I watched the plain grey curtains and thought about the man at my back. In the hospital grounds a peacock screeched and the blood in my veins moved an inch or two. The daylight seemed early and strong and the curtains became patterned with houses or cathedrals or something. Then they came, the day staff, at the end of the dormitory, their jocularity masking the loathing they felt at having to face another day in this place. After an agony of time one came closer, was behind me saying, ‘Fuck,’ before he ran soft-footed for his colleagues.

The Head Nurse arrived, I could smell him behind me, and before drawing the curtain that divided the man’s bed from my own he snapped, ‘Get him out of here,’ this being the signal for two dark-suited young men to be upon me in an instant, chasing time the way a dog, I believe, chases its own tail. They worked in a frenzy, squeezing my crackling wrists, hauling me up from the bed, slamming empty locker drawers as they took it in turns to glean for clothing. Soon they were pushing my poker arms into a shirt and pullover, the rightful owners of which I did not know. They decided against a tie, an item of clothing easily ignored in times of haste, then one hugged me tightly from behind while the other yanked up my trousers lined, as always, with a fat incontinence pad. Socks, shoes, and I was ‘done’.

They put me in a wheelchair, naturally, for how else, if you were so inclined, would you shift a creature like me? They had long ago, it seemed, given up the pretence of trying to rehabilitate me, struggling daily to try and get me to bear my own weight, feed myself, wipe my own arse. No one seemed more than superficially bothered, and I was happy to have it that way. It seemed as if they had contented themselves with the fact that I still lived, somehow, in spite of my thanatophile appearance and demeanour. So I was carted around in a wheelchair, naturally. Easier. For all concerned.