We’d started the morning round early, just before nine. There were only two of us so we had had to take on a whole floor each. No, this is not our usual practice. Our girl Alanna, yeah, the little blonde one – you see – is getting married soon. This weekend was her hen-do. Oh yes, we go back. We were in school together. I’m going to be her best girl at the wedding. Thank you very much. We’re all looking forward to it.

Mr Hancock’s room is the very last room at the end of the corridor, so I started my rounds there. After we straighten up their rooms we leave them to rest until lunchtime. Mr Hancock often took his lunch in his room. He didn’t cope well with the noise levels of the sitting room – to put it mildly. Let’s just say he was a rather solitary type. Timmy didn’t find him until one o’clock when he went up with the tray. I’d just come back from my lunch break. He gave this high-pitched scream, like a lady who’s seen a mouse or something, so we thought he was joking. Then we heard the metal tray hitting the floor and the emergency light went off on the switchboard. Mona and I hurried upstairs. Timmy was stood outside the door of room 214, very confused. When we pushed the door open, we understood why. There was blood and Timmy has haematophobia. A small fresh wound will throw him into a moderate panic. And this was a lot of blood. Mona went to fetch him a cup of water. Mr Hancock was lying on his bed, at a slant. His right arm must’ve got caught in the bars of the headboard, trapping the plastic tube of his IV drip, which had then jerked out of the vein. That’s where the blood had come from. It must have been why his body was at such a strange angle, hard to piece it together, really, old people bruise at anything, even the adhesive pads of a necessary ECG will sometimes leave behind small circular bruises on their torso, sometimes in patterns similar to spread-out fingertips. It wasn’t pretty, but dead old people are hardly ever pretty. It’s a good thing we’re used to it: death midwifery is to hospice care what regular midwifery is to obstetrics. It’s very much part and parcel of our line of work. We’re professionals.