Chapter 5

On day three I sat in the relatives' room pairing my son's socks into a ward laundry bag. The chair under the window stayed empty. I had kept it that way since the twenty-eighth, and in three days nobody had asked me why. Above the door the wall clock was still on winter time. Nobody had put it forward, so everything in that room arrived an hour late.

Two nurses were doing handover at the table. Three families had the rest of the chairs. A grandfather slept sitting up. A couple shared one charger between two phones. A woman opposite…