The coffee must have scalded the lining of his mouth but he drank it in big gulps until he had emptied the mug. Then he pushed the quilt away apologised for his morning glory reached out for a fistful of tablets and swallowed the lot without a drink.

Now you’d better help me to the bathroom. My eyesight isn’t what it was.

I survived the morning. Gained time by pushing the environmentally approved service car to its limits and checked in for lunch with my colleagues only quarter of an hour late.

You mustn’t do anything unnecessary for them you know said one of the colleagues whose name I’ve already forgotten. Mustn’t spoil them once because they’ll just expect the same every time and then we’d never get a break. But you understand that surely.

The lunchbreak was sacred because it was the time to talk.

Johansson had shat himself and the entire bed not to speak of eriknäslund. And our erik had smeared poo all over the headboard. As for alicia. Piss everywhere. One after the other they reported the old folks’ faecal status and spent much time on loose bowels which was considered an especially tough test of one’s patience. 46

What about you jana. You went to ingelahansson’s didn’t you. Was the nappy lying by her or did she have it on. They turned to me with burning eyes.

It was lying by her I told them. I felt that the simple question had a right and a wrong answer. Yees someone shouted waving her arm in victory. Oh shit others muttered.

We have a running bet the fat one explained and gestured towards a whiteboard. All our names including märitljungqvist’s and mine were neatly listed on the board. Each one had been given a number in red or black. Tomorrow you must put twenty kronor in the jar.

The afternoon wasn’t exactly easier. People needed showers. Food had to be provided but because there was only a four minute slot set aside for preparing it almost everything except porridge or softboiled eggs was out of the question. Incontinence pads must be changed and the immobile elderly have cream put on to ease any bedsores. Everyone had a pill dispenser and no one took less than four different tablets. Perhaps they were mostly vitamins or heart medicines but something seemed to make the old folk uncommonly lethargic even given the withdrawn personalities so common in my home village.

The last person to visit was a cancer patient who, the note said, had been discharged from hospital for palliative care at home. Whatever that meant. Her surname was unfamiliar and I didn’t reflect on who it might be until facing the sleeping woman. Then I recognised her.

Strangely katarinahansson or katarinakarlsson as she now was hadn’t changed much.