There is a wide hall with a gorilla-sized mother and child carved from granite. I have not seen less living rock. It feeds out its own cold, which it retains all year, intensifying in winter. The only thing about the sculpture which is on the human scale is held in the hand of the monstrous child. It is a ball, or a fruit. This part of the hospital is where the children are treated, and many of them touch this ball as they come and go, so it is sometimes warm. Single mittens are put there, until they are paired up, or lost again.
The remaining addition to the hospital is ‘my’ part. It adjoins the original building and is devoted to disorders of the heart. It is not large but it is efficient, containing two theatres. Because it is not large, there are not so many corridors, which patients fear. Seen from outside, the building is an upright creamy tube, with a sloped roof, whose window is a single ox-eye. The body of the building is pierced with what look like arrowslits. Artificial light is a constant requirement. We have two generators. The theatre in which I most frequently operate is in the top room. Because of the height and angle of the window, you cannot see out, but I have looked up to see stars from there, and dawn breaking. Every part of this modern cylinder is in use. Insofar as this is possible, there are no corners to contain dirt; unlike most followed-through architectural theories, this does not seem to be foolish and is handsome. It is also appropriate, as the building and my department were endowed by a man whose fortune was made from the manufacture of cleaning agents ‘good at reaching corners’. Only once the patients are mending in health does this cornerlessness present problems. The furniture of convalescence – sofas, chairs, the television – is incongruous in the circular rooms. Occasionally, I wonder whether I should ask Tertius to have one of his designer friends make appropriate, curvilinear, furniture, which I shall give to the hospital. Then I reflect that coin is both circular and more appropriate.
I took the lift up to the ward, having been to the consultants’ room in the main block. I was greeted by many nurses, each busy with something, as though in a diorama of a well-working hospital. I sometimes feel like a performer, with great longueurs between performances, while my juniors ensure that what is real – tests, readings, turning, dredging, wiping, feeding – all go on. They fill time. It is only once the patients are asleep, and the nurses begin to knit and quietly talk about husbands and children, that the truth comes out again. Life is dense with empty space.
The little brown boy was asleep. When I see the very small children with tubes in their noses and arms and sides, they look like puppets on transparent proteinous strings. To mediums, that is what we are. Geneticists know this too, I suppose, as we dance about on our helical threads. The boy was about two, but in that prim bliss of baby sleep he looked younger. His mother appeared to be praying. In fact she was helping a grumpy old man, who had come in from the adults’ ward, with a crossword clue. It was one of those crosswords which are called ‘quick’. The old man was in a dressing-gown with a badge over the breast. The crest was not familiar; it must be that of a chain store. I imagined he had six months left to him of life. He had a vile temper and did not enjoy the visits of his wife. One of the nurses had heard him crying at night. He had told her he did not want to die, he loved life. Each day, he made the newspaper last. He would call the more gullible nurses over on a pretext and then say, ‘Dreadful, isn’t it, shouldn’t be allowed, crying shame,’ and show them the photograph of the naked girl in the paper to make them blush. Then he would scuttle off to the bathroom to shave. He disliked many things, which gave him a sort of firewatcher’s vigilance. That he was currently doing the quick crossword
The remaining addition to the hospital is ‘my’ part. It adjoins the original building and is devoted to disorders of the heart. It is not large but it is efficient, containing two theatres. Because it is not large, there are not so many corridors, which patients fear. Seen from outside, the building is an upright creamy tube, with a sloped roof, whose window is a single ox-eye. The body of the building is pierced with what look like arrowslits. Artificial light is a constant requirement. We have two generators. The theatre in which I most frequently operate is in the top room. Because of the height and angle of the window, you cannot see out, but I have looked up to see stars from there, and dawn breaking. Every part of this modern cylinder is in use. Insofar as this is possible, there are no corners to contain dirt; unlike most followed-through architectural theories, this does not seem to be foolish and is handsome. It is also appropriate, as the building and my department were endowed by a man whose fortune was made from the manufacture of cleaning agents ‘good at reaching corners’. Only once the patients are mending in health does this cornerlessness present problems. The furniture of convalescence – sofas, chairs, the television – is incongruous in the circular rooms. Occasionally, I wonder whether I should ask Tertius to have one of his designer friends make appropriate, curvilinear, furniture, which I shall give to the hospital. Then I reflect that coin is both circular and more appropriate.
I took the lift up to the ward, having been to the consultants’ room in the main block. I was greeted by many nurses, each busy with something, as though in a diorama of a well-working hospital. I sometimes feel like a performer, with great longueurs between performances, while my juniors ensure that what is real – tests, readings, turning, dredging, wiping, feeding – all go on. They fill time. It is only once the patients are asleep, and the nurses begin to knit and quietly talk about husbands and children, that the truth comes out again. Life is dense with empty space.
The little brown boy was asleep. When I see the very small children with tubes in their noses and arms and sides, they look like puppets on transparent proteinous strings. To mediums, that is what we are. Geneticists know this too, I suppose, as we dance about on our helical threads. The boy was about two, but in that prim bliss of baby sleep he looked younger. His mother appeared to be praying. In fact she was helping a grumpy old man, who had come in from the adults’ ward, with a crossword clue. It was one of those crosswords which are called ‘quick’. The old man was in a dressing-gown with a badge over the breast. The crest was not familiar; it must be that of a chain store. I imagined he had six months left to him of life. He had a vile temper and did not enjoy the visits of his wife. One of the nurses had heard him crying at night. He had told her he did not want to die, he loved life. Each day, he made the newspaper last. He would call the more gullible nurses over on a pretext and then say, ‘Dreadful, isn’t it, shouldn’t be allowed, crying shame,’ and show them the photograph of the naked girl in the paper to make them blush. Then he would scuttle off to the bathroom to shave. He disliked many things, which gave him a sort of firewatcher’s vigilance. That he was currently doing the quick crossword
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