At night, hospitals feel like shadowy, deserted wastelands inhabited mostly by machines. The man stood alone in the elevator and he pressed the button to go down, over and over, until the machine announced Doors closing! with a sort of unwarranted cheer, and the doors slid shut and the elevator began its descent, like a mine cage going down a shaft. When the doors opened again they did so onto a wide corridor where, in the daytime, numerous visitors, doctors, nurses and patients came and went, not to mention deliverymen and postmen and administrators and attendants and cleaners and cooks, the lifeblood of a hospital, its people. Now there was no one in sight and the lights were dimmed to conserve power, and in this twilight empty world the man walked, his feet treading the parquet floor. They made a little squeaking sound with each step he took, like a clown’s.

Another corridor connected to this one and it was along it that the various shops and amenities for visitors ran, though most closed down at night and would not be opened again until morning. A janitor mopped the floor by the men’s public bathrooms. The only place open was the café, which like the hospital never closed, and so it was there that the man headed. There was something almost comforting about hospitals at night, he’d discovered. In his long sojourn he had grown to loathe the daytime hospital with its ceaseless movement of people and eternal busyness, the constant babble of voices. People died in the night much as they did in the day but nights were quieter: one could hear oneself think. He ordered a coffee and paid and sat by the window. A wan moon shone behind clouds. It had rained earlier. A dark figure stood and watched him from outside, by the public benches. He could not make out its face. It raised a hand in greeting. Just a random passer-by, a teenager returning from the clubs late, or a homeless person. The hospital offered them a kind of comfort. He tore a sachet of sugar and then another and another. The sugar spilled over the counter. He drew a shape: walls, windows, a roof. A house. He took out his hip flask and poured into the coffee surreptitiously. A word came and went in his mind, something to do with the end of a railway line.

Terminal.

He told it to go away.

Terminal.

No, he said. There’s a flower and it lies beyond the Mountains of Darkness and—

Shut up.

He wondered if he was talking to himself. It didn’t matter. It wasn’t long now. He had the map now.