All the time Holly and I said nothing. We didn’t look at each other. We got off at the hospital stop. The snow was in little hard bits. People wore long coats and hats and scarves and gloves. I was shaking because the hospital terrifies me. I get nightmares about my dad’s operation. I see them opening his chest like a box. Inside that box there are monsters. Like things out of Alien. Like when they put the guy on the table with all the food and he’s twisting around and then the thingy comes out of his chest. Like the lizard thing. Idk. And Sigourney Weaver omg. It comes out of her tummy. Like giving birth to an alien lizard character. I had that dream one night. The guy who made the alien also made the aliens for Close Encounters of the Third Kind. What are the other two kinds? And what if there’s more than three? I blame Serena for all that shit.

She was in Ward 2B. They told us at the reception. They don’t care why a patient is in. That’s someone else’s problem. They look at their computer screen and a ward number comes up and that’s that. I suppose if they knew why every person in the hospital was there they would die of the weight of all the pain. She’s in 2B, next please? We went up there but the nurse told us she was asleep. I was a bit relieved. I didn’t want to find out what happened. I think Holly was relieved too. We were just about to go away when the nurse stopped us.

If you wait for a bit we’ll have to wake her up to do her stats.

Oh OK.

Are you friends of hers?

We nodded.

She’s very upset about something. Any ideas, girls?

We shook our heads. I could have told her Serena is Very Upset about things often, it’s a thing she does. But it felt like I would be letting her down. And then, we all get upset. Except maybe Holly. We’re all just moving from one crisis to the next like the rest of the country. Like we’re supposed to be in recovery but everyone older than my brother is emigrating and the only way to see a doctor is to overdose on mood modifiers.

My phone rang. It was my brother. He asked me where I was. He said Mam was looking for me. There was some kind of protest outside my dad’s office and she was hoping I wasn’t there. I said I was visiting a friend in hospital, and what was the protest about? My brother said: One of Dad’s evictions looks like it went wrong. Talk to you later. And he hung up.

Like Dad’s evictions usually go well as long as you’re Dad.