The group paused before me. Was sentence about to be passed on my part in this sorry affair? ‘What’s he doing here?’ growled the Head Nurse, who must have had a name, I realize, but I’m at a complete loss in trying to remember what it was. ‘Get him out of the way,’ he said. One of the staff, a girl with a remarkable hare-lip, whose name was Tanya, or it may have been, though it was of no consequence since any name would do, hurried to my wheelchair and pulled me back a yard to repair the slight hindrance for which I was responsible. ‘Further, further,’ yapped the Head Nurse, and Tanya drew me back another yard. She was new to the place and would soon learn that by rights she should have taken me to the dining-room straight away, it would have been better for her if she had, but she paused, perhaps bravely seeking to appear somehow unafraid, somehow involved in the affair. One of the young men looked at her seriously. The two ambulance women silently shrugged off any suggestion of assistance as they handed the nearly-dead one from our company and into the back of their vehicle.

Everyone watched as the red and white doors of the ambulance shrank slowly away, turning off between the dark old buildings of the hospital and out of the grounds. Then the Head Nurse broke the silence and the stillness, locking and bolting the ward doors with deliberation.

‘Right,’ he said. ‘You all know what time it is. Get among them. Breakfasts. Quickly.’

TWO

Thus the new man had been taken from us leaving a hole in my mind that had not been there before. I was slipping, had known it for some time – I could not hope to live a life such as mine and expect to be completely unaffected.