“Don’t just stand around,” Lena commanded. “Grab anybody from the upper floors who can walk.”

K. raced into the hospital. A faint light filtered in through the barred windows. Groans, shuffling, heavy breathing, and anxious female voices filled the corridors. A nurse walked past, leading a slender, gnarled figure by the arm. A breathless woman thundered from the upper floor:

“Take him!”

“Come on, this way,” another voice answered.

“We’re going to need a wheelbarrow here. A wheelbarrow!”

K. jogged up to the second floor and turned into a men’s ward. A group of patients had crowded silently into a narrow space under the stairs. The alcoholics and schizophrenics gazed as if hypnotised into the depths of the corridor, from where a cold light emanated.

In the ward at the end of the corridor, a matchstick of a man clambered over a pile of bricks made by a collapsed wall.

K. entered the room. The man turned his angular face and protruding lower lip towards him. The room was lined with old wooden beds caked with dust and plaster. K. approached him and said firmly and calmly: “We have to go down. Now.” The patient obeyed and joined the others. K. tried to get them to queue along the corridor wall and repeated loudly: “Let’s make a line and move!” Several patients paid no heed and stayed in their bunks in one of the wards.

The angular-faced patient went up to K. and whispered into his ear: “This is all because of me. The war is all my fault. If nobody listens, I’ll turn on my camera. First shot, the world will see the enemy. Second shot, our guys will attack. Third, everybody’s dead! Kaboom!”

K. grabbed him and led him back into the line.

“It’s called journalism. Just stay there.”

He complied with a grimace.

K. lifted the remaining patients out of their bunks. They wordlessly joined the line and shuffled obediently to the first floor.

The lobby was still in ferment.

“Fetch Grandpa!” one nurse screamed.

Infirm elderly people were carried out of the hospital’s dark depths on sheets.

A soldier ran through the front door pushing a wheelbarrow. Thin, bare legs hung over the side. Paying little heed to his load, the soldier clunked the barrow down the steps and zigzagged across the courtyard to the kitchen building.

There, in the twilight, old men and women huddled up to Lena. Quiet, wrapped in blankets and wearing loose white T-shirts and diapers, they descended into the basement of the kitchen outhouse one at a time. No sign of the bus.

Lena and a nurse lifted the old man out of the wheelbarrow and carried him down. The soldier effortlessly picked up the first old woman that came into sight and followed them. The jagged line supervised by K. came out of the hospital building and made its way to the kitchen. The angular-faced patient darted out of the row at K. and tugged at his clothes.

“The prophet was here. He has wrought this war through me! He is dying and he wants everyone to die with him!” K. calmly held him at arm’s length.