LITMIR.BIZ

       8

       Accidents and Emergencies

      THE WAITING ROOM in the Accident & Emergency department at Brooklands Hospital was almost empty when I sat down. A teenager with a bruised cheek fiddled with a broken mobile phone. A mildly hysterical woman argued endlessly about a traffic intersection with her passive husband. An elderly man with a damp tissue to his eyes waited for news of his wife. Lastly, there was myself, more uncertain about my father than I had been when I first arrived. Together we were a collection of the ill-equipped and unsaved – a playground brawl, a wrong right turn, a heart too weary to embark on its next beat, and an assassin’s bullet had brought us together.

      Dr Julia Goodwin, who had treated my father when he was driven from the Metro-Centre, would see me shortly, according to one of the nurses. But the clock on the wall disagreed, and as usual overruled her. I tried to read the local newspaper, smiled as comfortingly as I could at the elderly man, and watched the TV set.

      It was tuned to the Metro-Centre cable channel, and showed an afternoon discussion programme transmitted from the mezzanine studio. The suntanned face of David Cruise dominated everything, and covered the proceedings like a cheap but over-bright lacquer. He was smiling and affable, but faintly hostile, like a bullying valet. Perhaps people in the motorway towns liked to be shouted at.