V

From a very early age I both loved and feared hospitals. They were exciting places! Full of sound and light, with many people in bright white coats running all about. Forever on the move. They seemed to my young eyes as a great anthill, overflowing with hundreds of individuals each with their own job, each busily working in the massive roiling ballet of people. I was in hospital when I was twelve. I’d fallen down a hill at school--or at least, I said I’d fallen. In reality I was trying to set a new record for hill-rolling--and broken my hand. I remember thinking at that time that I was the luckiest person on the planet! After all, I’d broken my writing hand, which meant only one thing: No homework.

I remember only one nurse specifically. Over these intervening years I’ve lost her face and name. Indeed, I’ve been told that we never think of a face we’ve not met, and I wonder sometimes whether a fleeting image in my head isn’t that nurse. She was kindest of all the people at the hospital. Now, don’t mistake my meaning; they were mostly all kind, but she was best. I can distinctly hear her voice in my ears even now. I had never seen an angel, but I could have easily believed she was one.

I used to keep a journal even then. It was rubbish, of course it was. Full to bursting with the stupid dreams of a young person: ‘I want some day to live in a big house! With a spiral staircase! Or maybe a castle? …Definitely a castle!’ That sort of shit. When this nurse saw me with a pen in my off-hand, the small book I used propped on my lap, she asked me if I would like her to write for me. I don’t think I ever said yes faster in my life. It was the final proof I needed: She was certainly an angel.

However, my view of hospitals changed on the day with the boots. They lost their idyllic quality: That day was the first scratch through the bright shining lacquer clouding my view of them.