’re going for scan. It’s all I have today, I am afraid,’ he said, apologetically. ‘Wait. I lift you. Here. Hold tight on to Michal. Hegs broke one-legged wheelchair yesterday like, I’m sorry but so what am I to do?’

A fucking toilet.

I couldn’t answer. But an answer wasn’t required.

I hoped he’d take me to the pub across the road. Bet he took Hegs to the pub across the road. The Blind Man’s Inn. Indeed. Some of the porters did that with the old men who had cancer. For a pint. I tried to get up and put my feet under me, but my knees buckled and I fell backwards onto the bed. Michal came behind me and lifted me up by the hips. ‘’KKKK, good, OK, try move your bottom back, and back, good.’ Michal grabbed another white theatre gown and he lifted it round me like a shirt, doubling me like the young lad in the off-licence who double-bags my wine. Margaret Rose rushed over with knickers, pulling them up along my feet and dragging them, until she settled them between my legs.

‘Ah, she’s vary weak,’ Margaret Rose said to Michal. He nodded as he tied the top gown at the front. ‘Are ya sure yar doing the right thing taking her off like this? I think she’d be better back in bed. Scans, they’re all on about scans. How’d they feel if they were stuck in a scan as sick as her? Poor Sinéad. ’Tisn’t right.’ She pulled the tag off a new pair of bed socks, awkwardly with her front teeth, and unrolled them on my feet. ‘Yar feet are vary puffy.’ She pressed her fingers into them.

I got up to walk and Margaret Rose and Michal grabbed hold of me. ‘Nooooooo,’ Michal shouted. ‘No, you not allowed, I no allowed, please you have to stop making my job so harder. I allowed to make no decisions. You’re too weak, SinAID,’ he said to Margaret Rose and me in turn.

‘Get her hoody so or she’ll freeze ta death …’ Margaret Rose, concerned, noticing my teeth chattering, rubbed the palm of her warm hand on my face. They both tried to lift me on to the commode, but I kicked at it, there was no way I was sitting on it in public. I was not somebody who took a taxi on a loo. ‘Do that, go on, and see how far you get with yar kicking, you won’na get to the door of this ward, Sinéad, please. Stop,’ Margaret Rose pleaded.