He was still up when she came in from her actual late shift last night on the ward.

His finger pattering away at his tablet, the way someone would poke another person in the chest if they were angry.

Don’t get cold, she’d said to him. And he’d said, ‘Do you mean emotionally?’ Not even looking up.

Always so clever with his words.

~

Ruth shows the ticket and is let through an old-fashioned turnstile. It clicks and snaps ingeniously. The bar rotates into her bum. A cheeky bump of encouragement. ‘It’s okay . . .’ Into a different world.

A group of young mothers sit on the grass. Their children bright as flowers.

Couples walk on the paths. Blackbirds toy in the leaf litter, flick up the ornamental bark.

Ruth has never looked up and seen so few people outdoors in this city. Feels a strange sense of vertigo at the unbusy-ness, the space. A nostalgia for the beach she grew up next to.

Remembers watching Leo learn to walk in their parents’ garden by the sea.

~

She builds up the courage to sit. The give of the ground ever-so-slight. Firm and warm. Rests her hand into the soft nap of grass, uncertain that she should.

It takes her a while to realise the hum is not the city traffic but the sound of insects. Tiny flies displaying, staying in one place in the air.

The lawn is littered with clover. Another plant she does not know. Tiny. A crowd of heart-shaped leaves with tight-grouped yellow flowers that look like knots in thread.

There’s a gentle breeze. That she hears more than feels. That knocks the nearby leaves a little.

Odd-looking alginate bags hang amongst the trees and shrubs, like funny plastic fruit. With the opaque haze of the soundproof pods around the patients’ beds. Leaves bunched up, the bags tied tightly at the neck with string.

She assumes the plants have some sort of infection.

Notices each type of leaf makes a sound all of its own. The rattle of dried peas in a child’s toy; the shush sound in a shell. Respirators. Laboured breath.

She pushes the thought of the ward away.

. . . Breathlessness . . .

Tonight. Maybe.

A tickle on her skin.

~

She watches an aphid stumble through the faint blonde hairs of her arm; its curious feelers flittering busily, tasting the paths of her salt.

For a moment she is lost, imagining how the world must look through eyes so small.

Finds the thought of it impossible. That it carries its machinery packed up inside. Its intestines and nervous wires, its breathing apparatus. Something so minute.

Its tiny eyes are perfect. Absolutely pin-prick black.

~

All around the park, bushes and trees are carefully spaced, or clustered into a balanced fringe. The songs of birds. Movements, every so often, a prattle in the branches.

She walks. Feels sun on her shoulders; a warmth tracing her edges. Reminds her of her shape.