I lean back on the pillows and look at the corners of the room. When I was a kid, I always wanted to live on the ceiling - it looked so clean and uncluttered, like the top of a cake.
Jenny DownhamNurses never tell you what they know. They're hired for their cheeriness and the thickness of their hair. They need to look alive and healthy, to give the patients something to aim for.
Jenny DownhamAnd in bed, deep inside the building, are all the headaches that won't go away. The failed kidneys, the rashes, the ragged-edged moles, the lumps on the breast, the coughs that have turned nasty. In the Marie Curie Ward on the fourth floor are the kids with cancer. Their bodies secretly and slowly being consumed. And then there's the mortuary, where the dead lie in refrigerated drawers with name tags on their feet.
Jenny Downham